“Fatherhood reigns, never again!” declares Calvin (from the Calvin and Harold comic), as he and Harold proudly head north to dominate their fate in the Icy land of the Yukon. “We got rid of those cultivated orchards!? [1] Will it be majestic life, calvin thinks?, because he won’t have to put up with it there, let alone the honor of your parents.
In a culture that honors youth, “honour your father and your mother?”(Exodus 20. 12a) doesn’t make sense. So what does it mean to honor others?
- Our tolerant culture has zero tolerance for aging.
- Which has produced a cult of perpetual youth.
- As a result of this youthful-looking frenzy.
- Americans spend enough cosmetic procedures each year to feed and dress fifty-four million hungry children.
Honoring the superficiality of appearances with devotion, do we look with desire to youth?And with contempt for old age and maturity. We desperately refuse to grow up and abandon childish things (1 Corinthians 13. 11b), so instead of showing honor to our elders, we despise them.
Dishonoring maturity, however, is not just a problem of our image-obsessed youth culture. Seeing a similar trend in the 16th century in Geneva, Calvin warned from his deathbed: “Let young people remain modest, without wanting to put too much evidence; why is there always a boastful character among young people?who hastens to despise others?
Perversely, our culture makes virtue “hurry to despise others,” especially parents. Professor Jared Diamond of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) argues that with technology and access to inexhaustible information, we no longer need the most mature as a source of wisdom.
At the base, does the fifth commandment go beyond the honor of parents, does it require the preservation of honor and the fulfillment of each person’s duties in their different conditions and relationships, as superior, inferior, or equal?(Bref Catechisms of Westminster, P
Is our duty completely anchored in the fifth commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves?
But honoring is difficult; it requires suspending the worship of ourselves, giving up the honor to which we imagine ourselves to belong and giving it to someone else, letting ourselves be spent for the good of others, standing in the presence of the old man (Leviticus 19:32), and, in doing so, honoring God.
Lovers of the incorrigible ego, is it too difficult for us to honor others?In fact, that’s impossible for us. So we’re looking for an escape, many have good reasons. A distraught young man once asked me, “How should I honor my father after what he did to my mother?” he was a good question. I knew what your father had done; he had fled with another woman, leaving his wife pregnant to collect the pieces of the domestic disaster created by his deeply shameful behavior; However, God tells this man to honor his father.
The Pharisees believed that they had definitively established the exception clause on their parents’ honor, they had developed a tradition that once they declared their resources an offering to God, they were free to keep the fifth commandment, Jesus denounced fraud: “And that is why you have invalidated the word of God, because of your tradition. Hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied of you, saying, This people honor me with their lips, but is their hearts far from me?(Matthew 15:6-8).
Only hearts drawn to God in Christ can truly honor the father and mother, even the fathers who acted dishonorably. Doesn’t obeying your parents include obeying sinful orders, too?Honoring your father doesn’t include honoring your dishonorable behavior.
Obviously, if Peter could urge the believers of the first century to honor everyone, including Emperor Nero (1 Peter 2:17), then the order to honor the fathers is not overturned by the fact that he has a dishonorable father, in the same sense. so that the order to love others doesn’t fall apart when we have a neighbor throwing cans of beer into our wall. God’s ordinances always apply in a broken world of imperfect neighbors and dishonorable relatives; our merciful Heavenly Father gave them to us as appropriate gifts for this world.
Singularly, a perpetual consequence for obeying him is attached to the fifth commandment: “Will your days be extended to the earth that the Lord your God gives you?(Exodus 20. 12b).
Long life, eternal life. Constantly assured by our firstborn brother, whose obedience surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 5:20), who is the perfect one like his Heavenly Father (5:48), who has done what no one could ever do: to fulfill perfectly all the duties required by the law of God. Choose your hero from the earth; none of them fully honored their parents.
Except Jesus, Honoring his Father’s will, Christ prayed, “My Father, if possible, pass me this cup!However, don’t be the way I want to be, but what do you want?”(Matthew 26:39). Did the Cross obey and perfectly honor his Father?
? Honor your father and mother? Jesus did it; In this, we can grow every day in the grace to honor our earthly parents for the greater honor of Heavenly Father.
Douglas Bond is director of the English department at Covenant High School in Tacoma, Washington, USA. And former president of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA). He is the author of more than twenty grace works (And Ways We Think It T) books [without translation into Portuguese].
[1] NT: Papa-figo is a Brazilian folklore figure who sucks blood and eats the liver of lying children. In the original, Bill Watterson, author of the Calvin and Harold comic, uses the word ghoul, which, according to Wikipedia, describes a monster from Arab folklore present in various fictional stories (for example, in The Chronicles of Narnia).
This article is part of the June 2015 issue of Tabletalk magazine
Translation: Vin-cius Silva Pimentel. Review: Vin-cius Musselman Pimentel REVISOR. © 2014 Faithful Ministérium. All rights reserved. Website: MinistryFiel. com. br. Original: The Ten Commandments: 5?Honor your father and mother.