Obedience To Parents Quotes

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter

Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.

And have your mother put my head on a stake? Do you have any notion what that would do to my handsome good looks?

Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.

How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?“ Winston thought. “By making him suffer”, he said. “Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.

You look so ugly, it seems that someone tried—and failed—to get the warts off your face through aggressive application of sandpaper. You are less a human being, and more a lump of dung with aspirations. If someone took a stick and beat you repeatedly, it could only serve to improve your features. “Your face defies description, but only because it nauseated all the poets. You are what parents use to frighten children into obedience. I’d tell you to put a sack over your head, but think of the poor sack! Theologians use you as proof that God exists, because such hideousness can only be intentional.

The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young.

What was behind this smug presumption that what pleased you was bad or at least unimportant in comparison to other things? … Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked’ but … but what? … Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others — a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.

Parents expect only two things from their children, obedience in their childhood and respect in their adulthood.

Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other; on the contrary, they breed and reinforce each other. Punishment does not deter misconduct. It makes the offender more skillful in escaping detection. When children are punished they resolve to be more careful, not more obedient or responsible. Parents

I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence.

For centuries kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice.

Now, the error which many parents commit in the treatment of the individual at this time(adolescense) is, insisting on the same unreasoning obedience as when all he had to do in the way of duty was, to obey the simple laws of "Come when you're called," and "Do as you're bid!" But a wise parent humours the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his absolute rule shall cease.

Every parent knows that delayed obedience is really disobedience.

People ask me how it happens that my children are all so promptly obedient and so happy. As if it chanced that some parents have such children or chanced that some have not! I am afraid it is only too true, as someone has remarked, that "this is the age of obedient parents!" What then will be the future of their children? How can they yield to God who have never been taught to yield to human authority? And how well fitted will they be to rule their own households who have never learned to rule themselves?

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. When she finally understands that it is not her duty to convince everyone on her island to accept and respect her.

no was a bad word in my hone no was met with the lash erased from our vocabulary beaten out of our backs till we became well-behaved kids who obediently nodded to yes to everything when he climbed on top of me every part of my body wanted to reject it but i couldn't say no to save my life when i tried to scream all that escaped me was silence i heard no pounding her fist on the roof of my mouth begging to let her out but i had not put up the exit sign never built the emergency staircase there was no trapdoor for no to escape from i want to ask all the parents and guardians a question what use was obedience then when there were hands that were not mine inside me - how can i verbalize consent as an adult if i was never taught to as a child

What makes you think you have to turn your life around before you can completely commit your life to God? What makes you think you have to impress God with your obedience before He will impart His grace to you? What makes you think you have to do things to get God to like you, much less love you? What makes you think you have to be the perfect spouse or parent before God will perfectly love you? Many Christians spend a lifetime trying to achieve something that Jesus already achieved for them. God’s acceptance isn’t based on performance. It wasn’t for Jesus. And because of what He did for you, it isn’t for you either. The acceptance He had, you have. The love He unconditionally received, you unconditionally receive. Yes, Jesus was the Son of God. But through Him, you are a child of God with the same privileges.1 That includes the privilege of having God look at you and say, “I am well pleased.

Love is not obedience.

God. A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. When she finally understands that it is not her duty to convince everyone on her island to accept and respect her and her children. It is her duty to allow onto her island only those who already do and who will walk across the drawbridge as the beloved, respectful guests they are.

Little children were trained not to do “just what they liked” but…but what?…Of course! What others liked. And which others? Parents, teachers, supervisors, policemen, judges, officials, kings, dictators. All authorities. When you are trained to despise “just what you like” then, of course, you become a much more obedient servant of others—a good slave. When you learn not to do “just what you like” then the System loves you.

Replace a goal of obedience with one of connection and trust instead. Children are drawn to follow those to whom they are emotionally connected. By parenting not for obedience but for relationship, kids are naturally inclined to follow your lead.

We teach our children to study hard, to strive to succeed but do we teach them that it's okay to fail? That life is about accepting yourself? That there is no stigma in seeking help? Our Indian culture is based on worshipping our parents. We grow up listening to words like respect, obedience and tradition. Can we not add the words communication, unconditional love and support to this list? I look at the WHO research. The highest rate of suicide in India is among the age group of 15 to 29. Do we even talk to our teens about this? That evening, I am standing in the balcony, sipping some coffee and looking at the sunset. The children have taken the dogs and gone down to play on the beach. I spot my son. He is standing on the sand, right at the edge of the ocean and is flying a blue kite. The kite goes high and then swings low till it almost seems to fall into the water and all I want to say to him is that soon he will see that life is just like flying a kite. Sometimes you have to leave it loose, sometimes you have to hold on tight, sometimes your kite will fly effortlessly, sometimes you will not be able to control it and even when you are struggling to keep it afloat and the string is cutting into your hand, don't let go. The wind will change in your favour once again, my son. Just don't let go..

Instant obedience and mindless compliance are poor goals, indeed, when raising children. A thoughtfully questioning, passionately curious, and humorously resourceful child who delights in inventing ‘compromises’ and who endlessly pushes the boundaries tends to become a thoughtful, passionate, resourceful adult who will change the world rather than being changed by the world.

Jimmy was no fool but he’d been well loved by good parents and well taught by good teachers, and those two facts accounted for the habit of obedience that mystified and enraged Peggy Soong. Over and over in his life, authority had proven correct and the decisions of his parents and teachers and bosses made sense to him eventually.

The recent spate of magazines for "parents" (i.e., mothers) bombard the anxiety-induced mothers of America with reassurances that they can (after a $100,000 raise and a personality transplant) produce bright, motivated, focused, fun-loving, sensitive, cooperative, confident, contented kids just like the clean, obedient ones on the cover.

My focus was on trying to figure out what God wanted be to do next. Their (his parents') focus was on what I was doing for God at the moment.

A curious contradiction which any child soon sees through occurs when his parents expect to control him when they cannot control themselves.

There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices. The time of obedience and atonement is past. Either help us as a friend, or go away!

