At Times It Can Be Difficult to see the practical implications of some parts of scripture. There should be no difficulty, however, in finding the practical and everyday implications of God’s command to honor our father and mother. It is a righteous thing to honor our fathers and mothers. It is an unrighteous act to dishonor them. Simply put, that is the message.
A fundamental command
From our youth we are taught that the two most important laws in the Old Testament are:
Hear, 0 Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Dent. 6:4-5).
Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD (Lev. 19:18).
To honor our father and mother requires that we adhere to both of these commandments. If we hold a grudge against our parents and therefore refuse to honor them, we are in serious jeopardy of also dishonoring God.
See how Jesus makes this very point in Matthew 15:1-7.
Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”
Jesus replied:
And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, “Honor your father and mother” and “Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.” But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father with it.” Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites!
Go through the scriptures and tell me if you can find one reference relating to washing hands before eating a common meal. The washing of hands was a matter of tradition, what Jews call the Oral Law. The Oral Law was a long list of traditions not necessarily found in the Law of Moses, which were administered in Jesus’ time by the Pharisees. The law concerning washing hands is found in the Mishnah (the written version of the Oral Law), Book 1 and chapter 40.
Jesus responds to the Oral Law by using The Law of Moses, God’s actual law. He not only turns to the Law of Moses, but to the ten commandments, which were considered the pinnacle of the Law of Moses. The point of this is to show the Pharisees that their entire definition of defilement and righteousness was skewed. They could point out and follow a tradition that involved nothing more than rule-following. When it came to something like giving honor to your mother and father, however, they failed. The reason they failed is because to honor your father and mother isn’t just a matter of following rules. Honoring your parents takes a righteous and consistent character. It takes a respect and sense of duty toward your parents and also toward God. In Jesus’ words, honoring your father and mother is also to honor God. We know this because in Matthew 15:8-9 Jesus quotes from Isaiah 29:13 and says:
These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.
If we want to honor God, we should start by honoring our parents. If we don’t honor our parents but profess God, we too become hypocrites.
How to honor parents
Why would we not honor our parents? It’s worth asking. The most common reason I’ve heard is because they have done something that has made them unworthy. We need to look no further than Leviticus 19:18, a passage I mentioned earlier. We all know about loving your neighbor as yourself, but do we know the words which immediately proceed that command?
Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people but love your neighbor as yourself I am the LORD
We are left without excuse. Who are “our people” if not our family? Most strongly, the term could be applied to our actual family, and then also to our spiritual family. Is our revenge against our parents to not do what they say? Are we holding a grudge against our parents because they have made mistakes? This is not what God requires.
By adhering to a tradition and dismissing righteous behavior the Pharisees defiled themselves. They were unclean. We shouldn’t repeat the same mistake. Honoring your father and mother isn’t a rule (such as the Pharisees loved), it is a way of life. If we want to be righteous, let us start with having a righteous attitude toward our family and by practicing our love on them. Let us get so good at giving love to our families that we cannot help but carry it over to the rest of our relationships, including our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
In a few of the articles I hope to give practical ways to honor our father and mother. Here are a few obvious ones to start.
Jesus has given us a good head start with ways we can go about honoring our father and mother. When they get older we should provide for them. I’m assuming that most of us reading this article aren’t at that point yet, but it’s something to remember. What are some other practical ways we can honor our father and mother?
- Listen to them. When your mom and dad tell you something, be quiet and listen. Don’t be so quick to respond and be defensive. Assume for a second that they have a good reason for saying what they do.
- Tell your parents you love them. Our parents are not army generals and honoring them isn’t like following a commanding officer’s order. Our parents love us. If we can appreciate that fact, then we can realize that the things they tell us to do are done for our benefit, even if we can’t always understand how. So tell Mom and Dad you love them. More than that, give them a hug and a kiss as well.
- Be honest with your parents. We want our parents to trust us. Most likely if they trust us they will allow us to make more of our own decisions. The key to starting that trust is to be honest with your parents. Tell them about what’s going on in your life. Tell them about where you’re going and when you expect to be back. Then live up to your word. Your parents would much rather trust you than worry about you, so the more honest you are with them, the happier your relationship will be.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One