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FIRST-PERSON: Is Proverbs 22:6 a guarantee?


NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — A number of years ago, I got a Sunday night call from a pastor who was facing backlash from a prominent deacon in his church. The critic was taking exception to his statement that Proverbs 22:6 wasn’t a guarantee — “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

I believe this came up in an exchange over the prospects of a wayward son. The layman was “claiming the promise” that his son, having been brought up in a seriously Christian home and church, would eventually straighten up and fly right. When the pastor ventured to suggest the verse wasn’t an ironclad warranty, the distraught, indignant dad said he was denying the truth of Scripture, and was threatening to take his complaint to others in the church.

What can one say to this?

Well, a not-so-impressive approach is to suggest that it might well be the case that the man and his wife hadn’t “trained him up in the way he should go” after all. If they had, the boy wouldn’t be on the wrong path. In other words, the proof was in the pudding.

Or, we could say, “Just wait. It’ll all work out, just as the Bible promises.” But we can all think of Christian families where all but one of the kids turned out well, and where it is hard to say how the one child was trained significantly more poorly than the others.

A much better approach is to see Proverbs as a divine book of moral generalities, of rules of thumb, rather than a book of pointed prophecies, physical laws or contractual obligations. That’s just what proverbs or aphorisms are meant to be, whether we’re talking about such secular versions as “a stitch in time saves nine” and “absence makes the heart grow fonder” or the inspired, biblical counterparts, “A gracious woman gains honor” (Proverbs 11:16) or “wealth obtained by fraud will dwindle” (Proverbs 13:11). Though we can think of exceptions to these rules, there is deep and life-important truth in them.

As with all Bible interpretation, it’s important to know what sort of language is being used to convey God’s infallible, inerrant revelation. When someone insists that Jesus is made of wood because He says He’s a gate (John 10:9) or that He’s made of flour because He says he’s bread (John 6:35), they mistake figures of speech for literal talk.

Imagine a young man who manages to walk blindfolded across a busy street. What if, on the opposite curb, he says, “See, those who told me I would be a fool to do this are wrong. I don’t have a scratch on me.” Or what would we make of the statement from a heavy smoker dying of lung cancer, “They said it would do me good to exercise regularly and watch my cholesterol. I did both religiously, and now I’m dying.”

As for Proverbs 22:16, the verse in question, it teaches us that sound religious and moral upbringing is a wise investment of time and energy. It’s the sort of thing that pays off in a big way. And to neglect it is to flirt with disaster.

With this view of Proverbs, you don’t lose trust in Scripture when the skeptic says, “Aha, I know a lazy man who lived like a king all his life on his inheritance” as a way to refute Proverbs 24:33-34 (“A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.”) The problem would arise if, in general, laziness proved to be a better path to success than hard work. Which it won’t. And neither will laissez-faire parenting, where the kids are allowed to run wild and ignorant.
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This column first appeared at the blog of BibleMesh, a website that teaches the Bible as a unified story pointing to Christ (online at biblemesh.com/blog). Mark Coppenger is director of the Nashville, Tenn., extension center for Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress ) and in your email ( baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).

    About the Author

  • Mark Coppenger