What conscientious parent doesn’t want the best for their children? Even before our babies enter the world, we do our best to provide them with the best nutrition, the best prenatal care, and the best environment. We search for the safest car seat, the softest clothing, and the most well-trained pediatrician. We want to do everything we can to help our children live happy, healthy lives.
And after they’re born?
We spend hours Googling orthodontically approved pacifiers, brain-enhancing formulas, and wipe-warmers to give our little ones a comfortable diapering experience. As they get older, we research the best shoes for toddlers, how to make healthy snacks, and which educational toys we should buy.
We want the best for our children—all the days of their lives. With this goal in mind, I invite you to prayerfully consider this quote from Scottish preacher and teacher Oswald Chambers:
The greatest enemy of the life of faith in God is not sin, but the good which is not good enough. The good is always the enemy of the best.1
Somewhere along the way, despite our desire to give our children the best, we often find ourselves spending vast amounts of time, energy, and money pursuing the good instead.
How does this happen?
We become deceived. Deceived by culture. Deceived by our well-meaning friends. Deceived, sometimes, even by Christians.
Let’s consider four ways the good can become the enemy of the best as we seek to raise our children in the faith.
1. We trade the best of regular church attendance for the good of sports and extra-curricular activities.
Decades ago, families had fewer options for extra-curricular activities. Boys played Little League (for a season). Kids took half-hour piano lessons and attended a weekly Boy or Girl Scouts meeting. Church was the center of the community, and Sundays were sacred. Even the non-religious knew not to schedule a practice or a game on Sunday.
Today, we have year-round and traveling sports teams and extra-curricular groups that schedule events indiscriminately on nights and weekends. Participation often requires families to miss church more often than they attend. Without intending to, we elevate sports and other activities above church attendance.
To properly handle this good/best dilemma, it helps to take the long view and ask ourselves which will benefit my children most over the course of their lifetime? Intense training to learn to play a sport well or opportunities to develop a deep and vital relationship with God and His church?
The likelihood of our child becoming a world-class athlete is slim. The likelihood that they’ll become a mighty man or woman of God improves dramatically when we spend more time on faith-building and church activities than on recreation. These two results aren’t mutually exclusive, but we usually become what we invest the majority of our time pursuing.
Matthew 6:21 says, “Where your treasure [time, money, effort] is, there your heart will be also.” Sports and other activities, when they don’t conflict with church participation, are good. Active participation in the ministries and mission of a Bible-believing church is best.
2. We trade the best of Christ-centered books and media for the good of “harmless” media.
Conscientious parents celebrate their child’s burgeoning interest in books and other forms of literature. Many turn them loose in the children’s room at the library and encourage them to pick out whatever interests them. With no guidance, they often choose “harmless” books. Sometimes they inadvertently choose material that is anti-Christian and conflicts with biblical truth. Even some of the “Christian” books contain information that doesn’t agree with the Bible.
In our desire to encourage our children to read and love books, we aren’t always careful about what they read or even what we read to them. We naively assume it doesn’t matter what they’re reading (within reason) as long as they’re reading.
What we fail to realize is that by allowing them to consume a steady diet of “junk food” books, we waste the opportunity to feed them high-quality material to help their minds and souls grow strong. Bible story books, fiction written from a Christian worldview, and missionary biographies can shape our children’s hearts and minds. It takes time and effort to find these books, but it’s so worth it. Books like these are powerful tools to train them in righteousness, spark spiritual conversations, and reinforce Christian values.
Providing books for our children to read is good. Providing high-quality books written from a Christian worldview is best.
3. We trade the best of Christian discipleship for the good of academic success.
My husband, David, served as a youth pastor for many years. He loved his students and their families and spent long hours preparing lessons and activities to help them grow in their Christian life. He came to faith as a teen and knows how crucial spiritual training is in the teen years. He’d often quote the statistics that reveal that the chances of a person surrendering their life to Christ drop dramatically after they turn 18. “I have only a few years to reach them,” he’d often say. “I want to make the most of the time I have.”
Sadly, many of the youth in our church didn’t participate in the Bible studies or activities our church offered. Why? They had “too much homework.”
“I can’t come to youth group on Wednesday night,” one would say. “I have a paper due tomorrow. I have to get a good grade.”
“I’m on restriction,” another would say, “until I get my grades up.”
“Restriction from attending youth group?” my husband would lament in the privacy of our home. “If these kids attend church and God gets ahold of them, grades may not be such a problem.”
School wasn’t easy for David, but when he surrendered his life to Christ at age 17, his attitude toward school, homework, and hard work was transformed. So were his grades.
Academics are important. They help our children gain entrance to college and learn a trade or profession. But academic success doesn’t guarantee a happy and fulfilling life. Knowledge of God’s Word, the disciplines of the Christian life, and a dynamic relationship with God does.
Psalm 1:1–3 reminds us,
How happy is the one who does not
walk in the advice of the wicked
or stand in the pathway with sinners
or sit in the company of mockers!
Instead, his delight is in the LORD’s instruction,
and he meditates on it day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside flowing streams
that bears its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
Academic education is good, but a rich spiritual education is best.
4. We trade the best of hard work and delayed gratification for the good of ease and plenty.
“I want to give my children everything I didn’t have growing up,” Alan said. Alan is a kind man and a good father. He works hard to provide for his family—too hard. He’ll often log fifty or sixty hours a week as an HVAC repairman. His wife complains that he’s never home, and he often responds by saying, “I don’t want my kids to have to work like I did for everything I got.”
Sadly, instead of being grateful for Alan’s generosity, his children are selfish, lazy, and entitled. While his two oldest daughters could earn money babysitting to buy the designer jeans they want, they ask their dad instead. His well-meaning generosity has hindered them from experiencing the healthy satisfaction and independence that comes from working and saving. Because Alan’s kids haven’t had to earn their spending money, they spend it recklessly.
Alan’s desire to provide well for his children has robbed them of the chance to develop resourcefulness, practice a strong work ethic, and learn gratitude.
If we want to raise financially responsible children, it’s good to provide generously for their needs. It’s best to give them the opportunity to work for their wants.
The examples I’ve shared are only a few among many. I invite you to prayerfully examine your family and personal life. Look closely at how you spend your family’s time, energy, and money. Pray James 1:5 and ask God to give you wisdom to discern His will for everything you say yes to and everything you say no to.
I suspect you’ll find dozens of good choices, but as believers, we don’t have to settle for good. God wants the best for us. When you find an area where the good has become the enemy of the best, be courageous enough to make the appropriate changes. You won’t regret it.
Let’s close with a prayer the apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians. May it encourage you as you seek to raise your children in the training and instruction of the Lord.
For this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven’t stopped praying for you. We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints’ inheritance in the light. (Colossians 1:9–12).
1 Oswald Chambers, “The Good or the Best?,” My Utmost for His Highest, February 21, 2024, https://utmost.org/updated/the-good-or-the-best/.
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