Alexander Hamilton Junior High School -- SEMESTER REPORT -- STUDENT: Joseph Margolis TEACHER: Janet Hicks ENGLISH: A, ARITHMETIC: A, SOCIAL STUDIES: A, SCIENCE: A, NEATNESS: A, PUNCTUALITY: A, PARTICIPATION: A, OBEDIENCE: D Teacher's Comments: Joseph remains a challenging student. While I appreciate his creativity, I am sure you will agree that a classroom is an inappropriate forum for a reckless imagination. There is not a shred of evidence to support his claim that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian, and even fewer grounds to explain why he even knows what the word means. Similarly, an analysis of the Constitutional Convention does not generate sufficient cause to initiate a two-hour classroom debate on what types of automobiles the Founding Fathers would have driven were they alive today. When asked on a subsequent examination, "What did Benjamin Franklin use to discover electricity?" eleven children responded "A Packard convertible". I trust you see my problem. [...] Janet Hicks Parent's Comments: As usual I am very proud of Joey's grades. I too was unaware that Dolley Madison was a Lesbian. I assumed they were all Protestants. Thank you for writing. Ida Margolis

matter what, and given the wrong cultural and political circumstances, circumstances that have occurred with morbid regularity throughout history, this is a lesson that may well come with a suicide clause. That parents wish to foster a certain respect for legitimate authority is understandable, and probably important for the functioning of society as we know it. But to drill children in reflexive, no-questions-asked obedience is to beat a horse that is more than half-dead already.

In the Book of Genesis, Abraham believes that God is commanding him to sacrifice his beloved son as proof of his love and obedience. But just as Abraham is about to thrust the knife into his terrified child, an angel grasps his hand and there in the thicket is a sheep that God has provided for the sacrifice. Most people find this story horrifying, but what my father taught me that day was this: No matter how sacred the calling appears, it is not God’s will for parents to sacrifice their children.

Most children seem eager, even desperate, to please those in authority, reluctant to rock the boat even when the boat clearly needs rocking. In a way, an occasional roll-your-eyes story of excess in the other direction marks the exception that proves the rule. And the rule is a silent epidemic of obedience. For every kid who is slapped with the label “Oppositional Defiant Disorder,” hundreds suffer from what one educator has mischievously called Compliance Acquiescent Disorder. The symptoms of CAD, he explained, include the following: “defers to authority,” “actively obeys rules,” “fails to argue back,” “knuckles under instead of mobilizing others in support,” and “stays restrained when outrage is warranted.

True adulthood would mean no longer denying the truth. It would mean feeling the repressed suffering, consciously acknowledging the story remembered by the body at an emotional level, and integrating that story instead of repressing it. Whether contact with the parents can then in fact be maintained will depend on the given circumstances in each individual case. What is absolutely imperative is the termination of the harmful attachment to the internalized parents of childhood, an attachment that, though we call it love, certainly does not deserve the name. It is made up of different ingredients, such as gratitude, compassion, expectations, denial, illusions, obedience, fear, and the anticipation of punishment. Time

... primitive times had required primitive obedience, that later generations evolved to the point where parents offered themselves as sacrifice - as in the dark knights of the ovens which pocked old earth history - and that current generations had to deny any command for sacrifice. Sol had written that whatever God now took in human consciousness - whether as a mere manifestation of the subconscious in all its revanchist needs or as a more conscious attempt at philosophical and ethical evolution - humankind could no longer agree to offer up sacrifice in God's name. Sacrifice and the agreement to sacrifice had written human history in blood.

Borderline parents with an insecure sense of self may use jewelry, clothes, and other trappings as proof of their attainment of the idealized happy family, regardless of their means. Rather than unconditional love, nurturance, and open communication, the emphasis may have been on how things appeared to outsiders. Thus the need for expensive cars, respectable jobs, obedient children, well-groomed pets, a carefully landscaped yard. The

Our Indian culture is based on worshipping our parents. We grow up listening to words like ‘respect’, ‘obedience’ and ‘tradition’. Can we not add the words ‘communication’, ‘unconditional love’ and ‘support’ to this list?

She wished she could open her mouth and tell her parents, "No, this isn't the life I want." But Israa had learned at a very young age that obedience is the only path to love. So she only defied in secret. Mostly with her books.

In this martial world dominated by men, women had little place. The Church's teachings might underpin feudal morality, yet when it came to the practicalities of life, a ruthless pragmatism often came into play. Kings and noblemen married for political advantage, and women rarely had any say in how they or their wealth were to be disposed in marriage. Kings would sell off heiresses and rich widows to the highest bidder, for political or territorial advantage, and those who resisted were heavily fined. Young girls of good birth were strictly reared, often in convents, and married off at fourteen or even earlier to suit their parents' or overlord's purposes. The betrothal of infants was not uncommon, despite the church's disapproval. It was a father's duty to bestow his daughters in marriage; if he was dead, his overlord or the King himself would act for him. Personal choice was rarely and issue. Upon marriage, a girl's property and rights became invested in her husband, to whom she owed absolute obedience. Every husband had the right to enforce this duty in whichever way he thought fit--as Eleanor was to find out to her cost. Wife-beating was common, although the Church did at this time attempt to restrict the length of the rod that a husband might use.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, my parents, like the rest of America, were terrified. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and now were ahead of us in space. So my parents marched me and Owen into our living room, sat us down, and said, " You boys are going to study math and Science so we can beat the Soviets!" I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year old. But own and I were obedient sons, so we studied math and science. And we were good at it.. Owen was the first in our family to go to college. He went to MIT, graduating with a degree in physics, and then became a photographer. I went to Harvard, and became a comedian. My poor parents. But we still beat the Soviets. You're welcome.

Over time both parents and child figure out that the more quickly they get enraged and threatening, the more quickly they get what they want—the parents get obedience or the child gets a reprieve from a command. When this process goes unchecked over many months, it can lead to confrontations that end in parents physically abusing their children or the children destroying property, attacking the parents, holding their breath until blue, banging their head against a floor or wall, or hurting themselves in other ways. This is how “No!” escalates into violence in some families.

Children must learn obedience, and parents must exact obedience from them. Love your children, let them know that you love them; but remember that it is no favor to a child to let him do things he should not do. I have seen the results of many surveys and know from personal experience that children want some direction and control in their lives and want to live up to the expectations of those who are responsible for directing their lives.

