It is as much a secret as it is
common knowledge that I absolutely love Will & Jada (Pinkett) Smith. Over
the years, they have seen a lot of press surrounding their relationship, and
even more around their parenting style, but what I saw today cemented, for me,
what makes them truly awesome parents.
I feel that they are actively moving the needle in the tearing down of long held beliefs about ownership as parenting within the Black community - what it means to bring life into this world and the nurturing of that life into adulthood. I would also go as far as to say that they directly, yet however unintentionally, are working to change the narrative around black parenting, while inadvertently, uplifting a biblical argument about parenting that has been, as yet, unconsidered.
In a special episode of Red Table Talk Father’s Day couch edition, Will Smith made the statement, “I saw how much I was making, and forcing, and pushing the things that I wanted and… I had a real epiphany on how bad a person will hate you if you keep forcing your wishes onto their lives.”
His statement immediately made me realize just how much, historically, black parenting has been a largely audacious and borderline egregious affront, not just to parenting as an institution, and Christianity, but to the God-Man relationship overall.
See, as Christians, a lot of people like to use the Bible as a weapon as much against other people, as we should use it against the devil! You know the ones. The church mother or revered “Bible scholar” who always seems to have a scripture at hand to use against you in trying to make you do what they want you to do. The ones whose view may not be as objectively upright biblically speaking, as it is acceptable practice based on religiosity.
The late Bishop of my former church used to always say “you so heavenly, you ain’t no earthly good”. My attention to language and tone allowed me to understand his meaning long before discovering the Johnny Cash song.
If we are called to be fishers of men and to live Christ-like as the very definition of Christian, how dare we attempt to use God’s Word as a force of hand to make someone else be to us, or for us, what we decided they should be. It’s disrespectful to God!
Isaiah
64:8 says, “yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.”
(Black) parents have got to stop asserting ownership over people that simply do NOT belong to us! All things (people, property, and otherwise) belong to God! We are merely the safe keepers of that which He entrusts to our care.
My daughter is my daughter only because I was the vessel chosen by God as the means of her entering this world. I can give her everything that I have, to bring her up as an upright and decent, Christ-like human being, but I do not get to decide what that looks like for her. I went through an entire college life and applied to law school based on a vision that my father built for me, decades before, based on who he decided I needed to be in this world, in order to be of value to my race and lineage. I had to be the one to do the thing that no one else in our family had ever done. Oh, how much more burdensome his promptings would have been, had he been a “Bible scholar”.
By weaponizing our Bible knowledge against others, what we fail to do is realize that we are also using the bible against ourselves, making everything relational toward us instead of relational toward God.
God is
supposed to be at the center of all of our relationships, not our flesh-driven
desires.
As a young mother, allowing for my daughter to find her voice in the world, I would throw Proverbs 29:15 at her all the time, “a child left to their own devices will bring shame upon their mother”. Not their father or anybody else, their mother…and you ain’t gon’ make me look crazy in these streets!
Again, so quick to weaponize the Word, not realizing that it is much more a boomerang, than a baseball bat.
No use of God’s Word as a weapon comes without ricochet. You are inevitably going to feel or experience some unintended pain or discomfort of your own because you have placed yourself at the center, within God’s space of your relationship, and not the space intended for you.
I had to grow in The Word to realize that I was beating both of us up with that scripture. To imply that my daughter would shame me, was to imply that (1) she would go into the world and act foolishly, while also implying that (2) I had not properly prepared her to thrive outside of my presence.
When will (Black) parents learn that there is so much freedom in just letting God have His due?! It’s like getting to be a small child again – you don’t have to take on the burden of responsibility that was never intended to be yours. This is God’s stuff! Not mine. But (Black) parents, and especially (Black) mothers will take on the burden of their children’s decisions, especially their sons, UNTO DEATH!! Literally, because this Walter Lee (Raisin in the Sun reference) Syndrome ever-present within the Black community will kill you!! IF you let it.
Let me tell
you a secret – the choices of your children, especially your adult children,
ARE
NOT YOUR FAULT OR RESPONSIBILITY.
PERIOD!
Will made an incredible point in admitting that our children are not ours. “They are their own people. I am not going to preconceive what you need to be. There is a real arrogance in that.”
Just as you once desired autonomy as an individual, your children deserve the same. Stop trying to reshape clay that the Lord has already molded.
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