My thirteen-year-old daughter recently informed me that I was the worst dad in the world. To me, that’s a pretty remarkable achievement considering how many fathers there are in the world to choose from.

It happened in the car on the way to school a couple of days ago, and it involved my 13-year-old daughter, the same one who has taken a real interest in Jesus lately, has started attending church and youth group, and even announced to us that she wants to get baptised. All of this apparent spiritual growth has been tossed to one side, however, while she argued with me back and forth in the car.

I know, I know. It’s hard to imagine a teenager being argumentative, but apparently it happens.

This particular disagreement was over something fairly ordinary. She wanted to go out with friends, but I was insisting that she needed to finish certain chores before permission would be granted. She thought this was an outrageous infringement upon her basic human rights and argued that she should be allowed to do the chores “later.” Anyone with teenagers knows that this non-descript timeframe “later” can often mean, in practice, “never,” a fact that I reminded my daughter of. She was not impressed.

Anyway, things escalated, as they sometimes do in a power struggle between an unwilling teenager and a stubborn father.

By the time we pulled up at the school, neither of us was particularly impressed with the other. She delivered one final parting shot as she exited the vehicle… something about my deficiencies as a parent. And I responded with a parting shot of my own.

Knowing just how enthusiastic she has become recently about all things Christian, I fired off, “Jesus is listening.”

She slammed the car door and walked away.

And for a brief moment, I felt rather pleased with myself. If she wasn’t going to listen to her Dad, then perhaps she would listen to Jesus.

But as I drove away, that smug satisfaction dissolved into regret. I kept replaying those final three words in my head: “Jesus is listening.”

Somewhere between the school drop-off zone and home, I began to realise there was something troubling about what I had just done. The more I thought about it, the worse I felt.

God Is Watching You

If you’re anything like me, and you grew up going to church or Sunday School, there’s a fairly good chance you remember singing a cheerful little children’s song called “Oh Be Careful Little Eyes What You See.”

It went something like this:

“Oh, be careful little eyes what you see,

There’s a Father up above,

And He’s looking down in love…”

There were other verses as well, warning little ears about what they heard, little mouths about what they said, little hands about what they did, and little feet about where they went. They were all designed to remind children that God was always watching.

We always sang it with great enthusiasm, complete with hand actions, mostly unaware that we were celebrating the existence of a celestial surveillance system.

Of course, the song was supposed to be reassuring. I’m sure that the Sunday School teachers who taught it to us had nothing but good intentions. However, I wonder what message a small child actually takes away from a song like that.

Is it that God loves them? Or is it that God is watching them?

For many who grew up in conservative Christian environments as I did, the idea that God was watching us was always drummed into us. God knew what we did when no one was watching. God even knew our thoughts. There was no escaping it. And for parents and pastors trying to keep their young ones on the straight and narrow, it was all rather convenient. Who needs to catch someone doing the wrong thing when you’ve already convinced them that God sees absolutely everything anyway?

And this is where guilt and shame enter the picture.

Guilt, at its healthiest, tells us when we have done something wrong and encourages us to make things right. It’s part of taking responsibility for our actions. Shame, on the other hand, does more than tell us we’ve done something wrong. Instead, it can convince us that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Sure, we want our children to recognise when there is something for which they need to make amends, but we certainly do not want them to feel as though they are despicable to God or anyone else, and not worthy of being loved. There is a fine line between the two.

Also, we want our children to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because they are afraid of disappointing, upsetting, or being caught by God.

Unfortunately, fear is an effective way of securing obedience, particularly when the authority figure happens to be an all-knowing being you cannot see, but he can see you. Kids are quite capable of behaving themselves when they think they’ll get caught. I certainly was. But take away the threat of punishment and what happens then? I’m not sure we’ve achieved much if the only thing keeping a child from doing something wrong is the fear that God might catch them.

Which is what makes my little parting shot at the school gate so disappointing.

“Jesus is listening.”

I knew exactly what I was doing.

Surveillance Produces Obedience, Not Love

Have you ever noticed how many older schools were built around a central quadrangle or courtyard, with classrooms and corridors looking inward?

This architectural configuration has some fairly obvious practical advantages. Firstly, it makes supervision very easy. From a central position, a teacher can keep their eye on a large number of students without having to follow them around. It allows for open lines of sight, meaning you don’t need many adults to monitor the behaviour of hundreds of students at once.

In the eighteenth century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed a prison design called the

Panopticon

based on similar principles. Prison cells were arranged around a central watch tower, allowing a guard to see every prisoner, without the prisoners knowing whether someone was actually looking at them.

