How important is environment?

As a Christian parent, I feel the great danger of thinking that creating the right environment for my child(ren) will cause them to persevere in the Christian life. I don't think that I am alone. There are many Christian parents who, thoughtfully or thoughtlessly, assume that their ability to form and develop their children in the Christian faith will determine their children's endurance.

So, how important is environment?
Environment is very important to the nurture of a child. A child who grows up in a family where the parents trust Christ with their lives, and make decisions based on the values of the Kingdom and the leading of the Holy Spirit are vastly better off than children whose parents make professions of faith, but in their lifestyles and choices are identical to their non-Christian neighbors. They are also vastly better off than children who know little or nothing of Christ. To grow up in a truly Christian home is a great privilege.

Is family nurture the deciding factor?
Is a good Christian family environment a sufficient condition to ensure that children persevere in trusting Christ? To affirm that it is sufficient would be bold-faced Pelagianism. Any theology of parenting founded on the Gospel must affirm that the Holy Spirit can and does use wise parenting in the conversion and maturing of children. Yet it must also affirm that the Holy Spirit is free and sovereign and is under no constraint to save anyone based on our performances. Our faithfulness does not necessitate His saving action in our children. Christian nurture in the home is vitally important, but is not decisive.

Doesn't that put parents in a hopeless condition?
Yes, in one sense it does. It is not within our power to create the conditions that guarantee our children will be saved. We must hear and believe that, if we are true to the Gospel. That very hopeless and helplessness is what pushes us to proper, and utter, dependence on Christ to save our children.

If we really believe that it is Christ who saves through the work of the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit delights to use that which honors the Son, then and only then will we be courageous in the kind of Christian parenting that trusts not in its own ability to parent, but in the power of Christ to work through us and in spite of us in the salvation of our children.

So where does it leave us?
Ultimately, a right view of the Gospel, and of Christ, presses us to faithfulness and prayer. We don't abandon faithfulness because it fails to guarantee our children's salvation. Rather we practice true faithfulness, in that we don't trust in the performance of these responsibilities, but in the One who graciously uses them in the salvation of people. The more clearly we see that, the more earnestly we will pray for Christ to act in saving our children, and in making us truly faithful to Him as parents.