The Ten Commandments 6
Honor Thy Father and Mother: God Between the Generations
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^yh,l{a/ hw”hy>-rv,a] hm’d’a]h’ l[;
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Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
INTRODUCTION: Cultural Challenges to Obeying the Fifth Commandment
a. The Culture Divide
In Tom Wolfe’s most recent book, I am Charlotte Simmons, an early scene describes Charlotte’s arrival as a freshman at the prestigious Dupont University. 1 Growing up in the mountains of western North Carolina, Charlotte meets the “sophisticated” graduates of Groton and St. Paul’s Schools, one of whom is her roommate, Beverly. Charlotte is both proud of and rather embarrassed by her simple, country parents, who have brought her and her cardboard boxes to the dorm in their battered half-ton pickup.. Charlotte’s father and mother have little formal education, i.e., school education. Her father sports a tattoo of a mermaid on his upper arm, which has turned a garish red with the exertion of carrying Charlotte’s boxes to her room. Compared to Beverley’s parents, Charlotte’s father and mother wear all the “wrong” clothes. They suggest lunch at the “Big Sizzler” , turning the stomachs of Beverley’s parents and Beverly (who is bulimic). Charlotte’s father is a blue-color worker; Beverley’s father is the CEO of a large Connecticut company. Charlotte is going to have a hard time at Dupont honoring the values, especially sexual values, her parents taught her by word and example. Sexual practices in the unisex dorms will be a special challenge for Charlotte because her “God-fearing Baptist” mother refused to even talk about sex outside of marriage.
Tom Wolfe’s masterly depiction of Charlotte Simmons’s struggles to cope with the challenges of modern college life point to one of the major challenges to understand, much less to make one’s own the Fifth Commandment. Separating the values, indeed the whole world of Charlotte’s parents and the norms and practices at Dupont are both the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s and the cyber revolution. Charlotte’s classmates at Dupont take globalized communication and interactivity for granted. In the virtual global society of the Internet, space means nothing, time means nothing. The norms of Charlotte’s high school classmates mean nothing. Indeed, a person’s identity, Charlotte’s own name, the norms she lives by, the forces that shaped her, are all up for grabs. On the Internet, they can be fabricated, “made over”, faked, experimentally put aside as college kids try on life styles they could not experience at home.
Overstating somewhat, asking Charlotte to honor and respect her parents, at least regarding their moral value, their cultural norms, is like asking a Martian to follow Martian moral norms on the planet earth. The culture gap between the pre-cyber and the post cyber generations make “honoring your father and mother” hard to understand, and even harder to obey.
B. The Sins of the Fathers
A second challenge to obeying the Commandment to honor father and mother is that mothers and fathers are fallible, sinful human beings. They hurt their children, usually not intentionally, usually thinking they are doing the right thing, trying their best. The parents of German actor Karl Boehm decided he must be punished for trying to commit suicide. Their teenaged son had been told that his return home 30 minutes later than required “could never be forgiven.” This threat of the loss of parental love capped a long history of emotional neglect by the parents. Karl Boehm cut his wrists and escaped death by accident. To re-punish his original lateness but to punish him for his suicide attempt, Boehm’s father, the world- famous conductor, instructed the family doctor to suture his son’s cuts without benefit of anesthetic. No doubt Boehm senior thought he was teaching his son an invaluable lesson: respect and obey parental authority. His parents’ cruelty scared their son, physically and emotionally, for life.
Like many children, abused by their parents or by relatives, Boehm Jr.’ intimate relations were deeply affected for the worse. He went through several marriages before he could establish a stable one. He believed that he must repudiate the values of his parents, rather than honor and obey his parents. The sins of the fathers can deeply undermine obedience of the Fifth Commandment.
C. The Welfare State and the Permissive Society
In premodern and early modern societies, children often understood the Fifth Commandment to require them to provide a home and basic support, when they were too old or too poor to care for themselves. Honoring father and mother meant taking care of them when they couldn’t take care of themselves.
