I Explained The Right Way The Whole Time

It is all correct. That is what makes this difficult.

You know why the grain matters. You know why that joint fails and this one holds. You know the reason behind the reason, and when you explain it you explain it well, in order, with the principle first.

And she is nine, and she is at the table with something in her hands, and it is coming at her continuously.

I want to be careful because there is nothing here that anybody would call harm. She is learning things. She could tell you more about grain than most adults. And when she is older, some of it will still be in there and she will be glad of it.

But notice what she is not doing while you explain.

She is listening. That is all. Her hands may still be moving but the part of her that was engaged with the material has gone somewhere else, because a person cannot attend to a principle and a piece of wood at the same time.

And the two are not equal. The principle you are giving her is available for the rest of her life, in books, from anybody, at any point when she wants it.

The other thing is only available here, at this table, in the twenty minutes she is nine and has something in her hands.

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth

Paul writes a line to a church full of people who genuinely did know more than everybody around them, and it is short and it is sharp.

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. (1 Corinthians 8:1, King James Version)

Knowledge puffeth up.

He is not saying knowledge is bad. The whole chapter assumes they are right about the thing they know. He is saying that knowledge has a direction, and the direction is upward and inward, and it inflates the one who has it whether or not that person intends it.

And then the other half. Charity edifieth. Edify means to build, and it builds the other person.

Two directions. One goes to the knower and one goes to the other person in the room.

You are holding something that has a direction of its own, and 1 Corinthians 8:1 says knowledge inflates while love builds. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line about a church argument and lays it down at a table with a nine year old and a bit of wood on it.

And notice how little Paul says about the content. He does not correct their facts. He puts the whole weight on what the knowing is doing in the room.

You have facts that were never in question, and it is already settled in the written word that the question was about direction and never about accuracy. His Spirit is the one who says charity edifieth over a man who is right about the grain.

Teaching is a gift and it can be spent later

Now let me hold the good thing carefully, because I am not asking you to stop teaching your daughter.

There is something real here to give her. Most children do not have a parent who knows why, and the ones who do end up understanding the world differently, and that is a genuine inheritance.

I am only asking about the timing.

The explanation can happen at any point. Over dinner, in the car, next Tuesday, when she asks, when she is nineteen. It does not have a window on it.

The wordless twenty minutes has a window and the window is closing at about the rate of a year a year.

And this: how much she understands is not a measure of her, and how much you have transmitted is not a measure of you as a father. Nobody is examining either of you at the end of it.

You are not wasting an evening by teaching nothing, and heaven has never once measured a father by what got explained. 1 Corinthians 8:1 puts building the other person above having the knowledge, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a good gift back until it is wanted.

And if she asks, answer. Obviously. A question is an invitation and the whole thing changes when she opens the door herself.

You have permission to hold it until she asks, and this is yours: the edifying was named as the thing that builds and the knowing was not. It is written in 1 Corinthians 8:1 that charity edifieth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes silence a form of generosity.

Twenty minutes, and teach nothing

So here is the ask, and it is one session.

Tonight, sit at that table with her for twenty minutes and teach nothing.

Not the grain. Not the joint. Not the reason the thing she is doing will not work, which it will not, and which she will find out.

And not the softened version, which is the question that is really a lesson. What do you think will happen if you do it that way. She knows that one. Everybody's child knows that one.

You have permission to hold what you know until she asks, and 1 Corinthians 8:1 puts the weight on direction rather than on whether the knowledge is correct. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a silence a form of generosity.

If she asks a direct question, answer it, briefly, and then stop rather than continuing into the principle behind it.

And work on your own thing while you do it, so your mouth has less to do and your hands have more.

It will be uncomfortable. You will watch her do something that will fail and say nothing about it, and that will feel like withholding something you owe her.

You are covered while a nine year old goes wrong beside you unteached, and 1 Corinthians 8:1 is the ground under that. The written word puts the building of the other person above the holding of the knowledge, and the Spirit of God is present at a table where a man is keeping something back on purpose.