Raising Mighty Arrows In a Broken World System
Photo source: svetlkd on iStock “Discipline today is direction tomorrow. Straighten the tree while it is young, so it will grow upright” - Anonymous Children are arrows—meant to be sharpened and shot in the right direction. The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” The Yoruba also remind us: “Ati kekere la ti n peka iroko; to ba dagba tan, owo o ni ka” (You bend an iroko tree from childhood, when it is grown, you can’t). Sadly, the way many parents raise children today shows something is missing. I once saw a little girl, about 5 years old during a church sermon, slap her mother because she was denied a phone. Instead of discipline, the mother apologized to the girl. These are not isolated cases—parents complain, yet they’ve lost control. Some parents hand over their responsibilities to others, yet get offended when...