What this care might mean, however, is graphically depicted in Grimms’ fairly tale of the parents who required their old, demented father to eat from a bowl on the kitchen floor behind the oven. When the son and daughter in law asked their own son what he was trying to carve from a stray piece of wood, the boy answered, “a bowl for you to eat from when you get old.” Grimm’s tale hints at the reality that children’s care for their aging and incompetent parents may not always have been caring and sensitive.
Contemporary children, at least those in most western, industrialized countries, often do not need to support their parents financially in their old age. For one thing, the state, the welfare state, has assumed this task. In the United States, Social Security provides a small resource. Medicaid provides help to elderly people. Medicaid and welfare exists for the indigent.
But, in addition, many older Americans today are the beneficiaries of thirty or forty ears of a booming post-WWII economy. These retirees, disciplined by the Great Depression to save and invest conservatively, have substantial savings. Indeed, many of them are helping their children meet their financial needs, as well as helping to care for their grandchildren, while both parents work. In other words, today, young people don’s ask, how can we honor our mother and father by helping them in their old age, but how can our old parents help us as we struggle with the new demands of a globalized economy.2 In these ways adult children today continue to be obligated to their parents.
This dependence of adult children and their retired parents parallels another major cultural shift in the relationship between parents and children, at least in US society. Since the Second World War, parents have gradually assumed that they owe their children everything in their own power to enjoy success and happiness. Of course loving parents have always wanted the best for their children But today, the younger generation has grown accustomed to the idea that their parents owe them the best of everything in material goods, in educational possibilities, in opportunities to develop the skills to compete and win. If, very broadly speaking, earlier generations assumed that the younger generation existed to respect, obey and assist the older generation, in recent decades, children have come to think that parents exist for them —their success and happiness. This cultural development goes against the assumption of the Fifth Commandment.
Respect for parents and for older people generally go together. And while millions of modern people care for and care about the elderly, the elderly are increasingly ignored, disrespected, seen as more of a social burden than as a social asset. Many people, who know both European countries and the United States say, “If your young, health and well off, living in the US is fine. But if you are old and poor, the US can be a very difficult place.”
The relations between parents and children are deeply impacted by this recent expectations that parents exist for the sake of their children. The needs of young adults are also increasing, not decreasing in our globalized society. Young parents, often both working, are too tired, too needy, too morally confused , to meet the challenge of forming their kids morally and nurturing in them respect and honor for their parents. Instead, many parents in post-modern societies are obsessed with teaching their children to win, to get into the best schools, to get the best jobs, to put achievement above everything else, including above other people and even themselves.3 Therefore, many children today are very disrespectful of their parents and of older people, generally. .
Thus, at least three major cultural changes and trends4—the culture divide between parents and children, the sins of the fathers against children and the Welfare State and the Permissive Society have deeply undermined the assumptions that give the Fifth Commandment plausibility and content.
SCRIPTURE: The New Testament
The New Testament presents a striking paradox in the reception of the Fifth Commandment from the religion of Israel. Following the same interpretative principle of other essays in this series, we start with the New Testament and interpret the Old Testament (the First Covenant) witness, including the Fifth Commandment, in the light of the New Testament (The Second Covenant) , with Jesus at the center.
1.
Affirming the Fifth Commandment in the New Testament.
Matthew’s Gospel presents Jesus in controversy with the Pharisees and Scribes over the proper interpretation of several of the Ten Commandments.5 In chapter 15, Matthew depicts Jesus’ critique of the Pharisees’ interpretation of the Fifth Commandment. Apparently, Pharisaic teaching held that giving money to support the Temple excused a person from supporting one’s own parents in their need. This traditional teaching empties the Fifth Commandment of its meaning, declared Jesus..
The assumption behind this critique of traditional Pharisaic teaching is that Jesus held that the Fifth Commandment, in its plain meaning, continued to be obligatory. Jesus thus, as in his teaching generally, affirms each of the Tend Commandments. And this is confirmed in the account of Jesus’ instructions to the Rich Young Man (Matthew 19:19) in which Jesus lists the Commandments from the second Table of the Law as the “good deeds” which the young man must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus names specifically the Fifth Commandment as obligatory for the young man.
