Proverbs. Kids needum. And they’re ready-built for kid ears.
Here are a few ways that the wisdom of Yhwh appeals to the young and malleable. When the proverbial father says, “Listen my son,” he then proceeds to focus on what is…
STUPID
Kid’s like to call things stupid. Heck… I like to call things stupid too. Especially when I am calling evil “stupid” in front of my kids: Guess who is stupid? Those who hate wisdom and instruction. I mean… idiots, really. (Don’t be offended, friend – This doesn’t have to be you.)
HEROIC
The Lion of Judah wrote words that lionize the spiritually fruitful. Because the wise (those who have the fruit of the Spirit blossoming from their tongues and hands and feet) they are heroes! Everybody wants to be righteous, you know? Everyone who’s anyone wants to respect his father and mother. No one is cooler than a wise man. That guy who saves his money and works hard…awesome!
UNFORGETTABLE IN PICTURES
Prostitutes are ugly and scary…their gaping mouths are graves.
Stolen bread will make your gut a bag of rocks. Then it isn’t so fun to eat anymore.
Fools go eat dinner with zombies sitting in a grave in hell. Oops. Don’t go there.
Robert Louis Stevenson, from Treasure Island
Lustful men light matches on their zippers and then set the flame down on their privy parts. Good idea, eh?
Girls who are beautiful, but not wise, are like jewelry covered in pig-snot. Go fix that.
Lazy people are so afraid to act… because, you know, the monsters out there might get me if I go outside.
CHALLENGING
Do your kids like a treasure hunt? Tell them to find wisdom under every rock. If they hunt it down, they will have rooms full of fine treasures. Tell them nothing is more worthwhile than the treasure hunt. Tell them that when they find it, they should cling to it. Oh, and tell them that the treasure map starts in chapter 1 of Proverbs, where they meet a guardian sphinx. They can answer this dark riddle to pass: Do you fear Yhwh?
But Oooooh to get your hands on a hunk of that TREASURE inside!!!
Teach your treasure hunters to pass the gate, storm the store room, and find some jewel encrusted, shining, golden plate. Show them how to do this, and then ask them to hold it up in the sun so they can recognize the reflection of their own face in it.
Cause that’s what kids like. And since their proverbial father Yhwh, when he made kids and when he made the book of proverbs, knew who he was writing to.
HOW TO KEEP THE LAW WHEN THERE IS NO LAW: Understanding the Fruit of the Spirit in Context
Moses with the Tablets of the Law – Rembrandt
We live in a time when our governments on all levels are driven by the business of making rules. This is how they make revenue; this is how they justify their existence; this is how large corporate interests maintain their permanence and power — by keeping the right people in a place to keep giving the citizens more regulations. There are so many rules that it is a burden to try to keep up with the rules – apparently now under the ACA, we have minute codicils added for bizarre minutiae: you may have heard that there is a separate insurance code to be entered for being “hit in the head by a turtle.” And not even the regulators seem to be aware of what the new stipulations will do to their own departments. In recent months congressional staffers have started quitting and looking for other jobs because they won’t be able to afford to work for congress anymore once the ACA regulations kick in. They write bad laws, and nobody knows what all the laws say.
Why do we resent such laws? We resent being “mothered” by the state, especially when it seems like “mother who knows best” is really a crook. We call it the Nanny State. Well, this illustrates two things helpful things for us – 1) Law, whether good or bad, acts like a parent or guardian to tell us what to do, and 2) erroneous, tyrannical or overflowing laws are painful burdens.
Let me start with a brief story about a society in which some people had slaves and attempted to use those slaves for income:
David thought the interview had gone well so far. Huxley Industries needed a slave to answer phones, keep records, and do other office work. David needed some better income and he had a slave to rent. His slave could easily do the jobs that they needed to be done.
“So can your slave be here by 7:30 am every weekday morning?”
David’s heart lurched. “You start that early?”
