I saw it again just recently at the grocery store. Down the aisle, a child wanted something off the shelf; her mother told her “No.” The child was not happy with the decision and she let the entire store know—“pitching a fit” would be a mild description. Had I not witnessed the whole thing, I would have been running to the child to save her from suffering major harm to her person. As it turned out, I hurried to get away from the embarrassing scene.

Several aisles away, I could not only hear the little child still screaming, but I could hear her telling her mother why she was wrong to not let her have what she wanted. I asked myself, Who should I feel more sorry for, the parent or the child?

What do you think?

What I witnessed at this store was not a one-off occurrence. It happens regularly in many public places, with a majority of families. Disobedient, unruly children with foul attitudes are a plague across the globe. The fulfillment of Isaiah 3:12 stares us in the face and shouts in our ears.

Family life—two loving parents rearing happy, loving, positive, productive and obedient children—is vanishing right before our eyes. Can anything be done about it?

Yes! And it starts with us, the members of God’s Church. We are—or should be—experts at building loving obedience in our children.

Obedience: The Whole Duty

I am very thankful that God brought my wife and me into His Church within a year of being married. Our first daughter, Rachel, was born about four months after my wife was baptized. We had the wonderful advantage of God’s revealed knowledge on proper child rearing from the very start of our parenting career. For us, raising children has been wonderful. We have loved every day of it, even the tough ones.

I can honestly say that it was rare that our children disobeyed us in public. Why? We taught our children to obey us—everywhere. God taught us, through Herbert W. Armstrong’s teachings and Gerald Flurry’s example, that the overall goal of child rearing is to teach children loving obedience toward parents and authorities like God’s ministers. Child rearing is not meant to make things convenient for adults. God designed it to ensure every child achieves his or her incredible human potential.

Loving obedience means that your child comes to love you so much, that he or she wants to obey you, even when they disagree with you. Anyone can enforce strict, unquestioned obedience—like an animal trainer does a dog.

However, only God’s people, using the child-rearing principles found in the Bible and the power of God’s Holy Spirit, can produce lovingly obedient children.

King Solomon, one of the wisest men to live prior to Jesus Christ, wrote: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). This verse gives us the bedrock foundation for all proper child rearing. God put man on Earth—into Satan’s evil clutches—so we could learn the importance of obeying Him. Satan and his demons are proven rebels. They chose to be wickedly disobedient to God ages ago (Isaiah 14:12-14; 2 Peter 2:4). Satan failed to maintain the government of God on Earth and destroyed the angelic opportunity to help God rule the universe.

God plans to reestablish His government on Earth through human beings. Through the conversion process, all men will have the opportunity to prove their willingness to obey God. Jesus Christ set the perfect example. Formerly the Eternal God, He came to Earth, lived as a human being and learned obedience (John 1:1-14; Hebrews 5:8). He overcame Satan’s well-established, disobedient lifestyle, qualifying Him to rule the world and the universe (Revelation 3:21). We must do the same.

This is the reason why teaching obedience to your child is so important. When you teach your child to lovingly obey you, you are preparing your child for conversion. This is an incredibly serious responsibility. Teaching obedience is labor-intensive, time-consuming, blood-sweat-and-tears hard work. Yet, the vision of where child rearing takes your child makes it worth all the effort.

Start Young

The Bible is chock full of examples of men and women who did not obey God: Adam, Eve, Cain and Nimrod, to name a few. King Saul’s tragic history with disobedience is especially important for us because we are king-priests in training (Revelation 1:6). This makes our children princes and princesses (Psalm 45:16). What a future we will share with our children!

King Saul tried to excuse his own disobedience. Samuel would not allow him to do that. “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,” Samuel said. “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:22-23). Saul lost his kingdom, his opportunity to rule for God, and most likely his salvation—because of his careless disobedience.

Jesus Christ will not let any parent make excuses for their own, or their child’s, disobedience. Do we see that obedience is an eternal life-and-death matter?

To teach loving obedience, each parent must first be lovingly obedient toward God. Is obedience to God the bedrock foundation of your spiritual life? Do you have a personal, daily focus on being obedient to God? When you do, your child will want to imitate your example. Little children are great imitators.

“Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it” (Deuteronomy 6:1). Moses emphasized obedience with the generation of Israelites ready to step into the Promised Land. These Israelites are a type of us. Remember, their fathers, mothers and leaders died in the wilderness because of their disobedient hearts (Numbers 14:28-29). “That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged,” continued Moses. The new generation of Israelites had to be obedient to God and his laws if the nation were to survive and thrive.

Even more, Moses showed them that their obedient example would have a major impact on their young children’s success. Moses wanted no more “wilderness years.” In order to prevent something like that from happening again, the parents of the new generation had to start teaching their children from a very young age. Obedience to God and His laws was their children’s only true defense against national failure.

Start young. Don’t wait until your child is a teenager to begin teaching obedience. Start today and be consistent every day after. You must establish the habit of obedience in your child by age 5. Once the habit of obedience is well established, it will be much easier to establish other necessary habits such as cleanliness, good grooming, thrift, self-discipline, etc. Put your faith in Proverbs 22:6.

Be Diligent Daily

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Here, Moses provides us the only successful strategy for establishing loving obedience in a child. Notice that there are two major steps outlined here.