The Letter to the Ephesians also clearly affirms the plain meaning of the Fifth Commandment. The author of Ephesians6 writes, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your Father and Mother (this is the first commandment with a promise) that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.” (Eph. 6:1)
We should note that the author revises the promise side of the Commandment. The Old Testament statements of the First Commandment refers to long life in the land into which Yahweh is leading the Israelites. The Ephesians author writes, instead, “that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.”
Further, we should note that the author revises the Commandment itself, to say, “Obey your parents in the Lord.” This wording means that the author sets the meaning of the Commandment in a larger, ultimate , framework, namely life “in the Lord, “, i.e., life in the framework of Jesus Christ as Lord. This is another example of how the New Testament writers re-frame and reinterpret the teachings of the Decalogue in the light of Jesus Christ. Our attempt to interpret the Fifth Commandment for today must follow this pattern.
2.
The Claim of Jesus Christ Transcends the Claim of Family Obligations
The first side of the paradoxical teaching about the Fifth Commandment is that Jesus and others affirm the plain sense of the Fifth commandment. But the other side of Jesus’ teaching confronts us with the radical subordination of all human relationships to loyalty to Jesus Christ and to God, the Father of Jesus Christ.7 Let us first simply list three passages in which Jesus directs allegiance to himself and to God, the Father, which transcends allegiance to parents and family.
Matthew 10:37: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Matthew. 19.10 “Not all men can receive this saying (condemning divorce), but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are men who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this let him receive it.”
Matthew 12:50 “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
These statements of Jesus have as their source and basis Jesus’ relationship to his heavenly Father as the absolutely primary and central relationship for Jesus and for all those who follow Jesus as disciples. Jesus’ relationship to his Father, His absolute obedience, honor, glorification of the Father, an “honoring” of his Father unto death, is the paradigm of Christian discipleship. The consequence of this teaching is to orient Jesus’ disciples in every age to God, the Father, as the absolutely highest loyalty in life. Indeed, Jesus’ teaching about the priority of the Kingdom of God, i.e., obedience to God’s will, is identical to the content of the first part of the Double Commandment, to love God with one’s whole heart mind and strength.
3.
The Paradox
This then is the paradox of Jesus’ teaching regarding the Fifth Commandment. Service, honor, loyalty, worship, glorification of God, the Father is prior to any and every human loyalty. “We must honor God more than men.” The key question is how believers can live in this paradox.
How did Jesus live in this paradox? The Fourth Gospel’s account of Jesus’ “handing over” his mother into the disciple’ care is one clue. Jesus did not ignore or abandon his mother as he followed the absolute requirements of his higher loyalty. On the other hand, Jesus obeyed the will of his Father; he did his Father’s will, not his own will or the wishes of Mary, his mother. Of course, we must return to this question of how to reconcile Jesus’ call to follow the will of his Father as our highest loyalty at the same time that we try to obey the requirements of the Fifth Commandment..
THE FIRST COVENANT
1.
The Head of the Second Table
The Fifth Commandment is the first of the Second Table of the Decalogue. The First Table orders human obedience to God: have no other Gods; make no graven images; do not take the Lord’s Name in vain; keep the Sabbath. The Fifth Commandment heads the list of obligations to other human beings, guiding faithful Jews and Christians in their “loving their neighbors as themselves.”
The Fifth Commandment begins with the “neighbor” who is closest to us; our parents. This relationship, as all psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists and common sense tells us is a primordial, a root relationship. Nothing shapes who we are more than our parents, especially when our birth parents are also those who raise and nurture us. This shaping power of our parents is not only educational and psychological; it is also biological. Our genetic constitution consists of the joining of the genes of our birth parents. There is no escape from our birth parents, at least at the physiological level of our lives. A realistic person will acknowledge this.
Even more fundamental than the levels of parental education and genetic contribution are that to our parents we owe the difference between or being or our not being, i.e., our being born, our coming into this world as a human being. We have already implied, in the section titled “the sins of the Fathers, ” that we should not mistakenly make being born a sufficient reason to expect children to honor and obey their parents. Some parents are horrible parents; they physically abuse, they psychologically violate, they financially exploit their children. If such parents demand of their children: “ Obey me; I brought you into the world,” they should not expect any positive response. . Thank God, the overwhelming majority of parents are not intentionally cruel to their children. They many unintentionally hurt them, physically, psychologically, spiritually because parents, like children, are fallible, limited, sinful human beings. The terrible parents are much fewer than the good parents.