Well, we need him ready to go before others come to work. We found this position works better if he starts a half hour earlier.”
“Oh.”
“Is that a problem?” Sharon, the interviewer sounded completely non-judgmental about David’s slave. He was thankful for her professionalism.
“Well, I have my slave during most of the day,” said David, hating to have to admit the truth out loud. “Body is a good slave and I’m sure he could do the work here.”
“But?”
“But I’m not completely his sole owner. His other master may make that 7:30 start time difficult to meet.”
“Someone else has ownership that early in the morning?”
David shook his head. Not in the morning, but usually late at night. Wine, Women, and Song are part owners from about 9 p.m. until pretty late. Getting up that early might be a problem.”
Sharon nodded. “That was actually why this position didn’t work with the last slave we tried to rent from someone.”
“Did Wine, Women, and Song have part ownership?”
“No,” said Sharon, “I think it was Late Night Television. It kept the slave up at night and when the other owner got full control back in the morning, the slave was too groggy to work for us effectively.”
David sighed.
“I appreciate talking to you about the job,” said Sharon. “But you have to understand lots of slaves can do the tasks we need done. Our problem isn’t the tasks themselves but the simple fact that the owners are not really total owners. You can’t really rent out a slave if you already share him with other masters.”
Now perhaps you understand the point of my story. To give a clear application of the point, lets think about a couple at their wedding making vows.
Giving Yourself Away In Marriage
When a man and a woman get married, they promise themselves to each other. The assumption is that they are each in a position to actually give the item that they are promising.
I wonder how often that is completely true.
Traditionally, there is a point in a wedding ceremony where the minister asks if there is any other relationship that prevents either person from being legally and morally capable of marrying the other. It is mostly just a formality–though it reminds us that marriage had to be carved out of social chaos.
But while the average couple in a wedding is legally free to marry the other, do they have any real freedom to truly offer and give themselves to the other?
To a certain extent, of course, you can’t learn how to give yourself in marriage until you get married. You are promising to learn how you need to change to become the perfect spouse (not perfect in a generic way but perfect to the particular person you are marrying) and then to do so. That can’t be all figured out before marriage. You have to grow and adapt.
But such growth and change require freedom. And by freedom I mean slavery.
Slavery to oneself.
Slavery to oneself as an integrated decision maker rather than slavery to the bits of you, whether only immature or downright sinful, that you can’t understand.
If you can’t master yourself you have no capacity to offer yourself to another. So two people take vows who have a hundred invisible spouses already chained to their hands, feet, eyes, and mouths. They are slaves to ambitions, greeds, vices, assorted addictions and, probably most of all, fears.
Marriage has to force real change on a person in order to work. The person has to realize that the vow to belong to another entails a vow to capture and dominate oneself so that one has a person to offer to another. That’s why my absolutist language should not be taken too literally. You can indeed offer yourself to your spouse, but it probably involves a promise to capture more of yourself and bring those parts into the family.
Why am I talking about a person as if he was a collection of opposing forces?
Because that is the way we are. Sin aggravates the problem, but anyone who sees a baby discovering it’s own hands and feet should realize that the process of maturation is a process of integrating parts into a whole.
Now, You Can Only Have “An Accident” On Purpose
Perhaps, if you doubt the way I’m describing a baby’s relation to his body parts, you might consider a specific issue (pun not intended).
Many claim that real character comes from “the inside” and must be truly “from inside you.” You are supposed to“listen to your heart” and “be true to yourself” and all that.
This was your way of life when you were first born and for a time thereafter: Once what “came from inside you” was messy diapers but now you would find it difficult to soil your pants even if someone offered you several hundred dollars to do so.
It was the most natural thing in the world to every single human being now reading this blog post to, at one time, let “poop happen.” No control. No concern. This was spontaneous human behavior unconstrained by outward, external imposition.
And now it is inside you, in your heart and in your mind. You have not only the ability to control your bowels, you have such a powerful impulse to do so that the idea of overriding that impulse seems almost beyond your reach.
