Father knows Best & listen to Mom

May 30, 2018

Proverbs 1:8-19

“Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.  They are a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.

My son, if sinful men entice you, do not give in to them.  If they say, “Come along with us; let’s lie in wait for innocent blood, let’s ambush some harmless soul; let’s swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit; we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder;
cast lots with us; we will all share the loot”— my son, do not go along with them,
do not set foot on their paths; for their feet rush into evil, they are swift to shed blood.  How useless to spread a net where every bird can see it!  These men lie in wait for their own blood; they ambush only themselves!  Such are the paths of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the life of those who get it.”

 My parents and especially my mother would often make this statement; “Bobby, choose your friends wisely.”  What she did not understand was I wanted to be with the popular kids, and the popular kids did many things my mother would not have approved?  I have often wonder how different my life would have been if my parents had taken the time to teach me from the Proverbs?  Anyone who tells a young person the dos and the don’ts without the why is going to end up with a rule breaker.

What if, you as a parent, who has time to support school programs, sports and all other kinds of activities would invest the time to teach from the proverbs the why’s?  You would not tell them “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  No, you would teach them, by example, of the choices you make the results of those actions.

Then you would show them how sin entices all people, and you will not lie to them by telling them sin is not fun, for it can be a lot of fun for a season.  Therein lies a big problem the enticement of sin, for it, always takes you farther and more profound than you ever imagined.  No one set out to be a drunk; no one's goal was to be a sex predator, nor a drug addict, it all comes from the enticement of sin.

My observation of life and today is very different than in 1950; In the 50’s dad was the breadwinner in most families and went to work each day, and mom was the caregiver and stayed home. Everyone has a distinct job to do in his or her “separate spheres” of public and private life. And in the 1950s, the majority of children were being raised in such “typical” families.  It's reported that today family is only a tiny part of the makeup of family life, and these are the numbers I found.  Today 35 percent of both parent’s work, 23 percent of all children are raised by single moms, and 7 percent live with a parent who cohabits with an unmarried partner.  Also, it is stated that 3% live with a single dad and 3% with grandparents, and I took these numbers from a report by Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the University of Maryland.

How is the new norm working, not so good, for it often has no dad to instruct the child and often the poor mom is just doing good to keep her children in food and clothes, with a roof over their heads.  When both parents work, the kid is often left to make choices they do not have the wisdom to make. So at this point we have abandoned the teaching of Proverbs 1:8-19, and are leaving the young child to get his/her teaching from where, the T.V., or worst and older child that is running from one place to another looking for fun, yes we open the doors for sin and sinners to entice our child. 

We have a large number of children that now are having children, and have never been equipped even to know what the word sin means.  The video games are full of evil, and we wonder why we have children that hurt people and steal even kill, it a set up by the one Jesus calls the thief in John 10:10, Google that verse.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice