Believing God -

I recently wrote an entry here on empty piety vs. true righteousness. Similarly here, I'd like to point out one example of a Scripture which many people read and even quote, without believing what God is saying. Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." One of my presuppositions in the rest of this brief piece is that God's Word is true. Someone denying that truth might have difficulty with a great deal of what I write.

While we may derive good ideas from Holy Scripture, generally speaking, the Bible is far more than good ideas or helpful suggestions. The Word of God is authoritative, powerful, and true; it is the written expression of God's own thoughts; the Bible contains that portion of God which He chooses to reveal. When we come to Proverbs 22:6, how often do we say, "Hmmm, that's a nice thought." But if our hearts were truly revealed, we would be saying, "Those parents whose children do turn out right sure are lucky; I know too many 'good' parents whose children departed from God's ways as they got older."

It makes my skin crawl to think of professing Christian parents wringing their hands when their children are rebellious, "Well, I trained him in the way he should go, now he's departing from it." And without realizing it, the parent has just denied his responsibility and called God a liar.

Now, we might have a deep and heady discussion on our hands if a parent really trains a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he departs from it. But it is not allowable for a parent to make their case for having properly trained their child if they, 1) turned their children over to government schools for 6 to 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, and/or 2) allowed their children to spend unsupervised time with pagan children, and/or 3) told their children that a walk with God was important but lived as if that walk consisted mostly of busy-body activities. There are other examples I'm sure for illustrating common failures of parents, but I think these make the point.

Are there exceptions? Of course, it's called grace; many have been subject to one or more of the above failures, but God mercifully spares His children from the pit of destruction. And when he does not spare a person from eternal damnation, their sin is still on their hands and they cannot escape responsibility for rebellion. My point here is simply to say that our parental failures do not make God a liar. We cannot claim to have trained up our children rightly just because it "seemed" right in our own eyes. God's Word is the standard by which we know if we have obeyed His righteous requirements.

If we have done everything we thought right to do, and our children rebel and reject the gospel, let's take the portion of responsibility which lies with us and repent of our own failures. Then we pray that God will show mercy in spite of our disobedience. We don't act like we did our part, and God failed.

Let's believe God. Let us, as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, trust that His Word is true and therefore trustworthy.