Woven
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
In this inspiring parenting book, learn how to create space for your children to get to know God in a way that focuses on trust instead of a list of rigid rules.
Most Christian parenting books are ready with exact practices every family should follow in order to raise obedient children. In this obedience-training model, faith is a wall, constructed brick by brick, as adults tell children what to believe and how to behave.
But what if obedience is not the goal of Christian parenting? What if it’s our job as parents to instead help our kids get to know God and discover that God can be trusted? And what if faith is not constructed brick by brick, but rather woven strand by strand?
Much like a spider’s web, in which anchor strands and internal threads combine to form a unique web, Woven can help children anchor to who God is and have faith practices that are rich, textured, and all their own. Kids need space to explore the Bible, ask big questions, and even change their understanding of God and faith along the way. With Woven, families can nurture the kind of faith that can flex and grow, be broken and repaired. This is the sort of faith that can stand up to the life a child will live, the doubts they will encounter, and the questions that will come up along the way.
So many parents want to pass along their faith, but know that God is so much bigger than the list of do’s and don’ts they were taught about as children. They want to pass along a faith their child doesn’t have to heal from. Woven is the guidebook parents have been looking for. With a deep reverence for scripture and suggested activities to help your family grow in faith together, Woven is for parents who want to go beyond a list of do’s and don’ts and pass along a resilient faith based on genuine love for and trust in God.
Customer Reviews
One chapter in and I already have reservations
I follow what Miller is trying to do. She’s pushing back on a moralistic, rule-bound way of relating to God, and that’s a fair target. But she swings the pendulum so far the other way that she lands somewhere just as unbalanced. Her central image, relationship with God as a “web” rather than a “foundation,” is where she loses me.
The trouble is that scripture doesn’t share her discomfort with foundations. Jesus calls Himself a rock. The Old and New Testaments return to that image again and again, and foundations show up throughout the Bible as something necessary, not as a symptom of legalism. I’m not defending rule-following for its own sake, but anything healthy and lasting, a relationship with God included, is built on boundaries and structure. The web metaphor is charming on the surface, but it mistakes flexibility for depth and misses the mark.
What lost me completely was her choice to refer to God as a non-binary being instead of honoring the way He presents and names Himself throughout scripture. God uses He and Him of Himself. Reframing that to suit a contemporary sensibility doesn’t read as thoughtful to me. It reads as juvenile.
I’ll keep reading, but the foundation this book is building on, or refusing to build on, already has me concerned.