Bless Your Children, Require Obedience
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.”
- Ephesians 6:1-3 (NASB, 1995)
This passage of scripture is widely known. Christians and non-Christians alike are probably familiar, but one thing that is not as widely thought about is just how counter-cultural this passage is as we compare it to the current modern parenting advice and practices widely promoted within and without the Church. What we often see today are Christian parents who are swayed by social media posts, reels, blog articles, or even modern “science,” which contradicts what scripture commands.
Parents must remember that the one true God blesses obedience and curses disobedience. Our Creator is not unclear in how He designed us, what He made us for, What His will is, or what He has done for us. These things are plainly revealed to us in His Word. Every creature is left with the decision to be obedient or disobedient to their Creator. And, if we once again recognize that God blesses obedience and curses disobedience, it follows that we must require obedience of our children if we truly love them and want them to be blessed. This reason alone should be enough to sway us to require obedience of our children, but I’d like to highlight a few other reasons why requiring obedience is so necessary within an educational paradigm. See the following three points below.
Reason 1: Requiring obedience prepares a child to be obedient in all other appropriate areas of life.
A proper understanding of education acknowledges that all education is preparatory. Calling some schools “prep” schools, which is quite popular today, is misleading because it assumes some schools aren’t preparing students for something. The reality is that all schools prepare students for something. Every educational system has a telos, and you don’t have to spend too much time investigating a school’s program and/or curriculum to figure out what that telos is and what the students are being prepared for. Within a classical Christian educational paradigm, we are interested in preparing students for all of life, and one aspect of that is being obedient in all the categories that the Bible requires. This includes being obedient to governing authorities (Civil Magistrates) as instituted by God (as long as they function within their God-given sphere), employers, and the Word of God itself (more on this in point 3). Disobedience, where disobedience is not called for, creates confusion, chaos, danger, and ultimately destruction to that individual as well as a society as a whole. We best love God and our neighbor by requiring obedience in the appropriate places and carefully training our children where disobedience is warranted (and yes, it is certainly warranted at times).
Reason 2: Requiring obedience sets your child up to learn intellectually, develop good habits, and love the right things.
At the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is the need for food, water, shelter, clothing, and sleep. These are the basic building blocks of life, and without them, life cannot be sustained. Without these things, you cannot move on to the other pieces of Maslow’s Hierarchy, such as safety, security, love & belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. In the same way, obedience is at the very foundation of all education, including learning intellectual concepts, developing good habits, and training affection.
If you picture a home or classroom of disobedient children, you imagine disorder, chaos, and a lack of accomplishing anything. Not only this, there is no ability for children to be shaped, molded, and conformed to the image of Christ or into God-glorifying adults. In fact, the very meaning of obedience implies conforming to something. Obedience means conforming to something outside of ourselves. There is a sense in which we are to be self-governed, but it’s unavoidable for the Christian to govern themselves without appealing to the authority of God’s Word. Christian adults, who are “self-governed” because they are no longer children, still govern themselves under the authority of the Word of God (if they are truly Christians). They govern themselves based on what they believe would please God. Children, on the other hand, have less capability of self-governance, and so obedience to parents, teachers, and role models becomes essential for Christ to form in them. Without this foundation of obedience, children cannot be shaped in any way and this leads to death and destruction.
One aspect of much of modern thought surrounding parenting and education is the child-centered movement. There are certainly variations on this theme, but the movement has been largely destructive to our young children. We have the most mentally unhealthy population of young people the world has ever seen. They are anxious, nervous, stressed out, and depressed. I’d like to argue that there are various reasons for this (screens don’t help), but the child-centered movement has a significant role to play in this including, but not limited to, the following two reasons.
Firstly, as it says even in the name, child-centered thought means we are consciously training children to think about themselves first. They become the center of the universe. This is not a part of God’s design or purpose for us. The Westminster Confession of Faith tells us that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. The Creator is central, not the creature. Remember, God blesses obedience and curses disobedience. Children who are trained to put themselves first end up comparing themselves to everyone around them, cannot leave the house without looking perfect in the mirror, and get their souls crushed when they don’t get the grades they want. This primes the pump to depression, anxiety, and worry. This is not God’s will for His creatures. God quite literally created us to glorify Him and Him alone. When we try to function outside of that purpose, it results in the symptoms listed above.
Secondly, the child-centered movement crushes children with too many choices. Children, indeed, must learn to eventually make decisions on their own and become self-governed under God’s authoritative Word. However, the child-centered movement (which has much influence in Christian circles) pushes self-governance to a significantly young age. It’s easy to hear the internal (sometimes external) cry of children to their parent/authority, “Just tell me what to do!” Young children are not mentally capable of decision-making without getting overwhelmed and crushed with pressure. They need to be told what to do. They need to stop being given choices. They need to be obedient. And, they will be blessed and relieved by parents and educators who require obedience. If this hasn’t been a requirement in your home or at your school, it may seem like a fight at first, but if you stick to that fight in faith, blessings and fruit will come. God’s Word promises you that.
Reason 3: Requiring obedience sets your child up for self-governance under the authority of God’s Word.
This point has been hinted at above already, but one of the end aims of a proper education is that children learn self-governance under the authority of God’s Word. The common modern and child-centered thought in how we train self-governance under God’s Word is to give children as many opportunities to govern themselves as possible. This, it is believed, will surely train them how to make self-governing decisions and set them up for success. However, as we have seen above, this self-governance at young ages crushes them. They are suffocated by having to make so many decisions. Young children have a significantly limited understanding of God’s Word, and the way they begin to learn God’s Word, His design, and His will is to have a parent/teacher tell them what to do in each situation in accordance with God’s perfect Law. To be abundantly clear about this process, here are the steps in how children learn to be self-governed under God’s Word.
Step 1: Children are read God’s Word by parents and teachers.
Step 2: Parents govern a child under God’s authoritative Word at younger ages.
Step 3: Children are obedient to their godly parents, learning how to live in the world as a Christian and what to do in a variety of situations as they are told what to do.
Step 4: As children grow older, more governance is passed off to children.
If this is done successfully, it will look like parents being highly strict at younger ages but slowly (ever so slowly!) releasing restrictions so that by the time a child is ready to leave home, they should be able to independently decide on whether they are going to go to the theatre and watch a particular rated-R movie or not. By the way, there are rated-R movies that are worthy of watching! Our children should be able to discern which ones are worthy of our attention and which ones aren’t. They should know which ones could be watched in good conscience and which ones would be sinful to watch.
You may notice that I am not giving ages on when this pass-off of self-governance should occur. This is intentional because it will certainly vary per child, but I will say that a good general rule would be for everyone to lean on the side of pushing off self-governance to high school ages. Decisions often crush elementary-aged kids, and middle school-aged children are at a significantly awkward age as they go through puberty and are in the process of figuring out their place in life, but high school seems to be a great age to begin taking off restrictions and granting more choices while still being able to guide decisions when needed.
