Church Voices

One of the most abused pieces of scripture is Proverbs 22.6:

Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.

Not too long ago I heard second-hand about a Sunday School teacher (and Bible College grad, and former minister) opine to his class that this is a promise of God, and that if you really properly trained your child then at some point they would return to the church. Its this sort of thing that makes me want to light myself on fire.

A maxim in the NFL goes that if you can run the ball well you will win games. This particular pundit disagrees. and offers up as evidence the recent game between the Cleveland Browns and New York Giants. He accurately points out that the Giants dominated the run game, while the Browns won the battle for air supremacy, and concludes that it is the passing game that determines winners, and not the running game.

Case closed. Right?

Well, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. Because a closer look at the box scores shows us something else. That something else is that the Giants turned the ball over three times, including an intercepted pass that was run back 94 yards for a TD (which is essentially a 14 point swing since the Giants were six yards from paydirt).

While a good day running might not be a guarantee to a victory, it is probably generally an indicator of victory, so long as you’re not handing over the ball to the other team.*

Biblical wisdom functions similarly to football wisdom. They are observations that are generally true. They are not mathematical formulas wherein you do X and always get A. Generally someone who works hard will end up materially better off than if he did not. But occasionally life kicks a hardworking man in the teeth and gives a big fat cupcake to a lazy fattie.

And usually a child raised in the faith will remain or return to the faith he was raised. But sometimes that doesn’t happen. And when it doesn’t it has to be heartbreaking to their parents. Teaching that a child who doesn’t remain or return to the faith did so because either God broke His promise, or the parents weren’t faithful to God doesn’t do anything but turn that heartbreak into an unbearable load of guilt that isolates and crushes.

This reminds me of another piece of scripture:

“Yes,” said Jesus, “what sorrow also awaits you experts in religious law! For you crush people with unbearable religious demands, and you never lift a finger to ease the burden.

*This is at the very least highly simplistic. Football is a complex game in which every facet of the game are impacted by all other facets of the game.