"Honor thy parents": Understanding the Fifth Commandment in context

Many parents want to be honored. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. Most American parents feel entitled to respect and honor from their children. The fact of the matter is that, with few exceptions, honor and respect from children is earned. Parents can only order for adult children to honor them under exigent and rare circumstances, when parents are victimized by elder abuse. 

It says in Exodus 20:12 KJV:

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 

This commandment refers to, at bare minimum, rare acts of elder abuse against parents, which were more common in biblical times. The Fifth Commandment, when understood in context, prohibits beating parents (see Exod. 21:15), cursing parents with airborne gaslighting (see Lev. 20:9), or commits moral or physical crimes in their mother's name (see Deut. 21:18-21). Apart from these narrow circumstances, all honor and respect in parenting is earned when children are still dependent, with this honor and respect coming at a later date when adult children become independent from parents. Elder abuse was endemic in biblical times, meaning crimes against parents happened often. No adult child was put to death for dishonoring parents, but a few were whipped with 40 minus 1 lashes after being convicted of their abuse against their parents by a court of law - these whippings were the ones mentioned in Proverbs and Hebrews, and only apply to the Old Testament legal context, with the New Testament mentioning the punishment in figurative format and only for God to do to His children (earthly parents don't have the authority to whip their children like God whips His children). These parent protection laws apply only to children who had left the house. All other protection from parents come from the secular law.

How was honor and respect earned in biblical times? Respect in parenting was earned using the Christian doctrine of mutual submission. See Colossians 3:20-21 KJV:

Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. 

The Greek root word translated "obey" is υπακουο (Latin: hupakouo) and refers to secure, vulnerable rest in the love and submission of parents. Children are to rest securely in the sacrifice of parents, just as parent believers rest securely in the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This commandment was intended by the Apostle Paul as lifting up the customary law that commands a secure attachment between parent and child in the family home. This secure attachment comes from parent submission, where parents submit to children as their enemy, expecting absolutely nothing in return.

The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to damages or offenses, namely the slightest of personal offense perceived by a child, including, but not limited to, the slightest of offensive touch or speech perceived by a child, stemming from entitlement. This commandment was intended by the Apostle Paul, and understood in its original context, as a moral statute prohibiting all forms of punitive parenting, including any punishments or controlling demeanor towards children. In the Old Testament, punitive parents were put to death by way of bloodletting, after punishing their children one last time. Parents who punished their children were charged with kidnapping, with "kidnapping" being defined as the slightest of damages or offenses stemming from hostage-taking - child punishment was seen in biblical times as holding your child hostage merely for things that they did wrong, thereby treating your child as a quartered slave. Paul here was lifting up the Law in order to convict a group of Greek Christian parents who brought their pagan custom of spanking and punishing children into the church. Paul, contrary to popular legend, was anti-spanking, and opposed any and all punishment of a child in his writings.

Most children in biblical times came to honor their parents. Parents achieved this by righteously pampering their children during their childhood. During the first 6 years of a child's life, children were in constant closeness to mothers. The Early Christians practiced birth nudity, with both mother and child in the nude next to each other, in skin-on-skin closeness and intimacy. Mothers responded to the every cry of a child, cooing and picking up the child, then co-snuggling with the child in skin-on-skin format. When mothers were out and about in public, they swaddled their children in swaddling blankets, perhaps also breastfeeding the child in public if summoned to by their child. In the case of older children, they were allowed to play freely, venturing farther and farther from home, but then retreating to the sustaining warmth of mothers, in the form of skin-on-skin co-sleeping. Co-sleeping ended at puberty, when the child wanted their own place to sleep. Fathers also nurtured, but from afar, encouraging Christian discipline in children, and also encouraging the religious self-education of children. Fathers centered their nurturing instinct by masturbating to fantasies pertaining to their parent attraction, usually towards their daughters, but also sometimes towards their sons. 

This loving, warm childhood gave way to respect and honor for parents when children grew into young adults, and left the house. Children were expected by church custom to respect and honor their parents once becoming independent from their parents, as a means of thanksgiving for all parents did for them during their childhoods. Parents could be shunned by their children, and sometimes even taken to trial before a panel of elders in order to be excommunicated from the parish. However, most children in the Early Church didn't need to disown their parents. Their parents gave them a warm and loving childhood, and so children gave thanks to their parents later by pampering them, and taking care of their parents when they were old and senile. How good of a job parents did at pampering children was determined by how much respect, honor, and praise parents got when children were older. 

Parents are not deserving of respect and honor just for existing, apart from the narrow protections that the parent protection laws afford them. Respect is earned in life, including in parenting. Dear parents, YOU are a depraved and decadent adult who is deserving of nothing but DEATH and PUNISHMENT merely for existing in relation to your children and the God that protects them. Parents are deserving of absolutely nothing from their children, and are to be grateful for the every joy their child brings them. Parents are deserving of absolutely nothing in life, and are to be grateful for absolutely everything in life, and this sort of attitude adjustment chastens up the parent, and forms them into a disciplined example for children to follow. Taking an undeserving attitude towards your child also centers any parent anger towards children, to the point of elimination.

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke children to anger through punitive parenting will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them forever be cast into the lake of fire and burning sulfur, which is the second death prepared for Satan and his accomplices! Let them descend into the abyss which is the ever-burning Hell of fire and torment, suffering God's wrath day and night forever and ever! Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!