The thought of raising children today can be a frightening proposition.
Parenting has never been an easy task, but current distractions and temptations
make the need for Christian parenting as vital as ever. The Bible does not
give a detailed plan for parenting, but what it does say is of utmost importance.
Proverbs is a good place to begin because it is designed to
be a book of wisdom for godly living. A proverb is not a guaranteed promise
or a mathematical formula. Rather, a proverb is an observation of life. In
regard to parenting, Proverbs makes clear that two things are necessary for
raising children: love and discipline. Therefore, Proverbs 22:6 is a reflective
observation of what takes place in a child’s life when he or she experiences
the integration of both love and discipline.
Love is another way to say “nurture.” Discipline is
another way to say “train.” Love without discipline is permissive.
Discipline without love is punishment. Both take hard work and determination.
But the two wed in perfect harmony give children a knowledge of what is right
and wrong, significant and irrelevant, temporary and eternal.
Elizabeth Achtemeier poignantly writes: “Christian parents
are a different breed from those parents who are too busy or too tired or—God
help us—too selfish to care what their children are doing and becoming”
(Preaching About Family Relationships, 60). The purpose of this sermon is
to give biblical guidance and relevant hope to parents interested in passing
on to their children a Christian way of life.
My wife and I were moving through our lives business as usual.
We went where we wanted to go, when we wanted to go. We were both attending
a Nazarene university and working part-time. Our schedules were filled to
the brim with study, church, work, and time together. Life was good.
But one morning my wife woke up with a strange feeling in her
stomach. And it happened morning after morning after morning. Oddly enough,
after a few hours she would feel better and the rest of her day would be fine.
I suggested 7-Up and dry toast. She didn’t think that would take care
of her symptoms!
We rushed to the drugstore and bought the test that said “100
percent accurate.” The next morning the vials were a deep blue, and we
knew that in just eight short months our lives would be radically changed.
We never dreamed how much.
We went on a strict diet and began those wonderful evening walks.
We attended Lamaze classes, where pillows are brought to class and we are
taught to breathe. We even purchased a Jane Fonda workout tape for pregnant
women and their “dumb” husbands! We were preparing for our baby
to arrive.
The due date was set for Thanksgiving time, and so in typical
late fashion, our first child was born on a cold December night. I will never
forget that night (and I venture to say that my wife won’t either). During
the first few hours of contractions the breathing method was working beautifully.
My wife was patient and let me be her coach. But after nine hours of contractions
she was trying to help me breathe. We were both exhausted. The nurse came
into the room and said: “Are you ready for your epidural?” I said:
“Yeah, and give her one too!”
The entire struggle was worth it when for the first time I held
in my arms a beautiful, dark-haired, baby girl. She was suddenly a vital part
of my reason for living. The next few days were very exciting, and I spent
a lot of time bragging and showing her off to anyone who would pay attention.
I was so proud of her. She brought such a sense of joy to my life.
It wasn’t until the day we brought her home from the hospital
that the reality of what had happened began to crash in on me. I will never
forget those first few nights placing that tiny bundle in her crib, standing
in the darkness, watching her sleep. I began to realize the tremendous responsibility
of being a parent to such an innocent, dependent, impressionable little life
that would look to me for love, support, and instruction.
I knew that what I wanted more than anything else in the world
was for my daughter to grow up loving God. And in my quest to make that happen,
I remembered the verse that we read this morning: “Train a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”
I knew what I had to do. I immediately began reading Bible stories
to her, playing Christian tapes for her, and praying out loud while she slept,
hoping that somehow what I was saying would be permanently imbedded in her
subconscious! My wife and I did everything we could think of. We had her in
church every Sunday. We hung pictures of Jesus holding children on her wall.
We sang songs to her. We enrolled her in Vacation Bible School (even though
she couldn’t attend until she was five). We started her on a Bible memorization
plan that would enable her to know all the books of the Old Testament by her
first birthday!
You know I’m just kidding, but our intent was clear and
serious. We were doing everything we could to point her to Jesus because we
believed the promise that said: If we just do certain things, our daughter
would do certain things. If we could just say enough Christian words, expose
her to enough spiritual truths, and cram enough Scripture into her little
mind, we believed that one day she would become Christian. And I reminded
God often of His promise in Proverbs.
But we soon discovered a problem with all of that. We began
to see that there were other parents who were doing a far better job raising
their kids than we were, whose children were not becoming Christians. And
we began to wonder if this proverb were really true. That is, until I began
to understand what a proverb was really all about.
What is a proverb? Is a proverb a promise? Is this proverb saying
that when you raise children in a certain way, God promises us that when they
grow up and begin making decisions of their own, they will be solid Christian
people? Is a proverb a promise? How does a proverb speak to us today?
