Discipline Drives Away Folly

“Folly: a foolish act or idea” – Merriam-Webster Online

“¹⁵Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” – Proverbs 22:15 (ESV)

Let’s face it, children have to learn. They will make mistakes and must learn from those mistakes in order to move forward. Focus on the “foolish” part of the definition above. Mistakes are bound to happen and are a vital part of the learning, however what if we could minimize the damage of mistakes?

When we remove the folly from our actions we are able to direct the learning to those areas that are beneficial. Discipline provides a path to minimizing the damage of the mistakes.

I want to be clear in that I am not saying that fun must be removed, on the contrary. The “foolish” acts where we know better or have an idea of what is better is what we are to avoid. Example of the penny in the light socket. When we know better, we are to instruct to help others avoid the shock that comes with it.

We know better in a lot of things and that helps us avoid the “foolish acts”, but are we instructing others to avoid those same acts? What would happen if we simply had an attitude of training others to avoid those acts? What if we taught discipline to drive away folly?