Recently, when a city in the United States of America exploded into rioting and anarchy over the weekend following the death of a young African-American man in dubious circumstances at the hands of the police, hundreds of African-American agitated youths swept across the city burning and destroying properties and looting at will. However, the young man who was chased down by the police and killed had been arrested eighteen times previously by the police and had several convictions, mostly for drug possession and distribution. It also turned out that he had a difficult childhood. However, the person who was grabbing the headlines, around the same time, was the mother of another African-American 16-year-old boy who publicly smacked her son for taking part in the riot. She was caught on camera berating and clobbering her son and chasing him home after she spotted him carrying rocks to hurl at the police. She was even heard saying, “That’s my only son and at the end of the day I don’t want him to be another Freddie Gray.” The question is not just whether the young man was killed by the police, but what caused him to get to the station in life where he was chased down by the police.
The wise one at Proverbs 22:6 wrote, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Parents are custodians of their children. To them it is enjoined that they train and bring up their children in this world of vanity to keep them from sin and the snare of it. “He who spares his rod,” says Proverbs 13:24, “hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly.” It is the parent’s rod, not the rod of an enemy, that must be used by wisdom and love designed for good. It is good to begin correction and discipline with necessary restraints of children from that which is evil before vicious habits are confirmed. The branch is easily bent when it is tender. Parents who do not keep their children under a strict discipline, by all proper methods, pretending to be fond of them, ignore making them sensible for their faults. Maybe parents are afraid of offending them or that they would regret in their later years were they to discipline their children.
In the Old Testament Book of 1 Samuel in its second and third chapters, we read about the two sons of Eli, who was one of the judges that ruled over the nation of Israel before kings were appointed to rule over them. The sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, the Bible says, were corrupt, and they did not know the Lord (1 Samuel 2:12). It is parents’ responsibility to instill the fear and respect of God in their children. Eli’s sons committed grievous sins because they did not know the Lord. They treated the Lord’s sacrifices with contempt (1 Samuel 2:3-17). They were very immoral. They gave into lusts and indulged in all kinds of vices (1 Samuel 2:22). Yet, the most tragic of all was, the Bible says, “his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them” (1 Samuel 3:13). Again, it is the parents’ awesome responsibility to raise their children in the training and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4), and among other things that means restraining them. They should not be left to do and to have everything they desire. When we fail to raise our children in the discipline of the Lord, we are honoring our children above God (1 Samuel 2:29). Our world today is being influenced by immorality on television and in the movies, pornography in reading materials, and in music, and the deification of human bodies along with the making of worldly pleasure the highest priority. “Evil companionship corrupts good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33).
There is an urgent need in our day for parental restraint of their children. There is a strong tendency to do evil, and this is aided by so many examples of evil in our world and by so many temptations. Parental restraint is imperative. As parents, it is our duty not only to the children but also to God to rear our children properly before Him. To omit or to neglect parental restraint is ruinous not only to children, but in many cases to parents also (1 Samuel 3:13).
