Honor Your Parents

Prageru.com posted a video about children dishonoring their parents a couple of years ago. I believe Prager brings up a very real issue that plagues evangelical circles.

Refusing to honor your father and mother is, ultimately, evil rebellion against your Father in heaven. Our society is too quick to throw around terms like "abuse" and "toxic," particularly when it comes to parent-child relationships. It reveals an incredibly dangerous lack of knowledge about the biblical concept of the household.

I've seen it first hand on a number of occasions. Most of the time, the problem has been a selfish or foolish adult-child whose heart is devoted to some form of idolatry. When the parents confront their adult-child's idol, the response of the child is to dishonor their parents and to "punish" their parents by cutting off communication and withholding the grandchildren. Such wickedness should be publicly shamed in the church; however, many Christians have succumbed to the idolatry of child-centeredness and will not discipline members of their own congregation for dishonoring their parents because, more often than not, they too believe that the parents must be the problem.

Christian parents know this, they know the churches their adult-children attend will not be bothered with helping restore that parent-child relationship. Parents know that possibly even their own church will label the child's rebellion as a "family issue" due to the parents being too strict, or legalistic, etc. So, many parents will refrain from actually confronting the idolatry of their adult-children for fear of losing them and being villainized by everyone else. They let them divulge in sexual immorality and homosexuality, they let them marry whomever they want without question, they let them reject their Christian faith without consequence. They will abdicate their paternal/maternal duties out of fear, and in such cases make idols out of their own children.

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends (Jn 15:13). There is no greater love for another person than self-sacrifice. The very nature of parenting is the father and mother laying their lives down for their children from the moment that child is conceived until the parents take their last dying breath. This, by nature, is a position worthy of honor, especially from the child. That so many Christians today feel the freedom to cut-off their parents is a consequence of churches forsaking the biblical concept of household/family for far too long.