The Bible is full of different types of literature. And each
of those literary types express a different dimension of the gospel. There
are narratives, law, prophets, psalms, Gospels, Epistles, and more. Each of
these forms has a different purpose to achieve in the lives of believers and
therefore should be read in those ways. We read the newspaper differently
than we do a short story. We read the obituaries differently than we do the
“Dear Abby” column. Different literary types require a different
kind of reading. And so before we can begin to fully understand a particular
passage of Scripture, we need to know the type of literature we’re dealing
with.
So what is a proverb? The Book of Proverbs is from the section
of the Bible called the wisdom literature (which also includes Psalms, Ecclesiastes,
Song of Solomon, Job, and Esther). How should a proverb be understood? Let’s
look at a few other proverbs and see if we can answer that question.
Here are a few examples:
“A penny saved is a penny earned.”
“Haste makes waste.”
“Cleanliness is next to godliness.”
These are called conventional proverbs. They are not in the
Bible, but they are proverbs nonetheless.
Here is another proverb from the Bible: “Love not sleep,
lest you come to poverty” (Proverbs 20:13, rsv). The youth version of
that is: “You snooze, you lose.”
Here are a few more proverbs taken from Proverbs 22: “A
prudent [person] sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and
suffer for it” (v. 3).
“The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender”
(v. 7).
These are proverbs. What is their purpose? Proverbs are very simply observations
of life from a spiritual perspective. They are reflections and conclusions
of experience. We observe what has happened in the past, and we form a conclusion
based on that past to guide us into the future.
Proverbs help us look at yesterday and today so we can try to
determine what might happen tomorrow. We say: “When this is done in a
particular way, this is usually the result.” And because it has happened
that way in experience, there is a very good possibility it will happen that
way again.
Proverbs make assumptions about the way the world works. That’s
the reason they are called wisdom. And so in the biblical proverbs we have
God-inspired observations about the way the world works. That being true,
it helps us also understand what a proverb is not. A proverb is not a promise!
A proverb is a divine observation of life.
Listen to another biblical proverb: “A good name is more
desirable than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1). That is not a promise.
That is a divine observation of life. Now don’t misunderstand what I’m
saying! The Bible is full of the promises of God to His people:
“I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5, NRSV).
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect
in [your] weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Those are powerful promises from God’s Word. But those
are not proverbs. And so the wise sage of Proverbs 22:6, under the anointing
of the Holy Spirit, reflects on his experience: “If you raise a child
in the way he or she should go, when that child is old, he or she will likely
still be going in that way.” Why? Because it has been seen time and time
again. It has been observed again and again and again. When a child is brought
up under a godly influence, they very often choose God’s way for themselves.
It was a godly observation of life.
When my first child was born, I was searching for a quick and
easy way to insure that my daughter would love the Lord. Therefore, I tried
to make the proverb a promise. I thought that if I just gave her enough information
and created stringent enough parameters, somehow she would magically become
a person of faith.
Information and parameters are very important! And believe me
when I say that my kids have more information and parameters than they know
what to do with. But that is no guarantee that my instruction and rules will
create faith in my children.
What is the proverb saying then? What is our responsibility
to our kids if it’s more than just bringing them to Sunday school and
praying around the supper table? How do we begin to pass the faith along to
our children?
The word here for “train” is an intriguing word. It
is hanak. You’ll recognize the word from Hanukkah, or the Jewish celebration
of Passover. The word literally means “to initiate.” To initiate!
Initiate children in the direction they should go, and when they are old,
they will continue in that direction.
Passing the faith along! What does that mean? It means that
faith is not information that I cram into my children’s brain and say:
“Believe this!” That’s important, but it’s not faith.
To pass faith along is to pass a system of confidence along. A way of thinking.
A way of believing. It is the creating of a worldview. That’s what faith
is! Faith is a spiritual worldview, a way of thinking, and a confidence in
God’s plans and purposes for one’s life.
I have confidence that if I sit in a chair, it’s going
to hold me up. I don’t even think about it. I just sit down. I have faith
that the sun is going to come up in the morning. I don’t lie in bed at
night and wonder if it will or not. I just have faith that it will.
Faith is confidence even in things that cannot be seen. And
how we pass that faith along is not by the information we give, but by the
life we live. We can say to our kids all day long: “You’ve got to
love God. You’ve got to trust God with your life. You’ve got to
put your sole confidence in God.” But if we live our lives contradictory
to what we say, how can we expect it to be anything more than information
to them?
If we say we love God with all our heart, yet invest our time
in everything but God’s work, we’re simply giving information. If
we say we should put our confidence in God, and yet live lives that evidence
we place our confidence in our work, we’re simply giving information,
but we’re not passing on faith.
