To My Facebook Friends

To My Facebook Brothers and Sisters in Christ….

I write about a crucial matter, one avoided in social media. What I share regarding a neglected command-promise could impact the lives of many. Are you ready for this….?

Exodus 20:12 (Amp): “Honor (respect, obey, care for) your father and your mother, so that your days may be prolonged.” Let’s consider the promise attached to this fifth of the ten commandments: “So that your days may be prolonged.” Is not obedience to this command insurance against premature death? And debilitating disease and accidents? And poverty?

Though we are New Covenant sons and daughters, we still benefit from the promises of the Old. That Jesus expects His new covenant saints to likewise honour parents is made clear in the NT. Paul tells us to “repay [our] parents” who raised and nurtured us by honouring them as they age. “For this is good and acceptable before God.”

I wish I would have honoured my parents more than I did. Children start life wanting/needing parents more than parents want children. In time that is reversed. Parents want/need their adult children more than they want their parents. I knew that. I could have been more attentive, entered their world, asked questions, phoned more often, just been there.

Today exclusive respect for dad and mom has to many, it seems to me, become passe, even in Christ’s church. Many are more conscious of their local church’s wants and needs than their own parents. Which reminds me of the words of Jesus to the pharisees who abused parents wholesale, “Why do you by your traditions, violate the commandments of God?”

(Some parent-offspring relationships are unhealthy. A brother regularly attended catholic mass to please his mother; this is wrong. Loving parents more than Jesus is wrong. Allowing parental interference in one’s family is wrong. Elevating parents above one’s spouse is wrong. Amen?)