Exodus 20:12: ‘Honour your father and your
mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is
giving you.’
Ephesians 6:1-3: ‘Children, obey your parents
in the Lord, for this is right. “Honour your father and mother,” which is the first
commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long
on the earth.”
At church
this morning, the pastor spoke about the importance of honouring one’s father
and mother. He spoke both to parents and to children about the importance of
maintaining discipline and respect within the home, and how the consequences of
shortcomings in this area may predispose to the breaking of subsequent
commandments. All of us have seen this in our children, how one of the first
areas where sin becomes apparent is the dishonouring and disobedience of
parents. And most of us work hard to correct this, seeking to ‘Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not depart from it.’ (Proverbs 22:6)
However,
during the night I came across an article on the BBC website, which I heard
discussed on Radio 4 this morning: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18367053. This 'amusing' article discusses the reasons why all parents become 'annoying, embarassing and/ or ridiculous' as a child enters their teenage years. In our
culture, it is not expected that children should respect their parents. If
these are the type of views which are widely held regarding the relationship of
children to their parents, then is it surprising that such children go on to
disobey, disrespect and dishonour? Is it surprising that parents view respect and obedience as ideals from a former generation, not to be realistically attained today?
As
Christian parents, we must pray that we can stand firm against the tide of
contemporary culture. We should raise our children to respect and honour us,
whilst seeking ourselves not to do anything to cause them to stumble on that
point. We also have the responsibility: Ephesians
6:4: ‘And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them
up in the training and admonition of the Lord.’
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