Proverbs 1:8: Honoring your parents

“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching,”
-Proverbs 1:8

I’m going to be honest, I have a hard time, right now in my life, talking about the Bible’s teachings on the parent / child relationship. In a way, I’m somewhat in between the two.

It’s not that I don’t make an effort to honor my parents, because I do. It’s just that I’m not a child anymore, and so our relationship is not quite the same. I don’t have a curfew, and I don’t have to ask them permission to go to the movies (even the ones rated R!).

At the same time, I’m not a father yet. I hope to be one relatively soon. Not now, because I’m still unmarried (for six more weeks), and my fiancée and I don’t plan to have children right away. But soon.

On the other hand, I can appreciate this teaching more than ever. One thing that is rather neat about Christianity (and something that a lot of people miss) is that it is a personal thing, but it is also a community thing. We are not meant to just be a Christian alone in a cave. We are meant to be part of something. We are meant to live together, helping and loving one another, and submitting to one another.

The first forms of this we encounter is our relationship with our parents. It’s our parents’ job to raise us into, well, Christians. In return we’re supposed to honor them and submit to their instruction.

Which is just about as rare and parents who teach the Word to their children!

When I was younger, I didn’t think my parents had any idea about what I was going through. Like the Fresh Prince once told us, “Parents just don’t understand.” I wonder what he thinks of that song now that he has children. Just a thought.

I now know that my parents did understand, and they probably could have helped me through a lot of the messes I got myself into had I just asked for help. I seek their advice a lot more now.

I hope, and I do pray, that my children will realize that I experienced the same stuff they’re going to experience. I hope they will come to me, and I hope they will listen when we open the Bible together and seek out God’s answers.

There’s a reason honoring your father and mother is one of the Ten Commandments. It speaks to our community, and it speaks to our humility. We don’t know everything, and there are a couple of people right in our own houses that have experienced many of the same things.

As for parents, this is also a call for you (and me too, eventually) to be godly. Teach the Word, so if your child is listening, he will be listening to truth.

So what do you think? Do you think that you are too wise to listen to your parents? Do you think you know better than them? Did you know that Jesus obeyed His parents? Take a look at Luke 2:51: “And he [Jesus] went down with them [Mary and Joseph] and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them.”

Now this Guy had every reason in the world to go His own way. He was God, right? I mean, talk about a good reason not to clean your room! But in humility He obeyed. We should do the same. You are not better than Jesus, and so you do not have an excuse for not honoring your own parents.

But before we can, we need to repent of the ways we have fallen short. Confess those times to God, and ask for His guidance and mercy in your life. As Jesus also submitted to God the Father, we should do the same doubly, since we are not perfect as He was. If He submitted in humility, how much more do we need to do the same?