Obedience--The "O" in SCORE

Here are my thoughts on Obedience--for our SCORE basketball league website.

This is not one of the most talked about character traits in America. It smacks itself up against our free-spirited, individualistic culture that tells us we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. When I tell people about SCORE and what it stands for, I almost cringe when I say, “O is for Obedience.” I don’t know what I’m expecting…some kind of parental backlash declaring, “My kid is not going to be a mindless drone, blindly obeying some harsh authoritarian dictator.”

So far, no one has said that. Maybe it’s just something in me that has a hard time with obedience. I don’t want my kids to be mindless drones, but obedience has become a very important rule in our home. It is almost impossible to run a peaceful household when there is no one in charge and everything is an argument. At the same time, I don’t want my kids to merely obey because I’m bigger than them and can take away their ipod if they don’t.

Obedience comes down to two issues: Authority and Trust.

If no one is in charge, you don’t need obedience. That works OK in certain situations, but when it comes to a basketball team, a coach takes on responsibility for making decisions that impact that team. In a family, parents take on responsibility for raising kids to be independent adults. When you join a team, you are placing yourself under the authority of the coach. When you take a job, you are under the authority of a boss. When you swim at the local pool, you are under the authority of the lifeguards. When you are born, you are under your parents’ authority. When we are kids, we are not offered a choice. Until we can be fully responsible for ourselves, our responsibility is to obey the ones who are responsible for us.

The second part of obedience has to do with trust. Of course, there is an obedience motivated by fear. It’s that kind of obedience that makes us hate the word. We’ve all encountered an authority figure that has inspired our outward obedience while inwardly shooting daggers with our hearts. At the end of the day, that is not what I want from my kids. I want them to be motivated to obey because they trust me. I want them to understand that everything I ask them to do has a purpose and that I have a bigger picture in mind than meeting their every demand or catering to their comfort.

Now I don’t actually expect my kids to understand this at the moment. In fact, I am sure that neither of our boys could articulate that they want to obey us because we are trustworthy and have their best interests at heart. We have to have a rule about obeying because it does not come naturally at all. For me, I try to recognize that when they struggle to obey I need to work on building their trust in me.

Here’s the flip side of that. When kids obey, it builds our trust in them. Let me give a coaching example. Bo was coaching a flag football team this fall and he noticed that the opposing team placed all of their good flag-pullers on the outsides of the field. In the huddle, Bo told the kid who was going to receive the hand-off to run straight down the middle. What Bo saw was that the kid with the ball was so quick that their inside guys didn’t have a chance at pulling his flag. What the kid saw was a bunch of kids right in front of him and some space on the outside.

The kid ran to the outside.

The other team got to him and pulled his flag. The play was over and they ended up losing the game.

I overheard Bo saying to this kid as they trotted off the field, “I need you to trust me.”

This kid chose not to trust the seeing eyes of the coach and obey. What that ended up meaning for him is that Bo lost trust in him. When a coach sees an opportunity, he wants to give it to the one who will follow through.

On a practical level, one thing we do is talk about the times that Bo and I choose to obey. I work at home so when my kids ask why I am doing something out of the ordinary I will tell them that I am doing it because my boss asked me to and it is important to obey so that she will trust me and value me as an employee. We talk about our faith in God and how we show our love by obeying His word. It’s tempting to give them false hope that one day when they are on their own they won’t have to obey anymore. It’s true that they won’t have to obey us, but obedience is a life long process with life long rewards.