Why should you honor your father and mother?
According to the Bible, in the conception of a child, the parents and the Creator take the fate. Honoring the fifth commandment is a recognition that it was God who became the Creator of the new man. Standing on this foundation, a Christian will be able to fulfill the remaining 5 commandments. In God's message (Exodus 20:12) there is also a promise that by honoring ancestors, man's days will be extended on earth.
The fifth commandment is the first of six commandments regulating relations with one's neighbor.
Reverence does not only mean respect. Synonyms of this word:
- worship;
- admiration;
- awe;
- honor;
- respect;
- piety;
- respect;
- confession.
The age at which people are required to fulfill the fifth commandment is not specified here; it applies to both young children and mature Christians.
The promise will be fulfilled, the Lord will definitely bless you with continuation of the family, but on condition - honor your father and mother.
The offspring, spoiled by their parents from childhood, provided for by them in youth and adulthood, often become disheartened when the parental allowance ends, they feel abandoned and helpless. Grown-up egoists are not capable of love and respect for the people who raised them. They are irritated by the frailty of the elderly, the need to care for the sick, therefore, nursing homes grow like mushrooms, and, as a result, homes for children.
Read about Christian parenting:
- Orthodox films for children
- Conversations with children about the Orthodox cross
- How to teach children prayer
The New Earth will never accept Christians who dishonor their father and mother, who do not know what honor and obedience are. Stubborn and disobedient children who fail to learn reverence throughout their lives will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. The Lord knew in advance that children are often ungrateful, and, perhaps, in order to test his people in obedience and patience, love for their neighbor, the fifth commandment was written.
Children are continuation of the family
Often married couples have been asking the Creator for years for the gift of offspring, but in doing so they violate the fifth commandment.
For years, the parents have been struggling with the child’s illness, while refusing to forgive the father and mother. The Lord did not say to love good parents who gave you everything in life. The Creator clearly and briefly justified his promise - honor your father and mother, so that your children will be alive and healthy, so that your lineage will last.
In the 5th commandment, the Lord commands us to honor our parents and promises a long life
God has placed on every Christian the responsibility to treat his father and mother, regardless of their relationship to their offspring. Disrespect for father and mother, which is especially evident at the present time, which is a sign of the end times when Satan controls the minds and emotions of man.
Important! Many call themselves Christians, but only a few fulfill the fifth commandment and remain faithful to the Creator in obedience and fulfillment of His decrees.
Obedience is the key to health
Do you want to be healthy and live long on earth? Be obedient to the Creator, for He participated in your conception, breathed your soul into you, and chose your father and mother. Disobedience is rebellion against God's plan, a sin that leads to sickness and death. You will say that the parents are bad, this may happen, but God did not guarantee good ones. Obedience and acceptance of father and mother is the path to salvation.
Read about other commandments:
- Commandment "Thou shalt not steal"
- Commandment “Do not remember the Lord in vain”
- Commandment “Do not make yourself an idol”
By forgiving, we are transformed from the inside into the nature of the Creator, we fulfill the second commandment of love for our neighbor, without it we can’t go anywhere. Unforgiveness and resentment put a barrier between the Lord and a person, over which prayers for health and mercy are broken.
Important! Disrespect for earthly parents is reflected in love for the Creator, shortens the duration of earthly life and closes the road to Heaven.
Families in which the spirit of reverence for elders reigns are filled with the light of love. The Lord appreciates the efforts of those who ease the burden of old age, restraining irritation, freeing themselves from resentment. Only in helping the elderly can one appreciate all the care and love they invested in children at an early age.
“You will have goodness and long life” (Ephesians 6:3) - the Creator’s promise for a respectful, loving attitude towards your ancestors.
School of Family Life
- Does the Old Testament commandment about honoring parents come into some contradiction with what the apostle says: will a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will become one flesh (Matthew 19:5)? Conflicts between spouses and parents of spouses are very frequent - is this the reason for this contradiction?
- There is no contradiction. Yes, in marriage two people come together, a new family is created, and its interests are a priority for the spouses, but this does not negate the need to respect parents. And not only to your own, but also to your spouse’s parents. A son-in-law may not love his mother-in-law, but he must respect her. And the daughter-in-law should do the same in relation to the mother-in-law if the spouses want their life to be prosperous. I really like the beautiful words of the prayer from the follow-up of the Sacrament of Wedding about the parents who raised the bride and groom: “Remember, O God, and the parents who raised them: through the prayers of the parents, the foundations of houses are established.” The prayer of parents is the basis of a new family, and not wealth, career and the like. The sacrament of wedding places the new family on the same semantic level with all the righteous people of the Old Testament. Remember this chain? Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca and other righteous people from Sacred history. This listing is given so that a person understands that his forefathers walked this path and now they have to walk this path. The family is a great school, which, among other things, prepares a person for eternal life. Whether we want to go through this school and learn its lessons is another matter.
