After 10 years, Tedd Tripp's “Shepherding a Child's Heart” is still one of the most popular books on parenting in Christian circles. My wife and I recently worked through this book to glean some things we can use on our own adventures in parenting. I didn't know anything about Tripp, but had heard good things about this book.
In the beginning, I really liked this book. When it comes to practical advice on raising children, I think Tripp mostly does a good job. I was happy to see that he rejects pop psychology and attempts to adopt a fully Biblical perspective. I especially appreciate his emphasis on communication throughout the book. In short, the purpose of discipline is to bring the child to repentance. Snap angry judgments and spankings are almost always unhelpful. Tripp makes the case for reasoned discipline. This means setting clear rules, and enforcing those rules with discipline, not angrily, but explaining to the child what they did wrong, why it's wrong, trying to figure out why they did it, etc. Essentially, punish the behavior, but also get to the heart of the matter. This teaches the child the important concepts of sin and its consequences.
Great so far, but still, I have a major problem with this book. Tripp completely whiffs on the most important thing: the salvation of your children. Tripp's attitude is most plainly seen on p.44 where he puts “saved children” in his list of unbiblical goals. To be fair, he's mainly criticizing manipulative evangelism and the sinner's prayer in this section. I'm fine with that part. Parents are seriously harming their kids by encouraging superficial professions of faith and accepting such as genuine salvation. However, for parents who correctly understand salvation, shouldn't we do everything we can to help them come to repentance and faith in Christ? Of course! Once they are old enough to understand, parents should have regular conversations with their kids about their spiritual state. Make sure they understand sin, the gospel, and what they must do to be saved. Explain repentance and faith. Plainly ask them if they've repented. Watch them and ask yourself if they are bearing appropriate fruit. Have they been born again? These should be our main thoughts as parents.
Tripp couldn't be more wrong when he says the salvation of our children is an unbiblical goal. Not only is this bad parenting, it shows a lack of understnding of salvation and Christian living. It gets worse on p.54 when Tripp suggests how to rework the goal of saved children. He says, “one of the problems with this perspective is that it looks for a major spiritual event of salvation and misses the spiritual process of nurturing your children.” Major spiritual event...you mean like passing from death to life, becoming a new creature, and being taken out of the Devil's family to become a child of God? (2 Cor. 5:17, Eph. 2:1-3, John 5:24) Of course there is growth and discipleship, but Tripp seems to completely neglect the child's need to be born again. The new birth is the beginning of a Christian's life. Before their salvation, your child is, at best, a well-behaved lost person. Don't expect that to last long. You can try to teach your lost child all you want, but until they've been born again, they will never really “get it”.
I imagine that if I were having this argument with Tripp, he would say that salvation is not a main goal, but is the outcome of a properly shepherded child. But this puts the cart before the horse. Sure, salvation doesn't mean that your child instantly becomes perfect, but it means they have a chance. No matter how well you shepherd their heart, until they've been born again, their chance of living a fruitful life pleasing to God is exactly zero percent. To say it again, your first real task as a parent is to make sure your children come to repentance and faith in Christ. After that, the task of discipleship can truly begin.
When you neglect to directly deal with the salvation issue, your kids may miss it. Churches are full of teens and adults who are moral, religious, and lost. Why add your child's soul to that number? That's the risk of teaching them to act Christian without being sure they are born again. All of your work to teach them good character will mean nothing if they go to Hell when they die. Even if your kids do get saved somewhere along the way, what have you taught them? If you had no urgency to share the gospel with your children, do you think they'll feel any urgency to share the gospel with the lost around them? So, even if they do get saved along the way, you may still cripple their growth.
There is a simple reason that Tripp is so horribly passive when it comes to dealing with your child's salvation and it comes down to his theology. Tripp is infected with the theological poison of Calvinism. This is most painfully shown on p.199 where, in reference to children internalizing the gospel, Tripp says, “While you dare not presume upon His sovereign mercy, you may labor with expectation that the gospel is powerful”. Or to put it more plainly, in Tripp's theology, God may have already arbitrarily damned your child to Hell before they were even born. No matter what they do, no matter what you do, your child cannot be saved and all your work is in vain. Of course, we can be happy to know that this is nonsense. God extends his love and mercy to all. You can be confident that if your child repents and believes the gospel, he will be saved.
In conclusion, Tripp gives some solid practical parenting advice in “Shepherding a Child's Heart”, but this is completely overshadowed by the fact that he fails to correctly address your child's pressing need for salvation. This means that his advice may lead you to raise religious, but unsaved children. Parents must avoid manipulative evangelism techniques, but should also do everything they can to ensure their children are born again. It's right to train your kids before their new birth, but they will not really "get it" until they know Christ.
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