In the list of rules for society that God gave as a good gift to His confused, rebellious, and self-destructive image bearers, the first to which He attached a promise is “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.”[1] Given the nature of these rules, one may ask whether this commandment elicits special blessings from the Creator directly, or merely activates innate blessings woven into His world and your soul. Answer: “YES!”
If you have any doubts about this “God-obviously-doesn’t-know-MY-parents” command, consider how hard tyrants work to break the parent-child bond, seducing children away in a hundred ways to turn them into “useful idiots” who destroy their own families. Even Aristotle noted the pattern. This sits at the soul of our millennia long battle against humanist hopes for Utopia, waged for over a century though the varied seductions of Marxism. The godless exploit every opportunity to turn each generation against previous generations. Doubt me? Just ask your “racist” “homophobic” “transphobic” “patriarchal” parents who don’t care enough about the environment and eat meat.
What then is the positive that God lays against so many negatives invented by the subversive to gain power? What is this “honoring” that God thought important enough to include among The Big Ten?
Let’s knock out two fictions. First, Paul quotes our passage and declares in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do.” This clearly makes obedience an essential part of honoring parents in childhood, but it neither demands obedience from adult children nor limits honoring parents to minor children. As with civil disobedience, even among children there are times where strict adherence to wicked demands by parents are superseded by commitments to the higher power of Christ.[2] The good news—or bad news if you were hoping to get off the hook on this thing—is that honoring mother and father is bigger than obedience, for adults are called to honor father and mother, and it can be accomplished even in the face of morally necessary resistance.
While so-called rational people see family connection as an accident of nature and, thus, nothing to get all worked up about, Christians should see family connection as vital. We should not only believe that God is sovereign (a theological statement acknowledging that God is in complete control), but also that His plan, though often mysterious to us, “work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”[3] These good purposes are partially represented in the essential command, “Honor your father and mother.”
Moses survived out of a generation of boys tossed by their parents into the Nile river at Pharaoh’s command. He led the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers of those murdered boys out of Egypt and into the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. And it was through THIS Moses that God commanded the Children of Abraham to honor their fathers and mothers that their days might be long upon the earth. What’s our excuse for refusing to honor our parents?
Some, no doubt, have some horrific stories to tell.
A friend of mine grew up with a single hippie mother who was a practicing witch. She saturated his life in drugs and immorality, and even threw orgies with him in the house, allowing others to abuse him. He found Christ through a church youth ministry and only this kept him sane in the midst of her insanity. When his mother’s health began to fail seriously, he wrestled with how he could honor God by honoring his mother without exposing his family to her influence. It grieved him that he did not have the kind of mother that could be a grandmother to his kids. But still, she was his mother, and he wanted to do right by her.
I could tell of another woman whose mother severely abused her and her siblings when they were growing up on a farm. She would beat them ‘til their eyes and ears bled. She’d make them kill their pets for displeasing her… and the things she did to those animals if they refused taught them early to put them down mercifully on command. Twice, her father came in from the fields to find that she’d put them all down for naps in their respective bedrooms and set the house on fire. Still, as a Christian, she has labored to make sure that her mother is housed, fed, and cared for.
And what could we say of the dangerous? Sexual predators? Severe addicts? Thieves and liars? All going by the names Mom or Dad? These are hard issues. They need prayerful meditation and wisdom from the Lord. But, somehow, someway, if for nothing other than being the vessels through whom we received life, God has called us to a response of “honor.” Thus, we should find gratitude where it can be found rather than drowning our souls in the ugliness and the lack that people without Christ often allow to consume not only their own lives, but the lives of their children as well.
Perhaps some of you are saying, “I’ve got them beat. Let me tell you about MY parent(s).” To you, I encourage that prayerful mediation. Ponder how you might use the command to honor in order to heal from the tortures your lost parents have laid against you?
Many, however, will feel a touch of shame for the lesser things that they have allowed to crowd out gratitude and to blossom into dishonor. Repent. Restore honor.
I can’t tell you what your specific situation may entail, but I can say, that your life will be better if you find a way to honor God in truly honoring what you can honor in your parents.
And if you have good parents, never forget what a blessing they are.
~Andrew D. Sargent
[1] Exodus 20:12.
[2] Mark 3:21, 31-35; Acts 4:1-20, 5:17-29; Daniel 3 & 6.
[3] Romans 8:28.
