Adult Children pt. 2

Part One

Proverbs 22:6 says:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

"When he is old" in this verse means, when he is an adult, which could be when he is outside the home.  The Hebrew word first appears to refer to Sarah when she was saying she was too old to have a child.  Among many other points, the verse expresses a concern of parents, that when their children do become adults, they don't depart from what they were trained as children.  There is a reason parents are training their children in these things -- not just because they want them to do them as children, but that they would also believe and do them as adults.  If children comply as children and go a different direction as an adult, a parent likely views this as a failing.  If the way in which they were trained was the truth when they were children, it continues to be the truth for them as an adult.

The instruction to the son in Proverbs 1:8 is similar, "forsake not the law of thy mother:"  A mother and father are not going to be okay with their son forsaking the law of his mother.  A father seems to be speaking to a young person about when he becomes an adult in Proverbs 3:1-2:

1 My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments: 2 For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

When would the son perhaps be forgetting his parents' law?  It seems to be obvious that it's when he's an adult child.  The threat of that occurring is why the passage even says what it says.  When he forgets his parents' law (it's not even saying God's law), he's forfeiting in general length of days and peace.  Over many years and seeing adult children, I can attest to it by personal experience.  A lack of peace is in the future of an adult child, who forsakes his parents' law.

I move to Proverbs 4:1-4:

1 Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. 2 For I give you good doctrine, forsake ye not my law. 3 For I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. 4 He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.

The father says to his son, "Retain my words: keep my commandments, and live."  Parents have the right to expect their adult children to retain their words and keep their commandments.

Society today would say, "You've got to let those adult children go -- don't tell them to retain your words and keep your commandments when they are adults, because that is a deal breaker and will only turn them off."  Scripture says that nowhere and says just the opposite.  No one wants to lose a child and parents become desperate, willing often to give up aspects of historic, biblical doctrine and practice, and this harms everyone.  It is never right to do wrong.  It is still a normal expression of a psychobabble, even among Christians. I read it with no verses attached as a kind of seat-of-the-pants home-spun good counsel.  Later in chapter 4 (vv. 20-21):

Incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart.

Negatively, the adult child is not to let his parents' teaching depart from his eyes and he is to keep it in the midst of his heart.  Most millennials consider this terrible advice, a total fail, that is, any parent in his right mind should just quietly accept decisions of adult children that depart from how they've been trained.  "Just agree to disagree, and if you don't, you're the problem, you are failing."

Evangelical churches today often craft their church growth strategies around capturing adult children away from their parents' teaching, catering to the law of sin in the members, as Paul put it in Romans 7, especially attacking the parents on cultural issues, calling them legalists without any proof even of the existence of their perversion of the term.  Within the context of the subject of relationship Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:17-20:

17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, 18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: 19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. 20 But ye have not so learned Christ.

Anyone given over to the lasciviousness, as other Gentiles walk, have not so learned Christ.  Very often it is young men alluring young men, against parental counsel, akin to Proverbs 1 (vv. 10-11, 15-16):

My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us . . . .  My son, walk not thou in the way with them; refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil.

Parents don't have to stand by and watch this occur to adult children.  They can say, incline your ear to my sayings, not theirs, and retain my words, not walking in their way with them, consent not to them.  That should be normal for parents of an adult child, who seems to be departing from the way trained as a child.  An adult child, who won't understand that, is blinding or hardening himself.  I would ask anyone from scripture to show me how what I'm writing here is wrong.  Scripture actually says a lot about it, it just clashes with secular culture.

As an example, let's say an adult child, who doesn't live at home, wants a tattoo.  I'm sure this occurs, but I don't know one personally.  The parents, say, "Don't do that."  Even, "Here's what I think scripture says about it, and this is historic Christian teaching, certainly not out of left field, so please listen."  The friends of adult children are encouraging otherwise and against parental counsel.  Adult children should and must listen to parents on this.  Parents could even say to them, "This is walking as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, alienated from the life of God, giving themselves over to lasciviousness."

Paul commanded even Timothy, a young man, a pastor himself, "Flee youthful lusts" (2 Timothy 2:22).  He commanded him like a father to an adult son.  Paul was successful to tell him that.  It was good.  Would someone suggest to Paul the Apostle, "Give him some space, because he needs to feel like he's his own man and might eject if you use commands at all"?  No.  Commands of biblical content work well with someone with "unfeigned faith," something Timothy possessed (2 Tim 1:5).  Biblical Christianity is not finessed into adult children like walking on eggshells.

There seem to be sins against conventional thinking that bode worse to people, especially millennials, than actual sins against God.  The goal should be to please God, not protect psyche and personal autonomy.  Success isn't making one's way through as the one who makes the decisions, but making the right one, the one that does the will of the Father.

What I'm talking about seems to be akin to a referee being corrected by video.  A call should be overturned if it's the wrong call, because getting it right is more important than someone having his way.   How could someone agree with that for a game, but is opposed in decisions in real life?  Parents come in to get calls right with adult children, and children fight for mere autonomy or a "happiness" of not being told what to do?  Scripture contradicts that.

I want to bring in 1 Samuel 3:13 and Eli here.  I hear different points of view on contemporary application of the example of Eli and his adult children.  His sons were both killed by God and the translation into English says that Eli "restrained them not."  God pinned responsibility on Eli for not restraining his sons.  I've heard people say that we can't use that same reasoning or argument today.  I don't hear evidence for why not, especially in light of all the other teaching in scripture.  John Gill writes:

This they did, they preferred their lusts, and the indulging of them, to the honour and glory of God: this Eli knew, and he restrained them not; from their evil practices; he did not make use of his authority, neither as a father, and especially not as high priest, and the judge of Israel, who ought not only to have sharply reproved them, which he did not, but to have censured or punished them, and turned them out of their office.

Keil and Delitzch, Hebrew scholars, don't disagree with this Gill explanation.  Albert Barnes writes:  "He restrained them not - In the sense of punishing. He did not remove them from their office, which he ought to have done."  Indicating the historical nature of what I'm writing, H. Crosby writes in the Biblical Illustrator:

God is a holy God, and He will have His people holy; and if they substitute a ceremonial for holiness, His holy wrath will certainly fall upon them; and in this blow not only those will fall who, like Eli’s sons, commit gross wrongs, but those also who, like Eli, through indulgence or apathy, fail to rebuke and resist the evil. The Church of God is today courting the world. Its members are trying to bring it down to the level of the ungodly. The ball, the theatre, nude and lewd art, social luxuries with all their loose moralities, are making inroads into the sacred enclosure of the Church. God will not bless a Church that drags down His heavenly things into the dust--that gilds vice, calls it Christian, and then indulges in it. But His holy vengeance will assuredly come and strip such a Church of its pride and make it eat the bread of affliction.

If this was an application and concern of Crosby at his day (1826-1891), it is prescient and even more appropriate for today.  The new, unbiblical position is that parents should stay silent, because the example of Eli and his sons don't apply.  I don't see it.  Eli was guilty of more than not speaking.  He was also expected by God to do something, what I call, using all the scriptural tools from the toolbox.  Parents need to consider strongly that God views them the same toward their adult children as God did Eli.

Most parents don't want to step in with an adult child, but just leave that situation alone.  Surely, some go out of their way to micromanage their adult children's lives, but intervening for expectations of scriptural behavior is not that.  Any biblical counselor would counsel an adult child to follow scripture as it relates to his parents.

More to Come