We can very easily see how parents in other cultures simply repeat cultural norms to their children as if those cultural norms were objective truth. Japanese parents teach their children obedience and filial piety; Catholic parents teach their children to drink the blood of their god; Muslim parents teach their children that a man who married a six-year-old girl – and consummated that marriage when she was nine – is the paragon of moral virtue; Western parents teach their children that democracy is the highest ideal; North Korean parents teach their children that the dictator who rules their lives is a sort of secular deity who loves them. The list goes on and on. Virtually every parent in the world believes that she is teaching her child the truth, when she is merely inflicting what may be politely called cultural mythologies on her child. We lie to our children, all the while telling them that lying is wrong. We command our children to think for themselves, all the while repeating the most prejudicial absurdities as if they were objective facts. We tell our children to be good, but we have no idea what goodness really is. We tell our children that conformity is wrong (“If everyone jumped off the Empire State building, would you jump too?”) but at the same time we are complete slaves to the historical inertia of prior prejudices.

The utter atrocities of Nazism have shown us clearly what the inherent potential of destruction in the parenting rules we have been using for the last 150 years. These rules are non-democratic. They are based on inequality of power and unequal rights. They promote the use and ownership of some people by others and teach the denial and repression of emotional vitality and spontaneity. They glorify obedience, orderliness, logic, rationality, power and male supremacy. They are flagrantly anti-life.

Keeping secrets from your father will only lead to trouble.

Obedience is required conformity. Responsibility is voluntary conformity. Obedience is submission to a person. Responsibility is submission to a principle.

An obedient child learns from the example of an obedient parent.

People who have narcissistic parents said they were authoritarian, controlling, tyrannical, and demanded blind obedience.

My mind was curiously blank. It was the blankness of obedience. With the unerring instinct of children, I had surmised what my parents wanted from me. They wanted me to stay the way I was. [434]

Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter Rachel, Whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.” Sol hesitated and looked back to Rachel. The baby’s eyes were deep and luminous as she looked up at her father. Sol felt the unspoken yes. Holding her tightly, he stepped forward into the darkness and raised his voice against the silence: “Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The time of obedience and atonement is past.

How would parents respond to children who gladly cleaned the house and mowed the lawn but refused to spend time talking with and enjoying them, the very ones who have loved and cared for them their whole lives? We know this isn’t the way things should operate in a healthy family, and yet we often and subconsciously relate to God in this way. We give Him what we perceive to be our obedience yet internally resist a deeper surrender.

One cannot always know what children are thinking. Children are hard to understand, especially when careful training has a custom them to obedience and experience has made them cautious in conversation with their teachers.

Whenever people idealize their caretakers, chances are pretty good that the opposite is true. Sometimes illusion is created by the parents, who insists in godlike fashion that they're perfect and that the child owes them obedience because they're responsible for his or her existence. Other times the illusion is created by the child as a survival strategy, disconnecting from reality in order to avoid the pain of growing up in a toxic enviroment.

Too many children live with the feeling that they are not accepted for who they are, that, somehow, they are “disappointing” their parents or not meeting their expectations, that they don’t “measure up.” How many parents spend their time focusing on the ways in which their child is “too this” or “too that,” or “not enough of this or that”? A great deal of unnecessary pain and grief is caused by this withholding, judging behavior on the part of parents. When has parental disapproval, in the form of shaming, humiliating, or withholding, ever been a positive influence on a child’s behavior? It might result in obedience; but at what cost to the child, and to the adult that child becomes?

Would-be rulers justified their authority on the basis of their ancestry. Whether they claimed descent from the gods or from an earlier king or legendary hero, their legitimacy depended on the purity of their parents’ bloodlines and the validity of their parents’ marriages. In a world where most of the upper class was busily establishing pretensions to noble blood, the best way to bolster one’s legitimacy was to marry someone who also had an august line of ancestors.

Satan represents God’s law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading men to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. “In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” Hebrews 2:17. If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are.” Hebrews 4:15.

OBEDIENCE IS NOT ENOUGH. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.

In the United States teen rebellion is considered standard, putting the American adolescent in the awkward position of having to rebel in order to conform to societal expectations. For an obedient rule-following teen like I was, this is utterly flummoxing.

i don’t wanna live up to my parents’ expectations so they know how it feels it’s too bad they taught me how to please everyone but myself sit, down, stay i was always obedient until i strayed i wonder if their new dog is a good boy i wonder if he’s doing a good job of replacing me

Only children simply accept the fact that their parents have the right to make choices for them. Even disobedient children never question the fact that their parents have that right. They may choose to flout the rules, but they don't question their parents' right to make those rules.

Some Parents Are Responsible for Disrespect—When parents permit a child to show them disrespect in childhood, allowing them to speak pettishly and even harshly, there will be a dreadful harvest to be reaped in after years. When parents fail to require prompt and perfect obedience in their children, they fail to lay the right foundation of character in their little ones. They prepare their children to dishonor them when they are old, and bring sorrow to their hearts when they are nearing the grave, unless the grace of Christ changes the hearts and transforms the characters of their children. [362]

The same economic and political changes that made it harder for parents to control marriage and gave young men and women more freedom to pursue their desires also reduced the possibility of forcing a man into marriage if he got a young woman pregnant. For the working classes of Western Europe, especially landless laborers, the spread of wage labor and the breakdown of older community constraints on courting led to a sharp increase in out-of-wedlock births. The percentage of out-of-wedlock births doubled in England during the eighteenth century and quadrupled in France and Germany between the 1740s and the 1820s.37

the effects the denial of our true and strong emotions have on our bodies. Such denial is demanded of us not least by morality and religion. On the basis of what I know about psychotherapy, both from personal experience and from accounts I have been given by very many people, I have come to the conclusion that individuals abused in childhood can attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment* only by recourse to a massive repression and detachment of their true emotions. They cannot love and honor their parents because unconsciously they still fear them. However much they may want to, they cannot build up a relaxed and trusting relationship. Instead, what usually materializes is a pathological attachment, a mixture of fear and dutiful obedience that hardly deserves the name of love in the genuine sense of the word. I call this a sham, a façade. In addition, people abused in childhood frequently hope all their lives that someday they will experience the love they have been denied. These expectations reinforce their attachment to their parents, an attachment that religious creeds refer to as love and praise as a virtue. Unfortunately, the same thing happens in most therapies, as most people are still dominated by traditional morality. There is a price to be paid for this morality, a price paid by the body. Individuals who believe that they feel what they ought to feel and constantly do their best not to feel what they forbid themselves to feel will ultimately fall ill—unless, that is, they leave it to their children to pick up the check by projecting onto them the emotions they cannot admit to themselves. This

