Honor Your Father and Mother

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In the Christian, Jewish and Muslim world, this is considered one of the Ten Commandments, and thought to have "super" authority over people of faith.

Ideas to work with:

• "that it might go well with you in the land" -- properity relates to honoring father and mother
• "Father and Mother" -- Parents of both sexes are to be held in honor, not just the Father.
• "Honor" -- what does that mean?
•  does "honoring" involve communication?
• What if the parents are drug addicts, murderers of innocents, etc.  How does this obligation apply?
• Is it possible that this is meant to support and sustain the "mainstream" where there is actually a family?
• Does prosperity come better to strong families of several generations than to fragmented family members?

I want to work with these ideas and questions for several blogs.

Children in the United States often have problems with the word, "Honor".  If they understand their parents to have been abusive, or emotionally distant, or to have abandoned them through divorce or even death, it is hard to understand this word, "honor" as something they should give.  After all, shouldn't one's parents deserve honor?  And if they deserve contempt, or death, or exclusion -- how can God possibly demand honor?


Honor is a somewhat ambiguous term, and there may be a better translation of the Hebrew.  The other word I find that translates the Hebrew word is "respect".  Respect your father and mother. 

We think of the Old Testament covenant people as a patriarchal culture, and it was, but the mother gets equal billing here.  In the next blog I want to look at what "honoring" or "respecting" might look like in the 21st century.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

The Good Old Way

The spiritual in "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" has the phrase, "the good old way."  I got to thinking about the "good old way" the other day, and these thoughts are quite mixed. 

The "good old way" feels a lot like coming home.  It feels like safety, comfort, agreement with history, revisiting what is known.  In terms of faith, it feels something like "agreeing with God, and God knowing I agree."  Tension ebbs, relaxation and vigor increases.

In terms of what we really get with the "good old way," however, we get more than we bargained for.

We get. . .

• racism
• sexual oppression
• hypocrisy
• Sunday-go-to-meetin' participants
• most people living in poverty
• undo deference being given to power (economic or political)
• the use of religion to shackle people

just to name some of the less worthy parts of "the good old way."

I speak not only of the Christian faith (but that is easy to see).  How about the good old way in China?  Old enough for binding feet and making cripple of young girls and women? 

How about the "good old way" of Islam, when villages were slaughtered and conquest was more important than faith?

How about the "good old way" in Hindu cultures, with the caste system and god-awful poverty rampant?

The more I ponder it, the "good old way" wasn't very good.  It's just sort of familiar. 

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.