Exo 20:12 - "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you."
Deut 5:16 - "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you."
The verb kabbed, 'honour,' derives from a root whose basic meaning is 'to be heavy, weighty.' To honour one's parents is, therefore, to give them their right due. The family and home is the germinal formative unit of our growth as persons. What we become finds its foundations there. To honour our parents is to acknowledge their place in our personhood, a precursory act to acknowledging God's place in our life, an observation already latent in Lev 19:32's conjoining respect for the elderly and reverence for God ("Rise in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am Yahweh."). The respect due to parents is theirs by divine right, not a privilege they need to earn. So serious is this regard for parents in Yahweh's eyes that rebellion against one's parents constitutes an evil to be purged by stoning to death (21:18-21).
In the light of such modern psycho-social concepts as role-reversal and "parents-as-friends," it is important for us to remember that our parents will always be our parents and must be treated as such. Although caring for our aged and physically disadvantaged parents can often be trying and exhausting, our parents never ever become our children whom we may scold and 'discipline.' And those of us privileged enough to have parents who become our best friends need also to remember that there is never any moment in life when we cease to be children upon whom this commandment bears.
Just as importantly, we must not confuse this commandment with the very Asian culture of filial piety. While valuable for the richness it imparts to family relationships, filial piety can easily slide us into a bondage to our parents that obstructs the way to obeying God. Jesus exemplifies this balance in his life and teaching. He condemns the hypocritical practice of denying to one's parents their support on the pretext that what is due them is "Corban" (Mt 15:3-10; Mk 7:6-13). He also appoints "the disciple whom he loved" to care for his mother even as he awaits his death on the cross (Jn 19:26-27). On the other hand, he asserts a prior claim on our loyalty over that of our parents that is categorical, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me . . ." (Mt 10:37).
As Paul has observed, this "the first commandment with a promise" (Eph 6:2). In fact, it is the only commandment—at least, if we are thinking within the context of the Ten Commandments—with a promise, "so that you may live long in the land Yahweh your God is giving you," which is emphasized in Deuteronomy with the motivational clause, "that it may go well with you." However we may explain the promise, or explain it away, by sociological and psychological expositions, we only need to observe the relationships of the family members in families with strong traditions of honouring the parents and those of families that do not to appreciate the logic of this promise.
For those of us who are parents, we should also remember that the honour due us from our children is only 'one side of the coin.' If we believe that our children should honour us as parents, it is also our responsibility to not to make it trying for them to do so by exemplifying a life of godliness, of genuine care and love. It is according to this logic that Paul reminds the Ephesian Christians, "Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" immediately after calling on them to honour their fathers and mothers (Eph 6:2-3).
In the preaching, teaching and practice of this commandment, it is easy to forget that "father and mother" includes "father-in-law" and "mother-in-law." One of the most powerful and soul-warming re-application of this commandment that my wife and I have witnessed was when, at the wedding dinner, our friends, Paul and Vivien, publicly charged their son, the bridegroom, to honour and care for his new, and long-widowed, mother-in-law as he would his own mother. Even if we dismiss half of the nasty stories told about mothers-in-law as false, and half of the rest as suspicious, it still leaves plenty enough to suggest that honouring and loving our parents-in-law (which, in a marriage, always means the briegroom's parents as well as the bride's) is not always an easy thing. It sometimes requires grace that only God can give, but it can make a world of a difference if a husband is pepared to recognize that it is his responsibility to "leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh" (Gen 2:24), that it is his responsibility to recognize where the proper boundaries should be drawn between honouring his parents and loving and cleaving his wife.
Paul's and Vivien's example also reminds us that bad-mouthing the fathers and mothers of our children's spouses is just as potent a transgression of this commandment, for few things can so easily poison their relationships with our children and curtail our children honouring them than what we say about them. Of this far too many of us who have married children are guilty, and we need to repent and begin to honour our in-laws both for the glory of God and the sake of our children.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2013