Tieri and the Parable of the Waffle Box

This is my #50PlusDad Reflection for this week, a message to parents, and a lesson I learned from watching my son.

As a #50PlusDad, raising my first child in my twilight, I pay attention to a lot of things. I draw lessons daily from my interactions with him, and that is what I am doing again today.

The waffle lesson

My son loves waffles. It’s one of the meals on his breakfast menu, and he loves it so much. There’s a way he normally eats it: we toast two slices, put syrup on it, and he enjoys it, usually by holding the two slices together and biting into it.

But one morning, after I toasted his waffles and put the syrup, he said he wanted me to cut it into pieces and give him a fork to eat it.

We had never done that before.

As I tried to ask why, because he had always eaten it the same way, he pointed me to the waffle box. On the box was a picture showing waffles eaten by cutting them into pieces, with a fork picking up a square piece that had been cut away. That was where he saw it. And he said that was how he wanted to eat his waffles.

I kept the box by the dining table. The waffles were already in the freezer, and I was about to throw the box away. But as long as the box stayed there, he insisted that was how he wanted to eat his waffles. When I removed the box, he went back to the way he used to eat them. If I had kept the box there long enough, that would likely have become his new habit of eating waffles.

That told me something.

Jacob’s story: what was placed before them

It reminded me of Jacob’s story, when he wanted the flock to produce a particular kind of offspring. Scripture records that Jacob took fresh branches, peeled them so white streaks appeared, and then placed the peeled branches in the watering troughs where the flocks came to drink, so the branches were directly in front of them at the moment they mated. And the flocks bore young that were streaked, speckled, and spotted (Genesis 30:37–39).

Whether you read that account primarily as Jacob’s strategy or as God’s providence in Jacob’s increase, the picture is still striking: what was set before them mattered.

The message: images matter

This is the metaphor for me, and it is a big one: the picture my son saw affected what he wanted to do.

So here is the question for parents: what images are we placing before our children, through what they read, what they see, what they watch, and what they listen to?

Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body.” If the eye is healthy, the whole body is full of light; if the eye is unhealthy, the whole body is full of darkness (Matthew 6:22–23).
And Scripture is equally clear about the ear gate: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17).

What our children repeatedly see and hear is not neutral. It trains them. That is why the Bible speaks about maturity as the ability to discern: “Those who by reason of use have their senses trained to discern both good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

Erwin McManus said, “What informs you forms you.” There is no neutral zone. What informs you forms you.

The waffle box sat there like a small, harmless picture. But it shaped a decision. It influenced behavior. And it reminded me that what we call “just entertainment” is often not “just” anything.

Ben Carson has long argued that every human being has a photographic brain, that once we record, the challenge is not with recording; even when we don’t recall, it is permanently recorded. And that we don’t recall does not mean it doesn’t govern our lives. That we don’t remember does not mean it’s not there.

Some things enter the subconscious and become a program, forming reflexes. And reflexes matter. The best goalkeepers in the world are known for their skills and their reflexes. In many ways, reflex is a major part of skill.

That is why Scripture says maturity comes when the senses are trained, trained, by reason of use (Hebrews 5:14).

Entertainment shapes culture more than law

There is another line that hits hard, often attributed to Andrew Fletcher: “Give me the music of the land; it doesn’t matter who makes the laws.”

The point is simple: culture shapes behavior, and media is a major carrier of culture.

So what do our children see? What do they hear? What do they watch? What are they being formed daily, repeatedly, quietly?

The charge

In this age and time, we must pay attention. We must intentionally expose our children to things of value, things that help them do the right thing, reject the wrong thing, model the right thing, and live right.

Because right living begins with right believing, and right believing begins with the right information entering through the eye gate and the ear gate.

That is my #50PlusDad reflection for this week and do have an INSPIRED week.