Initiating a child into the practice of faith is finally accomplished
only through the modeling of our lives, because the world we choose to live
in is ultimately the world they choose to live in.
You say, “Does that mean that if I’m really sincere
and doing all I can to live by God’s grace, my kids will automatically
follow suit?” No, that’s not what it means. The proverb isn’t
a promise. Our children have been created with a free will. They have their
own choices to make. But what it is saying is that it has consistently been
observed, over and over again, that if children are initiated to faith in
Christ, by the faith they see in us, they will be much farther down the road
to choosing that faith for themselves. Why? Because they will have seen it
lived out in the crucible of life, and they will know that faith in God works!
I believe with all of my heart that what our homes need more
than anything else is for people of faith to become faithful people, because
the pictures of God our children imagine are painted most significantly by
their parents. Our kids will understand God’s unconditional love most
clearly as they see our unconditional love to them. Our kids will understand
God’s grace to them most clearly based on our grace to them.
And the real truth is that not only will the pictures of God
our children see be the ones we paint for them, but also our kids will eventually
become reflections of who we are.
I heard the story “Red with a Green Stem.”
A little boy was going to school for the first time. It was
a big school, but he found that when he walked from the playground to his
classroom, the school didn’t seem so big anymore. One day the teacher
got out some paper and said, “We are going to draw pictures today.”
“Oh, good,” said the little boy. He loved to draw
pictures. He could draw a boat, and trains, and animals of every kind. And
he got the crayons out and started going to town.
But the teacher said, “Wait!” And she stood there
until everyone looked very ready. “Now, boys and girls, we are going
to draw flowers.”
“Oh, good,” thought the little boy. And he took out
a purple, and a pink, and a blue crayon, and he began to make flowers.
But the teacher said, “Wait! Let me show you how.”
And she walked over to a blackboard and took some colored chalk and drew a
flower. It was red, with a green stem.
“Now, you may begin, boys and girls.” Well, the little
boy looked at the teacher’s flower on the blackboard, and he looked at
his flower, and he liked his flowers a lot better. But he turned his paper
over and drew a flower. It was red—with a green stem.
Well, the next day the teacher brought out some clay. And she
said, “Today, boys and girls, we are going to make things with clay.”
“Oh, good,” said the little boy. He loved to make
things with clay. Why, he could make animals of every kind—snakes, and
snowmen, and dinosaurs. And he began to push and pull at his lump of clay.
But the teacher again said, “Wait! Let me show you how.” And she
took her lump of clay and made one deep dish. “And now you may begin.”
And the little boy pushed his lump of clay into a ball and made one deep dish.
And soon the little boy learned to wait and to watch, and to
make things just like the teacher. And soon the little boy stopped making
things of his own.
Well, time went by. And the little boy grew a bit. And his family
moved to another city. When he got to the new school on that first day, the
teacher said, “Boys and girls, today we are going to draw pictures.”
“Oh, good,” thought the little boy. And he waited
for the teacher to tell him what to do. But she didn’t. She walked around
the classroom looking at everyone’s pictures, and when she came to the
little boy, she said, “Well, don’t you want to draw today?”
“Well, yes,” said the little boy. “I’m waiting for you
to tell me how to do it.”
“Well, you can do it any way you like,” the teacher
said.
“Any color?”
“Any color you like. How would I know which picture was
yours unless you made it in just the right way with just the right colors?”
And so the little boy began to draw a flower. It was red—with
a green stem.
We help shape for our children their horizon to life. We teach
them to laugh and love, or we teach them to be critical and self-absorbed.
We teach them to embrace the expansiveness of life and creatively explore
what God has called them to be, or we teach them to be narrow and wooden.
We create pictures of God. And we create pictures of the way to live life.
And our children become like us.
“Initiate a child in the way he or she should go, and when
that child is old, he or she will continue in that way.” Passing the
faith along.
Some of you are here this morning saying: “Well, my kids
are in a lot of trouble, because I am far from perfect.” Thank the Lord!
I hope your kids know that too. None of us are as good as the message we preach!
The Christ I declare to my children is always far beyond what can be seen
in my life.
My kids know I’m not perfect. They know I make mistakes.
They know there are moments when I think more of myself than anyone else.
They know there are times that I expect too much from them. They know there
are times that I lose my patience.
But they also know something else. They know that I love God
with all my heart. They know I’m a growing Christian doing my best to
submit to God’s will and become more and more like Jesus.
This proverb is not just for parents. It’s for every person
who is a part of this community of faith. You see, I need you! I need you
to help my wife and me paint a healthy picture of God for my children. Initiating
faith is always larger than any single family.
That’s what a community of faith is about. The church kids see is the Christ they will see, and the Christ they see is the Christ they will trust.
