I Turned The Door Into A Standard

It started well. That is the part worth saying first, because you have begun to suspect it did not.

You wanted your household outside. You wanted them off screens and out of their rooms and doing something together, and you are the head of this house, and so you did what a man who leads does. You made it the way things are here. Sunday afternoon, we go out. That is what this family does.

And it worked. That is the sting in it. They come. Every time. Nobody argues.

And you have noticed, over about a year, that something has gone out of it.

They come to the door. They put their shoes on. And they come the way people come to a thing that is required, and there is a particular quality to the silence in the first two streets, and you have started dreading it without letting yourself say so.

I want to name what happened, because it is not a failure of leadership and I think you have been reading it as one.

Lest they be discouraged

There is an instruction to fathers in Colossians that comes with a reason attached, and the reason is the whole thing.

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. (Colossians 3:21, King James Version)

Lest they be discouraged.

That word is not about temper. Discouraged means the courage goes out of a thing. It means somebody stops bringing themselves to it and starts bringing only their compliance.

And notice the letter does not say provoke not your children lest they rebel. Rebellion would at least be a presence in the room. Discouragement is quieter than that, and it looks exactly like obedience, which is why it can run in a good house for years without anybody naming it.

You are not looking at rebellion in your household, and you were never dealing with children who refuse you. Colossians 3:21 names discouragement rather than defiance as the thing to watch for, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a father see that without it becoming a charge against him.

And look who the verse is addressed to. Fathers. Not children. The instruction about the atmosphere of a house is given to the man in it, which is a heavy thing and is also a compliment, because you are not addressed like that unless you can actually move it.

You have been handed the one position in this house that can change the temperature, and it was never given to somebody who had already failed at it. The written word speaks the instruction directly to fathers, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that read as trust rather than as blame.

What a rule does to an invitation

Here is the mechanism, and it is simple enough to be uncomfortable.

An invitation and a rule are different objects. They can contain the same words.

An invitation can be refused. That is not a weakness in it. That is what makes a yes mean something, because a yes that could not have been a no is not a yes, it is a compliance report.

The moment going out became the way things are here, every yes in this house stopped carrying information. You cannot tell anymore who wants to come, because there is no longer a way for anybody to tell you.

You are not being disobeyed, and you were never actually finding out what any of them wanted. Colossians 3 warns against the thing that takes the heart out of a household rather than the thing that takes the order out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a father the difference between quiet and willing.

An invitation that cannot be refused is not an invitation, and taking the rule down is not the same as losing your house.

Authority is not the thing at risk

Now I want to guard something carefully, because there is a bad version of this article and I am not writing it.

Nothing here says stop leading. Nothing here says a household should have no shape, or that a father should hand the running of his house to a vote.

You are not being asked to hand your house to a vote, and you were never going to lose your place by taking one Sunday rule down. Colossians 3 warns about discouraged children and says nothing at all about a father losing his standing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a good correction from becoming an overcorrection.

What is being taken down is one rule about one activity, and it is being taken down precisely because that activity only works when it is wanted.

There are things in your house that ought to be required, and going for a walk on a Sunday is not one of them, and it never needed to be.

You are able to remove one rule without removing yourself, and it has never once been the number of rules that made a man the head of his own house. The passage puts the caution on discouragement rather than on the loss of order, which is why the Spirit of God moves a father to take down one thing rather than everything.

Say it out loud and then go

So the practical part, and it has to be said out loud, because the rule was said out loud.

Get everybody in the room and say it plainly. Something like: Sunday walks are not a rule in this house anymore. I made it one and I should not have. From now on I am going, and anybody who wants to come is welcome, and anybody who does not is not in trouble.

Then say nothing else. Do not explain it for four minutes. Do not attach anything to the end of it.

You are able to take a rule down without taking it back, and it has never once weakened a man to say plainly that he set something wrong. Colossians 3:21 gives fathers the responsibility for the atmosphere of a house, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man saying a hard sentence to his own children.

And then next Sunday, go. Put your shoes on and go, whether three come or none do, and do not comment on who came.