I have heard a lot of people--both on and off the 'net--argue that the Ten Commandments are universal, that they do not reflect the values of a particular community, belief system, or religion. To be honest, I think that many conservative Christians--and pseudo-Christians--are more interested in reducing the effect of Darwinistic teaching in the public school system than they are in acknowledging a very inconvenient truth: that the Ten Commandments were, and are, testimony to the character and purity of the God who uttered them on Mount Sinai 3000 years ago.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know that those of you out there who, as upstanding citizens, want to use any legal means available to return America's public educational institutions to a pristine era when we did not hear the words "Darwin," "evolution," or "Big Bang Theory" will be disappointed at the above paragraph, but the fact is that according to the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, the Ten Commandments were delivered from the mouth of the God of the Bible. It was with this understanding that they were written down in the first place, and the ancient Hebrew culture which recited these words generation after generation had no concept of their being divorced from the primacy of the Hebrew God. Their relevance to a secular culture which is interested only in indoctrinating its children in the principles of material acquisition is of little importance (after all, as I have stated several times in this blog, the commandments were given to the "chosen people," not to all the nations of the Earth). However, if one calls oneself a Christian, and claims the name of Christ, one should be aware that the same Christ who said "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28) was--and is--part of the Godhead that spoke to Moses from the burning bush one thousand years earlier and said, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).
It is with this in mind that I begin my post on the Fifth Commandment, one which breaks my heart personally more than any other commandment the Christian culture in the United States has seen fit to throw aside. As a new husband, as a new father, I understand more keenly than I ever could have understood as a single man the weight of responsibility that is on my shoulders . . . a responsibility that, it seems, too many practicing Christians are willing to encourage their brethren to forsake.
Without further ado, let us look at the text of the Fifth Commandment itself:
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12
There are three portions of this verse that are crucial to our understanding of what it says:
1. "Honor . . . "
I took the opportunity to look this word up in Strong's concordance, and among other things, the Hebrew word translated "honor" in Exodus 20:12 also means "to reward." Ladies and gentlemen, our ancestors--and more importantly, the generations of Israelites who recited these words--knew well what it was to "reward" a parent for raising and taking care of his/her children. Multiple generations lived in the same house for thousands of years in ancient Israel, and among the Jews scattered around the world in the wake of the Diaspora, and it was normal not only for parents to house, clothe, feed, and train their children but for them also to feed and care for their own parents in turn. A man or woman who had grown too old for manual or intellectual labor in the nation of Israel had a place in society as a grandparent cared for in his/her children's home.
Sadly, we do not have the same values today.
The United States has become a land where the elderly are shut up in institutions that resemble insane assylums--and here again, the Christian community is to blame. A hundred years ago, men like Andrew Murray and women like Lilias Trotter would have been horrified at the very idea that a family would not take care of its elderly and invalid parents, siblings, and relatives, but their descendants seem to have uttered little more than polite chirps when an increasingly mechanized society decided that the time for America's aged and infirm to live in families had come to an end. Today, it is common practice for pastors, radio evangelists, and Christian counselors to recommend the institutionalization of elderly family members when they become, in conventional financial terms, a burden too great to bear.
2. " . . . your father and your mother . . . "
Ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that you understand one thing: This commandment was not written to children who were raised in pagan households, to children whose parents were selfish or abusive, or to children of dysfunctional homes. This commandment was written to a people that the Lord had selected, ransomed out of a nation that had held them captive, and nurtured through their travels on the way to the land of Canaan. It was written to a people whose families--unlike many in our culture today--consisted of a father, a mother, and children (along with servants and animals). More to the point, it was written to a people who had been "redeemed" (as believers in Christ have been redeemed) and set apart by the Lord (as believers in Christ have been set apart by the Lord) for His special purposes.
Some of you out there are reading this blog, and your experience of family and parenting is a far cry from praiseworthy--beatings, verbal abuse, molestation, and the list goes on and on. To you, I would say that it is more important to forgive your parents than to honor them. After all, if they did nothing to aid in preparing you for a life in Christ Jesus, then it really is more of a matter of forgiveness than honor, isn't it?