Thus this Fifth Commandment addresses the, humanly speaking, most fundamental human relationship. And its content is: children should honor their parents. What does this mean in the framework of the Old Testament?
But observing how important parents are for each human being does not go to the heart of the matter, from the point of view of the Old Testament. For the Old Testament, the heart of the matter, with respect of honoring mother and father is God as Creator. What do we mean?
In the two creation stories, in Genesis 1-2:3 and Genesis2:4-25. Scholars tell us that these two creation accounts came from different authors and from two very different eras of Israel’s history. In both stories, however, the creation and man and woman is presented as God’s direct intention for human life. Further, that man and woman should “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea an ver the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. “ This creation of man and woman as God’s image and God’s blessing of man and woman in the command to have children and to have dominion over the rest of creation is clearly central aspects of God’s plan for creation. God wills that human being be in the form of man and woman; that man and woman join sexually and have children and that man and woman together, as equal partners, should have stewardship over the earth.
Surely, the Commandment to “honor father and mother” fits into this foundational plan of creation, God’s will to order His creation in a certain way. To honor father and mother, therefore is to express our respect for and our obedience to how God intends the creation to be ordered and ruled by man and woman in partnership.
We said at the beginning of this essay that some parents don’t deserve to be honored by their children, in the sense that they have mistreated their children and cannot expect from their children respect or love. But when the commandment to honor one’s parents is seen against the ultimate framework of God’s plan for ordering creation, honoring one’s parents means honoring God’s way of ordering God’s created world. A child can fear, distrust and even hate his or her parents for good reasons. That same child can still “honor father and mother” in the sense of accepting, promoting, protecting and furthering God’s plan for ordering human being as male and female in procreative union. The child, even one who can see nothing honorable in his or her own parents, can try to surmount that cruel destiny and be good parents, for the sake of God’s honor and glory, in his or her own life. This would certainly be a fulfilling of the Fifth Commandment in the spirit of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
In many of the churches today how the church should assess and evaluate homosexual orientation and homosexual relationships of different kinds is a divisive issue. However the churches involved resolve this thorny issue, they will not do justice to the Bible or to the Fifth Commandment if they ignore the Bible’s teaching that God wills that His creation of human being is as male and female, if they ignore God’s commandment that men and women join in one flesh union for procreation and if they ignore that as man and woman in partnership, humans should exercise stewardship over God’s creation.
The Two Lines of Old Testament Witness to Parents
Within the corpus of the Old Testament, the prescription to honor father and mother has two sources or Sitz im Leben. One is the Deuteronomic legal tradition, which contains the Ten Commandments and many other moral prescriptions. The second is the Wisdom literature (in Jewish terminology, “The Writings”).
We are concentrating on the Commandment to honor father and mother as handed down in the legal, or Deuteronomic, literature. The second source of normative teaching about children’s honoring of parents comes from Wisdom literature, e.g., the Book of Proverbs and the, in the Apocryphal writings, the Book of Ecclesiasticus.
Relevant verses in the Book of Proverbs are 6:20; 19:26; 23:22; 28:24; 29:1
6; 30: 27. An example: “My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your mother’s teaching. …For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life.” (Prov. 6: 20, 23. ) ; or: “He who does violence to his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach. Cease, my son, to hear instruction only to stray from the words of knowledge.” (Prov. 19:26-27).
Teaching about the duty of sons and daughters to parents in Ecclesiasticus is strongly marked by a denigrating view of women. An example: “It is a disgrace to be the father of an undisciplined son, and the birth of a daughter is a loss. A sensible daughter obtains her husband, but one who acts shamefully brings grief to her father..” Ecclesiasticus 22:3-4.
These verses demonstrate that the subject matter is not duties of children to parents, as in the Fifth Commandment, but the standing, or embarrassment in the public forum a parent faces if their children do not behave properly. Thus, these passages are only marginally relevant for our purposes.
In summary, we can say that two sources seem to feed teaching in the First Covenant about children’s relation to parents. One is the Ten Commandments and prescriptions in the legal writings. The second is the Wisdom literature, especially Proverbs.
