Respect: Why parents have to earn their respect in parenting

Most parents want to be respected. However, many parents demand their "right" to respect from their children. Most American parents demand respect from children. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. However, parents are not inherently deserving of respect. Like all good things in life, they have to earn their respect in relation to their children.

Parents are to show respect to their children, as part of the Christian commandment for mutual submission. The burden of proof is on the parent, not the child. 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 are to submit to children as their enemy, from beneath yet from above, 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 punishment 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 under the Law 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.

Respect for parents was a command in the Early Church, but only for adult children who had left the home. Until then, parents had to give due respect to their children, and obey the lawfully binding orders of children. Respect did exist in parent-child relationships in biblical times, but that came in the form of closeness, not reverent respect. 

Respect meant closeness in Early Christian parenting. For the first 6 years of a child's life, children were in constant closeness with mothers, meaning wherever the mother went, so did the child. Mother and child were in a state of birth nudity, where both mother and child were in the nude next to each other, in skin-on-skin closeness and intimacy. Mothers picked up their crying child with both parties in the nude, and engaged in skin-on-skin co-snuggling, placing the child on the breast area in mammary closeness. It was this type of sustaining closeness that was seen as a child's way of surrendering to parents. 

When children became adults, and left the house to get married off, they gave thanks to their parents by giving their parents the due respect that they earned while their children were still dependent on them. Respect for parents was thanksgiving for all of the times that children were pampered while dependent on parents. Some children did not get that type of childhood even then, and such children, as young adults, usually shunned their parents or petitioned the council to excommunicate them, which was perfectly lawful then.  

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 unto 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!