Proverbs 22:15. Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him. Pt 1
I can already hear the objections…..
“A rod! That’s barbaric!”
“That was all right for back then, but we’ve been enlightened.”
“Smacking is child abuse.”
“I believe that it’s better to ……”
You like to think you have an ‘open mind’? Then, rather than being offended and closing my blog having already pre-determined that I don’t know what I’m talking about, I challenge you to read to the end of this blog post. Perhaps it will help you see things a little differently.
Too many Christian parents are being deceived into believing that the world now has a better, more sophisticated way of training children and that they no longer have to follow the ‘old fashioned Bible way’.
Yes. I said Christian parents. People who, to one degree or another, claim to believe what the Bible tells us. Not just Christian pew warmers, but Christian leaders as well.
Only yesterday, my husband came across an old friend of ours. We hadn’t seen him since he was a young married man with a few children. Since then, he moved into full-time ministry, lectured regularly at a Bible College and has written several Christian books. Now, nearly 30 years later, we learned that his children were rebellious, some of them are living with ‘partners’, and none of them are following the Lord.
It grieved me to hear it. How it must grieve the Lord.
Tragically, this situation is repeated over and over in Christendom. In my experience, most of the parents are sad, even heart-broken, but rarely admit their own part in the breakdown.
I’ve had parents defensively tell me, “I tried my best’ - yet refused to use the rod when correcting their children.
Some have thrown the whole responsibility of the situation onto the children without any reference to their own failings. ‘They (their children) have a free will. If they choose to do wrong, that’s not my problem.’
And I’ve had one pastor say with resignation, ‘Funny the way life works out’, as if life just ‘happens’ and we don’t have any power to influence outcomes. Whatever will be will be.
But we can do a lot to influence outcomes. That is clearly demonstrated by God’s repeated instructions to the Israelites - ‘IF you will do this, THEN you will be blessed. IF you do that, THEN you will suffer.’
It’s all about choices - and most Christian parents have decided they know better than God when it comes to the use of the rod. However, they ignore God’s instructions to their child’s hurt, for the rod used correctly brings good results. Proverbs 23:14 tells us that the rod will deliver our child’s soul from hell. Proverbs 20:30 tells us that the rod gets rid of the evil that is resident in us. Proverbs 22:15 says that the rod drives foolishness out of our hearts. So why on earth would any Christian parent choose to ignore God’s instructions about the use of the rod?
And if that isn’t enough to convince us that we should be using the rod, Prov 13:24 says, ‘He that spares his rod hates his son, but he that loves him chastens him quickly.’ Wow! That’s pretty tough! I struggled with this for years. Parents love their children. Then God showed me the verses in the above paragraph and it all made sense. If I love my child, I want the best for him, even if it is difficult for me. The best things for my child is that his heart is trained, his will is aligned to God’s will for his life and that he spends eternity with God - and the rod is one of the tools God tells us to use in order to achieve this outcome.
Click here to take a closer look at what Proverbs 22:15 really says.