By Jonathan Keller
Kicking off our series on the 10 Commandments is everyone’s favorite commandment: honor your father and mother!
On its face, this commandment seems to be little more than a mildly annoying injunction for young children to listen to their parents’ stern warnings and for grown children to call their parents at some point. But what if we considered the Israelites’ understanding of fathers and mothers?
Honoring Your Parents is Honoring Society
In our world, our families are siloed off from each other, every house governed as a small nation independent of other houses. In the Israelites’ time, though, fathers and mothers stood for social authority. Honoring your father and mother for the Hebrew fresh out of Egypt was the first step to be a productive member of society. If you disobey your parents, the authority figures in the home, you were seen as likely to disobey other authority figures – priests, soldiers, kings – in broader society. A rebellious child would become a rebellious adult, and a rebellious bunch of adults would destroy the social fabric of a people that lived on a shared sense of community to function. Your neighbor could be relied upon for help rather than our social safety nets of today; destroying this generosity with chaos in authority would ruin their society.
Furthermore, who gives fathers and mothers the authority to rule over children? Who places them over the lives of little ones? Who places princes over peoples? Well, it’s God Himself, the Father of all creation in the sense that in Him all things that are derive their existence from Him. He tends boundaries between creatures to ensure good order within the whole. A rebellious son, then, does not defy only his parents; he also defies the Creator who bequeathed that authority to them.
Honor from those Under Us
Our church follows a system of teaching called the Westminster Standards, and within these standards is a concept related to this commandment referring to “superiors, inferiors, and equals.” That is, we have superiors (fathers and mothers) above us with authority; we have inferiors and are fathers/mothers to them; and we are equals in the same generation of authority to others. We look to any placed above us in authority, such as local law enforcement all the way to our national government, with respect. We also ought to be worthy of the respect of those under care by birth or by other arrangement, such as at work. Finally, we also ought to recognize our peers as peers and not as those placed above or below us. Each person has a place in relation to these levels in our lives, and sometimes people may change positions (your boss may become your brother-in-law). In all these relationships, though, God teaches us to respect the good order He personally placed in the world. Our lives ought to follow some sense of order because God Himself is ordered and commands things according to His good purposes.
Who are your superiors? Who are your inferiors? Who are your equals? How might you honor them this week as you honor the Lord as your God?