Appendix 3. Show Them Only What Is Clean

What is God like? He is holy, he is clean, and he is light. In him there is not so much as a needle’s point of sin or impurity. God was the first to show his people a life worth following, and he has kept every promise.

It is only natural that God’s children should live holy lives in his likeness and shine as lamps. Do you love your children? Then show them your holy and pure life. Suppose parents, to teach their children what filth is, showed them a sewer and turned the house into a garbage dump, and then said, “See how dirty that is? So you have to live clean!” Such parents would be the most foolish and unwise of all. There are other parents, too. When a child, without thinking, repeats in front of them a curse word picked up outside, they reach for the rod, demand to know where the child learned such language, and order them to say it again. Terrified of the rod, the child swears again, and at that the parent raises the rod and tells them to say it once more. They are angry that the child let a word slip once by mistake, and yet these foolish parents are the very ones who make the child repeat it. Rather than teaching, is this not an unwise act that plants the curse deep in the child’s heart?

If, at every moment, parents show their children a clean home, and show them first the gentle words and loving looks with which they honor each other, the children will come to know what is clean without even realizing it, until they cannot bear the slightest dirt.

Faith is the same. Once you hear the word of truth, you can no longer listen to the words of the world. Once you are loved by brothers and sisters in the faith, fellow members of one body, you no longer go looking to the people of the world for comfort. Meet the God of love, and you will find you cannot endure the places of the world where Satan leads, and you will leave them. May you keep this firmly in mind: parents must first know the truth rightly, love what is clean, and serve God faithfully, and only then will their children naturally keep from going out into the world.