This parallel brings us to a fundamental point in the consideration not only of this Commandment but also of all the Commandments of the Second Table of the Law. This point is the parallel contributions or roles of God’s revealed will through Moses and human wisdom giving voice to what the Christian and philosophical tradition has called the universal or natural moral law.
A fundamental question is whether we hrst in the Second Table of the Law only the revealed voice of God or also the voice of human wisdom and experience reflecting a general human insight into moral norms and practices that make and keep human life human. The theory of natural moral law, a natural human insight into norms that promote, protect and provide for human flourishing holds that human moral reason shares in the mind of God naturally. Or, in the words of the Prologue to John’s Gospel, “In him (the Word of God) was life and that life was the light of men.”
The philosophical and theological debates over whether a natural moral law exists and if so, what its content may be, is beyond the scope of this essay. Both the Catholic (Roman Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox) Christian tradition and also the Protestant theological tradition (Luther and Calvin as their fountainheads) affirm the existence of a Natural Moral Law.8 Human moral reason has a reliable insight into valid norms of right and wrong, norms that do not contradict what God teaches in God’s “special” revelation through Israel and through Jesus.
In the next section of the examination of the Fifth Commandment in the Old Testament we therefore should inquire what sense this Commandment expresses an insight into valuable human wisdom.
2.
Submit to One’s Parents
Various other laws in the Old Testament indicate what this Fifth Commandment meant a part of the legal tradition of Israel’s faith. One of these laws stated that he who strikes his mother or father should be stoned to death. So far as this writer knows, no case of this being actually done is recorded in the Old Testament. However, the commandment is stated in Genesis 21:15.
A second verse states: “Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother.” This is clearly a restatement of the Fifth Commandment. What a child did that constitutes “dishonoring” of parents is not stated. However, in the context of the Old Testament, to be cursed for any action is about as strong a punishment is there is. If it does not mean the death penalty, it might mean exclusion from the People of Israel, which in a clan and tribal culture, was a drastic penalty.
A third set of verses in the Old Testament may also give content to what it means to dishonor one’s parents. These have to do with forbidden sexual relationships and what in English translations is called “uncovering the nakedness” of one’s parents. (See Leviticus 18. 6ff).
From this evidence, we can conclude that in the framework of the First Covenant, honoring one’s parents meant literally obeying their directions, not doing anything that brought them into disrepute. Nevertheless, the verses in the Old Testament which actually state clearly the content of children “honoring” their parents, are few. Therefore, we probably can look to traditional societies today, e.g., Near Eastern cultures, to see what honoring of parents can mean.
Unfortunately, it could mean submitting to parental will regarding one’s marriage partner; one’s choice of work; and doing acts of revenge against anyone outside the family or inside the family (such as a daughter) who acts in a way perceived to being ‘dishonor” to the family, i.e., to contradict the will of parents, especially the father, regarding behavior. Such interpretations of “honoring father and mother” must be subjected to critique in the light of the larger framework of our relation to God, the Father, in Jesus Chrsit, presented in the New Testament.
3.
The Point of the Fifth Commandment
The fifth Commandment has two parts: a positive prescription to honor father and mother and the promise that “your days may be long in the land which the Lord will give you. “ This second part of the Commandment may give a clue about its meaning as part of Israel’s legal tradition. These two parts are related causally: the promise depends on, i.e., is caused by, the fulfillment of the prescription. The, the meaning is : honor father and mother in order that your days may be long in the land which God will give the Israelites.
The causal relation between honoring father and mother and length of residence in the Promised Land is by no means clear. Why honoring father and mother should secure Shalom, general well being, in the Promised Land is not obvious. The most plausible connection is found in the basic Covenant between God and Israel itself. According to this Covenant, if Israel is loyal to God, God will favor Israel, protect Israel, and bring Israel to a land of its own. Obedience of children to parents would include accepting and living into the religious teachings of parents, i.e., into the religious teachings about the Covenant. Following the Fifth Commandment would mean that the next generation would dutifully learn and follow the requirements of the Covenant, obedience to God’s will, fulfilling the ceremonial law and moral law.
