Honoring Your Parents
God's expectations for the family are based solidly upon Scriptural principles. We have already observed some of those principles in relation to heritage, but there is another basic principle which has suffered such neglect and abuse in Western society that we must pick it up here and consider it carefully. That is the principle of honoring parents.
Among the commands God gave to His people was one specifically related to families. "Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" (Exodus 20:12). Paul, writing to the Ephesians, notes that this is the only command of the ten to which a promise is attached. The promise has to do with well-being and long life. Inasmuch as life is a social existence, and inasmuch as the family is the basic social unit, it follows that our obedience or disobedience to a basic family principle will directly affect our lives.
What does it mean to honor our parents? Do Westerners generally honor their parents? Do Western Christians honor their parents? These are questions we must honestly face.
The Hebrew word for honor literally has the idea of heaviness. In verb form it means to give weight to, or to hold as significant or worthy in contrast to something light or frivolous. The practical outworking of such a high regard for parents is invariably associated with such things as obedience, helpfulness, and deference. Children do what their parents instruct them to do, help their parents with work and responsibility, and where there are differences of opinion about plans or desires, they yield to their parents.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that parents are to be honorable. That is, they are to be venerable, loving, and wise. The truth, however, is that all parents have faults and fall short of the ideal, and that some parents are actually unloving, foolish, and contemptible. Does a parent need to be honorable to be honored?
The direction God gives for children to honor their parents makes no exception for parents who are not honorable. In another authority relationship where God calls for honor, He says specifically, "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward [unreasonable]" (1 Peter 2:18). Young children do not grapple with whether they should obey or not. They tend to respond as their nature dictates. Older children and youths, however, begin to analyze their parents' performance as well as their own reasons for or against obeying. Those with Christian teaching struggle with this command of God in view of their imperfect parents. Three things must be kept in focus for those whose parents may not be honorable:
One must honor the position of a parent even when the parent does not seem deserving of honor. All authority rests in God. The position of parenthood with its responsibilities was given by God, and where parents are unfaithful in their responsibilities, they are unfaithful not simply to their children, but to God. By honoring the position of parents, children can leave in God's hands the task of rebuking, chastening, and correcting. With this view, one can say, "Even though my mother screams at me, she is still my mother. And I will try by God's grace to do cheerfully what she says."
The giving of honor is more dependent on the heart of the one honoring than the life of the one being honored. To honor parents, one must have an honoring heart, that is, a heart with the qualities suited to honoring. Such qualities include submission, love, faithfulness, meekness, wisdom, etc. Without these qualities, one would find it impossible to find a parent he could honor. With these qualities, one will find grace to honor the parents God has given.Since God commands honor to parents, and God is perfectly honorable, obedience and honor can be given to imperfect parents as obedience unto God. As long as we focus on the imperfections of earthly parents, honor will be difficult. But when we focus on the glory and perfection of our heavenly Father, we have no reasonable option but to honor Him. Since He told us to honor our parents, our honor and obedience to them can be viewed as honor and obedience to Him.
Many Christian young people struggle with practical questions about honoring their parents. They wonder HOW? Here are some specific suggestions for teens who are serious about giving honor:
Develop a conscious habit of expressing gratitude to your parents. When you begin to consider, you realize your parents have done, and continue to do for you, far more than you can ever calculate.
Discuss with your parents plans you are making. Share both short-range plans for the week and any long-range plans you may have for the next year, several years, or your life. Failure to communicate is one of the most common problems between teens and their parents.Ask for advice. Even if you think you know what your parents will say, ask them what they think. Many teens complain about overrestrictive parents, but probably the biggest cause of overrestriction in parents is underaccountability in teens. Initial advice from parents may not be intended to be the final word on an issue. If you have other thoughts, their advice provides a basis for you to discuss your view point with them. When it comes down to the final decision, of course, you will need to honor them. But even if this means you do not do what you had wanted to do, you will have gained respect and the benefit of further openness with them.
Value evenings at home. This will mean, especially in some communities, that you will not go to every activity available to you. Discuss with your parents a suitable schedule and then ask for advice when faced with schedule conflicts. Believe it or not, there will come a time (and shortly) when you will think back to evenings at home as a teen and wish that you could roll back time and just for one evening return.
Look for opportunities to do what is not asked. It is hard to describe all that happens when a task is done voluntarily as a gesture of kindness. The work becomes lighter, the worker is changed, and the one for whom it is done is affected. Parents find immeasurable joy in those who honor them in this way.
Honor your parents when away from them. Those young people who are really serious about honoring their parents will find that their actions do not change when they are removed from their parents. Neither do their words. Neither does their appearance.
Involve your parents on any steps you take on acquiring a life companion. This is not saying we should return to the oriental custom of parents arranging totally for the marriages of their children. It is to say, however, that the notion that only "I" can ultimately tell who is best for me is a false notion in the other extreme. More specific guidelines for this will be given in Chapter 3.
