“Honor your father and your mother.”
– Exodus 20:12a
One of the most painful things a person can do to one’s own parents is never talk to them again — just cut them out of one’s life, essentially killing the relationship. It’s devastating. It’s a type of divorce and a split that impacts others. The grandchildren are often removed too, and so there are multiple relational casualties. This relational break by way of “the silent treatment” or merely “doing the minimum” is one of the truly devastating pandemics in modern society, and few are talking about it. As a positive role model in society, Christians need to embody following the great commandment toward our father and our mother with a unique and special honor. Not only will our family relationships flourish, but a society at large will as well. In fact, this commandment is one of the pillars of all successful, long-last societies.
“If you build a society in which children honor their parents,” explains Dennis Prager in his PragerU video, “your society will long survive. And the corollary is: A society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction. In our time, this connection between honoring parents and maintaining civilization is not widely recognized.”
Three Root Problems
To get to the root problem, Prager asks: “Why have these people decided to hurt their parents in one of the worst ways possible—to the extent of not even allowing their parents contact with their grandchildren?” There are often three reasons the younger generation no longer respects their parents:
(1) Parental Alienation. Prager explains that parental alienation is often a product of divorce or unhealthy marriages, when one parent tries to pit their children against the other parent by focusing on the mother’s or father’s flaws. The constant reinforcement of alleged wrongdoing eventually erodes children’s respect for both parents, leading to alienation later in life.
(2) Ideological Differences. “This is the newest excuse for cutting ties with parents,” Prager shared. “I suspect few people in previous generations encountered parents whose children did not speak to them because of how the parent voted. Many Americans hated Richard Nixon, but it is hard to imagine grown men and women in the late 1960s or early 1970s who refused to speak to their parents because the parents voted for Nixon. But many parents who voted for Donald Trump have a child who does not speak to them.” Regardless of their political, moral, or spiritual views, God commands children to respect their parents. He did not command us to blindly agree with our parents on all subjects, we are to honor their position in our lives as best as we can and the sacrifices they made to for us.
(3) The Therapeutic Mentality. “Prior to the explosion of psychotherapy, people were governed by ‘shoulds.’ But beginning in the 1960s, the therapeutic model replaced the moral model as the guide to one’s behavior,” Prager explains. “A popular phrase at the time was, ‘there are no shoulds.’” In a world where there are no “shoulds,” children no longer feel compelled to honor and respect their parents. The previous generation said, “I should call my parents every week,” “I should speak to my parents with respect,” and “I should consider my parents’ feelings.” Now, the worldview of the younger generation says, “If I don’t feel like calling my parents, I don’t have to.” Prager notes: “You do not have to love your parents – just talk to them.” We need to learn to respect those we may not like, even our parents.
Duty vs. Desire
From Prager’s insights, we can establish three general categories of children:
(1) None: Those who do not talk to their parents.
(2) Duty: Those who talk to their parents, but do so not because they truly want to, but out of sheer duty, obligation, “should,” and essentially a grit-the-teeth mentality.
(3) Desire: Those who talk to their parents out of a joy, delight, love, and internal desire to honor them as uniquely special people in their lives. They can hardly help it since a wellspring of deep respect and gratitude comes flowing out of their hearts naturally. In this category, duty is transcended by a full type of love called agape, a divine love, the highest form of charity found in the Bible.
For those sons and daughters in Category #2 of Duty, there would seem to be at first glance an unbridgeable gap between duty and desire, or even the appearance of a contradiction. “Dutiful roses are a contradiction in terms,” John Piper says poetically. The great Christian author C. S. Lewis writes, “For no man can love [or honor] because he is told to.” Love or honor, in this sense, cannot be placed on one’s To-Do List without being compromised or tarnished.
But there is hope for those in Category #2 because duty will often lead to a transformation of the heart, our center, our core. The first step to bridge duty to desire is to realize that, as Lewis says: “[L]ove, in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion. It is a state not of the feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people.” “Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will. . . . He [God] will give us feelings of love if He pleases.” That is, the essence of love or to honor another person is a choice of the will.
The second step toward desire and toward a truer love (agape) that sheds mere duty is this. Again from Lewis: “The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour [or parent]; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
Surely, all parents long to be loved and not merely honored out of cold, heartless duty. The above two steps give hope for those parents.
A Closing Thought To Shape Generations
No doubt in some relationships there are exceptional situations: “And, yes, we all recognize that some parents have behaved so cruelly – and I mean cruelly, not annoyingly – that one finds it morally impossible to honor to them,” says Prager. “There are such cases. But they are rare.” The normative duty to honor our father and mother holds for nearly all people in all times and places.
Finally, Prager ends with a truths all should remember: “If your children see you honor your parents, no matter how difficult it may sometimes be, the chances are far greater that they will honor you.” For more insights on this important topic, here are two videos below.
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