Skip to main content

Children...


          Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and your mother" -- which is the first commandment with a promise -- " so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. (Ephesians 6"1-3)

          The moment you say something about how someone is supposed to behave in a relationship, you get the “But you don’t know my ________.” No, I don’t, and many of you didn’t know mine. The problem is that we are tempted to create a false dilemma: either we obey one hundred percent, or we obey zero percent. Either our parents are perfect and deserve our cooperation, or our parents are imperfect and therefore monsters deserving nothing.
          When Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement first started their movement, Dr. King provided guidelines to his followers. They were to obey the law except when that law was racially biased. Civil disobedience wasn’t anarchy. In fact, he told them that they weren’t to resist arrest. Penalties given them for their civil disobedience were to be accepted. In other words, they were to obey the law when they could, and when they couldn’t was to be the exception to the rule, rather than the rule. It was based on matters of principle, not ego.
          There are times when one needs to disobey a parent. The sad part is that most kids don’t have the wisdom to know when those times are. That’s why families need to be connected in a community, so that parents can learn, but also so parents can be monitored. Even this doesn’t guarantee that bad parents will be discovered and dealt with, but this commandment is dealing with the majority, not the exceptional cases.
          This passage is also difficult for adult children. The command to obey one’s parents doesn’t get revoked when a person reaches legal age. Even marriage doesn’t erase it. Keep in mind that a few verses back, we were told to submit to one another. That means adult children to parents, and parents to adult children. The goal doesn’t seem to be to have the right to dictate, but to submit, except, again, if that submission violates another principle God has taught us.
         One last idea here. This passage is about the behavior of children. “You don’t know my ________” ignores the opposite possibility, that it is the children who are being abusive, disobedient, destructive, hateful, etc. That’s what this passage is talking about, and that idea brings us back to the promise included with the commandment. A kid who grows up “good” and learns to cooperate with others is far more likely than the bully to have a life that goes well.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Saved?

  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:28-30) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ ” (Matthew 7:21-23) Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:4)   What conclusion do you draw when someone who was raised in a Christian family and church, perhaps even playing a significant role in a chur...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shepherd!

                 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep . (John 10:14) God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Genesis 3:14) The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths     for his name’s sake. Even though I walk     through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,     for you are with me; your rod and your staff,     they comfort me. (Psalm 23:1-4) For the Jews, it was politically incorrect to make claims about yourself as a teacher (or possibly as anything else.) Teachers were expected to take pride in the...
Post a Comment
Read more