Didactic Dichotomy

Train up a child in the way he should go;
(Proverbs 22:6 – ESV)

In Florida, we have a situation that I am not sure many people are thinking clearly enough about, considering the effects it has on children. You see, children have to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle, but adults do not when they ride motorcycles. It is much more dangerous to ride a motorcycle than a bicycle, but adults are mature enough to handle it, the reasoning goes. This sort of practice, when applied as it is to other areas of our family and community lives, creates an unforeseen split in our teaching and their practice, a didactic dichotomy.

Often we teach our children to do things we would consider wrong in ways we never even thought of. It is not that they do not respect you it is that they do; they want to be like you, an adult, so one way is to do what adults are allowed to do but children aren’t. Think about it. If the only perceived difference between you and them is that you are mature enough to handle cigarettes or alcohol or not wearing a helmet, then this must be what it means to be mature, to have alcohol, to have cigarettes, and to not wear a helmet.

We think training is how we teach but it is more about how we live and the rules we make for ourselves. Our rules for ourselves are more important than the rules we make for our children sometimes, because that is what they see themselves getting toward, your rules. They reason, if it is okay for you, and eventually okay for them, why not now? Training is not just telling. It is showing. The word in Hebrew means dedicate. Bring them up – train them don’t just tell them. Your children will learn what you live. Pastor, your flock will pasture where you graze.

When discipling believers, we want to show them how to be like Jesus, not show them how Jesus is like them. When training children, we don’t talk like children we get them to talk like us; we don’t act like children we get them to act like us. However, when the only thing we do different than our children is smoke and drink and cuss, well then no wonder that is what our children do when they want to sound and act grown up. And then we want to punish them for imitating us, for doing what we taught them to do. Ironic. Do as I say, not as I do, it does not work unless we can articulate why we can do it and they can’t handle it yet, and it has to be a legitimate reason.

When youth see different behavior in adults they often perceive it as what it means to be grown up, and when they want to act grown up they do this very thing. We are teaching them to do it when we define adulthood as being able to do these things, instead of modeling and defining maturity as Christ does, not as what you are allowed to do, but as what it is best to do. Maturity is not learning to develop our self-indulgence but learning to deny it. When you include yourself, you realize that you are always teaching somebody.