I read of a pastor, who confessedly tells that he is not the neatest person in the world, but discovered his daughter was on the way to becoming an even messier housekeeper than he. His approach was always to come at a problem not only with both self-confession and identification but with a bit of humor. When she came home from school one day, he caught her as she walked in the door and said, “I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that we were broken into today. The good news is that they only ransacked one room, throwing clothes, hangers, books, plates, papers all over the floor. They only ransacked one room—yours.”

As a teenager is likely to do, she rolled her eyes and went off to her room to clean it. As a good example, he went to his office to straighten things up as well. In…