You Get What You Measure

Think about it. What do we seek to provide for our children? We want them to be happy, safe, comfortable, good citizens, educated, religious, and fulfilling their potential. The criteria parents use to determine the condition of their children are substantial. Most parents would examine the state of their children and conclude they are:

* Provided with their basic needs: food, clothing, shelter
* Physically healthy
* Performing at or beyond their grade level
* In a secure and comfortable home
* Monitored and cared for by parents
* Involved with church services and programs
* Connected to decent friends
* Not involved in gangs
* Not taking drugs
* Not alcoholics
* Not out-of-control sexually
* Not involved in a cult or in satanic activity
* Not the victim of physical or emotional abuse
* Without a criminal record or related problems

These measures are meaningful-as far as they go. But here's the invisible problem that hampers the development of America's children: We are measuring their well-being based upon the wrong standards. Without realizing it, we have made ourselves the judge and jury of what is right and wrong, good and bad, useful and useless in relation to our children's lives.

You are not likely to get the right outcome if you base your actions on the assessment of the wrong things. Yet when it comes to raising our children, Americans have created a matrix of measurements based upon what our society defines to be significant. We gather the raw data for those indices based upon the best information we are able to capture from the ever-present, omniscient mass media. We analyze what we learn based upon our standards and make corrections as needed. The result, of course, is that our children are constantly receiving "the best care" available.

Think about the process for a moment. We have replaced God with ourselves, usurping leadership over our children's circumstances. We have ignored God's Word when it comes to determining how well we're doing, believing that if our conditions meet the social norms, we're most likely in compliance with God's expectations. And we make our judgments and comparisons on the basis of the popular wisdom and criteria dispensed by a mass media that is run for profit by groups of people who have no intention or desire of pleasing God or meeting His standards through the material they produce and distribute. With that in mind, it would not be hard to challenge some of the common thinking about the "okayness" of our children.

For instance, we could note the decline in educational performance: Reading skills are declining, writing skills are abysmal, math ability is below par, and science knowledge is lacking. We could expose the percentages of teens and adolescents having sexual intercourse, smoking, drinking, using drugs, or being victimized by violent crime. Some of the rates of activity in these areas have declined in recent years, but millions and millions of our children remain caught up in such lifestyles. We could harp on the 13 million children who live in poverty, or the 18 million who are being raised by a single parent. We could highlight the issue of physical health, focusing on the 12 million children who are overweight, or the millions of children (particularly girls) who wrestle with anorexia and bulimia, or the 8 million children who receive subpar heath care because they have no health insurance. But that would be missing the point, too.

What is the point? That God is the absolute judge of how well our children are doing, that His standards examine the character and faith of our young people, and His ways are often not facilitated by many of the activities we promote or endorse, regardless of our ignorance or good intentions.

You get what you measure. If you want intellectuals, measure their exposure to complex information and ideas, and their performance on sophisticated tests. If you want great athletes, evaluate how committed they are to advanced physical training and how superbly they perform in sporting competitions. If you want relational people, determine how connected and popular they are among their peers.

What does God measure? Our hearts. He created us to love, serve, and obey Him. So He studes the indicators of our devotion to Him. As parents, then, our job is to raise spiritual champions. That does not mean we are supposed to ignore the significance of developing our children's intellectual, emotional, and physical dimensions. But it suggests that we have to see the bigger picture of God's priorities and raise our children in light of His standards, not ours or society's.