The Trainer and His Objective
The role of a trainer is to prepare another participant for a future engagement. Trainers are to provide the trainee with tools for interacting during that engagement when it arises. If successfully trained, the trainee will use those tools to effect the outcome desired of the trainer. Therefore, it can be assumed that the trainee's performance is a direct reflection of his training, but even more so of the one providing the training... the trainer.
The Christian Trainer
If you, as a believer, have children, then you are a spiritual trainer regardless of whether or not you desire to be. The parent is either training proactively by obeying God's Word, or he is training myopically (unwittingly) by ignoring God's Word.
So often we hear Proverbs 22:6-- "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it"-- and we tie it to Biblical obedience. We all understand that the verse denotes that instilling God's law from His Word into a child will effect obedience to it when he matures to independence. All this is the practical application of the verse, but have we ever considered the connotative, myopic training the same verse implies? The other side of the coin, if you will?
If we fail to lead and train our children spiritually by using God's Word as our guide, then we are choosing to train them by ignoring it. My dad always said, "Choosing not to choose is a choice in itself." That saying stuck with me and it came to my recollection the moment my children began to mimic the things they heard and saw within the walls of our home. It was then my wife and I had to choose to whole-heartedly be proactive in the spiritual training of our children.
My Experience
Being a Christian educator has been extremely helpful in my own journey as a parent. For twelve years, my wife and I have seen other parents precede us in child-rearing. Some have done well in equipping their child's spiritual tool bag. Others not so much.
What a teacher hears and observes from students behind classroom doors reveals so much about the training sessions performed in the home. When the child of a Sunday school teacher or Christian ministry worker walks the hall reciting lyrics of a current pop song, we can infer training methods in the home conflict with those the Christian school or church tries to instill. Supposed "Christian" parents allow improper music, movies, friends, television shows and video games to influence their children, and the results evidence that myopic training. Over the years, parents who were thought to be strong spiritually have been discovered to be otherwise. Their children have shown little spiritual fruit; rather, their lack of respect for authority, their constant chatter of worldly entertainment, their use of foul language, their thanklessness and lack of desire for singing praises to God, their deceitfulness and dishonesty, their boldness and lack of conviction for their sin... these are all evidences we regularly observe that indicate improper training at home.
So here's where the rubber meets the road. The flipped side of the coin that is Proverbs 22:6 can be summed up like this: The training you choose to implement in your home, whether it be good or bad, will effect results. Those training in ignorance of God's Word will see results reflecting that choice. Their children will take the way in which the parents have unwittingly trained him. When those children mature to independence, they will cling to bad influences, which will affect life choices. When that time comes, it won't be the church's fault, nor will it be the pastor's or the Christian school's. It will lie on the shoulders of parents who trained them.
Sadly, the promise of Proverbs 22:6 also has a negative implication. You see, if children in Christian homes have received a myopic training, then the promise is that they (the children) will not depart from it (the poor way). This too, we have observed. Students enter upper junior high and high school, and rebel and digress into an anti-Christian mind-set. They bolt from the home as soon as they are of age and ruin their life through drugs, alcohol, violence, crime, having children out of wedlock and more. Parents then ask why and shake their heads in disbelief and are completely oblivious to fact that it was their own training initiatives that are to blame.
There are No Perfect Trainers
No parent we have observed (including ourselves) has executed perfectly the will of God in his child's spiritual training. Doing so is nearly an impossible task. Striving to do it to the best of our ability should be the ultimate goal. No doubt, there will be times when we come up short in an area, but the child will be less likely to remember those shortcomings if he sees that we are consistently striving to attain Biblical guidance for him.
Is There any Hope for the Poorly Trained?
We've all heard the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks," and we all know that's not true. It just takes a willing dog and a willing trainer. What we can take from this old adage is that it is hard to teach that old dog new tricks. Why do you suppose Proverbs 22:6 focuses on the child? Well, children are easily trained. Anyone with children knows this first-hand. They pick up on things quickly and easily. But this is not so for an older person who is set in his way-- the way he was trained to go. Can an older individual be retrained to obey God consistently? Yes, but the task will be much more difficult, because you have to reprogram the memory of the previous training. Unfortunately, memory is said to be the strongest muscle of the body.
Conclusion
The time we have with our children is short. Are we making the best of that precious time to strengthen their spiritual walk, or are we hindering it. We have either chosen to properly train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord through obedience to His Word, or we have chosen to train them by ignoring that same Word and minimizing the sins which doth so easily beset us. There will come a day when you will see the effect that your training has had on your children. I pray to see more young adult believers living sanctified, holy lives in the coming years. This prayer, though, isn't as much for the trainee as it is for the trainer! May God burden us as Christian parents to be proactive spiritual trainers in the home.
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