As a parent, obedience is often on the forefront of my brain. It came to me this morning how often my insistence of obedience can so easily bring about as well as destroy peace in the home. If I destroy peace, it's often because I'm after obedience from my children in the wrong way or time, or even after unreasonable obedience - expecting that they do something beyond their capacities. This emphasis on obedience to create or maintain peace, it occurs to me, can (and has been) used against me, though - usually when I've ruined the peace. So the objection then comes like this: "Would you rather have peace or obedience?" as though the two are opposed (which, as I've just described, they can be). But turn it around and the dichotomy is self-evidently false: "Would you rather have disobedience or chaos?" Who in their right mind ever thinks of divorcing those two? Disobedience/lawlessness (whether in the home or in society) always go together, which is why, I think, parents of all ethnicities, religions, and ages have, to one degree or another, expected obedience (however they have defined it) to bring about peace and for peace to accompany compliance.
To oppose peace and obedience is to misunderstand both, and to rob oneself of them. It is to become a people-pleaser who will avoid conflict at any cost and call it "good", or a tyrrant whose obsessive and absolute rule is the only stability people (or a wife and/or children) know. Neither is good and neither is desirable. Which is why understanding one's children is so important, and why it is so hard to be an effective and beloved parent.
