The First Community – Where Moral Civilization Begins
We are in the midst of an extensive study of 18 ways of living that characterize the kind of upright people upon whom communities depend to truly flourish. The mission today will not be to look at a particular way of living as we typically do. Rather, we’ll consider a crucially important institution through which those ways are taught, especially to children. This institution is, of course, the family.
Every one of us enters the world through a family. Long before we make our own decisions, someone has begun shaping how we see, whom we trust, what we desire, and how we respond to correction. Proverbs takes that influence with complete seriousness. Its opening chapters are framed by a father speaking to his son because Solomon understands that wisdom is passed from one generation to the next before it is tested in the larger world.
The family is the first place in which character takes shape. There God’s instruction is first received, and the habits of a lifetime begin to take root. A healthy society depends in part on what happens there.
For young children, parents are entrusted with forming judgment before the world will form it for them.
The father helps the child develop understanding, so that received wisdom becomes one’s own and the child can begin to recognize what particular situations require (4:1). The child should garner from parents the cultivated capacity to live in harmony with God’s moral order, especially in following His commandments (4:4).
They’re to “bind the instruction continually” upon the child’s heart and “tie it” about the child’s neck (6:21), linked to the child’s affections and decking his moral character. They accompany the child and teach him when awake, wherever he goes, and even when he sleeps (6:22). The commandments serve as a lamp, providing light for the instruction of the way of life he should live (6:23).
