born and others die. There are marriages and divorces. Families
experience social stability or instability. There is enough money or
not enough. Some enjoy good health while others must structure their
lives around sickness or disease. Some have deep roots in the
neighborhood, while others are uprooted continually.
(^) I recently spent time helping a woman sort through the events of
her childhood. Our conversation went like this:
(^) Q: How many times did you move during childhood?
(^) A: A lot of times.
(^) Q: Five or ten?
(^) A: Oh, no, more than that!
(^) Q: Not more than twenty? [Here she stopped for a few minutes
thinking and calculating.]
(^) A: Many more than twenty.
(^) She later told me that she and her sister had counted forty-six
moves before age eighteen.
(^) To be sure, that family history profoundly shaped this woman’s
values and perspectives.
(^) This brief list is only suggestive of circumstances that have
impact on our lives. The effect of these things on us is undeniable.
Mistakes in Understanding Shaping Influences
(^) Two mistakes are made in interacting with the shaping influences
of life. The first is seeing shaping influences deterministically. It is
the error of assuming that the child is a helpless victim of the
circumstances in which he was raised. The second mistake is denial.
It is the mistake of saying the child is unaffected by his early
childhood experience. Passages such as Proverbs 29:21 illustrate the
importance of childhood experience. Here we see that the servant
pampered from youth is affected in a manner that brings grief in the
end.
(^) Neither denial nor determinism is correct. You need to understand