Respect: Why respect is earned in parenting

Many parents feel deserving of respect. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. Most American parents punish their children when they feel disrespected. However, respect is earned in life, and that includes when being a parent. Most parents don't know what respect meant to children in the Bible.

Earning your respect as a parent means pleasing your child, as is commanded in 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. Parents are the enemy of children, just as mankind is the enemy of God, and is to submit as such. This surrender to parents came with strings attached on the part of parents, with children issuing righteous demands from their restful place, usually when parents weren't pulling their weight.

The Greek root word translated "provoke...to anger" is ερεθιζο (Latin: erethizo) and refers to damaages 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, but not limited to, any punishments, reprimands, or other 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 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 children. Paul may not have gotten along with the women, but he sure loved children, and even took in orphaned children. Indeed, Greco-Roman fathers whipped their children with the scourge of cords, but NOT the Christians among them. 

Respect, in biblical times, was earned by parents. With that said, respect for parents was understood differently than how respect for parents was understood today. Children in biblical times were simply close to their parents. For the first 6 years of a child's life, children were in constant closeness to mothers, meaning that wherever the child went, so did the child. The Early Christians practiced birth nudity, where mother and child were quartered in the home, in the nude next to each other. Whenever children cried, mothers ran to the rescue by cooing at their child, then picking up the child, diagnosing his/her needs before providing what the need is. A common reason for children to cry was when they were hungry, and if they were milk-dependent, they were breastfed to sleep by their mothers. When out and about, children were swaddled next to the bosom of mothers, in swaddling blankets. Come nightfall, children co-slept next to mothers in skin-on-skin format, with this co-sleeping ending at the onset of puberty. This sort of closeness is what children in biblical times understood as respect.

When children left the house, they paid due respects to their parents. Reverent respect for parents, as an independent adult, came in the form of thanksgiving for all the fond memories of being pampered by parents. Most children surrendered to the law of their parents once they were baptized, as a giving of thanks for everything that they received from their parents. Sometimes, children resented their parents, in which case they either simply shunned their parents, or else took it further, and petitioned the council to excommunicate the parents who abused them. The ancients in the Early Church had a concept of child abuse, and they defined it broadly, namely as any entitlement perceived by a child as either damages or offenses. 

The depraved and entitled parents who provoke their children to anger through punitive parenting will not inherit the Kingdom of God! Let them be forever 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!