You get trained and you change…. from the outside in and then from the inside out.
And this applies to much else.
A baby will play with his hands and feet and put them in his mouth because he perceives them as externalities. He doesn’t know how to control them at first. He’s not sure they are part of him.
By the time he is two, that stage is over. He has “brought” his limbs “into” his consciousness. Or he has “extended” his self into his hands and feet. They are part of him now. They are tools. He has dominion and from there he can do new things.
Learning To Drive
Or consider teaching a teenager to drive. Once you know how to drive you no longer think, “I need to slow down so I had better push the pedal on the left.” If you are thinking that way, then you don’t know how to drive yet. But when you do learn, the car is part of your body. You never need to think about the controls.
It is true of language. You can no more think of the individual letters in order and the sounds they make as you read this post, than you can drive by first thinking about what the controls for the car do. Language, both written and spoken, is experienced without noticing the different parts that, when you were young, you had to figure out.
This is called wisdom. The same principle applies to learning to listen before you speak or learning to restrain anger.
When a teen first gets in a car, the car’s power scares him. It bucks and jerks. Why is the engine so rough?
But it is not rough. You just don’t have control. The car couldn’t function without an engine and brakes. You need those things. But you need to know how to use them right. The same with your emotions. You have to learn to drive them or else they will drive you off the road.
Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding (Proverbs 17.27).
Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly (Proverbs 14.29).
Good sense makes one slow to anger,
and it is his glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19.11).
The vexation of a fool is known at once,
but the prudent ignores an insult (Proverbs 12.16).
A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
but a wise man quietly holds it back (Proverbs 29.11).
These are barely decisions at all but much more habits of behavior. They are how you drive yourself in a way that glorifies God and keeps you out of unnecessary traffic jams. They are the habits that give you the time you need to reflect when reflection is called for.
It is all about how you train your body.
Sin In Your Body Parts
Sin complicates this process. But the Bible encourages us, in Christ, to conquer the enemies and bring them into submission to the Lord. Note the way the Apostle Paul describes the imperative of victory.
Romans 6.13
Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
And then Romans 6.19b:
For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Does this see an odd way to write? But (among many other parts of the Bible) it is right out of Proverbs wherein we are warned about wicked or foolish eyes, ears, hands, feet, and hearts, etc. Just one example among many:
There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
The evil man is ruled by his parts.
This solution here is not intellectualism or a mind-good/body-bad-until-domesticated doctrine. The point is that the intellect or brain does not master the body simply by force of will. You would never get done tying your shoelaces if the brain/body system was supposed to work that way. When you integrate your body into the service of God you are changing both your fingers and your fore-brain. As I pointed out here, taking control of yourself is compared in the Bible to taming an animal. If I remember correctly, this has been confirmed by scientific studies measuring the brain activity of amateur and pro golfers. The amateur’s brain activity spikes as he thinks so hard about what he is doing, but the pro’s shows much less activity. He is simply riding the body that is already trained (as well as had a natural and inexplicable talent from the beginning, in many cases).
Parents Rule You So You Can Rule Yourself
I was recently reading a novel by a rationalist atheist who portrayed a heroine who, though she had never allowed anyone to make her do anything she didn’t want to do, and who despised labor, was able to engage and succeed at the pursuits of goals that she desired once she became an adult. There are prodigies and there are amazing leaps in progress in human life some times. But normally that is not the way it works.
Normally, if you haven’t been forced to get up in the morning, you aren’t going to be able to make yourself get up as an adult. If you haven’t been forcibly stopped from yelling, or shooting your mouth off, when you are angry as a child, it will be extremely difficult to stop yourself as an adult. It isn’t impossible, but it is going to be difficult. You will struggle to arrive where others already are. (Of course, if it encourages you to humility, you might be better off in the long run than some others. Self-control doesn’t guarantee you will evade the traps of sin. It only promises you that your sins will tend to be more self-consciously chosen, though perhaps under the power of a delusion.)
