Submitting to Parents, Submitting to God

I knew that Michael Pearl tells his followers that their children must learn to submit to them or they won’t learn to submit to God, but the truth of this didn’t hit me until just now. Let me explain.

Here are things parents following the Pearls’ child training methods say to their children, and indeed things that were said to me growing up:

“Don’t ask questions, just obey.”

“Obedience is more important than understanding.”

“Just accept that we know better than you because we are older and wiser.”

Here are things I have heard fundamentalists and evangelicals say, and said myself when I was one of them:

“Don’t question God.”

“Faith is more important than knowledge.”

“Just accept that God knows better because he is God.”

It only makes sense that teaching children not to question their parents’ orders would carry over to helping them to not question God. It only makes sense that holding obedience to one’s parents as more important than understanding would carry over into religion. And that, quite simply, is why Michael Pearl says that children must learn to submit to their parents if they are to learn to submit to God.