Obedience Gives Me the Ick

Back with another hot take in the Christian world, and this one is straight-up half-baked. It's going back in the oven, but I wanna crack the door and take a peek real quick.

"Obedience" gives me the ick.

Is that because I'm an arrogant, fallen, millennial creature? Very possibly. That's what I want to think through.

I recently heard someone describe their toddler as "obedient," and it made me go

in my head. I brought this reaction up to Gabe later.

"Why does the idea of raising your kids to be 'obedient' give me the ick so bad?"

"Because the goal of raising kids is to train them to be good adults," Gabe said after a minute. "'Obedient' isn't a positive quality in an adult. You don't compliment an adult by saying, 'oh they're so obedient.'"

That rang true for me. We don't want adults to be "obedient" the same way we want children to be, or maybe we just don't use that word. When putting obedience in an adult context, Christian life and the military are what came to my mind first.

The Christian view is obvious: Adults are suppose to be obedient—to God, even when we don't understand, even when we don't like it. It's a choice of submission and a form of dying to ourselves. Children practice being obedient to their parents and authorities as an earthly way to practice being obedient to Christ.

Similarly, soldiers are expected to obey their superior officers even if they don't understand, agree, or like the order. Theirs not to reason why.

Neither the Christian context nor the military one helps me. The term still gives me the ick. Still feels gross. I still cannot imagine using the words "obey," "disobey," "obedient," "disobedient" with Elle. It makes me so physically uncomfortable.

Is it only semantics? Do I just have negative memories associated with those terms? If I use words like "listen," "trust," and "boundaries" instead, does that solve the problem for me?

Yes...but maybe because the connotations and nuances of those words are actually important. To me, obedience has connotations of being on a power trip. A parent makes rules and gets to punish you if you break them. Powerful, powerless. Stronger, weaker. Are the rules there for the child's safety? Yeah—theoretically. I think they're for other reasons more often than adults care to admit, and maybe that's what puts me off.

When kids are "obedient," parents sometimes treat it like a flex. I remember being told a story of someone declaring that he wouldn't stand for his kids to obey someone else better than they obey him. As a result of this declaration, parents in that father's circle suddenly started requiring their kids to use "sir" and "ma'am" when they hadn't before.

Gross. I'm all for southern manners, but that reaction feels so parent-ego-stroking it borders on dom/sub behavior.*

Maybe I'm more sensitive to power dynamics than the average person. (Enneagram Eight much?) Power is intoxicating—corrupting, even. God is Good enough to handle it; people are not—I am not. I need to be very, very careful that I don't become drunk on my role as a parent and use my power to tread on Elle's personhood for the sake of ego or convenience. I do not want her to "obey" me; I want her to trust me. 

However, I also want her to STOP immediately when I say "STOP" so she doesn't get hit by a car.

If we don't want adults to be "obedient" (with synonyms like docile, compliant, submissive) per se, what do we want them to be? What's the healthy, grown-up version of "obedient"? Words like reliable and thoughtful and wise come to my mind. I want to raise Elle to do what she says she will do, to consider how her actions will affect herself and others, and to use good judgment. I hear an argument that the way we train children to develop these attributes is to require obedience of them when they're young. I hear it.

I hear it.

Sigh.

So...where does that leave us? The middle of the Jungle of Parenting, I guess, where only half the mushrooms are edible and the animals might eat you.

I don't think you need to worry that Gabe and I are going to raise a feral brat (even accounting for the We Won't Make Our Daughter Apologize post), although I suppose only time will tell.

🫡 Stephanie out.

~Stephanie

* I do not feel this way about teaching your kids to use "sir" and "ma'am" in general. However, hearing about a parent's requirement of insta-obedience and submission-flavored language and thinking "Ooh, that sounds nice to implement in my home too" hits different.