Honoring parents in this way would mean that the next generation would be ready to live within the framework of God’s covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and thus be beneficiaries of God’s promises in this covenant, i.e. that Yahweh will be their God and lead them to and sustain them in the Promised Land. This is the most plausible explanation of the connection between the prescription and promise aspects of the Fifth Commandment and the best clue to its meaning for the People of Israel and for Christians.
CONCEPT OF xiâo (filial piety. )
We saw in the last section that the Second Table of the Law may have as its source not only God’s direct, divine revelation but God’s indirect revelation through human moral reason. We reached that conclusion by recognizing that Israel’s Wisdom Literature (we looked specifically at the Book of Proverbs) contained teaching that expresses common human wisdom rather than being described as coming directly from “the mouth of the Lord.”
1.
Evidence for the Fifth Commandment as Natural Moral Law.
That the Fifth Commandment has an indirect source in general human mora insight is reinforced when we discover in Chinese moral wisdom a striking parallel to the Fifth Commandment. This is the concept of xiâo.
xiâo is usually translated “filial piety.” It is a cornerstone of the Confucian ethic, and arguably a crystallization point of the whole Chinese culture.9 Confucius lived in the fifth century before Christ and no evidence of any cultural interchange between China in Confucius’ time and the Ancient Near East exists.10 Therefore, the Confucian concept of the son’s duty to parents, especially to his father, is a genuine analogy to the Fifth Commandment, which is historically independent of Israel’s faith. Hence it is genuine evidence of a parallel between divine revelation and general human moral wisdom.
2.
The Concept of xiâo
The canter point of Confucian ethics is the obligations of oldest son to father; younger siblings to oldest son; wife to husband and the family father to the emperor, represented by the vast imperial burocracy. In the Confucian ethic, the natural family (husband-wife-children) (jia) and its lines of authority are a microcosm of the society and the state. As all family members, , (jiating) stand under the authority of the family head, i.e., the father, who should rule with understanding, kindness, strictness and wisdom, so all members of the society constitute a unified household (guojia) standing under the authority of the emperor. Thus, this concept of xiâo, filial piety, locked the whole society into a tightly knit “family” unity, where at the family level, the smallest social unit, the social virtues of respect for authority, cooperation, learning one’s exact place in the social hierarchy and learning to live out that status, were instilled.11
A primary life event for demonstrating filial piety is the death of one’s parents, especially of one’s father. The son, in earlier times, depending on social station, was expected to demonstrate mourning for a considerable period. One extreme form was withdrawing from public life for three years. But demonstrating filial piety was not limited to death. While parents lived, a child, especially the oldest son, was expected to obey and respect and learn from his father and obey his moter. And, after the mourning period, the children, and especially the oldest son, was expected to bring offerings to the parental grave and during the year show other forms of respect to the immediate and distant fore. Therefore, the Confucian concept of Xiao, or better, the practises embodying bears. This moral principle linked not only a living family with the whole larger society but the generations with one another.
3.
What Should We Make of the Parallel?
Before we jump to wild conclusions about the parallel between Confucian teaching and the Fifth Commandment, we must observe important differences. In the first place, Confucian teaching does not name God as the source of this moral principle. Rather, the source of this teaching is only human, a teaching which Confucius probably inherited from thinkers before his own time.12 Confucius’ reason for affirming “xiao” was practical: it promoted social unity and social peace and prosperity. His justification was utilitarian.
Second, Confucius claims only that practising the virtue of filial piety will, of itself, help bring peace and prosperity to the society. The Fifth Commandment, by contrast, promises peace and prosperity to Israel in the Promised Land as a blessing given by God.
Third, the actual social and historical effect of the Confucian ethic, with filial piety as its canter point, is a strongly hierarchical, tightly integrated Chinese society, with all authority grounded in the Emperor (or modern equivalent, like Mao Zse Deng) and flowing down through the imperial burocracy to clans and families. Israel’s God, by contrast, wholly transcends the world. God has created and begins Israel’s existence as a people by an act of liberation from slavery. The history of Israel and of the Jews, and of Christianity, a branch of Judaism, demonstrates Judaism and Christianity as a leaven for social change, indeed a leaven of revolution on behalf of human freedom. The social dynamism of western history, in contrast to that of China before the impact of Christianity upon it, especially in the nineteenth century, is a history of dynamic liberation movements. These liberation movements obtain their leverage from appealing to the transcendent God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ, as an absolutely transcendent moral basis for absolute human value and dignity (inalienable rights) not granted by the Emperor, or the State or the Society.
