Honoring the Dishonorable

[Brad Fox]

Honoring the dishonorable

 

I was doing my regular Bible reading this morning when, in Exodus, I read the 5^th commandment about honoring your father and mother.  It got me to thinking about my junior and senior high students at school and in our church youth program.  Many of them have parents who are not worthy of being honored.  So it was with great interest that I read the commentary at the bottom of the page that discussed this commandment.  It said:

“This is the first commandment with a promise (so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you).  To live in peace for generations in the promised land, the Israelites would need to respect authority and build strong families.  But what does it mean to ‘honor’ parents?  Partly, it means speaking well of them and politely to them.  It also means acting in a way that shows them courtesy and respect (but not to obey them if this means disobedience to God).  It means following their teaching and example of putting God first.  Parents have a special place in God’s sight.  Even those who find it difficult to get along with their parents are still commanded to honor them.”

This explanation of the commandment presents some moral and ethical problems for a young person who has dishonorable parents.  Some worthwhile points this commentary brings up are:

• Honoring parents can result in peace, security and a strong family of your own.
• Speaking well of an honorable parent is easy; what can a youth testify about an abusive or neglectful parent?
• Speaking politely is comfortable when you have a parent who speaks politely to you; it’s difficult to do when your parent is cussing you, God and everyone else.
• Acting in a way that shows courtesy and respect to a parent seems the honorable thing to do, but what if it isn’t returned by your parent?
• Parents are part of God’s plan for you.
• We are commanded to honor parents even when they don’t deserve it.

 

So what’s a kid with parent problems supposed to do?  Some examples from the Bible might help.

 

• One child who apparently honored his wicked grandfather was Josiah.  His grandpa was Manasseh, one of the most evil kings in the Bible.  Manasseh ruled 55 years, a very long time for ancient kings considering life spans were less then than now.  He, himself, became king when he was twelve and he proceeded to undo most of the good works that his own father, Hezekiah, had done:  he placed shrines devoted to nature idols on the hills in the surrounding countryside; he built altars for worship of the king demon (Baal); he built asherah poles which honored the demon of fertility (Asherah); he became an astrology worshipper; he even sacrificed his own children to his pagan gods.  He practiced sorcery and divination and he consulted mediums and spiritual mediums.  A particularly damning sentence from 2 Kings 21:9 says “Manasseh led (Israel) astray, so that they did more evil than the nations the Lord had destroyed before the Israelites.  Prodigious evil!!!  Clearly, he was a parent unworthy of honor.  Manasseh was so evil that his acts begged judgment from God.  God used the Assyrian kingdom to defeat Manasseh’s rule and to imprison him in exile.  Notably, he had a hook placed in his face (nose or jaw) and was led off to prison in Assyria where they notoriously treated foreign kings cruelly.  Things looked bad; as if this was the end of the story, and a sad one at that. 

But God wasn’t done with Manasseh.  His profile, written in the Life Application Study Bible says that “forgiveness is limited not by the amount of sin, but by our willingness to repent.”  Apparently, given his painful circumstances, Manasseh “humbled himself greatly before God” for his evil intentions and actions.  Astonishingly, God was moved by his repentance and listened to his plea for restoration.  And that’s what He did; He restored Manasseh to his throne back in Israel where he finished out his life.  Manasseh responded to God’s loving grace by throwing out all the representations of idol worship in his kingdom and reestablishing worship of the One True God.  Although Manasseh turned his spiritual life around, his formerly evil influence had been so strong, that the Israelites weren’t able to follow his example.  Neither was his son, Amon, who was so evil that he was assassinated 2 years into his reign.  Little Josiah, Manasseh’s grandson, became king in his stead at the ripe old age of eight! 

Admittedly, 55 years is a long time to wait for your dad or granddad to reform themselves, but Josiah was faithful to the godly people God had placed around him and he developed into a God-fearing young man himself in spite of his family’s sinfulness. Because of the spiritual darkness that existed prior to Josiah’s reign, he wasn’t aware of the Book of God’s Law that had been hidden in the temple many years before.  But when it was uncovered during a remodeling of the temple, the contrast it revealed between God’s plan and the people’s unfaithfulness was enough to cause Josiah to initiate some long-overdue reforms.

Moral of this story:  Even though you may have immoral, ungodly parents or family members, you are still responsible for your own relationship with God.  He will place people around you whom you can rely upon for an accurate picture of His will and love.  If you are faithful to what you know about the One True God in your life, you will not only be blessed and protected yourself, but will be a blessing and protection for those who come after you.

• Another parent who fell short of God’s plan was Eli, the head priest of the nation of Israel.  Like him, Eli’s two sons Phinehas and Hophni were priests in the nation’s temple.  Eli apparently didn’t have a strong, living, interdependent relationship with God.  His was a symbolic, largely-going-through-the-motions type of priesthood.  He was a priest who emphasized the rituals and relics of religion, but didn’t point people to a relationship with God.  He might have had a relatively harmless tenure in his position except for the fact that he let his sons run wild in their sensitive positions.  They were incorrigible to say the least.  They imposed their will on women coming to the temple to have sex with them.  They adulterated the sacrifice system to gain spoils for themselves.  In simple terms, they “gamed” the system and made God look bad in his own temple.  People’s worship experience changed from inspiring and memorable to frightful and disgusting.  According to what we read in the Bible (1 Samuel chapters 1-4), Eli was full of threats when correcting his sons, but he never followed through.  His “no” didn’t mean “no.”  Eli’s weak discipline of his young sons led them to discount his advice and warnings as adults, and it came back to haunt him and his descendants.  God, on the other hand, modeled for Eli what good parenting looks like.  He explained what the sons were doing wrong, what the effects of those sins were, what the resulting consequences were; and then he followed through by allowing Hophni and Phinehas to be killed in battle. 

 

Moral of this story:  No matter whether your parents are responsible followers of God or not, you are responsible for knowing Him and following His discipline.  Parents and children have something in common:  they are both going through their respective roles for the first time.  Mistakes will be made; mid-course corrections will be necessary.  But it is crucial that parents and youth keep their relationship with their heavenly Father intact and vibrant so that they can respond properly to other family members who may be falling short of His will.