The Other Things Will Come on Their Own

Last night one of my pastors taught about peace as a fruit of the Spirit, and in some way that I no longer recall, I found myself thinking about inherited wisdom.

When the world runs properly, it runs on inheritance, not repetitious work. By using the word “repetitious,” I am acknowledging the fact that inheriting prevents us from having to re-do work our forebears did.

If you are born in the dirt, and you school yourself and find a way to get income, and you learn how to take care of it and invest it, when you have kids, they won’t have to repeat your efforts. Or at least they shouldn’t have to. From day one, you can tell them what you learned, and you can require them to apply it. You can send them to good schools. You can show them how to save and invest. You can leave wealth to them so they won’t have to work 12-hour days and become slaves to lenders.

You started at one level. Your kids will start at another. The word for that is “progress.” If you don’t do these things, your kids may end up poor and beaten.

People think they shouldn’t give their kids things. There are billionaires who refuse to leave their kids fortunes, because they think it will ruin them.

What could be more stupid?

The money isn’t the problem. The problem is inside the heirs. Many, many people who inherited money went on to increase it and best their own parents. It’s silly to make the assumption that your kids can’t succeed unless they suffer.

These truths apply to money, but that’s not what we should focus on. They apply to wisdom and good habits. If you can impart your wisdom and good habits to a kid, you can leave him absolutely no money, and he’ll still be all right.

In a family, wisdom and good habits can only be sustained through communion with God.

Without God’s help, people don’t behave rationally. You can tell people the truth over and over, and what you tell them may be obvious, yet supernatural forces can lead them to believe things which are patently wrong.

I’ve learned to look for a supernatural explanation whenever people behave in a way that makes no sense. Even a stupid person will have common sense if he isn’t led astray. In order to get people to approve of things like abortion, body modification, homosexuality, debt, and so on, people have to be deceived, and that implies the existence of deceivers.

If your family isn’t godly and attuned to the Holy Spirit, you will hear and believe stupid things, and wisdom will seem ridiculous to you.

Last night while I listened to my pastor, I started to realize how little wisdom my parents had passed on to me.

I’ve seen people speak wisdom to their kids. I’ve seen it in real life, and I’ve seen it in movies and TV shows. A parent puts a kid on his knee, and he says, “Always remember…”, and out come words that kid can apply when he’s eighty.

That didn’t happen to me! Not much, anyway. Everyone’s parents teach them a few good things, but I am sorry to say that my parents were not wise people, and they didn’t have much to teach me. They were smart. They were not wise.

My dad didn’t really make an effort. He felt that as long as he brought money home, his job was done, and we were supposed to leave him alone so he could watch TV. My mother realized she had an obligation, but she had no support, and she was too busy with the tail-chasing busy-ness of putting out fires of dysfunctionality in the house.

I was not a rebellious kid, but I was functioning with half a parent, and I was lazy and stubborn. I just wanted to be left alone. Wonder where I learned that.

Do I write this to condemn my parents? Of course not. My problems are my own fault now, and the obligation to fix them is mine. But if we had known God, I would never have had to deal with most of the failures I’ve experienced. My parents were educated, but they were very ignorant. They didn’t know what a family needs to make it grow. As a result, neither did I.

We think poverty is a natural state. We think it means having little natural wealth. That’s completely wrong. Real poverty is invisible. Part of us exists in the supernatural realm, and if that part is poor, the rest of us is like a plant with rotten roots. It doesn’t matter how big the fruit are as of this moment. Our harvests will eventually dry up.

I know many Christian families now. Most are not affluent. Yet they have things that look like unattainable treasures to me. The siblings LIKE each other. The parents show each other affection. They pray for each other. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. My mother died at sixty-one, and I can recall ONE stunted display of affection between her and my father; he kissed her on the scalp as he was leaving us (and I don’t mean leaving for work). My sister has been unbearable to be around for the majority of my life. When I go to Facebook and I see people posting photos of families having fun, it seems foreign. We never had fun together. That’s so strange.

All these problems could have been avoided, and to a great extent, they can still be fixed, but God is the only way. He gives us knowledge. He shows us tools, and he gives us faith, which is the power that makes the tools work. When we pick up the tools and use them, he transforms us and our surroundings. He brings life out of ground that used to be dry. He drives away the pests and cures the blights.

If you don’t have faith, you are poor and blind. It’s that simple. Faith is the fundamental gift. If you have faith, you can get knowledge, wisdom, and discernment. But if you’re not praying in tongues, you’re not using the Bible-specified tool that causes your faith to grow. So you should expect continued failure. You should never go to God and ask, “Why me?” Like tech support people love to say: READ THE MANUAL.

It’s upsetting to realize how bad off I used to be. But it can help me save other people from the same pit, so if Satan managed to steal from me and enslave me for a while, he will pay manyfold through the people God pulls out of his hand through me.

If you’re giving your kids money and not helping them commune with God, you might as well throw them out of the house to beg. You are a failure as a parent. Turn it around while you can. The one thing kids should not inherit is regret.