June 19, 2023

Proverbs 4: 1 Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. (NIV)

The way to train the child is to train yourself.*

Have you ever watched a Peanuts movie? You know – Charlie Brown and Linus and Lucy and Snoopy. Remember the sound effects used to portray the voices of the adults? “Waah waah waah” is the closest equivalent that I can contrive. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the way we sound to our own children when we offer them our unsolicited advice.

Instead of harping on all the things his sons should or shouldn’t do, Solomon wisely tries to help them learn to choose wisely. Any parent or other authority figure is bound to have more success by presenting wisdom as a desirable aspiration and by being a solid role model. There’s no guarantee that your child will not choose poorly once you are no longer in a position to enforce or influence his decisions, but Solomon offers some words of hope in Proverbs 22: 6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” A proverb may not be an “invariable rule” or a “binding promise from God,”* but exceptions are – well, exceptions to the rule!

Even if I had been a perfect parent, I could not build the perfect child.*