I can still remember my father sitting me down to chat about my high school boyfriend. As a headstrong teen, I was in no mood for sober reflection. “I’m concerned about your happiness,” he drolled, “your long-term happiness.” The “long-term” rolled off his tongue a little louder than the rest of the words and stuck in my mind like an earworm. He was right. The young love experiment, with all the partying and dissipation bound up in our unprincipled young love, left us both scarred and regretful.
The notion of parental honor comes from the fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12), repeated by Paul in his letter to the Ephesians. Jesus followers must take it seriously; not only as part of His Word but because it sits enshrined in the Ten Commandments, the transcript of His character of love and the timeless, transcendent moral principles governing life. God wrote the filial honor commandment with His own finger on stone.
People react to this commandment in a variety of ways. On one hand, some may have suffered abuse from parents, and honoring them feels outrageous and unfair. On the other hand, some fail to honor flawed, but overall decent parents. We come to this commandment with different histories and biases. In this piece, I will attempt to mine out principles that can guide a variety of child-parent relationships to, hopefully, a safe and healthy place.
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Here’s Paul’s counsel in Ephesians. Take a moment to read it carefully:
“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.’ And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1-4).
Now, bear several variables in mind.
A mother is more than a womb, and a father is more than a sperm donor. If, for example, a man impregnates a woman and leaves her, and another man comes along to love her and the child as his own, tell me, which one is the real father? The answer is obvious.
In God’s economy, submission is always predicated on sacrifice, and titles on time spent serving. When we honor God, we honor the One who gave up Heaven for us. Although fully entitled to it, God requires it of Himself to win our trust through sacrifice. How much more does He require earthly parents to sacrificially win the trust of their children? Some biological or legal parents are not parents in the true sense of the term because they do not sacrifice for their children. God does not require blind obedience in those cases. It seems obvious that when He said, “Honor your father and mother,” He meant fathers and mothers in the true, functional sense of the term.
Notice that the admonition is to obey parents “in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1). This seems to be a qualified submission similar to Ephesians 5:22, which uses the same language for wives submitting to husbands. A parent or husband who does not submit to God’s principles will not be able to manifest the sacrificial love that enlists true submission.
But — and this is essential to the discussion — most parents do sacrifice for their children. Speaking as a parent and a student of human behavior, bearing children profoundly incentivizes loving behavior toward one’s offspring. Aided by layers of biological, social, and spiritual phenomena, the child mysteriously becomes the center of the parent’s universe, riveting his or herself into consciousness forever.
God has orchestrated human family life to create the greatest potential for children to be loved, cherished, nurtured, and trained. In most cases, it works, and parents become their most unselfish selves in the face of the needs of precious little ones. In a recent Pew Research Center report, a whopping 82% majority of young adults said their relationship with their parents was excellent, very good, or good.[1]
Sadly, all the natural incentives God puts in place sometimes backfire. The prophet Isaiah plaintively asked, “Can a woman forget her nursing child?” He answers his own question with “surely” (Isaiah 49:15-16). Physical engorgement of breasts and emotional, birth-process-mediated fixation of the mother’s psyche on her offspring make it very difficult for a woman to forget her nursing child, but it can happen. Melissa Drexler, also known as “prom mom,” gave birth to her out-of-wedlock baby in a bathroom stall at her high school prom, killed it, and threw it in the garbage can. Mothers forget. Likewise, fallen humans can trample on all the God-given natural incentives to love their offspring, and instead harm the very beings God called them to protect.
Beyond this, even decent parents can “provoke their children to wrath” (Ephesians 6:4), driving them away from God and themselves. Godly parents will know when they err and humbly admit and repair their mistakes. No parent is perfect, but all parents can be committed to growing into the best parent they can be.
Bear in mind that honoring imperfect parents may not be as hard as we think. The word “obey” in the Ephesians passage means “listen to”; “honor” means to value something. One can listen to and value a parent without blindly submitting to them. A friend raised by a mentally ill mother learned young that she couldn’t expect stability from her mom. Through her teens and adulthood, she maintained healthy boundaries, making the best of the situation, and doing the part of a dutiful child until her mother passed. She didn’t lie about her mother’s flaws, and she protected herself against her hurtful behavior, but even in doing those things, she honored her. Then at the end of life, she helped ease her mother into proper care, actually enjoying visits with her because her mom, now on medication for mental illness, actually became a pleasant person.
The commandment to honor parents comes with a promise: “that your days may be long.” God tells us to obey and honor our parents for our own good. We thrive and flourish when we honor those who have loved us, and in most cases, our parents did just that. When we listen to and value (remember the definitions!) those who, faulty though they were and are, earned our trust by wiping our baby-butts and rocking us to sleep, chances are we’ll be doing ourselves a favor. Honor involves trust; we safely trust those who have invested in us. Since humans always trust someone, we do well to channel that trust toward those who are mostly likely to handle that trust responsibly.
Heartbreakingly, parental estrangement is on the rise. I am still looking for hard data on this, but I have observed this in my own social circle. It seems that a combination of pop psychology, social media, and cancel culture have led a number of young adults to think going “no contact” with their parents, many of whom are undeserving of such extreme treatment, is warranted. I don’t want to die the death of a thousand qualifications here, but I’ll say it again — some parents aren’t really parents and distance from them may be the best option. The push I see today, however, is not for only extreme cases. It is an unhealthy, ungodly rejection of flawed-but-decent parents.
Do a quick internet search of “going no contact with parents” and similar phrases, then compare the outcome with “children dishonoring parents” and you’ll see where the culture is going. The former search will yield scores of coaches, courses, and videos walking people through the no-contact steps, whereas the latter will take you to Bible passages.
Do we want to ride the wave of the latest cultural fad, or dive into the timeless wisdom of the Word of God?
God’s command to honor our parents is not relegation to a psychological torture chamber of forced smiles and abject obedience. He asks nothing of us that we would not ask of ourselves if we knew the end from the beginning. Taking sensible, context-relevant approach to how we obey the command will reveal it to be like all God’s laws — as coming from a heart of love and a desire to see us flourish in its sunshine.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/01/25/young-adults-relationship-with-their-parents/#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20young%20adults,their%20mom%20or%20their%20dad
Jennifer Jill Schwirzer, LPC, has a Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling from Capella University, and a doctoral degree in community counseling and traumatology from Liberty University. She is an author, speaker, TV host, professional counselor, musician, wife, mother, lover of Jesus, and a friend to many. She has spoken all over the world, written 14 books, and hosted two TV programs.