Photos from open Internet sources
Newspaper “Orthodox Faith” No. 16 (540)
Priest Yaroslav Kozdrin Interviewed by Olga Protasova https://www.eparhia-saratov.ru/Articles/uvidet-obraz-bozhijj-v-roditelyakh
The great price to pay for honoring the older generation
Every Christian knows the story of Noah and his family, who were saved during the flood, but few have thought about it. Why did the Lord choose Noah? Yes, Noah was a righteous man, but not only that. Shem, the son of Adam and Eve, honored his parents.
The son of Shem gave care to his father, but forgot about his grandfather, and the sons of all 10 clans behaved the same way, right up to the time of Noah. The great righteous man took upon himself the responsibility of taking care of all the ancestors, and at that time they lived 600-900 years. The Almighty appreciated Noah’s feat of obedience and granted him salvation.
Honoring parents includes deep respect, deference and help
Do you know why there is no Mother's Day or Father's Day in Israel? There they honor their parents every day, both during life and after death.
Every Christian knows that breaking even one commandment is a sin. And every sin leads to death, illness, mental illness and spiritual decline. There is no big or small sin, there is non-compliance with the law, and this is subject to judgment.
Everything created by father and mother is inherited by children. And so from generation to generation, if the law is observed. The Lord bestows blessings and wealth, passed on by inheritance, and not taken away by children or authorities for illegal enrichment, which increase from generation to generation. The prosperity of the future generation depends on the obedience and fulfillment of the fifth commandment by present parents.
Parents are not higher than God
Finally, you definitely should not fulfill those whims of your elders that are contrary to the Law of God. For example, some non-believing parents prohibit their believing children from praying, visiting church, or participating in Church Sacraments. Protodeacon Sergius Shalberov notes:
“Obedience to parents extends very far, but no further than to our Heavenly Father (John 10:37). If we live with our loved ones who are not believers, then we need to be firm in our confession of faith, but extremely gentle in dealing with them.”
It happens that parents turn into real enemies for their children. For example, they torment them with indifference or anger. Archpriest Dmitry Roshchin speaks about honoring parents in such situations:
“Here it is useful to remember one more commandment - it is no longer about parents, but about people in general: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who despitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). If your parents turned out to be hateful and abusive, the Lord commanded to bless them and do good to them. This is the highest ideal of Christianity to which we must strive.”
Old Testament about honoring parents
Jesus came not to abolish the law given in the Old Testament, but to fulfill it. Therefore, everything said before the coming of Christ is law for modern Christians. In Galatians 6:7, the Apostle Paul says that God is not mocked; whatever you sow, that is what you will reap.
Failure to fulfill the law in Israel was punishable by death, and not a single commandment is an exception. The answer is quite simple, unworthy children bring a curse to the entire clan, so it is better to let one person die, but the whole clan will be saved. Scary and wise.
- Exodus 21:15 says that if a person strikes one of his ancestors, he will die.
- In verse 17 of the same chapter we are no longer talking about physical violence, but about insult, and the same ending. This same theme is addressed in Leviticus 20:9.
The commandment of reverence is a promise of longevity and goodness on earth - Proverbs 20:20 says that the lamp of life of those who curse their father and mother will go out in darkness. Unfit children will face a hard life, covered in darkness, and a quick death in problems and illnesses.
- Proverbs 28:24 calls those offspring who rob their parents robbers, which means they are subject to judgment and death.
Close eyes
- Parents are different. What to do with the fifth commandment if the father drinks or the mother abandons her child in the hospital? It is very difficult to honor such parents.
- No matter what happens to our parents, it does not relieve us of our duty towards them. Let us recall the same biblical example with Noah, who, having drunk wine, lay naked, but his sons Shem and Japheth, unlike Ham, did not laugh at him, but, looking away, covered his nakedness. This is an example of the correct attitude towards parental shortcomings, mistakes, and sins.
- That is, such a formulation of the question: I have bad parents should, in principle, not exist?
- Of course, thinking like this is contrary to God’s plan. If a person cannot cope with this situation in any way, he must approach it practically and rationally: “What do these judgmental arguments give me? Now I know what my parents are like. But what did I do in order to be not like that, but different, in order to overcome the qualities that I may have inherited from them? Yes, grievances remain, but, it seems to me, it is very important to close your eyes, like Shem and Japheth, to the sin of your father or mother, and thereby, as it were, cut off the negative past experience and try to become different yourself for the sake of your children. We often say that man is the image of God, but obscured by sins and passions, and yet we must try to see this image of God in every person. So why not try to see this image in the one who is closest to you - in your parent?