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

For pre-eminently a divine image, resembling God, is the soul of a righteous man; in which, through obedience to the commands, as in a consecrated spot, is enclosed and enshrined the Leader of mortals and of immortals, King and Parent of what is good, who is truly law, and right, and eternal Word, being the one Saviour individually to each, and in common to all.

but good-hearted and companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and without examination also—which goes without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with

She needed this wedding—this perfect, minutely orchestrated wedding—to shout, This is who I am. To tell us all that she was not that girl who’d tried to kill herself freshman year, the girl who developed an unhealthy obsession with her poetry professor junior year, the girl who had baffled psychiatrists and mystified her parents, for she had once been so perfect, so good, so obedient.

In one case, although the judge was sure that a woman’s rape accusation against her father-in-law was true, he ordered the young man to give up his sentimental desire “to grow old together” with his wife. Loyalty to parents was paramount, and therefore the son should send his wife back to her own father, who could then marry her to someone else. Sons were sometimes ordered beaten for siding with their wives against their father.

Someone once said that the challenge of living is to develop a long obedience in the same direction. When it's demanded, we can rise on occasion and be patient . . . as long as there are limits. But we balk when patience is required over a long haul. We don't much like endurance. It's painful to persevere through a marriage that's forever struggling. A church that never crest 100 members. Housekeeping routines that never vary from week-to-week. Even caring for an elderly parent or a handicapped child can feel like a long obedience in the same direction. If only we could open our spiritual eyes to see the fields of grain we're planting, growing, and reaping along the way. That's what happens when we endure... Right now you may be in the middle of a long stretch of the same old routine.... You don't hear any cheers or applause. The days run together―and so do the weeks. Your commitment to keep putting one foot in front of the other is starting to falter. Take a moment and look at the fruit. Perseverance. Determination. Fortitude. Patience. Your life is not a boring stretch of highway. It's a straight line to heaven. And just look at the fields ripening along the way. Look at the tenacity and endurance. Look at the grains of righteousness. You'll have quite a crop at harvest . . . so don't give up!

Perhaps it’s time you stopped sulking over an engagement three years broken and bore yourself like a man!” The duke’s voice snaps like a whip. “Zeus and Hera, how did I beget such an unruly son?” “If you’ve forgotten, perhaps you could summon up the dead and ask my lady mother.” The duke barks a laugh. “You got that tongue from her, that’s for certain. But she was obedient to me for all her carping.” “Obedient?” says Lord Anax. The desk creaks and shifts; I think he is leaning against it. “We must remember her very differently.” “Always when it counted, my boy, which is more than can be said of you. I wanted that girl for my daughter, you know.” “Adopt her, then. I believe it’s legal.” “First I’d have to kill her parents,” says the duke, “and I am given to understand that’s frowned upon these days.” “It’s gone the same sad way as the right of a father to execute his sons.

Most parents would not allow more than one daughter to remain unmarried. So if one daughter had already declared herself a spinster, her sister had to conduct a marriage ceremony with a dead man, called marrying a tablet, to retain her independence. These women later told historians that “it was not so easy to find an unmarried dead man to marry,” so when one did become available, they vied with one another “to be the one who would get to marry him.

We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words. If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser. Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encountered the Maureen Peals of the world. What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it

Obedience is freedom. Better to follow the Master’s plan than to do what you weren’t wired to do—master yourself. It is true that the thing that you and I most need to be rescued from is us! The greatest danger that we face is the danger that we are to ourselves. Who we think we are is a delusion and what we all tend to want is a disaster. Put together, they lead to only one place—death. If you’re a parent, you see it in your children. It didn’t take long for you to realize that you are parenting a little self-sovereign, who thinks at the deepest level that he needs no authority in his life but himself. Even if he cannot yet walk or speak, he rejects your wisdom and rebels against your authority. He has no idea what is good or bad to eat, but he fights your every effort to put into his mouth something that he has decided he doesn’t want. As he grows, he has little ability to comprehend the danger of the electric wall outlet, but he tries to stick his fingers in it precisely because you have instructed him not to. He wants to exercise complete control over his sleep, diet, and activities. He believes it is his right to rule his life, so he fights your attempts to bring him under submission to your loving authority. Not only does your little one resist your attempts to bring him under your authority, he tries to exercise authority over you. He is quick to tell you what to do and does not fail to let you know when you have done something that he does not like. He celebrates you when you submit to his desires and finds ways to punish you when you fail to submit to his demands. Now, here’s what you have to understand: when you’re at the end of a very long parenting day, when your children seemed to conspire together to be particularly rebellious, and you’re sitting on your bed exhausted and frustrated, you need to remember that you are more like your children than unlike them. We all want to rule our worlds. Each of us has times when we see authority as something that ends freedom rather than gives it. Each of us wants God to sign the bottom of our personal wish list, and if he does, we celebrate his goodness. But if he doesn’t, we begin to wonder if it’s worth following him at all. Like our children, each of us is on a quest to be and to do what we were not designed by our Creator to be or to do. So grace comes to decimate our delusions of self-sufficiency. Grace works to destroy our dangerous hope for autonomy. Grace helps to make us reach out for what we really need and submit to the wisdom of the Giver. Yes, it’s true, grace rescues us from us.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that ‘Don’t paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo’ is good advice but ‘You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail’ is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world, about the cosmos, about morality and about human nature.