But the point here is that learning to force yourself to do things to avoid unpleasantness with an external authority can actually help you grow up and, when you have left that authority, take authority over yourself. As far as I know, if children survive their parents, they can spring back from all sorts of horrible situations. But, if memory serves, feral children are virtually feral forever. To be completely ignored is deforming to the human personality. And the next worse thing may be a childhood in which one’s parents spoil you.
In the Bible slavery leads to dominion. The primary instance of this truth is growing up with parents and then leaving home or becoming master of the estate. Thus:
Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 3:23-4:5, ESV)
And the mark of childishness, it seems, is instability–the inability to stand firm for a purpose:
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. (Ephesians 4:11-14, ESV)
How Service To God Gives Autonomy
We often hear Christians oppose autonomy to “theonomy” or to obedience to God. But the word, “autonomous,” can mean simply the ability to rule oneself. And with that in mind we might notice that the only path to autonomy is theonomy:
If we take the -nomos suffix as “law” then theonomy is good and autonomy is evil, because one should submit to God’s law rather than be a law to oneself.
But being “autonomous” does not typically mean being a law unto oneself in all contexts. It can means simply being self-governed. A child becomes “autonomous” to a degree at the age of eighteen because the child becomes an adult and is permitted to make choices for him- or herself. One becomes “autonomous” when one is given space and time to make one’s own decisions without immediate supervision.
In other words, you are autonomous when you are expected to supervise yourself rather than be supervised by someone else.
Autonomy can be a matter of degree: you can be told to report back in two weeks or six months on a project. You are autonomous in that you are “on your own” until the appointed time of review. Or you can be given a mission without being given minute instructions on how to succeed at the mission. Determining your best strategy to complete the mission is part of the mission itself. So in both cases you have a lesser or greater degree of autonomy without denying a higher authority.
So God has left us largely autonomous, or rather, with the charge to become autonomous and thus complete the mission He assigned to us.
But to what end? If we don’t have at least an overarching plan for human beings in mind, then how can we unify our desires, perceptions, and impulses toward an intelligible goal? With no goal, we become slaves to vices. With a false goal, we will eventually find that our “autonomy” is actually slavery to some principle that doesn’t truly suit us.
If God is truly the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit revealed in the Bible and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then only by governing ourselves to serve him and model ourselves on him can we be truly self-integrated and self-governing.
So, this is the conclusion of the matter: The only real autonomy is found in theonomy.
Is This Why God Subjects Us To Unpleasant Or Hostile Forces?
Let us consider two common statements by Evangelicals:
1. “we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but
2. more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope.”
Yes, but what about the third truth?
3. We can be greater than we would ever dare attempt.
So, if one accepts only 1. and 2., one will find great comfort. But if one accepts 3. along with 2. then one might suspect that Jesus is gong to make one’s life a living hell for quite some time.
In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Notice that the writer of Hebrews is not telling them to repent of any particular sins. He is simply promising them that their troubles are to help them gain mastery over sin. By being slaves we become masters. But if we never become masters of ourselves we will always be slaves to others, and to our own passions or desires.
To Be A Profitable Soldier In God’s Army You Need Trained Soldiers In Your Army
No matter how awesome your battle plan or how ingenious your general, a conflict can only be won by trained troops. If the soldiers run in the face of danger, don’t listen to orders, or don’t follow orders; if they get into arguments that distract them from their duties, they are doomed.
Soldiers can’t expect to do well without weapons and armor, but also weapons and armor will be wasted if the soldiers aren’t trained to constantly care for their equipment.
Likewise, sports. The greatest coach in the world cannot bring a team to victory if the players won’t exercise or practice.
Solomon knows that God has given the law. But he also knows that you can’t follow it naturally. No, I’m not talking about “the natural man,” I’m talking about the impossibility of relying on thoughtless habits and untrained impulses to guide you in a course of action.
