Proverbs 22:6 and My Appreciation of Hank Williams' Music

I had a brief follow-up, off the blog, conversation about my post on how, over the years, I have come to enjoy the music of Hank Williams.

And, it got me thinking. Proverbs 22:6 says something like, according to various traditions, if you start a child out on the way they should go that even when they are old they won't turn from it.

That's proverbial wisdom. It's true in a general sense about all of life.

And, I'm thinking that that's what happened with Hank's music and me.

As I recall, I made it clear to my mom that I didn't like her music and I can't recall that she tried to convince me that I should like it. Knowing mom, as I do now, it probably hurt her feelings that I wanted to puke over her music.

But, the point is that when I reached adulthood, I came genuinely to like that music...A LOT. I  don't like contemporary country music particularly, but, up through the 70s, I groove on it.

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Now for a spiritual harangue.

The proverb focuses on the way a child learns to go, that is, what a child sees parents do.

I suspect that, in this truth, lies a useful explanation for the numerical decline and spiritual decay of today's institutionalized church.

Perhaps, in the recent past, children learned too much about going to church and far too little about following Jesus.

It seems to me that the churchy way they were taught to go strikes them as being shallow and empty and lacking in significance and that, for many millennials, and people who are younger, the church offers them nothing that has meaning.

And, with today's emphasis, among leaders of the institutional church, on the saving of the church, and not on radical Jesus following, it seems to me that we are asking for continued failure according to the wisdom of Proverbs 22:6.

These days, I pick up a lot of impressive talking, especially from the holders of institutional authority in the institutional church, but what those folks do, is from the old way of being church.

We need a revolution in the way we go...the way we live...the example we set, in order to reverse our demise.

And, so far, that's not happening.

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One way of understanding revival movements is that they introduce a radically new way of doing Christianity, a way that works for a new generation.

I'm convinced that we need a radically new way of doing. We've got the talking down but that's not the answer.

We're not close to that now.