but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
A child who gathers in summer is prudent,
but a child who sleeps in harvest brings shame.” NRSV
We have been “showing off” our town to some friends who are visiting our area for the first time. When we drove by our local bowling lanes, she commented that, in their town, there was nothing for the (high school) kids to do except cruise in their cars. I wondered, silently, why these kids weren’t home doing chores and helping their families, many of whom are farmers?
For some reason, many of us think that we need to give our children a lot of time for amusements and require very little of them in the way of chores, of helping the family around the house. Meanwhile, as adults, we are working our fingers to the bone doing the work of two (or more) people to provide a “nice life” for our family (including those children). When did we decide, as a society, that childhood was to be a perpetual vacation?
Proverbs 22:6 NRSV: “Train children in the right way, and when old, they will not stray.”
Children don’t just “grow up” into good habits. They don’t mature and suddenly become responsible. Children must be trained (taught) how to become the kind of adults they should be. Looked at conversely, how an adult child is reflects how they were raised. The two—how a child is raised and how that adult child acts—are tied together.
Now it’s true that there are exceptions to the rule. There are people (as children and then as adults) who had some innate inner push to become disciplined even though their parents didn’t teach them thusly. But, over all, children become what we teach them to be.
The fact is, we are raising (and even have raised) a generation (or more) of children (now adults) who prefer their leisure to work, who abandon their responsibilities in favor of recreational pursuits, and who are even neglecting their own children in favor of their own enjoyment. They are bankrupted spiritually, emotionally, and financially because they would prefer to “sleep” (literally or figuratively) rather than work the harvest.
Conversely, some of these same children are turning to various weird kinds of doctrines and cults because they long for the strict discipline that appears there (e.g. Mormonism) and can’t find anything but fluff and games within many evangelical churches. I think that while many want to simply play games all their lives, within the human heart exist the conscious knowledge (conscience?) that life isn’t just about games.
Teaching our children (even our adult children by our example) about the discipline of work, however, is something that’s difficult for us because it means that we have to deny ourselves. Unfortunately, these days, we have convinced ourselves that age’s reward is playing (e.g. retirement). Rewarded based on age rather than merit (Have we saved enough, stored away enough, to be able to afford not to work?), retirement has become synonymous with self-indulgence: finally doing what we want to do. We need to ask ourselves, as Christians, if the Bible teaches that there is ever a time when doing what we want to do is a choice? Rather our choice is to take up our cross, deny ourselves (and our own pursuits), and follow the Lord in disciplined service. If we ever think we are going to teach our children this, we probably need to begin with ourselves.
© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).
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