Any course of action.
God made us this way. Sin had nothing to do with it at this level. If all humans were supposed to do one and only one thing throughout history, then it could have been wired into us. But God had more diversity in mind. So we can shape ourselves (or commit to shapelessness). We can drive ourselves (or be driven by forces outside our control).
And since this is the way we are, submitting to God’s commands takes a similar form. You can promise yourself not to say unpleasant things if you get angry, but until you’ve trained yourself to keep quiet and think before you speak it won’t mean much. Oh, you can “decide” all you want. But until you’ve got your body parts working in formation, it will be a fruitless promise. “Let not him who puts his armor on boast as he who takes it off.”
I was talking to one of my sons about some of these concepts. He watches basketball a fair amount. He told me that he’s noticed that some players, when they disagree with the referee, simply cannot shut up. They end up getting their whole team penalized–a situation that was worse than the original problem and one which the player could have avoided. Or maybe he couldn’t because his mouth or his temper is not under his control.
Here are people who have forced their bodies into shape doing amazing things and yet they unable to overpower their own mouths?
Self-mastery must be learned. Without it, freedom is meaningless. But the easiest way to master yourself is to serve another for a time as a child. If you can’t obey orders you will never be able to command yourself.<>сумки для macbook air 13 cozistyleконтекстная реклама а от гугл
Social media has been in a frenzy this week over Miley Cyrus’ live show on Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. Her performance was outlandish, embarrassing, and contained undertones of pedophilia. Cyrus, 20, wore a leotard with a teddy bear design while her dancers were in teddy bear costumes. This presented us with a very silly, childlike theme consistent with the song’s music video. Robin Thicke, 36, enters the stage wearing a black and white striped suit, reminiscent of a prison uniform. Cyrus then proceeds to perform sexual gestures toward him. Though Cyrus is “legal,” the visual was one of a young girl simulating sexual acts with an adult criminal.
Now, we shouldn’t be shocked by this behavior. MTV has been known to push the envelope many times before. Nevertheless, the desperation and immaturity that Cyrus displayed was so extreme that it sent pop-culture into mourning. Bloggers and journalists – particularly Christian conservative ones – have rightly called Cyrus out for her antics. For whatever reason, however, the critics haven’t been as tough on Thicke.
Yet, the Miley Cyrus performance was only half of the problem. There were other displays of inappropriate behavior, including Lady Gaga showing off her bare backside. But I’m mostly surprised that Christian bloggers haven’t said anything about the overtly pro-gay evangelism of rapper Macklemore. His song, “Same Love” won the award for Best Video with a Social Message. His acceptance speech included: (more…)
Liturgy is grounded in acts. Every act leads to another act. In liturgy, skipping to a meal before being cleansed (washing of hands) is improper. Liturgy requires table manners. The liturgy shapes us. In particular, the Lord’s Day liturgy has a way of forming us into obedient children of the Most High God. The goal of biblical liturgy is to make us vessels of the gospel as parents and children. Liturgy is order and decency (I Cor. 14:40). This is one reason structure is so crucial to the Church, and more to the point this is one reason structure is so significant to the life of the home. A home that lacks structure is a home that lacks a well-thought out liturgy. I am not advocating perfection. Any parent who has been a parent for any amount of time knows that there is always work to be done. Parenting does not work within a 9-5 boundary marker.
This is why it is important to grasp the nature of liturgy. Its nature will indicate its purpose. The liturgy of the people of God is a holy one, and those principles which are generally fixed as we gather as God’s family are principles that can be applied to our homes also.
Worship establishes patterns of behavior. In general categories, we could summarize the nature of worship in three acts: First, we are a) cleansed, then we are b) taught, and finally we are c) commissioned. This is a synopsis of a covenant renewal model. When you apply this pattern to child-rearing you realize it is a sober method of disciplining.
