Thesis 38- We must model for and teach our children to be hard-working and diligent.
A recent poll asked parents what one thing they believed was the most important to provide for their children. Those outside the church gave as their top answer, a good education. Those inside the church gave as their answer, a good education. We have been taught to believe that a good education is what will cure whatever ails us. It will persuade us not to smoke. It will persuade us not to do drugs. It will teach us how to eat properly. And it will, in the end, be the very key to our future prosperity. Get a good education, and get a good, high paying job. Get a good high paying job, and you will have a good life.
The Bible offers no such calculus. It does not suggest that getting a good education is the key to prosperity, far less that it is the key to having a good life. Our problem, according to the Bible, isn’t that we don’t know the truth, but that we will not submit to it (see Romans 1). Our problem is rebellion, not ignorance.
The Bible does call us to diligent labor, from God’s command in the garden to the call to do our work “as unto the Lord.” In turn it suggests that one of the great blessings in this world is to eat of the fruit of our labors in peace. It explains that we will prosper as we consume less than we produce, and we will fall into hardship as we consume more than we produce. The Bible, in turn, commands that we look to it for all of our answers (II Timothy 3:16).
For the good of our own families, and for the good of the families of our children then, we must model for them what it means to be diligent in our labors. They will learn to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay as we demonstrate the same to them, not from lectures from us. We must also expect the same from them. We live in a culture driven toward recreation. We work for the weekend, rather than resting that we might work. We can overcome this cultural drift as we delay gratification, as we work now and play later. We can push back against this folly as we rejoice in a job well done. When we collapse into bed at the end of the day exhausted we tend to think something must be wrong. Being tired at the end of the day is a sign of blessing, not curse.
Our children learn by watching us. Our work in teaching them then is never through. As we labor diligently, God will bless us. He will bless us first in our own homes. But He will in turn teach our children to do the same, and when the time comes, bless their own homes as well. Hard work and sound saving is the path to prosperity. It always has been, and always will be. Shortcuts lead only to disaster.