REV ROBERT DASH
THE EDITOR: Parenting has failed us immensely. This is a major problem in our nation. And the facts are there to be visited. The family unit has failed many of our children.
The family unit is an incubator for the quality of citizen of a nation. If the family unit is producing obedient and God-fearing children, the nation will be populated by citizens with those qualities. So it is the failure of many families of our nation that is playing out in the high level of violence on our streets.
The Prime Minister was on the ball when, in his evaluation of the state of our nation, he said that one of the major root causes of violence in our nation is the family. The family has failed and one has to remind families of their responsibility to parent their children.
And as usual, the Opposition, with no sense of responsibility to our nation and with no worthy recommendation to give in every situation, presents the view on policy and statistics. This Opposition has proved itself to be irrelevant for a very long time now.
This problem of our nation is not going to be solved by only policy and statistics. It is a spiritual problem and calls the nation back to God. It is a wake-up call to all families. It is a call to all parents in the land.
When it comes to parenting in our nation, some parents are obsessed with the well-being and success of their children. They keep fluctuating between anxiety and control. They want to micro-manage the lives of their children and, in so doing, they miss the mark. There are also those who just do not care.
What we find in Scripture is that parents do not own children, they are gifts from God who is dedicated to establish His kingdom throughout generations. Parents have been given the responsibility to raise up the next generation of godly people.
There is a framework for godly parenting that has been rejected by some in our society and this is the root cause of the violence. Parents have to return to this framework for there is where the solution lies.
This framework is constructed on the first family that God created in Eden. The account of Adam and Eve must be looked at. For if one goes somewhere else, one will have real problems.
In this framework, there is a conversation between God and Adam in the absence of Eve. Before Eve came on the scene God spoke to Adam. That conversation is still relevant to parenting today. The husband has to assimilate this conversation again. He has to return to this charge as the carrier of first-hand knowledge from God, on how to keep his family and himself from the influence of the wicked one.
Secondly, the wife has to return to the place of the help to her husband. She was created for this position. Whatever the husband is doing, the wife is expected to help, undergird, maintain and support him.
Thirdly, the creation of Eve, by using a rib from the side of Adam, speaks to the side by side and equitable relationship that should exist between husband and wife. There is no supremacy between them. They are no longer