First, children need to understand that they have sinned against God (Ps. 51) and against one another. Children need to confess and be cleansed. Children’s ability to understand sin is far greater than we can imagine. Part of this cleansing process is the presupposition that all sin is communal. No sin affects only self. Children are born and baptized for the sake of incorporation. It is the individualist that prefers to see his sins as isolated. But sin in the home hurts the shalom of the house. When sins are individualized parents develop a faulty view of discipline. When a daughter sins, a father’s response should not be to simply discipline her and let it go, rather it is incumbent upon him to explain to the child (briefly) how her sins affect those around her; how her selfishness provided a poor example for her siblings; how her ungratefulness trivializes the generosity of God to our family. When a child sins he needs to see his acts in the context of his community. His sins are not merely exposed, but explained in a broader context than himself.
Secondly, the task of parenting then follows in teaching. This is didactic parenting. All parents are home-schoolers in one way or another. I am assuming here the role of nurturing and building up as part of the instruction. As I mentioned above the act of discipline needs to be followed up by some explanation. Discipline and words of instruction need to go hand in hand, especially when dealing with little ones. The instruction needs to be age appropriate and biblically saturated, even if the verse is not quoted verbatim. Teaching needs to be done calmly and with great patience. The impatience of our children often reveals our impatience. In the same manner, our impatience in instructing our children reveals our impatience to instruct others as well. If we are not capable of explaining the consequences of sins to the least of them how will we explain the consequences of sin to those who are more maturely aware of them?
Under this training, parents need to be also aware of the need to communicate love to our children. The Christian faith is wholistic. If we end simply in the didactic, we may be training little machines to respond appropriately. But though it is often assumed under nurture, parents sometimes forget that physical affection is needed. A I wrote in The Trinitarian Father, children must feel our presence as well as our affection towards them. Jesus comforted his disciples when he commissioned them. He told them that his authority is sufficient for them to fulfill their task. Parents must hug, kiss, and reveal to their children that parental training includes more than mere words, but actions; actions that will leave a lasting impression as they are commissioned to fulfill their call day by day.
Finally, the parenting liturgy concludes with commission. The father/mother after having cleansed and instructed the child, the parent now sends the child out to go and sin no more. This commission stems from the previous steps. Commissioning is the call to be reconciled to the world, beginning with our households. When Jesus grew he grew in favor with God and man. When our sins are confessed we are not only made right with God, but we are called to be reconciled with others. Children are also called to be ambassadors of peace.
Parenting is always liturgical. A make-up-as-you-go liturgy will cause certain effects on the liturgy of the home. I argue that every child needs structure. This is not a never-adjusting structure, but a foundational structure. Liturgy is nothing more than the structure of life.<>siteпродвижение через интернет
This is a continuation of a post I started yesterday. If you have not read that one, I would encourage you to do so before reading this one.
Show your children lots of physical affection. Hug them. Kiss them. Wrestle with them. Tickle them. Lay in bed with them at night as you put them to sleep. The physical matters to God. He will raise our bodies from the grave, not just our souls. Your children need to know that you love them through physical touch. By the way, this doesn’t go away when they become teenagers.
Learn to enjoy and participate in sports. Sports such as basketball, golf, tennis, running, rock climbing, swimming, fishing, etc. are great for the body and the soul. In our culture, these things have become idols so we are tempted to write them off entirely. This is a mistake. Our family plays basketball. We go on long hikes. We fish. We swim a lot in the summer. We run around and play tag when they are little and throw the football when they are big. Sports teach us so many things: how to endure pain, how to recognize our weaknesses and strengths, how to work together, how to lose, how to win, and how you can out there and give it your all and still come up short. I am not necessarily encouraging organized league sports, although that is fine. But find some way to get it in.
Read to your children a lot, especially fiction and poetry. I do not know the science of this, but I do know that good fiction helps to make us fat souled. I know that poetry, whether it is Mother Goose or Shakespeare helps our souls put on another layer of the good stuff. Read to them Treasure Island, Beowulf, Johnny Tremain, Time of Wonder, Blueberries for Sal, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, etc. History is great as well. Give them great stories whether true or fictional.
