Do you have any parent issues?

For instance, do you ever butt heads with your mom or dad? Do you ever feel like they are controlling your life and decisions, either openly, mentally or genetically? Are they treating you like they did when you were a kid? Or maybe your parents have passed on, but you feel that habits they taught you, beliefs they put upon you, and fears they built up are still haunting you, years, maybe even decades, later?

There’s a spiritual cure to all this unnecessary angst about the effect parents seem to have on their children.

God is your Parent!

This is a simple, straightforward, cut-to-the-chase antidote for all parenting issues.

I love my parents. They taught me many valuable lessons that prepared me for entering the world on my own and making my way through life. They watched over me, cared for me, fed me, clothed me, gave me shelter, educated me, instilled morals and spiritual values, spent a whole lot of hard-earned money doing all this, and still loved me all the same. They were the two most important adults in my whole life.

But my human parents had shortcomings too. They lost their temper once or twice. Passed on a few bad habits, not intentionally of course, but because they had their own imperfections yet to demonstrate over. They didn’t always see things the same way I did, and as I grew older, we disagreed on some very big issues. But all of this is okay. As I learned with my spiritual study in Christian Science, God is my Parent, my Father-Mother.

Human parents reflect the divine presence of Father-Mother for the children they raise. Some parents do a much better job than others, but it’s still the divine Parent that has the final say and impact on all children.

I think of human parents as windows into the divine Parent. Like looking through a window that is dirty, the view is not always clear. But, nonetheless, God is still the Big Time, ultimate, and only Parent. As a child understands God to be his or her Parent, that child naturally looks to God for direction, guidance, support, values and final decisions about all important issues. As they grow older, wiser, and more spiritually mature, they have to sort out what they hear from their human parents, and ask, “Is this directive coming from God or mortal man?” And then act accordingly.

I can easily forgive my human parents for any perceived wrong I felt they may have passed on to me. They did the very best they knew how. And that is enough. I hope my children extend the same grace to me when they are older and have a more mature perspective.

I can forgive my parents because I know that anything they humanly did or said that was not in accord with divine righteousness, is temporal. It does not have a permanent effect or final say on my life. Anything that is not of God is not of them, nor does it stick to me. It is my job to spiritually sort these things out and agree only with what my divine Parent gives me.

I don’t have to agree with my human parents on all important issues. They have their salvation to work out with God, as I do mine. I trust God to lead them, as God is leading me.

I don’t have to win approval from my parents for all my decisions. It’s the divine approval that counts, not human consent.

I don’t have to fear any beliefs of heredity concerning my human parents, because they are not the maker or determiner of my genes. As a child of God, my genetic make-up is totally spiritual. I have spiritual heredity only. There is no other.

Any bad habits I picked up from my parents, well, evils are not habit forming. My human parents do not form my thought, control how I think or affect how I act. God, the one Mind, is the source of all my thinking.

God is my Parent, my Father-Mother! There is no other.

Jesus was crystal clear on this vital metaphysical point. When quizzed about his familial ties, he replied, “Who is my mother: and who are my brethren?” and he went on to say “whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

What I see here is Jesus’ ability to look at family from a purely spiritual point of view, as God’s thoughts, rather than male and female mortal bodies related by blood. Jesus’ “family” was thoughts obedient to God. Now how cool is that!

You get to know your family by getting to know God’s thoughts. Our spiritual brothers and sisters are not mortals with shortcomings. They are divine ideas coming from God that illuminate consciousness with inspired spiritual views.

So, to have the right view of our parents, we have to drop the mortal concept of them with its whole human history, and think out from the original idea of God they represent in the first place. And the original idea of parenting is discovered in the truth about God as Parent. What is true about God as Parent is true about our human parents as children of God representing the divine Parent in our growing up years.

As we sift out the error about our parents from the truth of them as reflections of the divine Parent, we get a clearer view of them and find a much happier place to be in thought about them.

As reflections of the divine Parent, mom and dad are wonderful people. There is no other way to see them correctly.

“Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. As the apostle expressed it in words which he quoted with approbation from a classic poet: “For we are also His offspring.”” Mary Baker Eddy