Families are funny. We’re all a part of a family, though some of us have tried to run from our families because they have been so painful. We’re still related, though. You can change a lot about yourself, your address, your look, you can even change your name. You can change your jeans, but you can’t change your genes.
How we relate to our families has a large impact on how we relate in all our other relationships. Proponents of Family Systems Theory have a lot of good things to say about that, much of it is solidly Biblical. In this series of messages at Christ Church, we’ll be exploring many of these ideas: what does the Bible say about “family”? How can I be healthy in my family? How can my family be healthy? What does it mean to be in God’s family?
Today I want to lift a scripture from the message and delve a little bit deeper than I had time in the morning message. It is one of the Ten Commandments:
"Honor your father and your mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God will give you." Exodus 20:12 (NLT)
This is an interesting verse in that it is the only one of the Ten Commandments with a promise attached, a motivational clause, if you will. The promise is that the people will live long in the Promised Land. Remember, they are in the wilderness when this commandment is given. They have yet to enter Canaan. They are not yet where God wants them to be and God thinks there is a connection to their living out his promised blessing and their honoring their parents.
The whole Exodus narrative is full of the word “Remember.” Remember that you have been liberated, that your life has purpose. It’s important that parents pass down this information, that it be fully understood and integrated into the next generation, and the next, and the next…
The command to “honor” includes among its original meanings the idea to “be heavy,” to “give weight” to something, not to “take lightly,” but to treat with the appropriate seriousness. Parents are not to be blindly obeyed but to be respected, to be listened to, to be taken seriously. They’ve been there before.
God’s promised blessing, that we will live in the Promised Land, has yet to be fully fulfilled, and if parents aren’t taken seriously, aren’t honored, aren’t respected, who knows, we may forget there is a blessing at all.
Every generation struggles with a kind of uni-generational narcissism that is under the delusion that nothing worthwhile occurred before them. This temptation is strong. It is especially strong in times like today when technology changes so rapidly, when the previous generation finds it hard to keep up, thus seeming irrelevant to the demands of today. Watch out!
My parents have far more to offer than I think they do. I believe this commandment is to be applied even more to adult children. God wants to pass on a blessing. Your parents may not have been people of faith, but there is a faith that is ancient and is far more relevant than you could possibly imagine. Families, as imperfect as they are, being made up of imperfect people, are an important key to transmitting this ancient faith with all its future implications.
I believe part of honoring my parents is my willingness to forgive them for being imperfect people. I only hope my own children will forgive me.
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