What happens when a child reared in love, protection, and honesty is suddenly beaten by someone? The child will scream, give vent to his anger, then burst into tears, reveal his pain, and probably ask: Why are you doing this to me? None of this is possible when a child trained from the very outset to be obedient is beaten by his own parents, whom he loves. The child must stifle his pain and anger and repress the whole situation to survive. For to be able to show anger the child needs the confidence based on experience that he will not be killed as a result. A battered child cannot build up this confidence; children are indeed sometimes killed when they dare to rebel against injustice. Hence the child must suppress his rage to survive in a hostile environment, must even stifle his massive, overwhelming pain in order not to die of it. So now the silence of forgetting descends over everything, and the parents are idealized—they have never done any wrong. “And if they did beat me, I deserved it.” This is the familiar version of the torture that has been endured.

This revolution is not confined to the United States. Despite cultural variations, almost all industrial countries have experienced similar changes. Divorce rates tripled in France and Holland and quadrupled in Britain between 1970 and 1990. As in the United States, divorce rates began to fall in Western Europe in the 1990s, but rates of marriage fell even faster. By the late 1990s 40 percent of all births in France and Britain were to unmarried women. In Iceland, in 1999, more than 60 percent of all births were to unwed parents.42

Parents should not wait until their child’s behavior becomes unacceptable before they commence training—which would then actually be discipline. Training is not discipline. Discipline is the “damage control” part of training, but is insufficient in itself to effect proper behavior. Training is the conditioning of the child’s mind before the crisis arises. It is preparation for future, instant, unquestioning obedience. An athlete trains before he competes. Animals, including wild ones, are conditioned to respond to the trainer’s voice command.

In a totalitarian state, which is a mirror of his upbringing, this citizen can also carry out any form of torture or persecution without having a guilty conscience. His “will” is completely identical with that of the government. Both Hitler and Stalin had a surprisingly large number of enthusiastic followers among intellectuals. Our capacity to resist has nothing to do with our intelligence but with the degree of access to our true self. Indeed, intelligence is capable of innumerable rationalizations when it comes to the matter of adaptation. Educators have always known this and have exploited it for their own purposes. Grünewald writes that he has never yet found willfulness in an intellectually advanced or exceptionally gifted child. Such a child can, in later life, exhibit extraordinary acuity in criticizing the ideologies of his opponents—and in puberty even the views by his own parents—because in these cases his intellectual powers can function without impairment. Furthermore, the teacher finds the soil already prepared for obedience, and the political leader has only to harvest what has been sown.

It is also a part of "poisonous pedagogy" to impart to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation and dutifully accepted by the young even though they are not only unproven but are demonstrably false. Examples of such beliefs are: 1. A feeling of duty produces love. 2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it. 3. Parents deserve respect simply because they are parents. 4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children. 5. Obedience makes a child strong. 6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful. 7. A low degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic. 8. Tenderness (doting) is harmful. 9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong. 10. Severity and coldness are a good preparation for life. 11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude. 12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are. 13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended. 14. The body is something dirty and disgusting. 15. Strong feelings are harmful. 16. Parents are creatures free of drives and guilt. 17. Parents are always right.

Gandhi was one such bad parent who rewarded the ill-behaved and punished the well-behaved. He was harsh on the polemical but non-violent Swami Shraddhananda, and kind to the Swami’s murderer, about whom he stated in public: ‘Abdul Rashid is my brother.’ In settling his succession, he spurned his loyal and obedient friend Sardar Patel, and favoured the conceited and un-Gandhian Anglo-secularist Jawaharlal Nehru. His dealings with Suhrawardy were also read by the Muslim agitators as a sign of deference to Muslim aggression, an encouragement to continue on the chosen path of provocation and violence.

As Ernest Becker observes in The Denial of Death, the very thought of disobeying authority appears to awaken the anxiety connected with the possible loss, during infancy, of parental love, respect or support. The unexamined beliefs and experiences that generate our reliance on, and deference to authority, seem rooted in a profound existential uncertainty: the patient looks to the doctor to relieve this uncertainty, not only about not feeling well and not knowing why, but also about not knowing what to do, what action to undertake. In other words, the expertise of the physician relieves the patient of some of the burden of responsibility.

Prejudiced individuals, according to the four researchers, were the children of domineering fathers and punitive mothers who engaged in unusually harsh child-rearing practices. These practices involved a combination of threats, coercion, and the deliberate use of parental love and its withdrawal to promote obedience. In other words, authoritarian parents are not able to show their children affection without reservation; it is contingent on the child’s good behavior. The result is children who are decidedly insecure and, paradoxically, extremely dependent on their parents. Moreover, such children fear their parents and experience unconscious hostility toward them.

The reproductive revolution has shaken up all the relationships once taken for granted between sex, marriage, conception, childbirth, and parenting. People who could not become parents before can now do so in such bewildering combinations that a child can potentially have five different parents: a sperm donor, an egg donor, a birth mother, and the social father and mother who raise the child. On the other hand, some married couples use new reproductive technologies to avoid having children altogether. Seen in this light, a childless marriage is just as much a challenge to the tradition that children are the central purpose and glue of a wedded relationship as is a gay union.

May I ask you something?' said Peri. 'When we first met you said you and your sister had made different choices in life. So does that mean... you prefer to cover your head?' 'Of course. My parents always gave me the option. My hijab is a personal decision, a testimony to my faith. It gives me peace and confidence.' Mona's face darkened. 'Even though I have been bullied for it, endlessly.' 'You have?' 'Sure, but it didn't stop me. If I, with my headscarf, don't challenge stereotypes, who's going to do it for me? I want to shake things up. People look at me as if I'm a passive, obedient victim of male power. Well, I'm not. I have a mind of my own. My hijab has never got in the way of my independence.