Give music a prominent place in your home. This should include singing Psalms and hymns. But it could also include U2, Johnny Cash, Bach, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, B.B. King and if you are feeling particularly frisky, The Ramones. We must be careful of course. There is a lot of trash out there. But music makes us fat- souled. We should also teach our children to play instruments. One of my great regrets (and my wife’s) is that I never learned to sing or play music. I am glad my children will not suffer the same deficit.
Tell jokes, read funny stories, watch comedies, and laugh a lot. At our house we read Calvin and Hobbes and Peanuts. We watch older comedies that do not have the junk of newer ones. I love Far Side comics. My sons and daughters are always trying to make up new puns or funny stories to tell, usually with their stuffed animals that look like they have been run over several times. Laughter should be heard regularly. Teach your children to laugh at themselves. Fat souls laugh a lot, especially at themselves. We look funny, act funny, and funny things happen to us. Sometimes we are the butt of the joke. And that means as a parent you must learn to laugh at yourself.
Teach them to delight in the world God has made. When there is a thunderstorm at my house we usually go out on the deck to see it unfold. What power and majesty! When there is full moon we take a peek out our windows. My boys feed fireflies to their toads and the fireflies glow in their mouths until they are dead. We collect snakes and spiders and flowers and weird shaped sticks. We watch Shark Week on Netflix and laugh at the evolution, while standing slack jawed at the sharks. We come back from the library with books on alligators and crocodiles and insects you hope you never meet. Have you ever looked at Surinam Toad? You should. Google it. And remember God made it that way. Fat-souled children love the world God has made.
Feed your children well. I am not encouraging gluttony. But often a lean dinner table produces lean souls. Sacrifice so they can be well fed. I have four sons between 8 and 14. They eat like horses and show no signs of slowing down. I can grumble about the cost. My wife could grumble about how quickly her labor over the stove is consumed. But does God grumble when he feeds the world (Psalm 104)? Also, teach your children to feast. On occasion, pull out the nice dishes, put on the nice clothes, pop the cork on some good wine and eat, drink and be merry, preferably with friends. The end of our life is a feast. Give your children a taste of it now.
Enter into the joys and pains of your children. Play with your children. Get excited over the painting that is cannot be interpreted or the story you have heard seventeen times already. Bend down and look them in the eye. Build Legos with them. Color with them. When they hurt weep with them. Don’t make them wimps or flatter them with false praise. But too often we sit back in a proud posture while our children suffer or rejoice. Enter into their life.
Most of these things do not require much money (except for feeding teenagers), but they do require time. We cannot have fat-souled children if we do not feed them with our time and energy. Is this not the problem with raising children who delight in God and his world? Is this not the reason why so many of us give up and let their souls wither and die? It is hard work. But remember hard work produces fat souls.
I am not sure where I picked up the idea of fat-souled children. It could have been Angels in the Architecture. It may have been an article in one of the obscure periodicals I read. But the image has stuck with me. Just to clarify, the image in my mind is not some fat, lazy, bum living in his mother’s basement playing Halo. The image in my mind is one of contentedness and delight: My father napping in his easy chair after Thanksgiving dinner. My wife and I slipping into bed tired, but content after a hard day’s work. Sipping beer on the back deck after chopping fire wood. Finishing a large project. Spending the Lord’s Day with God’s people. Reading Beowulf in the dead of winter. These are a few of the images that come to my mind when I think of fat souls. My next two articles list ways I think we can raise fat-souled children, children who are content, who take joy in all God has done, who are not petty and dour.
The opposite of fat-souled would be lean, gaunt, under nourished, dying. When people see me do they see a soul overflowing with God’s goodness? Or do they see a dead withered tree that has no sap and no fruit? Many Christians have entered into the abundant life our Lord speaks of and yet their souls are barren, dead, joyless places. With this list I hope to give us and our children a path out of that type of life and into a place of fatness.
