Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget…” – Deuteronomy 4:9a  

The same Hebrew word is translated as “take care” and “keep.” It means to watch, guard, or observe.  

Parents are those whose primary role in their children’s lives is to care for them, to raise them, to keep them. If parents are going to keep their children well, then they must guard themselves well.   

Keeping Our Souls  

What does it mean to keep our souls diligently, to watch exceedingly? It is ironic to tell parents, whose principal occupation for young children is to watch and guard them, that they need to watch and guard themselves. Yet this is crucial, since the ability of a parent to guide and guard their child well is dependent on their own direction and safety.  

One way to think about it is to say that Moses is seeking to prevent hypocrisy. How can parents hope to guard their children and to guide them in life if they are not watching their own lives? How can straying shepherds hope to help straying sheep? It does not work. If parents want to watch and guard their children, then they must take heed to themselves first.  

This basic principle of watching ourselves in order to be ready to watch others is illustrated in air travel. Parents are told that, if the oxygen masks drop, parents must place one on themselves before helping their children. The logic is simple: if parents fail to ensure they can breathe, they may fail to get the oxygen mask on their kid, and then both child and parent are in danger. The same principle is at play in this passage: parents must guard themselves first, or they may fail both their children and themselves.  

How do parents keep their souls diligently? The language is clear enough. Parents must watch their own souls, their own lives. This is to ensure that they do not forget what they have witnessed. This tells us right away that keeping watch on ourselves is connected to our memory. We think of memory as such a passive thing, an innocent thing. If we forget something, that is normally a good enough excuse because it is an honest mistake. This passage does not allow that. It demands obedience in such a way that prevents forgetfulness and guarantees remembering.  

Parents are called in this passage to make an active effort to watch out that they do not forget what God has done for them and what they have seen. Why is this so important? It is one thing to explain it and it is another to show it. Consider a person with advanced Alzheimer’s. An Alzheimer’s patient may not hold a string of memories together. They quickly forget where they are and what they are doing. Perhaps most excruciatingly sad, they cannot remember who they are or the people they love.  

Keeping and Remembering 

What is the connection to our passage? It is that an Alzheimer’s patient begins to lose their identity along with their memory. Memory and identity are inextricably linked. This is not to say that the patient loses their identity in an objective sense. They are still related to who they are related to, and they still have the past they have. The problem is, they cannot remember it.d  

What is the tragedy that occurs when a person’s memory is lost? A person’s memory is their link to the past. The memory links a person’s sense of self in the present to who they have been in the past. That connection between the past and the present generates in the mind a sense of trajectory of a person’s life. We understand ourselves partly in light of what we have done to get to where we are and what the choices we have made say about us. We then use that information to help us make decisions that either alter our trajectory or maintain our course. We are always making adjustments in the present based on our memory of the past and our intentions or goals for the future.  

What happens if the parents listening to Moses forget what God has done in their lives? What if they forget the wandering in the wilderness, the manna from Heaven, the constant provision of God, the protection from their enemies? What if they forget about God saving their parents out of Egypt, when some of them certainly would still be children? What if they forget Yahweh’s mighty hand and outstretched arm?   

If they forget these things, there is no telling how things might go in the promised land of Canaan. How would they remain faithful to a God they do not remember? If their link with the past is broken, their choices in the future are wide open. If their choices are wide open, then their sinful hearts will incline them to all sorts of potential evil. Lo and behold, we need only read the book of Judges to see that this is what occurred.  

How does this relate to parents today? It is not much different. If parents forget who they are in Christ, where they come from, what their life is for, what they are saved to, and where they are going, then they are going to live according to the priorities of the moment. They will prioritize the temporary and the limited. They will seek after the things of this world that last only a few years. They will be prone to fall for the empty worldly promises of legacy, achievement, success, comfort, and pleasure. In the absence of a compelling alternative, parents will go with the flow. 

Conclusion 

To parent well, parents must keep their souls diligently. This means cultivating a connection in the mind between what is happening now and what God has done in the past. God continues to work in our lives, and our living for Him never stops. But if we leave God, so to speak, in the rearview mirror, we can expect other things to fill up our vision. God must be kept front and center for us to raise our children with a proper sense of identity and a developed discernment to make good choices.