The principle of honoring parents is a lifetime principle. Certainly roles change as a person moves from childhood to teenage to adulthood to old age. But all through life there are ways to show respect and honor to one's parents. As a person moves out of his parents' home, one of the foremost ways to show honor is to seek counsel. As one's parents move into old age and frailty, honor is shown by caring for them. Some of the difficulties associated with that care are discussed more fully in Chapter 8. Here we will simply note that the benefits which come from honoring parents in this way more than offset the difficulties. Furthermore, the practice of sending old folks off to care centers has left a vacancy in the family which convenience cannot replace. The separation and loneliness experienced by many aged parents is a tragedy they should not be required to endure.
Learning to Forgive Parents
Because nobody's parents are perfect, everyone is able to see particular features of his heritage which have not been right. Wrongs in the past often show up as scars in the present. Some of these scars are slight, some are major, and some are still festering. The wrongs which caused these scars are many times real, but other times they are imagined. As one writer put it,
Just as our parents are human and subject to error, so are we. As children we interpret what our parents said and did. Well-intentioned behavior may have been cast in the worst possible light, thus making our parents' good efforts seem wrong. A critical remark made by a parent many years ago may be replayed and blown out of proportion and significance by a child who now blames his or her parents for personal problems.
There are many reasons why we should forgive our parents. These do not necessarily made forgiveness easy, but they do show the importance of forgiveness. Obviously, the most important reason we should forgive has to do with our personal relationship with the Lord. "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14, 15). There are other reasons as well, but here we will consider especially those which relate to the family.Learning to forgive our parents for their failures is an important determiner as to whether we can honor them or not. Resentment and bitterness destroy our ability to honor. Forgiveness, on the other hand, gives us a freedom to honor our parents.
Forgiving our parents is necessary in order to keep us from perpetuating the errors. One of the strangest phenomena of heritage is that often those things in parents which are most detested are most commonly acquired by the next generation. Indeed, one of the surest ways to pick up your parents' faults is to resent them--the stronger you resent them, the more likely you are to pick them up. Somehow by focusing negatively on someone else's problem, we shape our own view of life. The alternative, of course, is to forgive. Forgiveness frees us to see our parents in a more objective light, and makes available to us the transforming grace of God.
We must forgive our parents for their wrongs and failures if our children are to have the security of a healthy relationship with their grandparents. Resentment and bitterness cut off relationships. Forgiveness, on the other hand, opens us to the possibility of building (or at time rebuilding) relationships. Grandparents need the laughter and play of their grandchildren. Grandchildren need exposure to the wisdom and dignity of old age. There are peculiar ties between grandparents and grandchildren which can be formed properly only when parents have right attitudes toward their past.
Knowing the reasons for forgiveness is not always enough to cause us to exercise forgiveness. Scar tissue can go very deep. The following pointers show more clearly just what forgiveness is and how it works.Forgiveness means release. It means no longer holdinging others accountable for what they have done.
Forgiveness is a choice. We do not need to feel like forgiving in order to forgive. We must choose to forgive. Usually when forgiveness is most necessary, it is emotionally difficult. The Scriptures do not say, however, we must feel like forgiving, but simply that we are to forgive. Choosing to forgive carries its own reward, and the act of forgiveness is often followed by emotional relief and joy.
Forgiveness is costly. It means absorbing the "debt" instead of retaining it on record. It cancels the account held against another. The cross of Jesus is the clearest example in all history of the cost of forgiveness.
Forgiveness is usually purging. Particularly with our parents, when we are willing to forgive, we usually find that they were not totally responsible for the problem. We come to see that our own negative responses to them may have contributed as much (sometimes more) to our injury as their initial wrong. "A big part of growing up is learning to accept responsibility for our own lives, which in this case means admitting that we may have created some of the problems with our parents." This point about forgiveness is often one of the biggest obstacles on the whole process. Many hurting adults are hiding their own failures behind the failures of their parents. To forgive the past means to reckon with the present, and for some, that seems too painful.
Forgiveness is an act of faith. This probably the most important concept of forgiveness presented here. The process of forgiveness involves a refocusing from the offender to God. Instead of looking any longer at what was done wrong in the past, we can look in faith to God who is able to work every thing together "for good to them that love God" (Romans 8:28). There is an unspeakable difference in such an outlook! It is virtually impossible to forgive parents when we focus on their faults. It is virtually impossible not to forgive them when we focus properly on God. Many people live somewhere between extreme bitterness and complete forgiveness by simply trying to focus elsewhere (just forgetting about their parents), but they end up missing both the peace of forgiveness and the joy of honoring their parents.
Heritage is a powerful factor in all of our lives. Families in Western society, by disregarding God and the principles of honor and forgiveness, have generally turned heritage into a curse which is being visited on children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Learning to live in accord with God's principles is the key to making heritage a blessing.
Posted by Bro Ale Aguspina,Jr
posted by Mods Oloya Jr. at
5:41 PM
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