There are some points to make before I get to the list.
First, you cannot have fat-souled children if you are not growing a fat soul yourself. A fat-souled person loves God, delights in God, and delights in the world God has made and the people he has put here. If you are not working to become that type of person then your children will not look like that either. All instruction concerning children begins with “parent teach thyself.” This one is no exception.
Second, these are not instructions for making a machine that churns out fat-souled children. In other words, it is possible to do many of these things and still not have fat-souled children. We can take these things and use them to beat our children, go through the motions or do these things without love and joy. As in all of life, there are no automatics. But the things I list below, done in faith and love for God and neighbor, can help your children not have withered souls.
Third, I am not an expert at most of these things. Some I do better than others. Some I am still terrible at. Some I am learning to do better. I fall short of this many days and my children do as well. I make no claim to mastery of these points. The list is a sermon to myself and a target to aim at.
So without further ado, on to the list. The first four are the most important. After that I just put them down as they came to my mind.
Pray that God would make your children fat-souled. Pray that they would not be petty or shallow or self-absorbed. It is true that God alone works on the heart, thus prayer is essential.
Teach your children they are sinners. Then teach them that all of their sins are forgiven in Christ. Nothing, absolutely nothing, frees the soul like Jesus. Nothing frees the mind from anxiety like God’s goodness shown to us at the cross. Without Jesus our souls are lean indeed.
Teach your children about God’s character. Tell them about his holiness, his wrath, his mercy, his providence, his kindness, his chastening rod, etc. Teach them through the study of Scripture, but also teach them through your life.
Teach your children to worship with joy and gladness of heart. This includes the private worship of reading the Scriptures and prayer. But I am especially talking about corporate worship. Fat-souled children need worship that feeds them. They need to know they are meeting with God and his people every Sunday. They need to know that they were made to bow before God.
Teach your children to enjoy hard work. Hard work makes us fat-souled. Both blisters on our hands from raking leaves and weariness of mind from doing research can help make fat souls. Do hard work together. Your children should learn to work by themselves. But they should also learn to work as a family. Build something together. Make a meal together for someone who needs it. Improve your house by laboring together on a project. Even if the little ones cannot help much let them participate where they can. Make your home a place of productivity and not just consumption.
Teach your children to love all types of people. Show them how to love babies and the elderly and everyone in between. Teach them how to love the quirks in their brothers and sister and to delight in the differences between families. Look that family loves to play the accordion. That man wears his ties too short every Sunday. Too often we disdain differences instead of rejoicing in them. Find ways to help your children meet other nationalities and people from other areas of the country (except California :-)). There are wicked people out there. There are stupid people out there. But do not raise your children to be suspicious of everyone they meet or to be uncomfortable around different people. Teach your children that people are fascinating. And that means you, as the parent, must delight and rejoice in your child’s quirks. You must find them fascinating.
We worship God for his glory, and glory means he is ever overflowing with beauty, truth, and goodness. We go to him with praise, because that’s where all the praise worthy stuff is. And when we get there, the glory of God isn’t a mere morsel that we would consume if we tasted it. The glory of God is like the feast of a great chef. If you heard the finest chef was presenting his most triumphant culinary successes to you – you would go. You would go with your fork in hand. Hunger would be a virtue, and wide eyes would be welcome. Wanting what the maker gives would be a praise to the maker.
You have begun going to this chef all the time for his manna, and for his fish, and for his loaves, and for his oil. And over time you have realized that you can take as much food as you can eat, and that at the end of every feast there are twelve baskets of leftovers. Not even a myriad munchers can out consume the service of such a chef. He never runs out, and it is as if at his right hand are delicacies forevermore. As if. (more…)
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’Abraham Kuyper
Let me start with a brief story about a society in which some people had slaves and attempted to use those slaves for income:
