Any of us who have been parents for a while have felt the weight of responsibility and the sense of inadequacy that comes with the task. We don’t know enough. We’re going to make a mistake that destroys our child’s life. How can I know that I am doing this right? No matter how many children we have, we are ever learning so that the rearing of each child feels like an experiment.
This weight of responsibility and sense of inadequacy should keep us humble before God, seeking his wisdom from the Scriptures and others who have passed this way before. Even with all of our perceived or real deficiencies, as Christians, we should approach our parenting with confidence. We can do this because we know that when God entrusts children to us, he has given us a calling we can handle.
Whatever your weaknesses as a parent, God, who knows all of your limitations, has chosen you to instruct this child or these children in the way of wisdom. Your parenting is sufficient to rear your child to be wise. How do I know this? Because parents are God’s ordained instructors of wisdom, and where God calls he equips.
The entire book of Proverbs validates the sufficiency of parenting for the rearing of wise children. Proverbs doesn’t simply contain tidbits of wisdom here-and-there to command you to discipline your child or why and how to do so (even though it does that). Proverbs is, in its totality, the instruction of a father and mother (1.8) to a son. Parents are the mouthpiece of God’s wisdom for the child.
All that God has brought you through, all that God has taught you up to this point, is sufficient for you to lead your children. Your responsibility is to do the best you can with what you know at the time of your child-rearing. As you grow older and look back, hindsight being what is, you will judge your former self and see your deficiencies more clearly. But when you were in the moment, you didn’t know the same things. You didn’t have the experience or perspective. At that time, you sought to be faithful to God. What else could you have done? You don’t know what you don’t know. You sought counsel from Scripture and older parents. You applied it the best way you knew at the time. That is all you could have done, and you shouldn’t live on torturing yourself for what you didn’t know. You weren’t slothful, so you should have no regrets.
If you sinned against the knowledge you had, then that is a problem. However, you can’t go back and change it. All you can do is ask for forgiveness from your child(ren) and move forward. The scars will remain, but you don’t need to continue to self-flagellate.
Your parenting is sufficient to give your child knowledge of the way of wisdom. But in the words of Morpheus, “There a difference in knowing the path and walking the path.” The power of your parenting is limited. No parental guidance is foolproof. The wisest parent ever, God the Father, had a wayward son even after he gave him a perfect environment, everything he needed, and good instruction. Children have their own responsibility to respond to instruction.
There is a recognition in Proverbs that even the wisest child-rearing doesn’t ensure wisdom. Good homes sometimes produce sloths (Pr 10.5) or profligate sons (Pr 29.3). A child may rebel (Pr 15.20), mock (Pr 30.17), or curse (Pr 30.11; 20.20) his parents. Bad child-rearing is the responsibility of the parents and can have long-term deleterious effects. That’s true. But if you are the product of imperfect parents (and all of us are to one degree or another) and you are using that as an excuse for your continuing lifestyle of sin, you will bear your own blame (Pr 29.3; 2.2ff.).
In God’s providence, he gave you the parents he did and, with them, certain battles to fight. Maybe you lost a parent through death or divorce. Maybe your parents were misguided, ignorant, or even wicked. You still have a choice to make: are you going to sit there and whine the rest of your life about all the ways your parents failed you, using it as an excuse to be slothful and not pursue the way of wisdom, plunging yourself into destruction and death out of spite for them, or are you going to enjoin the battle and walk the difficult path of wisdom? You were affected. I get it. Trust me, I get it. But you can’t spend the rest of your life excusing your sinful sloth and destructive patterns of life on your parents believing that you are innocent because of their guilt.
Godly parental guidance is sufficient to provide everything a child needs to walk in the way of wisdom. But there are limits to its power. Every child must choose for himself to receive or reject the wisdom of his parents.
