Q #20: How can Proverbs 22:6 be true if some children depart from what they were taught? What about the child
of faithful Christians who rejects the faith or becomes lost?
A: This is the passage referenced in the question above:
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. --Proverbs 22:6Implicit in the question is the expectation that Proverbs is a book of promises. "Do this thing, and you'll always have that result." It's true that the Bible is full of many wonderful promises that have a 100% dependability rate, but Proverbs is not that kind of book.
Proverbs and the rest of the wisdom books (Job, Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Lamentations) are not books of promise. They are books of wisdom. They give us a general path for walking through life, not ironclad rules about how things will always turn out. You might consider the Proverbs much like the advice of an older person who has learned from experience. It is generally true, if you raise your kids in consistent love and with an awareness of what is right and in the fear of God, they'll stick with it. Even if they wander through their youth far from God, when they're older, they often come back to it.
Check out more posts from the 31 Questions series on subjects as varied as marijuana, infidelity, 666, the eternal destiny of children who die, dealing with discouragement, cremation, co-habitation, baptism, suicide, prayer, the origins of scripture, hell, work, the third heaven, tithing, Old Testament salvation, giving in the Old Testament, and even speaking in tongues!