10 God And The Family
After four commandments about God’s direct claims come six on duty toward others. The first of these is, “Honor your father and your mother.”
RESPECT FOR PARENTS
Scripture stresses the responsibility of parents to train their children, and children to honor their parents. In the Old Testament, disrespect for parents was a major sin: one who cursed a parent could be executed (Exodus 21:17; Leviticus 20:9), and Ham was punished for mocking his father Noah as the latter slept off the effects of potent homemade wine (Genesis 9:20–27). In the New Testament, Jesus flays the Pharisees for claiming to keep the fifth commandment while actually breaking it by leaving parents destitute (Matthew 15:3–9), and disobedience to parents betokens decadence and apostasy (Romans 1:30; 2 Timothy 3:2).
Why does God highlight the duty to “love, honour, and succour my father and mother” (as the Catechism puts it)? For many reasons.
First, the family is the basic social unit; no nation is stable or virile where family life is weak.
Second, the family is the basic spiritual unit, in which God makes parents their children’s pastors and teachers.
Third, children do in fact owe their parents a huge debt of gratitude for years of care and provision.
Fourth, children need parental guidance more than they know, and impoverish themselves by rejecting it. The long life promised in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16 to those who honor their parents is not guaranteed to any Christian, but it remains true that children who flout their parents suffer loss. They forfeit a degree of human maturity and make it harder for themselves to honor a Father in heaven.
Fifth, in pre-social security days the aged had only their own children to provide for them; and even in the welfare state aging parents need their children’s loving concern, just as the children once needed their parents’ care.
GOD AND FAMILIES
None of this, of course, justifies parental tyrannizing or possessiveness or requires children to bow to either. “Do not exasperate your children . . . [and you] must not goad your children to resentment, but give them the instruction, and the correction, which belong to a Christian upbringing” (Colossians 3:21; Ephesians 6:4, NEB). Should one’s parents impede one’s disciple-ship, disobedience to parents would become a necessary evil.
But what we must realize is that God, who is himself a father—the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and of all Christians through him—cares about families enormously. Family life, with its built-in responsibilities for both parents and children, is part of his purpose for all, and the way we behave as children and parents is a prime test of both our humanity and our godliness. Love—the caring love of parents who respect their children and want to see them mature and the grateful love of children who respect their parents and want to see them content—is our great need here.
What we must realize is that God, who is
himself a father-the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ and of all Christians through
him-cares about families enormously.
How urgent it is in these days that parents and children together should relearn the ways of Christian family life. In the West, yesterday’s extended family has shrunk to today’s nuclear family; social security and community affluence have reduced the family’s importance as an economic unit; and all this has weakened family relationships. Parents are too busy to give time to their children, and young people, identifying with current “youth” culture, are more prone than ever to write off their parents as clueless old fuddy-duddies. But the fifth commandment recalls us to God’s order at this point.
Honestly, now, what is, or has been, your attitude to your parents? Honoring them means respecting them, so to speak, for their office, their relationship to you, just as we should respect clergymen and public officials whatever we think of their personal limitations or private lives. A school contemporary of mine carved out a brilliant academic career but grew ashamed of his parents (his father was a baker) and would not visit them or let them visit him. As in a pre-pension age the Pharisees let folk duck out of financial responsibility for parents (Jesus savaged them for it; see Mark 7:6–13), so people today duck the task of caring for parents who can no longer care for themselves. But none may claim to love their neighbor while they shrug off their parents. Some of us have some repenting to do.
Further Bible Study
Pattern for families:
• Colossians 3:18-21 (cf. Ephcsians 5:21-6:4)
How Jesus honored his mother:
•John 2:1-11; 19:25-27
Questions for Thought and Discussion
• Why can't a nation be strong if family life in it is weak?
• How is knowledge of God's fatherhood a help to parents?
• In what way is the home a testing-ground?
You shall not murder.
EXODUS 20:13