Honor parents: Understanding the Fifth Commandment in context

Many parents feel entitled to respect. Most American parents feel the need to punish their children in order to gain respect from them. This is a common attitude amongst American parents. However, the Bible, in context, calls for parents to earn their respect. Many parents want to be honored, but few take the time to earn that honor.

The Fifth Commandment states in Exodus 20:12 KJV:

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

This commandment simply means do not commit elder abuse against your parents. Ultimately, this commandment refers to the parent protection laws. All it means, in context, is that children should not strike their parents (see also Exod. 21:15), gaslight parents to send them places (see also Lev. 20:9), or commit moral crimes while blaming parents (see also Deut. 21:18-21). Apart from those narrow protections, parents need to earn their respect. How a child treats their parents says a lot about what kind of upbringing the child had.

The best way to understand the Fifth Commandment is the commandment to not strike parents. Parents are there for their children to use, like a sponge or a milking-cow. But, there are limits as to what parents should have to tolerate. Parents should discourage children from striking them, and the way to do this is through righteous wailing, meaning parents should cry out loud when their child strikes them.  You may find that children never want to take advantage of vulnerability. Most children who make their parents cry through striking them never strike their parents again, because they don't want to make their parents cry - they just want to be heard.

The Fifth Commandment is repeated in 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. This word ultimately refers to 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 they would to God, from beneath yet from above, expecting absolutely nothing in return. See also Matt. 22:35-40. 

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, but not limited to, any punishments, reprimands, or other controlling demeanor. 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 a child as a quartered slave. Paul here was lifting up the Law in order to convict a group of Greek Christians 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 secular writings. Paul may not have gotten along with the women of the church, but he sure loved children, and even took in a few orphaned children during his time as a deacon.

Respect for parents was a concept in biblical times. But, respect for parents came in the form of closeness to parents, not fear of parents. For the first 6 years of childhood, children were in constant closeness to parents, meaning that wherever the mother went, so did her child. For the first 2 years of childhood, children were constantly held by mothers, either in her loving arms, or on mom's back in a papoose bag when her hands were full. Between ages 2-6, children ranged next to mothers, following mom from room to room, not letting mom out of their sight, morbidly fearing that mom would "go away and never come back". Whenever children cried, mothers cooed before picking up the child, then diagnosing the need from there. Maybe the child was tired. Maybe the child was hungry. Maybe the child needed mom's milk. Maybe the child needed mom, period. Whenever mother and child were out and about, mothers wrapped up their children - under age 6 - next to their bosom in swaddling blankets, with the swaddling blankets - and the child with them - tucked underneath the mother's loose-fitting, revealing dress that resembled an apron. Come nightfall, children co-slept next to mothers in skin-on-skin format every night, until the child reached the onset of puberty, which was when children wanted their own place to sleep. Children went naked wherever they went, and mothers went naked within the family home, with this birth nudity facilitating optimal skin-on-skin warmth and sustenance. 

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