How to Survive Your Parents

    The salvation of your children and family depend on two things: 1) your standing firm on principle, making principle unmistakably clear; and 2) their choosing to stand with you on the side of principle, it having been made clear to them. The choice must be theirs alone, for God wants volunteers, not conscripts. That is why you must get your own will in the matter out of the way.
     Remember that your family are moral beings with moral choices. You rob them of their chance to choose the right when, in your own desperation, you pressure, manipulate, oblige or in some way try to force them to be right. By such means you make them either rebel against you, or capitulate to you in meek surrender. What point is there in sweet-talking or forcing them into being good? If you do this, it is certainly not because you care for them, rather it is because you think by "saving" them you save yourself, or because your ego cannot bear another failure, or because you simply enjoy power. Such an attitude will make any marriage fail. Your family can see when your caring for them to be right is not for their sakes but for its reflection on you. It is desperation on your own account that changes you from a Mr. Nice into a Mr. Mean, trying to knock some sense into your family. I'm not saying that force should not be used at times-to keep your kids from going with bad company, for instance-but it must be a force in which they recognize love-a true, fatherly caring for them.
     Do you see now what I mean by expendable? If through pure intent you reveal what true caring for them is and your family responds favorably, their choosing right is good for them and naturally pleasing to you. But if they reject the persistent good you show them, too bad for them!

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