To teach loving obedience, you must be actively and lovingly involved with your child on a daily basis—for a large part of the day! Teaching obedience is a 24/7 job. There are no shortcuts. Jesus Christ used Mr. Armstrong to reveal that a major part of the Elijah work is to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers …” (Malachi 4:6). Absentee parents are sure to bring curses upon themselves and their children. How much time are you spending with your child each day?

In a sermon, Joel Hilliker mentioned a 1970 study to find out how much time fathers spent with their sons and daughters each day. Men were asked to estimate how much time they spent with their children. The average response was 15 to 20 minutes. However, the study showed the average daily time with dad was 37 seconds.

The parents of God’s Church must be different. Keep track of your time with your child for one week—you may be surprised to learn that you need to be spending a lot more time with him or her.

Moses shows that to prevent family curses, parents must have a diligent and daily plan to teach obedience. He paints such a beautiful picture of a World-Tomorrow kind of family for us in verses 6 and 7. Can you catch that vision?

How often do you talk to your children about God, His plan for man and, specifically, His plan for them? We must stress that God’s plan has everything to do with being obedient. We should never be embarrassed to talk about God with our children.

To teach loving obedience, you should be actively looking for ways to bring God into your children’s lives. Think and plan ahead so you make God real to them. As Moses says, you should talk to them when you are sitting down at the breakfast, lunch or dinner table. These are perfect times to tell even the smallest children that God blesses us with healthy foods because we obey Him. And He will bless them with many other good things when they obey you.

We should be illustrating how God’s laws benefit our children and protect them when we are out conducting our activities in Satan’s world. Bedtime is the perfect time to talk about how God protects us because we obey him. You need to tell your child that he is protected from harm when he obeys you. Be sure to talk to your child at the start of every day. Rehearse with them how God will help with any problem they encounter, if they ask to and trust Him. Remind them constantly that God looks after all those who obey Him.

This does not mean that you should be constantly preaching to your child. However, it does mean that you should never miss an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson. God, the perfect Parent, is daily working with and teaching you. In the same way, love your child enough to pass the lessons you are learning on to them.

Build Wisdom

Mr. Flurry has emphasized that the successful formula for effective child rearing is 85 percent love, 10 percent teaching and 5 percent correction in love. It is a proven formula. My wife and I were able to observe Mr. Flurry rear his children for nine years. We witnessed the fruits. We worked very hard to imitate him, and we experienced the same fruits. Use this formula, and you will gain fruits in your child rearing. Your children will become happier, more positive and successful. Believe me, your child will love you for your effort.

To build loving obedience, you must become a teacher. Do not leave your child’s education to some other adult. It is your God-ordained responsibility to educate your child. This does not mean that you cannot use other adults to help teach your children the fundamentals: reading, writing and arithmetic, but your child’s character development, obedience and self-discipline is your sole responsibility.

God has provided you the perfect character-building instruction book: the Holy Bible. Start your obedience training with the book of Proverbs, especially chapters 1 through 5. These chapters establish human beings’ critical need for obedience. You should read and study them thoroughly. They will convict you to get motivated to help your child.

Then begin talking to your child in the same way that God inspired Solomon to talk to you. Solomon spoke for God and showed that obedience opens up wisdom, understanding and eternal life-saving knowledge for you and your child (Proverbs 2:1-5).

Take Ample Time

To build loving obedience, you must teach at the time you discipline your child. The number one mistake I see many parents make is not taking enough time to explain to their children why they need to be disciplined. Spanking without teaching builds bitterness in your child. Get it clear in your mind that disciplining in love involves loving instruction. This begins long before a spanking.

For example, when our children were toddlers and could get around on their own, my wife and I established between us the ground rules of how things were going to be run in the home. These were simple, easy-to-understand rules: no climbing on the end tables or coffee table; no playing with house plants or decorations; no playing with television or stereo knobs, etc. We then took our children to each location and taught them what we expected. When our daughters were especially young, we simply pointed to an item and said, “No, you cannot touch this.” We knew our children would test us, but we were ready for them.

When our children disobeyed us and I was home from work, I would take them to a quiet place—away from the rest of the family—and I would talk with them in a calm, deliberate manner. I would explain why I needed to discipline them. I would explain that they had disobeyed us. However, not only would I talk about the infraction, I would tell them that they had to learn to obey me in all things so that they could learn to obey God. After I administered the spanking (always in keeping with the seriousness of the infraction), I left the child to spend some time alone so they could think about what they had done and the result of their action.

After a brief amount of time, I always went back to the child and asked her to repeat what I had discussed with her. I made sure she understood why she had been disciplined. Then I poured on the hugs and told her how much I loved her, and that is why I spanked her. I always reassured her that I knew she would do better. My wife would do the same when I was not at home. And they did do better because of consistent, loving discipline.

This effort took a lot of time. Yet I knew that is what was required of me as a father. However, I did notice that after the habit of obedience was established, I had to spend less time disciplining, and I could spend more time teaching at meal times and during family Bible studies.

This is a proven method that works. It will work for you if you use it.

So, whom did I feel more sorry for at the grocery store on the day of the incident? I felt terribly bad for the child because she was not learning loving obedience. Please, take the time to teach your child loving obedience. The whole world will love your for it! And, most of all, so will your child.