Dear Solomon, is honorable parenting extinct?

This week’s advice from our friend Solomon hits a chord with me, and I must drag out my soapbox and rant a little. And I apologize up front for the seriousness of my tone. This is probably more sermon than newspaper column.

The desperately needed wisdom and responsibility of parenthood is being shot down, marginalized and even deemed harmful at just about every turn in today’s American society. And even though the laws of this land tend to be progressively taking away the rights of parents, I must lay much of the blame at our own feet.

We have surrendered our authority and God-given duty much too easily. We have swallowed the man-made philosophies for how to raise our children — hook, line and sinker. The God-ordained principles of nurture, admonition and properly measured discipline have been thrown by the wayside as if God is outdated and he couldn’t possibly know how to raise a child in this culture, even though he created us.

“Spare the rod, spoil the child” was not only a nice proverb from the days of our parents and grandparents, but it is also a principle of Scripture (Proverbs 13:24, among many others, which I will address in a future column).

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