The Ten Commandments Part 3

The Ten Commandments

Part 3

Exodus 20:12, “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

Deuteronomy 5:16, “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

“Honor your father and your mother:” Honor, a term of tribute. Leviticus 19:3, “You shall each revere your mother and father.” Honoring your parents is to revere them, to regard them with great respect and treat them to standards of conduct that reflect reverence and high regard by fulfilling the obligations due them.

Why honor parents: it is fitting that every person realizes that his or her parents are the cause of his or her being in the world. The parents labored through many thousands of hours over each child from birth to early adulthood. Yes, there are many joys but also many times of troubles and worries. Hence, it is proper for a child to give parents every honor and every benefit that he or she can. This honor is basic to the integrity of the family and the stability of society as well as generational continuity.

Actions demonstrate honor: The Bible explicitly requires honor and respect in relations to God and parents. Honor is a duty, an obligation for parents and child. Parents must train and coach their child to establish habits, attitudes and actions of honor and respect for God and parents. That must go hand in hand with parental actions that demonstrate honor and respect for their child. Proper language is a powerful teacher. From the time the child begins to talk, little things like teaching your child to say please and thank you, to answer adults’ questions with Yes sir, No sir, and Yes ma’am, and No ma’am are a beginning of that teaching. As the child grows, he or she may disagree with his or her parents or other people from time to time; teach them to respectful disagree. A part of respectfully disagreeing is patiently listening to those with whom he or she disagrees. Parents are to teach their child to forgive freely those who do make mistakes including forgiving themselves. Gentle correction of a child’s mistakes are a part of them learning honor. Later in life, circumstances change. Duty requires that the child have to make sure that the parents have enough to eat, have a safe home and have transportation when needed. If parents can do these things for themselves and afford their needs, the child is not obligated to provide or pay for parents’ comforts. In fact, parents feel better when they can support themselves physically and financially. If that is getting just too hard for the grown child to do, he or she must find other ways to assist even it means get hiring help.

A child is not quarrel with his or her parents. There is always a respectful way to discuss issues. “I cannot approve of you doing that, Dad!” is also disrespectful. Mom and dad do not require your approval. Unless they ask you to, do not call—or even refer—to your parents by name, even posthumously: they are mom and dad. If your parents are psychologically unstable, a child must still respect them. A child is also obligated to respect stepparents, parents-in-law, grandparents and older siblings.

“As the LORD your God commanded you:” He is serious. Parents are the vice-regents of the Heavenly Father. From the parents is where the child learns obedience and how ladies and gentlemen are to conduct themselves. It is a mistake to view civil authority as superior to parental authority when just the opposite is true. Acknowledgement of parental authority reinforces the fabric of human society, makes possible the transmission of values and the progress of humanity.

From Exodus, “so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” and, from Deuteronomy, “it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” These phases, in slightly different wordings, occur at least twenty-five times in the Bible. The meaning is simple: obeying God’s Commandments so that you may live, prosper, prolong your days and have a positive effect on the nation in which you live. I contend that if the majority of the people of the world lived by these commandments, the world would be a far happier place—more of that later.

I have given you a brief overview of the Fifth Commandment. Now we look at some of the effects of following God’s law: This commandment is comprehensive in that its application for child’s behavior toward his or her parents is different at different ages; dependence of the child on the parents’ changes over time to dependence of the parents on the child. Honoring parents will involve different acts and modes of being as the child grows and the parents’ age for the situation of a child of five with parents that are in their twenties is different than that of a child of fifty-five with parents that are in their seventies. Situations change even beyond that. Perhaps the father is deceased, and the mother is alone, this commandment demands taking such changes in circumstances into account. The shift in responsibility incumbent upon child and parents governs the responsibility in a given relationship that one did not create but cannot abandon. Being a child puts one in a relational category, not an age category.