Improving Family Relationships

“It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way. A foolish son is his father’s ruin, and a quarrelsome wife is like a constant dripping. Houses and wealth are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord. Discipline your son, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to his death. He who robs his father and drives out his mother is a son who brings shame and disgrace. Stop listening to instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge.” (Proverbs 19:2, 13-14, 18, 26-27, NIV).

Yesterday’s devotional spoke of the delight of finding a spouse and God’s intention of promoting permanence of the marriage relationship. Proverbs 19 has several bits of admonition on how to improve family relationships.

How we operate in families should be tempered with sound judgment and solid knowledge. Zeal and enthusiasm, although highly desirable, cannot produce right relationships without the leveling influence of applied wisdom. Each family member is taught responsibility and cooperation. Any household with a wayward foolish child will have a mountain of problems with which to deal. Likewise, a nagging and quarrelsome wife (or either spouse, for that matter) is like the irritation of a constantly dripping faucet or drain. Turn it off and soon it begins to leak, to drip again.

There is always room for financial improvement in family relationships. Statistics show that a very high proportion of marriages dissolve over disagreements on finances. If a family inherits from parents (as used to be the case in Biblical days, and sometimes so even in present day society), the inheritance is to be used wisely. But on the other hand, even though material goods sometimes come down from parents, they cannot provide a good wife for the son (or a good husband for the daughter). That “finding” and joining must be from the Lord. Likewise, any children who would seek to rob or otherwise undermine the possessions of their parents are standing on the brink of shame and disgrace. Or if the parents grow old, need special care, and the children are unresponsive to their needs, this, too brings shame and disgrace on the family, and social services must step in or else the parents die neglected and abandoned.

Discipline is a part of good family relationships. We know quite well the admonition, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). Lack of discipline could lead to death of the child if he engages in daresome behavior about which he has not been taught the dangers. Right instruction is necessary to discipline, but the aim is to work toward self-discipline. Improving family relationships covers a broad spectrum of human love and care.

c Ethelene Dyer Jones; Monday, July 19, 2010