FYI: Baby Worship is Bad!

It seems to me that there is a delicate balance between loving your baby well and ending up worshipping your baby. You might think that sounds extreme. Surely if you should be pouring out your love for someone it should be for your child? But in my experience this can go horribly wrong when we don't do it well. So...

This is how it should go in an ideal world - we love God, we love our husbands, and then we love our children. So babies are the third priorities of our lives. But when their physical needs mean that we are constantly focused on them, it is very easy to put them as the number one priority of our lives, which they should never be. We have a tendency to put feeding the baby first, or buying something for the baby, or talking constantly about the baby, or watching the baby! The list goes on. But what happens is that we stop being there for our husbands, we even stop respecting and honouring them if they need something from us that clashes with the timing of the baby's needs (I've been there!). Then we are sinning against God by neglecting our marriage, which is far more important to God than changing the baby's nappy (yes, I do realise that babies must be cared for, and sometimes things have to wait so we can do that, but this is really about your heart attitude). And then everything is out of sync and it is likely that the baby is taking a place in our lives which only God deserves.

In Paul's opening to the letter to the Romans he writes about humanity and idolatry. He says: "For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened...they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator" (v. 21-5, read the whole of chapter 1 if you can). God takes this seriously, and sadly baby idolatry is accepted and even praised in our culture. I know from hanging out with other mums that most of the time they don't talk about anything but their babies, and they joke about the fact that they never talk to their husbands or go to bed with them. This is a huge mistake which will end in disaster. If you live to serve your baby you will wear yourself down with exhaustion, and when the children are grown up you may realise that your marriage has fallen apart.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't care for our babies or enjoy talking about them, but we must remember that we are bringing them up to glorify God, not to meet our need to have something to worship. Children don't turn out well when we do that because they aren't meant to be worshipped. They are supposed to worship God with us. I think that this is something we particularly struggle with as mums, so here are a few things that I have found helpful for keeping things in a biblical perspective (some of these relate to the husband/wife relationship but that is for a reason - because God considers that relationship to be foundational to bringing up a child)...

• Be very careful about how you interact with your husband when your baby is around. Don't belittle him if he doesn't know how to do the practical baby jobs as well as you. Don't patronise him or take your frustation out on him.


• Listen to your husband. You may think that you know best when it comes to baby stuff, and maybe you do, but he has God-given wisdom to lead his family. He often knows what is best for you. So for example, if Aaron takes Isabelle at church and says he wants me to have a bit of time to sing to God, then I should do that.


• If you are having a conversation with someone and you notice that every ten seconds you are looking at your baby (this really does happen because you are so accustomed to reading your baby for signs of hunger/tiredness/boredom!), stop yourself. This is difficult to do, but you must make yourself concentrate on other people sometimes.


• On that note, make sure you have conversations about things other than babies. Ask your husband about his day, and be interested. Talk to other mums about your relationship with God. Read about things that interest you like art, nature, or prophecy for example.


• Don't allow your whole week to be shaped around your baby's schedule. Do what makes life run smoothly for you, and ask God how you can serve Him and honour Him in your week.


• Read your Bible when your baby is sleeping, and spend time in prayer, then God will remain the centre of your life, rather than this boring thing, confined to church on Sundays.


• Relax about your baby, they shouldn't rule your world!

This is a wonderful time, and having a baby around is a lovely experience, but we must be careful to keep our priorities right. This isn't just something that we have to force ourselves to do, it is actually best for us (we get to relax a bit more, and expand our horizons, and spend time with God - all of these help keep us sane on those bad days!), and best for the baby (as I already said, they aren't designed to be worshipped, and bringing up a spoilt, demanding child isn't nice). This is because God knows what is best for all of us, and he lovingly wants that for us.

Love,x