Patriotism comes from the same Latin word as father. Blind patriotism is collective transference. In it the state becomes a parent and we citizens submit our loyalty to ensure its protection. We may have been encouraged to make that bargain from our public school education, our family home, religion, or culture in general. We associate safety with obedience to authority, for example, going along with government policies. We then make duty, as it is defined by the nation, our unquestioned course. Our motivation is usually not love of country but fear of being without a country that will defend us and our property. Connection is all-important to us; excommunication is the equivalent of death, the finality we can’t dispute. Healthy adult loyalty is a virtue that does not become blind obedience for fear of losing connection, nor total devotion so that we lose our boundaries. Our civil obedience can be so firm that it may take precedence over our concern for those we love, even our children. Here is an example: A young mother is told by the doctor that her toddler is allergic to peanuts and peanut oil. She lets the school know of her son’s allergy when he goes to kindergarten. Throughout his childhood, she is vigilant and makes sure he is safe from peanuts in any form. Eighteen years later, there is a war and he is drafted. The same mother, who was so scrupulously careful about her child’s safety, now waves goodbye to him with a tear but without protest. Mother’s own training in public school and throughout her life has made her believe that her son’s life is expendable whether or not the war in question is just. “Patriotism” is so deeply ingrained in her that she does not even imagine an alternative, even when her son’s life is at stake. It is of course also true that, biologically, parents are ready to let children go just as the state is ready to draft them. What a cunning synchronic-ity. In addition, old men who decide on war take advantage of the timing too. The warrior archetype is lively in eighteen-year-olds, who are willing to fight. Those in their mid-thirties, whose archetype is being a householder and making a mark in their chosen field, will not show an interest in battlefields of blood. The chiefs count on the fact that young braves will take the warrior myth literally rather than as a metaphor for interior battles. They will be willing to put their lives on the line to live out the collective myth of societies that have not found the path of nonviolence. Our collective nature thus seems geared to making war a workable enterprise. In some people, peacemaking is the archetype most in evidence. Nature seems to have made that population smaller, unfortunately. Our culture has trained us to endure and tolerate, not to protest and rebel. Every cell of our bodies learned that lesson. It may not be virtue; it may be fear. We may believe that showing anger is dangerous, because it opposes the authority we are obliged to appease and placate if we are to survive. This explains why we so admire someone who dares to say no and to stand up or even to die for what he believes. That person did not fall prey to the collective seduction. Watching Jeopardy on television, I notice that the audience applauds with special force when a contestant risks everything on a double-jeopardy question. The healthy part of us ardently admires daring. In our positive shadow, our admiration reflects our own disavowed or hidden potential. We, too, have it in us to dare. We can stand up for our truth, putting every comfort on the line, if only we can calm our long-scared ego and open to the part of us that wants to live free. Joseph Campbell says encouragingly, “The part of us that wants to become is fearless.” Religion and Transference Transference is not simply horizontal, from person to person, but vertical from person to a higher power, usually personified as God. When

There comes a time in most of our lives in which we no longer have the strength to lift ourselves out or to pretend ourselves strong. Sometimes our minds want to break because life stomped on us and God didn’t stop it. Like a family who watches their loved one slip and fall onto the rocks on a mountainside vacation when all was supposed to be beautiful and fun; or like a parent whose child was mistreated or shot while at school. Charles and those who lost their loved ones that terrible day had to come to terms with suffering in a house of God while the word was preached and a prankster cackled. Questions fill our lungs. We mentally wheeze. We go numb. When on vacation or at school or at church, that kind of thing is not supposed to happen there. Even the knees of a Jesus-follower will buckle. Charles’ wife, Susannah, said of Charles at that time, “My beloved’s anguish was so deep and violent, that reason seemed to totter in her throne, and we sometimes feared that he would never preach again.”5 Though it cannot be said for all of us or for every person that we have loved, it remains true that, in this cherished case, Charles Spurgeon did preach again. But sorrows of many kinds haunted and hounded him for the rest of his life. His depression came, not only from circumstances, or from questions about whether or not he was consecrated to God, but also from the chemistry of his body. God gave to us a preacher who knew firsthand what it felt like for his reason to totter, not just once, but many times during his life and ministry. And somehow this fellow sufferer named Charles and his dear wife Susannah (who also suffered physically most of her adult life) still made a go of it, insisting to each other and to their generation that the sorrowing have a Savior. On that November morning, in weakness, Charles did what some of us are not yet able to do in our sorrows; he read the Bible. Perhaps it will comfort you to learn that for a while “the very sight of the Bible” made Charles cry.6 Many of us know what this feels like. But this Scripture passage, Philippians 2:9-11, “had such a power of comfort upon [his] distressed spirit.” And being found in human form, he [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:8-9). From this Scripture, Charles set the larger story of his hope before us. The same Heavenly Father who picked up His son out of the muck, misery and mistreatment can do the same for us.

God calls his creatures to live under authority. He is our authority and has vested authority in people within the institutions he has established (home, church, state, and business). You must not be embarrassed to be authorities for your children. You exercise authority as God's agent. You may not direct your children for your own agenda or convenience. You must direct your children on God's behalf for their good. Our culture tends toward the extreme poles on a continuum. In the area of authority, we tend either toward a crass kind of John Wayne authoritarianism or toward being a wimp. God calls you by His Word and his example to be authorities who are truly kind. God calls you to exercise authority, not in making your children do what you want, but in being true servants - authorities who lay down your lives. The purpose for your authority in the lives of your children is not to hold them under your power, but to empower them to be self-controlled people living freely under the authority if God. Jesus is an example of this. The One who commands you, the One who possesses all authority, came as a servant. He is a ruler who serves; he is also a servant who rules. He exercises sovereign authority that is kind - authority exercised on behalf of his subjects. In John 13, Jesus, who knew that the Father had put all things under his authority, put on a towel and washed the disciples' feet. As his people submit to his authority, they are empowered to live freely in the freedom of the gospel. As a parent, you must exercise authority. You must require obedience of your children because they are called by God to obey and honor you. You must exercise authority, not as a cruel taskmaster, but as one who truly loves them.

The child will be forced into a therapist role by the parent. It will be forced to take responsibility for the parent and everything the parent feels. Now, see how easy it will be for a narcissist that meets this kind of survivor to start puppeteering them around, using their own guilt, empathy and shame against them? Holding their abuse-target accountable for their adultery? For their anger and rage? For their abuse? This relationship is a one-way street where the abuse-target is held accountable for everything, has a long complex list of rules to follow and every minute is unpredictable. If one doesn’t manage to follow the rules, one gets punished. Love and affection is taken away. Just like in childhood. The narcissist will just pick up where the abusive parent left off, and the survivor will fall right back into the role of the child obediently taking accountability for every aspect of every minute.

