April 19, 2018

What Behavior Do You Model?

Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. – Deuteronomy 4:9

The elementary school was hosting a book fair and they needed volunteers. Lots of volunteers. Why so many, I asked. Because some children will steal the books if we don’t keep a careful watch.

My mind was shocked. My heart was broken. It’s a sad reality of our world today. Children aren’t being taught right from wrong. School administrators rarely do anything about it because they don’t get support from the parents. They can’t discipline the children effectively when the parents defend their “innocent” children rather than make them take responsibility.

My Sunday school class has a large container of small candy. We store it in the back of a closed cabinet so it is not readily available or visible to anyone. One year during Vacation Bible School every piece of candy went missing. This would equal several large bags of candy.

We were upset and mystified. It wasn’t about the candy. That’s easily replaceable. It was that someone would think it okay – at church even! We eventually learned what happened, though not the name of the culprit. A young boy had taken all the candy home. His mother asked about it but he lied and said we’d given it to him. She apparently let it go and did nothing. A few “teachers” knew what happened. They, too, did nothing.

The boy was never held accountable for his actions. By letting it go, by not creating a scene, what did we teach him? Again, it wasn’t about the candy. It was about responsibility and learning right from wrong. An apology to our class would have gone a long way toward him understanding that you can’t just help yourself to something that belongs to someone else. Even at church.

Why didn’t the VBS teachers do anything? They didn’t want to make anyone mad. They didn’t want to push the youngster away from church. Instead of using the incident to teach him about God’s rules – Thou Shalt Not Steal – they opted to teach him about mercy. But forgiveness doesn’t mean we forgo the consequences. That’s a lesson he’ll one day learn in a much harsher environment.

Maybe we don’t hold children accountable because we don’t want to be held accountable. We want to help ourselves to office supplies from work. We want to “borrow” something from a friend or neighbor and never return it. We want to lie about something rather than admit we were wrong. The list could go on and on.

What are we teaching our children? What behavior are we modeling for them? Are you honest and merciful? Do you take responsibility for your mistakes? Do you tell the truth even when you’d rather not? Whether you realize it or not, your children are watching and learning. Make the lesson be behavior necessary to help them become honest people of God.