Beth-El Baptist Church

01/04/2009

Greg Tomlinson


What should I do about undesirable relationships that my adult child has?


Even children that are raised up in a Christian home can buildup friendships and intimate relationships with people that their parents highly disagree with. Their friends may encourage destructive activities or strongly anti-God sentiment. What can the parents do to help their adult child when they are in the midst of such a relationship?


  1. What options are available to the parent?

Deuteronomy 21:18-21


One option that is available to the parents is to reject or throw the child out. There may be cases where that is necessary when the rebellious child that is living at home brings destruction into the house or may have too great an influence upon other siblings.


Judges 14:1-4


Another option is to try to discuss the relationships your child is forming and question the validity of them. Notice that with Samson, the parents questioned the legitimacy of the foreign relationship he wanted to form but they did not bring the commandments of God into the discussion. As far as Samson could have been thinking, the rejection of the relationship was not based upon the commandments of God but based upon personal choice or preferences. As we know, Samson rejected the counsel of his parents and built this relationship anyway. The parents did participate in the forming of the relationship which did not turn out so well.


Genesis 28:8-9


Another option is to say nothing about the relationship until late in the relationship. This can also lead to further problems. While your child may not take on another spouse it can lead to a break in the parent child relationship and making things worse over the long term. Again the difficulty here is that the parents did not care for the daughters of the Canaanites but they never discussed the situation with Esau and they never discussed the reasons behind their displeasure. This is a discussion that needed to have taken place long ago but it did not.


Ruth 1:1-5, 15-18


Another option is to learn to love by the power of God, the choice of your child and seek to teach and train up their loved one to know of God and Jesus Christ. Ruth was an idolater who by the example of Naomi learned to completely reject her own ways and her own god and seek the true and living God. Obviously this is an option that has to be carefully handled so that other destructive forces are not brought into the house and seemly approved of. The disapproval needs to be around the actions and beliefs and not the individual proper. There is love of the unlovable as Jesus Christ himself demonstrated.



  1. What happens if the child is forbidden (possibly by force) to see these friends?

Genesis 34:1-7, 24-31


While Genesis 34 is often referred to as the “rape of Dinah”. The situation does not read much like a rape. The man Schechem “loved” Dinah which would not typically be the result of a rape. Also notice that during the destruction of Schechem and Hamor that Dinah was removed by by her brothers. This indicates that she went to be with Schechem. One of the consequences of forbidding the child to see their friend/love interest is an increased desire to be with them.


Judges 15:1-8; 16:1-7


What can happen in some of these cases, is that the child begins a pattern of self destruction. They form destructive relationships that inevitably are destroyed and new even more destructive relationships are formed which causes even more destruction. With an adult child, there is no stopping these relationship until they either destroy themselves or they submit themselves to the God through Jesus Christ and seek healthy relationships led by God.


  1. What do these types of relationships reveal about the training of the child?

Ezra 9:1-4, 10-14 Hebrews 10:26-29

1 John 2:19 Romans 5:20-6:2


This could mean that the child may not have been trained that certain relationships are wrong because God says they are wrong. In the time of Ezra, some people knew it was wrong to have marriages amongst the unbelievers, but they did not understand why. Until they knew it was a violation of the law of God they were functioning according to their own desires and interests.


This could also mean that the child may not actually believe. There are many people who claim to be Christian but they do not actually believe. They know the commandments of God, they can quote scripture until you and they are blue in the face but they willingly ignore the commandments of God because they do not really believe.


  1. What is the best protection to keep these relationships from forming in the first place?

Deuteronomy 11:18-20 Proverbs 7:1-27


From the very earliest of ages, the children need to be instructed by and through the very words of God. They need to be taught what is good, right, and proper but they need to be taught that they are good because God says they are good so that they learn to avoid evil because of what God says and who God is rather than because mom or dad says so. They other thing that needs to happen is that the children need to be shown in safe ways the ramifications of decisions. This may mean taking the child aside and helping them to see the character of the person they are interested in. This will help them look beyond the physical to the deeper spiritual issues of life. They need to understand the basic principle of Amos 3:3 “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” Proper relationships need to be formed in common ground and that ground needs to be centered on the fundamentals of truth. Two people may share many things in common, but if the foundation of their beliefs are in conflict, they will continuously have difficulties.