You have a child on your island who is doing what few teenagers are able to do: She is living from her Touch Tree. Her tree is small, just a sapling on your island. Do not throw open the door and invite in a storm that will take her out before she's had time to grow roots. Protect your island for her. She is not yet old enough to be the keeper of the drawbridge; that is still your duty. Do not lower your family's drawbridge to fear--not even if it's from people she loves. Especially not when that fear is presented in the name of God. A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. When she finally understands that it is not her duty to convince everyone on her island to accept and respect her and her children. It is her duty to allow onto her island only those who already do and who will walk across the drawbridge as the beloved, respectful guests they are.

My pupil was a lively child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes wayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient and teachable. She had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below it. She made reasonable progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very profound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to please, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in each other’s society. This, par parenthèse, will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth.

As we go forward in life, we come more and more to realize the wisdom of being obedient, not because we are afraid of the law, but because we recognize the importance, wisdom, and necessity of law in civilized life. Freedom within the law is indispensable if your life is to be rich and radiant. Liberty is a prized possession, which should be jealously guarded, but it may be jeopardized by disobedience. We should not assume that liberty and license are synonymous. Sometimes we find people of all ages who resent regulations, restraints, or prohibitions of any kind. They seem to assume that rebellious disregard for rules or laws indicates emancipation and independence. In a foolish attempt to demonstrate their freedom they lose it, forgetting that real liberty can only be enjoyed by obedience to law. Consider for a moment our traffic laws, with their daily toll of suffering, loss, and death. It must be evident to all that these laws are enacted and enforced for the good and protection of people and property. Is it not, therefore, foolhardy to endanger oneself and others simply to show one's independence or importance. Of course, we may disregard the traffic laws, drive on the wrong side of the street, exceed speed limits, go through red lights, just for the satisfaction of showing off and doing as we please, but if we continue to act in such an irresponsible manner, we must eventually pay a price all out of proportion to any momentary satisfaction. . . . Speaking of the duty of parents to children, [John] Locke said, "Liberty and indulgence can do no good to children; their want of judgment makes them stand in need of restraint." . . . Any person is stupid who thinks he can defy the law with impunity. They who obey the law find it to be a safeguard and protection, a guarantee against privilege and favoritism; it applies to all, regardless of rank, station, or status. When properly administered, its rewards and punishments are inflexible. They are at once a warning, a promise, and a safeguard. If they whose duty it is to enforce the law were whimsical or capricious, or if the laws were not administered and enforced with undeviating justice and equity, there would be confusion, defiance, and rebellion. With the average, normal person, force will not become necessary, but sometimes, for the safety of society, drastic measures must be employed.

What is this strange touch?" With a start, Jesse realized that Rides the Wind had awakened. He lay watching her closely.Feeling shy she pulled the buffalo robe up under her chin, answering softly, "My people say 'kiss.'" "And who gives this 'kiss'?" "Parents to children, husband to wife." "Show me." As he said it he leaned toward her. Jesse obediently placed a kiss upon the wind-hardened cheek. He kept his face near hers and the dark eyes searched hers.Then a knowing smile curled up the edges of his mouth. "When Marcus Whitman met with Running Bear and the traders,Rides the Wind was there.I saw many things.I saw this touch you call 'kiss' between man and woman.It was not here," he tapped his cheek, "but here." His finger indicated his mouth. Jesse felt her face flush and wondered if the early morning light revealed her embarrassment. She assented, "Yes,for some it is so." "Did Jesse King and Homer King touch in this ay?" Jesse looked hard into the searching eyes.They returned her stare with honest interest. "My people do not speak of these things." Rides the Wind was quiet for a moment, pondering her response. "If the white man speaks not of what is here," he laid a hand flat upon the tawny chest, "he must be very sad.

An English silence – one in which the unspoken words are perfectly understood by both parties. What did I dislike and distrust about adulthood? Well, to put it briefly: the sense of entitlement, the sense of superiority, the assumption of knowing better if not best, the vast banality of adult opinions, the way women took out compacts and powdered their noses, the way men sat in armchairs with their legs apart and their privates heavily outlined against their trousers, the way they talked about gardens and gardening…… their docile obedience to social norms, their snarky disapproval of anything satirical or questioning, their assumption that their children’s success would be measured by how well they imitated their parents, the suffocating noise they made when agreeing with one another… But I do believe now that when two lovers meet, there is already so much pre-history that only certain outcomes are possible. Whereas the lovers themselves imagine that the world is being reset and the possibilities are both new and infinite. On the one hand – and this is the part to do with the past – love feels like the vast and sudden easing of a life long frown. In love everything is both true and false; it’s the one subject on which it’s impossible to say anything absurd Misunderstanding is democratically distributed. Some men mistook boorishness for honesty. Just as others mistook primness for virtue.

All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one's work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no "swank" or "side," no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience—obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be very unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls "busybodies." If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, "advanced," but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old-fashioned—perhaps even ceremonious and aristocratic. Each of us would like some bits of it, but I am afraid very few of us would like the whole thing. That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine.

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth.