However . . .
If, as was the case for me, your family was a Christian family, and they nurtured and encouraged you and taught you, even if badly, the nature and character of Christ, then you are not exempt from honoring them--either with your words or with your actions. For believers in Christ who grew up in families that honored Christ, this is a standing order, and it brooks no exceptions.
I will go on record at this point and say that my parents made a great many serious mistakes in raising me. For one thing, they trusted in the capability of social institutions--public education, church, and entertainment corporations--to instill righteous values in the heart of a child. For another, they were extremely negligent in training me to approach the practical aspects of life with care and energy. These oversights were serious, and devastating, to the point that I have had to go through a veritable deprogramming regime in order to understand them for what they are and (with prayer and patience) overcome them.
I cannot say, however, that my parents did not love me, that they did not provide a secure home for me, and that I was not encouraged to be the best that I could be when I was growing up. My mom and dad were not pagans or atheists or anti-Christians, they were never dependent on drugs or alcohol, and they have never, ever been separated (let alone divorced). I may not have had the perfect home as a boy--far from it--but I did not grow up in a bad or dysfunctional home, and I can thank my parents for that, in word and deed.
3. " . . . so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you"
There are 2 principles here in this last section: one is physical/social, and the other is spiritual.
1. the physical/social
Let's be honest here: The reason your parents get to tell you what to do is because (1) they have lived longer than you have, (2) they have faced more struggles than you have, and (3) they know better than you what to do when life throws you one of its curves. Parental discipline is not a bludgeon intended to destroy the spirit and liveliness of a child--it is instead a surgical instrument designed to train a child to approach the world in a practical, logical, and resourceful manner. The end product that any decent parent--regardless of his/her beliefs about God--aims for is to see a child raising a family of his/her own.
I would say that approximately 75% of the families in this world prioritize the physical/social needs of their children--they want their children to be effective leaders in their societies, to raise decent families of their own, and to live rich and full lives. It may even surprise you to learn that both churchgoing Christians and mosque-attending Muslims understand keenly the concept of the man as the spiritual leader of the family, and this concept is shared by many of the other religions of the world as well.
2. the spiritual
What I am talking about in regards to the spiritual development of a child is this: Has that child been prepared to receive, intelligently, Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior?
Ladies and gentlemen, a lot of people have taken the idea of raising one's children to receive Christ as Lord and Savior as a process of indoctrination, but I am talking about something different here. Instead, I am talking about the character of a man or woman's parenting--discipline, nurture, and inspiration, not just Bible education. Does your mother and father's parenting style reflect the gentleness and purity of Christ? If so, how have you responded?
We live in a society that destroys, in its mechanistic zeal, every notion of what our ancestors of generations ago would have called "family." We put our children in public school for 8 hours a day, eating substandard food and listening to substandard instruction, then chase it down with a healthy dose of television at night and on the weekends, simply because we're too busy with our two incomes and two car garages and white picket fences . . . or is it because we simply don't want the bother of having to spend so much time with our children?
I mourned, along with my wife, the days when she and I were a couple and the Lord had not yet blessed us with a child because I know, having helped raise my nephews, that parenthood is a set of responsibilities more overwhelming than I could fathom. My wife and I will no longer be able to use profanity, to indulge ourselves with morally questionable forms of entertainment, to spend our time and energy as we wish. Instead, we will walk into parenting with the full knowledge that children--and the correct raising of children--will require more sacrifice in terms of money, time, energy, and personal resources than we can possibly imagine.
We are walking into the journey of parenthood with the fear of the Lord guiding us at every step . . . but it is there that our responsibility ends. If we have raised our child in the way the Lord wants us to raise it, if we have listened to the leading of the Lord and have obeyed His will for us as a family, then it will be up to our children whether or not they accept the example of Christ set before them.
In the end, speaking as an expectant father, I know no better way for my child--or any child--to honor his/her father and mother than to become a true believer in Christ, and to live as Christ lived, pure and free, obedient to God even unto death.
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