Daily Bible Study: Proverbs 1:8-9

My son, hear the instruction of your father,
And do not forsake the law of your mother;
For they will be a graceful ornament on your head,
And chains about your neck.

Proverbs 1:8-9 (NKJV)

There are at least three controversial concepts in just this very short passage that show up regularly in the Bible, some in obvious ways, some more overtly. They are:

1) A father and mother do different things.
2) Your father and mother both do important things.
3) Constraints make you better, not worse.

 The reason these are controversial is that the postmodern philosophies embraced by popular culture in at least the United States rejects all three of these things, and for a litany of reasons, all of which boil down to rebellion against God's order. Let's take them one by one.

1) A father and mother do different things.

In this passage, the father instructs. The word used in the original language is "musar", which is associated with "discipline, chastening, correction". For those who don't know, while the English language has a very large vocabulary, ancient languages often did not, and so the same word would have multiple meanings along a theme. You can see how those three concepts are reflected in "instruction", and yet there is a little something missing. To help explain, let's look at what the mother does.

For the mother, the word in the original language is "torah", which is associated with "direction, instruction, law". Can you see how these two different words are very close, but hold a different connotation? The father's role is active, where the mother's role is passive.

The one who prescribes the law does not necessarily enforce it, or provide the corrective action when it has been broken. When you look at the results of sexual dimorphism in physiology, or even in the stereotypes of the past found behind phrases like "just you wait till your father gets home", you can see how the dynamic of similar but distinct roles comes into play.

2) Your father and mother both do important things.

That leads us into the next part, where scripture is very clear that both dad and mom have different roles to play in a healthy family. Both are necessary. You can't have a healthy family without one or the other, and we've plenty of both anecdotal and verified data to show what happens when you try to raise children without one or the other.

This is where the idea of "equality" comes into play, in that people have a hard time understanding that disparate roles can have equal value. We often view the outcome as the criteria for determining "equality", or the difficulty in achieving a task, and so if the inputs or outputs are subtle or hard to see, it "feels" like there is an inequality in value because there is an inequality in those inputs and outputs.

Having worked in manufacturing environments for over a decade, I can explain in great detail that when your responsibility is to avert possible problems in the future, it becomes very tough to explain how the specific steps you've taken prevented an issue from manifesting. In the same manner, if a mother provides instruction to her children and they listen and obey, it can be deflating and anti-climactic, but this should not diminish the importance of her role in shaping that outcome.

This is why, much later on in the New Testament, Paul would emphasize that husbands bestow honor on their wives in understanding. While a father may get a lot of visibility in his more active role, and it will be more physically challenging, that does not make the role of the wife less important, and so husbands are to recognize this and adjust their behavior towards their wife to reflect this.

3) Constraints make you better, not worse.

This is one of the common and presumably paradoxical claims made throughout the Bible, and yet it speaks to a truth we can understand and see in everyday circumstances. A garden which is not tended to will become overgrown and filled with weeds. A building which is not mended will crumble and fall. A company with an unlimited budget will still somehow bankrupt itself and collapse.

If you do not guide a process intentionally, the results are based entirely on chance. So often we hear people discuss "freedom", as if it is an inherently desirable concept, that lacking constraints people would make better decisions and not be "held back" by restrictions on their behavior.

Yet the reality is that those restrictions produce refinement. The garden which is tended to will produce good fruits and aesthetic beauty. A building which is tended to will stand for generations. A company that learns to live with little resources will become efficient instead of wasteful.

A child whose behavior is directed will mature, and the restrictions which chafed them as a child will instead become the very mechanism by which their true value can manifest. When you meet someone who displays discipline, you don't see the restrictions, what you see is the resulting refinement that discipline brought about in that person.

This is why Solomon describes the teaching and correction of your father and mother in such favorable terms, because the result of that understanding and obedience will bring results that will be plainly obvious to those that are around you, in the same manner that there is an obvious difference between one who is finely ornamented and one who is not.

Embrace the constraints on your behavior that your father and mother put in place and held you to and do not be tempted to presume that they did so out of cruelty, but out of genuine love in order to help refine you into something better.