- Sometimes you hear from a person that it is his parents who are to blame for the fact that he is a loser: they didn’t give him an education, they didn’t give him love and warmth, they ruined his life by not allowing him to marry the girl he loved, and so on...
- You know, Fyodor Dostoevsky once explained in a letter how a communist differs from a Christian. “By the way, a small parallel: a Christian, that is, a complete, highest, ideal one, says: “I must share my property with my younger brother and serve them all.” And the communard says: “Yes, you must share your property with me, the lesser and the poorer, and you must serve me.” The Christian will be right, and the communard will be wrong.” This position of a person is translated into all aspects of his life. Remember the parable of the prodigal son, when the eldest son was indignant: here I am always with you, and you! The inability to rise above one's selfishness is destructive for a person. We begin to live truly spiritually only when we forget about ourselves. And when a person becomes isolated on some internal problem, all other troubles begin - despondency, despair, the feeling that everyone around is to blame.
- How to feel about parental control? For example, a daughter has long been an adult, and her mother continues to “raise” her. Criticizes, forces you to account for every step. And at the same time he says: you must obey me, I am your mother. And my daughter already has two children. The relationship between them is very tense. Is mom right?
- It is impossible to answer unequivocally whether mom is right or wrong. If we analyze this situation, it will probably turn out that the mother’s behavior is an unwillingness to admit that the child has grown up, he has his own life and she is not in charge of this life. But it is very difficult to re-educate a person in adulthood, especially if their own children are trying to do this. Almost always such an attempt will be doomed to failure. However, there are situations in life to which there is no direct answer. And your question is from the same category: when we really don’t know what to do right, we can only pray that the Lord will enlighten us and guide us. In any conflict there is fault on both sides. Mom has enough wisdom to reconsider something in herself - thank God, this wisdom is not enough - which means we must try to cover up this sin. It’s not difficult: call, report, listen to her on something? You know, when our loved one has a cold, he sneezes, blows his nose, it’s unpleasant, but we understand this situation - the person is sick, and we are ready to tolerate it. But the one who gets annoyed with us, scolds us, criticizes us, is also sick. Only a different kind of illness is spiritual. This is the same runny nose, and we must tolerate this weakness of another person, especially since we also have sins that our loved ones tolerate us with.
Provide them
Lastly, we honor our parents by taking care of them financially. In 1 Tim. 5 we read how Paul gives Timothy advice on caring for widows in the church. In his instructions, Paul mentions two principles: children should “repay the favor” to their parents (4) and Christians who do not help their family members act worse than unbelievers (8). All interpreters of this passage unanimously assert that these principles apply to children and their elderly parents. In some churches something is commonplace, and in other churches the same thing causes division. Stott once noted that “African and Asian cultures, where the family is all relatives, are a living indictment of the entire West on this issue.”
When children are small, God entrusts their provision to their parents (2 Cor. 12:14). But, according to Stott, “as parents grow old and frail,” the roles are reversed. Hughes writes, “Christian daughters and sons are responsible for the financial care of widows and, as the text shows, for the financial care of helpless parents and grandparents.” William Barclay says something similar: “Raising children requires enormous sacrifices on the part of parents, and it is only fair that children are willing to make sacrifices for their parents in turn.” You can also recall a passage from Ev. Mark 7:9-13 when Jesus scolds the Pharisees for refusing to care for their parents.
Perhaps no other form of "reverence" is as hard to come by in the Western world as this. But it's quite simple: the Bible holds Christians accountable for caring for their family members. And this commandment is equally distributed to parents of young children and children of elderly parents.
Support them
We show respect when we support our parents. And I'm not just talking about financial assistance, but also about other forms of love and care. I remember the story of David at a very difficult moment in his life, when his friends turned away from him and his enemies attacked. In this situation, he cried out to God: “Do not reject me in my old age; when my strength fails…” (Ps. 70:9). David was afraid of a situation where old age and isolation combined, he was afraid of being old and alone. Our parents are afraid of this too.
When we are young, we have strength, we crave independence. Our parents raise us to be strong and free. But there is a catch, a price, so to speak, for all this: while giving us independence, they themselves are losing it every year (Eccl. 12:1-8). We honor our parents when we promise them not to leave them alone in old age. Just as they took care of us, we will take care of them. This is our duty and it should be our joy.
At a time when millions of elderly people live alone, placed in nursing homes or hospitalized, surrounded by professionals rather than family, Christians have an opportunity to show the world a special respect for parents. Kent Hughes says that even when parents don't need money, "Christians still have a responsibility to show their personal concern for them." You can hire caregivers, but this is not enough. Caring cannot be outsourced. It is impossible to refuse parents emotional support and communication, because even non-believers do not do this.
