The Family Car

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12

 

 

I didn’t get it at first.

It was a magazine advertisement for a car. Over the picture of the empty car/SUV are the words:

“IT’S ONLY A FAMILY CAR WHEN YOUR FAMILY’S IN IT”

Heaven forbid, someone might see you in a vehicle made to transport children, or that this car would look so much like a “family car” that someone would assume you have a bunch of kids to put in it. Only if your family is with you do need to look like you have one.

This is one of the more subtle ways that our culture is knocking down, slowly but surely, the importance of the family to the culture.

After the shootings in the Florida high school, I was reading an article put on social media by an elementary school guidance counselor. It was lamenting the lack of enough guidance counselors in the schools to counsel with the children if something tragic happens in their buildings. At the elementary school level, this article never suggested that the parents should be called to comfort and counsel their own children.

That should horrify any parent of a public school child. Biblically speaking, parents have 100% of the responsibility to raise and educate their children, and even to comfort them, so they can teach them how to respond appropriately. It’s a different religion that would teach otherwise.

Just as important, Proverbs is clear that children have a responsibility before God to listen to their parents – fathers and mothers. Proverbs 1:8-9 say, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.” These “educators” aren’t even going to point the children to their parents.

Even in a pediatrician’s office, at the age of sixteen, our daughter was asked questions about sexual activity and drug use, and told that her parents never needed to know about it. Really? No child should be left alone with a doctor – no matter their age. Parents are the ones who have the authority under God to discipline a child, to train them in the way they should go.

I don’t suppose that if the child ended up pregnant or drug addicted that the doctor is who they will call to help them, or that if they did call on them that they would receive any real help. That office lost my trust in that incident because they taught my daughter that family is not as important as doing what you want to do.

The point is that everywhere we turn the family is being attacked. If we raise our own children according to God’s plan, they should feel protected and secure enough that it won’t matter what anyone outside it says.

So, how do we teach our own children the importance of the family?

1. Talk about the Word of God in your home and any chance you have, point to the goodness of God (Deuteronomy 6:6-7 and His plans for families (Psalm 78:5-7).
2. Create an atmosphere of peace and security. Make ‘home” a pleasant place to be (Proverbs 1:32-33).
3. Eat meals as a family; discuss what’s happening in their lives. These should also be peaceful, not contentious, times (Isaiah 54:13).
4. Discipline children for disobedience and rebellion. Teach them when their behavior shows a lack of understanding (Proverbs 13:24, 12:1; Ephesians 6:1; Hebrews 12:7).
5. Love God and keep His commands, so children see it and hear it (Matthew 22:37). And, love them as the Lord instructs parents (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21).

The family is the bedrock of any culture. Let’s teach that truth to the next generation by living like we believe it.