Honor your Father and Mother…
Jun 12th, 2008 by ljkim
There are two basic teachings the Bible has about parents. One – the job of a parent is not just to raise you up but to raise you “out” – so that you don’t need them. So if you can take care of yourself – whatever else your parents’ shortcomings, they have done their job 100%. What that means for us is, you are not to pine after their approval or look to them as the gold-standard on humanity – they are just people like you, and if you are over 18 and still alive, then they’ve actually done a great job. If you had “bad” parents they probably toughened you up and taught you to take care of things yourself. If you had “good” parents they probably helped you out with a lot of things that made growing up easier on you. But either way, if you’re reading this, and you feed dress and can take care of yourself, they’ve done their jobs.
The other basic teaching is, even though you don’t NEED your parents or their approval anymore – you are to honor them… Enjoy them. You can still learn from them. And you can also TEACH them – because as regular people, they don’t really know everything (they just act like they do). In the Bible, Paul tells his protege pastor Timothy to teach older men as he would his father…with gentleness and respect. Because even in caveman days it was probably the children who first had to teach the grownups how to use fire and the wheel…and that Crogmagnons were people too. So whether your or not your parents are still around (my dad died a few years ago), we can honor them – forgive them, be thankful for them, and enjoy the good parts…
[About the photo: we don't have any dads in our fellowship yet, so I borrowed one from my extended family - here's uncle Frank cutting up the Thanksgiving bird]
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