The psychology behind these designs is fairly simple. If people believe they are being watched, eventually they will begin to monitor themselves. The possibility alone was enough to influence their behaviour, even if the guard was out the back having a cigarette.

Nearly two hundred years later, French philosopher Michel Foucault picked up Bentham’s idea in his book.

Discipline and Punish

. Foucault wondered if this particular kind of surveillance could be applied to hospitals and, yes, workplaces, to keep the workers in line. He is the father of CCTV long before any such technology existed!

Of course, the ultimate achievement of surveillance is not having to watch people at all. It’s getting them to behave as though they’re being watched, even when they’re not.

Anyone who grows up being regularly reminded that God is watching their every move might relate to Bentham’s prison design. In certain forms of Christianity, God can function as a kind of religious Panopticon, where God is both the watchtower at the centre, and the ever-present prison guard who can see into every corner of our lives. But unlike Bentham’s prisoners, who could hope that the guard might be looking the other way, Christians are taught that god is ALWAYS watching. Nothing escapes his attention. You cannot get away with anything!

That’s a pretty heavy burden to place on a child!

The system becomes even more effective when the religious authorities claim to speak on behalf of the man in the watchtower. Suddenly, there is enormous potential for harmful control. Church leaders can tell people what to believe, what to think, who to hang around with, and who to reject. They can say who they should date, what they should wear, and what they should watch. Nothing is off limits when the threat of God’s divine displeasure is hanging over us like the blade of a guillotine.

The Anxiety of Never Being Good Enough

I have experienced firsthand the consequences of growing up in such a system. The fruit of fear-based religion is perpetual anxiety. You can end up feeling guilty about things you haven’t even done, always second-guessing your motives, and wondering if God is always displeased with you for reasons you don’t fully understand.

There is actually a recognised psychological condition called religious OCD, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is otherwise known as

scrupulosity

. I can’t believe this is actually a thing!

It is a

form of OCD

where people are always afraid of sinning, offending God, or failing to meet his expectations or the expectations of the church. People who experience scrupulosity might lose sleep over their perceived wrongdoing and spend hours praying for forgiveness of sins over and over again just to make sure they haven’t missed anything. In essence, you become so scared of getting your relationship with God wrong that it becomes a form of psychological distress.

Now, don’t get me wrong. For many people, Christian faith is life-giving and helpful for their mental well-being. However, the kind of religion that produces this kind of anxiety is almost always characterised by a God who is always keeping track of every sin, including the ones we apparently commit inside our own heads.

And you don’t have to have a clinical diagnosis to recognise the patterns in your own life if you’ve been brought up in a fear-based religious system. I’ve met many Christians who seem pretty tormented by their own inability to “get it right,” or worry endlessly if they are “doing enough for God.”

What a torturous way to live!

Jesus talked about coming to give people an abundant life in John 10:10, and I find myself wondering where all that abundance is supposed to be in a life spent worrying about whether God is happy with you. Frankly, I’d find it exhausting to live like that.

What If God Is Watching in Love?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation with my daughter, particularly the three words I threw at her as she climbed out of the car.

“Jesus is listening.”

The thing is, I am genuinely happy that she is exploring Christianity for herself. I’m glad she isn’t relying on her parents’ faith, but is working out her own. The last thing I want to do is pass on my church baggage to my kids.

After all these years of questioning and rethinking what I believe about God, I managed to fall back on something I grew up with. I was annoyed with my daughter, wanted the last word, and decided to bring Jesus into an argument about household chores. I’m not particularly proud of that.

For the record, though, I stand by my parenting when it comes to doing the chores, and I would definitely appreciate a little more respect from my teenage children. What parent doesn’t? I just wish I’d handled this situation a little differently.

I grew up in a system where I was taught that God was watching every move and writing down every mistake. The last thing I want is my kids to grow up thinking the same.

And to you… If you grew up believing that God was impossible to please, perpetually unimpressed with you, always looking down from the watchtower waiting for you to make one wrong move, I’m sorry. I believe you have been given a distorted view of God. These days, I like to think of God as a loving father who watches on with curiosity as his children live and learn in the world. Sometimes, I catch myself doing this with my own children in their better moments. I marvel and think… “I cannot believe that this magnificent creation came from me!” And I am far from perfect!

Which brings me back to the school drop-off. I owe my daughter an apology. I want her to know that Jesus loves her, and I’m not going to wield watchtower theology over her to get her to comply with me.

Surveillance might produce obedience, but it never produces love.

• Dan Forster