At home and in Sunday School, children need to be taught the power of the Christ-spirit, which in turn will teach them how to uphold divine standards regardless of how far away from home they may be. This teaching provides an answer to the Psalmist's cry, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" Ps. 137:4 Shifting human values, changing circumstances, separation from one's familiar customs, do not interrupt the unchanging operation of the Christ, which Jesus exemplified so tenderly and mightily in his life.
Embodying the Christ-spirit gives us—parents and children—the moral might to stand firm for the truth. Mary Baker Eddy writes, "The entire purpose of true education is to make one not only know the truth but live it—to make one enjoy doing right, make one not work in the sunshine and run away in the storm, but work midst clouds of wrong, injustice, envy, hate; and wait on God, the strong deliverer, who will reward righteousness and punish iniquity." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 252 The Christ enables us to rely on the purity of spiritual thinking instead of becoming confused by worldly thinking, and to establish right habits of thought such as honesty, truthfulness, unselfishness.
Learning to be obedient to their parents is essential for children, but equally essential is obedience to God and an understanding of their relationship to Him. Parents and Sunday School teachers can guide children to God as their true Parent, their Father-Mother, and help them see themselves as God's immortal man, the image and likeness of Spirit. Because of this relationship, they are able to express love, thoughtfulness, patience, integrity. In this relationship to divine Love, children find the intelligence and courage with which to make good decisions.
