Righteous objectification: Why children should see parents as objects

Many parents think that children should treat them with respect while they are raising them. This is a common belief amongst American parents. However, most American parents want reverent respect from their parents. The kind of respect the Bible prescribes for dependent children towards their parents is objectifying towards parents. See also righteous use. 

Parents are there for dependent children to use at their dispose, like tools. This is part of 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 are to submit to their 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 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 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. Paul was the head of a group of deacons that went on child protection missions, also known as "child saviors", with Paul taking in several children in his time (sexual ransom was prohibited under the Law for "child saviors").

Children in biblical times generally did respect their children, even before they had to. But, while children were being brought up, the respect was of an objectifying type, where parents were seen as mere milking-objects by their children. Children usually saw their parents as milk-objects to squeegee and use at their own disposal, like a sponge. Parents were likened by their children to tools to be gotten out of a shed and used for the benefit of children. Parents didn't complain about being used by their children, as children were extensions of God to them. 

Children were seen in biblical times as the salt and light of the world. Children sat high atop a mounted hill, casting high judgment upon all adult-kind, discerning the sheep from the goats in terms of which adults are charitable and which ones are uncharitable, bringing out the best and the worst in all adults. Children's objectifying rebellion was seen simply as a child trying to shake what they need from a parent, with the parent being a sturdy tree that bears fruit. 

Parents likened themselves to that fruit tree, and sought to make themselves available to be used like that fruit tree. Even as children became young adults, parents were always there to be used selflessly and dutifully. Parents in biblical times loved their children in a way far deeper than any modern parent can fathom. Children were seen as vulnerable extensions of God, casting divine authority over parents, and parents simply surrendered to the divine authority of their children, fearing God's Wrath in their child's every cry, with the every cry of a child being a summonses of needs. Parents even prayed to their children when children rejected them, because that was seen as a sign of God's rejection. Ancient Jewish society, including the Early Church, was a child worshipping society, not a child enslaving society. 

Parents were seen as milking-objects. For the first 6 years of a child's life, mothers were in constant closeness with children, meaning that wherever the mother went, so did the child. The child used the body of the mother for their own sustaining warmth, suckling the teat of the mother and co-snuggling next to the mother, with both mother and child in a state of birth nudity. Mothers, when out and about in public, were swaddled next to the bosom of mothers in swaddling blankets, perhaps breastfeeding in public, with the child then tucked underneath the loose-fitting, revealing dress of mothers that resembled an apron.

As children got older, they ordered their parents around quite a bit. Between the ages of 6-13, children issued lawfully binding orders on parents, and parents, in most every case, had to obey the lawfully binding orders of children. Even when parents did not have to obey - perhaps due to the orders being unworkable or unlawful - parents had to decline reassuringly, or else be guilty anyway of provoking their child to anger. Parents were often rendered vulnerable and maybe even helpless due to the intensity of the righteous demands from their child during that point in their children's development. However, most Christian parents loved their children deeply, in a divine way, and so they did as their child said, no matter how vulnerable of a position they ended up in. Nothing came in between them and their child.

Anything that the child perceived as offensive or damaging, coming from entitlement, was considered a provocation to anger against the child, and the child was empowered to respond with resisting anger to the adult. In Sunday school in the Early Church, children were encouraged to challenge any punishments or reprimands from their parents with righteous anger. Children could instead turn the other cheek and forgive their parents, but they weren't obligated to. With enough rebukes, a parent or parents could be taken to court before a council of 3 elders, where they would be excommunicated if they didn't repent with promise to avail themselves of the church's help. Parents could not issue lawfully binding orders on their child or take them to court, and if parents did take their child to court, they would be forced to apologize to their child, and would be excommunicated from the church if they didn't apologize. Children, at the time of the excommunication, were taken in by "child saviors", or special deacons that went on child protection missions - "child saviors" had to be non-contact pedophiles, meaning pedophiles that abstained from their drives entirely, throughout their whole lives. Sexual ransom was unlawful, and deemed fornication, under the Law, and so "child savior" deacons asked absolutely nothing in return for the safekeeping of homeless children. The Apostle Paul was the head of this group of deacons, and he took in a few in his time.

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!