THE OBEDIENCE GAME DUGGAR KIDS GROW UP playing the Obedience Game. It’s sort of like Mother May I? except it has a few extra twists—and there’s no need to double-check with “Mother” because she (or Dad) is the one giving the orders. It’s one way Mom and Dad help the little kids in the family burn off extra energy some nights before we all put on our pajamas and gather for Bible time (more about that in chapter 8). To play the Obedience Game, the little kids all gather in the living room. After listening carefully to Mom’s or Dad’s instructions, they respond with “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” then run and quickly accomplish the tasks. For example, Mom might say, “Jennifer, go upstairs to the girls’ room, touch the foot of your bed, then come back downstairs and give Mom a high-five.” Jennifer answers with an energetic “Yes, ma’am, I’d be happy to!” and off she goes. Dad might say, “Johannah, run around the kitchen table three times, then touch the front doorknob and come back.” As Johannah stands up she says, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” “Jackson, go touch the front door, then touch the back door, then touch the side door, and then come back.” Jackson, who loves to play army, stands at attention, then salutes and replies, “Yes, sir, I’d be happy to!” as he goes to complete his assignment at lightning speed. Sometimes spotters are sent along with the game player to make sure the directions are followed exactly. And of course, the faster the orders can be followed, the more applause the contestant gets when he or she slides back into the living room, out of breath and pleased with himself or herself for having complied flawlessly. All the younger Duggar kids love to play this game; it’s a way to make practicing obedience fun! THE FOUR POINTS OF OBEDIENCE THE GAME’S RULES (MADE up by our family) stem from our study of the four points of obedience, which Mom taught us when we were young. As a matter of fact, as we are writing this book she is currently teaching these points to our youngest siblings. Obedience must be: 1. Instant. We answer with an immediate, prompt “Yes ma’am!” or “Yes sir!” as we set out to obey. (This response is important to let the authority know you heard what he or she asked you to do and that you are going to get it done as soon as possible.) Delayed obedience is really disobedience. 2. Cheerful. No grumbling or complaining. Instead, we respond with a cheerful “I’d be happy to!” 3. Thorough. We do our best, complete the task as explained, and leave nothing out. No lazy shortcuts! 4. Unconditional. No excuses. No, “That’s not my job!” or “Can’t someone else do it? or “But . . .” THE HIDDEN GOAL WITH this fun, fast-paced game is that kids won’t need to be told more than once to do something. Mom would explain the deeper reason behind why she and Daddy desired for us to learn obedience. “Mom and Daddy won’t always be with you, but God will,” she says. “As we teach you to hear and obey our voice now, our prayer is that ultimately you will learn to hear and obey what God’s tells you to do through His Word.” In many families it seems that many of the goals of child training have been lost. Parents often expect their children to know what they should say and do, and then they’re shocked and react harshly when their sweet little two-year-old throws a tantrum in the middle of the grocery store. This parental attitude probably stems from the belief that we are all born basically good deep down inside, but the truth is, we are all born with a sin nature. Think about it: You don’t have to teach a child to hit, scream, whine, disobey, or be selfish. It comes naturally. The Bible says that parents are to “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie careers. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years. So what made the other 5 percent stay? Prevailing wisdom would tell you that only the intellectually deficient or psychologically unstable would stick by a “cult” that long. But scholars have disproven this, too. In Barker’s studies, she compared the most committed Moonie converts with a control group—the latter had gone through life experiences that might make them very “suggestive” (“Like having an unhappy childhood or being rather low-intelligence,” she said). But in the end, the control group either didn’t join at all or left after a week or two. A common belief is that cult indoctrinators look for individuals who have “psychological problems” because they are easier to deceive. But former cult recruiters say their ideal candidates were actually good-natured, service-minded, and sharp. Steven Hassan, an ex-Moonie himself, used to recruit people to the Unification Church, so he knows a little something about the type of individual cults go for. “When I was a leader in the Moonies we selectively recruited . . . those who were strong, caring, and motivated,” he wrote in his 1998 book Combatting Cult Mind Control. Because it took so much time and money to enlist a new member, they avoided wasting resources on someone who seemed liable to break down right away. (Similarly, multilevel marketing higher-ups agree that their most profitable recruits aren’t those in urgent need of cash but instead folks determined and upbeat enough to play the long game. More on that in part 4.) Eileen Barker’s studies of the Moonies confirmed that their most obedient members were intelligent, chin-up folks. They were the children of activists, educators, and public servants (as opposed to wary scientists, like my parents). They were raised to see the good in people, even to their own detriment. In this way, it’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders―and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands―parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion―shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development―the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself―is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that:―the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders - and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands - parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion - shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development - the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself - is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that: - the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

In Shushan the citadel there was a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjamite. Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives who had been captured with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away. Esther 2:5-6 Mordecai is a Jew living in Shushan (remember from last week — this is the city that Darius established as the capital). His great-grandfather is Kish the Benjamite, who was brought to Persia / Babylon during the Babylonian captivity. Even though King Cyrus ended the captivity many years ago, many Jews have remained in Persia. Mordecai’s family was among them. Mordecai’s heritage is an vital part of God’s plan, so let’s be careful not to over look this important detail. God always has a remnant of people. Even though Mordecai is no longer captive to the will of man keeping him in exile, he is still captive to the will of God. As a result of his obedience to God, Mordecai remained in Persia even after he was free to leave. God has promised to protect His people, and His plan is in action. Mordecai is an important part of that plan! Also important to note is that this the historian’s first mention of Jews living in Persia. Mordecai descending from Kish the Benjamite is interesting, because another important biblical figure also descended from Kish: Israel’s first king, Saul. Saul was Kish’s son (1 Samuel 9:1). While this point may not seem important in a history of Ahasuerus, the ancestry of this Jew is very important in the history of Persia. Mordecai’s most important connection is about to be introduced to us: his cousin, Esther. “And Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The young woman was lovely and beautiful. When her father and mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter.” Esther 2:7 Ahasuerus is not the only one in Persia busy preparing; Mordecai is preparing as well. For many years now, he has been preparing Esther, raising her for the future that God intended for her. As you prepare, consider that you might be preparing for a future you do not know anything about; and that you may be preparing someone other than yourself. Mordecai’s first step was to obey God. Certainly it was God who told him to stay with Esther in Persia, even after her parents had died. We are never told that Mordecai had married; what reason was there for him to stay in Persia? Even so, Mordecai stayed in Persia with Esther and raised her as his own daughter. Raising her was a process, and he had to depend on the Lord to know the right thing to do. He had no way of predicting what would happen in her life or his, but he was obedient during the process (remember Jeremiah 29?). Mordecai was preparing Esther for a future he did not know anything about yet, but Mordecai knew something that we need to keep in our hearts as well: serving God every day will develop qualities in us that will serve us well, whatever the future may hold. Mordecai was preparing Esther to be faithful to God, knowing that quality could only help her in her life. Mordecai did not know what God had in store for Esther — but he did know that God had a plan for her, just as He has a plan for all of us. Mordecai poured his life into her. Is there someone that you are supposed to be pouring your life into? Perhaps while reading this history, you are identifying with Esther. Maybe you are an “Esther”, but consider that you may be a “Mordecai”. It is likely you will identify with both of them at different seasons in your life. Pray that you will be able to discern those seasons. Mordecai and Esther are cousins. Sometime after the Jews were carried away to Persia, Esther’s parents died. Out of the heartbreaking tragedy of losing her parents, God’s providence was still at work. His word promises that in the hands of the Lord, “all things work together for good to those who