In hindsight, I have to confess that I was an incredibly ignorant teenager. I remember lamenting my parents’ lack of knowledge on just about everything. As the years passed, my own experience echoed that of Mark Twain, who once wrote, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

The dictionary defines ignorance as a “lack of knowledge or information.” It is being unaware, uneducated, or unknowledgeable. Our children and teens are especially susceptible to making the kinds of life-altering mistakes rooted in ignorance. One reason for this is their young age. With youthfulness comes a lack of the kind of experience and learning that lead to wisdom and knowledge. In addition, their developing God-given cognitive abilities lead them, like they did the teenage version of me, to believe that they are wiser and more knowledgeable than anyone else.

Way back in 1652, a wise man by the name of Thomas Brooks wrote a classic book – Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices – about the strategies the enemy of God uses in an effort to undermine our faith and ultimately undo us. Brook’s tells us that one of Satan’s strategies is to destroy us by leading us into ignorance through the neglect of reading God’s Word. What results? Brooks writes, “Ignorance is the mother of mistake, the cause of trouble, error, and of terror; it is the highway to hell, and it makes man both a prisoner and a slave to the devil at once. . . A man without knowledge is as a workman without his hands, as a painter without his eyes, as a traveler without his legs, or as a ship without sails, or a bird without wings, or like a body without a soul.”

Frightening words, for sure. That’s not at all who I want to be. Neither is it what I want for my kids. What then, are some simple antidotal steps we can take with our kids to prevent this kind of ignorance while facilitating the kind of knowledge that will lead to their flourishing?

First, we must eliminate our own ignorance. I have come to realize that there is no more important task to be pursued on a daily basis than to seek to know the mind and heart of God. And the path to that end begins and ends with endeavoring to know and grow in a knowledge of His Word. And may I be bold enough to challenge the “I don’t have time” excuse that we all, myself included, use? What if we began by sacrificing 15 to 30 minutes of our daily screen-time to immerse ourselves without distraction into God’s Word?

Second, we must speak what we are learning. In Deuteronomy 6 we learn that we are to diligently teach the Word of the Lord to our children. Our teaching must be a 24/7 endeavor as we speak and live God’s will and way before our children’s eyes and ears. You see, just as their age makes them susceptible to ignorance, they are even more susceptible to knowledge. Their hearts have been made for it. They are hungry for it. And we are the ones called to spread a buffet of knowledge on their plates.

Finally, we must train them to read, study, and learn on their own. By reading the Scriptures together as a family, we are instilling habits and knowledge, as these habits will bear fruit in knowledge.