Therefore, we can note with great interest this cultural parallel in Chinese culture to the divine revelation of God’s moral law in the Bible. We can see in the Bible’s Wisdom Literature a kind of link between divine moral revelation and general human wisdom. For Christians, however, the meaning of duty owed by children to parents, must be keyed to biblical revelation and not first of all to general human wisdom. The parallel between the Fifth Commandment and general human moral wisdom, exemplified in the Wisdom Literature and in Confucianism, supports, however, the biblical notion that in Christ is contained all Wisdom and Knowledge, and that Christ is the light that enlightens every human being who comes into the world.
St. Medieval Theologian: St. Bonaventura
In our attempt to learn from God’s revealed will in the Ten Commandments and to apply that learning to our lives today, we should not neglect what earlier Christian theologians have taught. One of the great Christian theologians, who thought deeply about the Decalogue, as we have seen in previous essays in the series, is St. Bonaventura (13th Century). We turn to Bonaventura in this section for his insights on the Commandment to honor father and mother.
a. The Bible in Scholastic Theology
Scholastic theology, i.e., the theology that flourished between the 12 and 14th centuries in Europe richly combined philosophical ideas and Biblical teachings. Bonaventura is one of the great theologians in this scholastic tradition. This tradition has been derided , sometimes by narrow –minded people, for sometimes making very precise , “ hair-splitting” distinctionsand for forcing the richness of experience into philosophical categories. Reformation theologian, Martin Luther, suspicious of “that whore , reason” was very wary of scholastic theology.
However, anyone who actually studies St. Bonaventura’s or Thomas Aquinas’s writings, or those of other great scholastic theologians, knows that they are deeply committed to Scripture and had a knowledge of Scripture and a devotion to it that puts most modern believers and even theologian in the shade. Certainly for Bonaventura the Bible was the highest authority for Christian teaching, and all that he writes is saturated with the teaching of the Bible. Evidence for this is the very manner by which Bonaventura opens his discussion of the Fifth Commandment.
Bonaventura begins his discussion of this Commandment by reflecting on a verse from Ecclesiasticus (2:33): “Reflect upon what you have been commanded, for what is hidden is not your concern.” This verse prompts Bonaventura to counsel his hearers not to waste their intelligence on satisfying their curiosity. Nothing, his says, is more precious than our intelligence, and our intelligence should be devoted to learning about the via salutis, the way of salvation. People mourn the loss of many things, yet they waste the most precious of their possessions, their own intelligence, on satisfying their curiosity.13
b. Bonaventura on the Fifth Commandment
How, then, does Bonaventura interpret this Commandment for his hearers? First, he reminds them that the human rational soul is doubly ordered, first to God and also to the neighbor. That is, Jesus’ Double Commandment commands believers to do justice to God (Love God with whole heart , mind, and soul) and to the neighbor (love the neighbor as oneself). The Decalogue has two Tables, the first deals with what we owe God (for Bonaventura, Commandments One through Three); the second Table defines our duty to our neighbor. Thus, Bonaventura, like most Christian theologians, uses Jesus Double Commandment to divide the Ten Commandments into Two Tables.
Commandment Five ( Commandment Four, according to Bonaventura’s numbering of them), enjoining respect to father and mother is the first Commandment of the Second Table. All the Commandments of the Second Table are reducible to the Golden Rule: “do unto others what you wish them to do to you; or, negatively: do not do to other what you don’t want them to do to you.” The Fifth Commandment, stated in positive form, enjoins the affirmative form of the Golden Rule; the remaining Commandments, stated in negative form, enjoin what we should not do to others. Combined, these seven Commandments summarize a blameless life and a beneficent life, and blamelessness and beneficence (innocentia, beneficentia) are the two basic aspects of justice. The Commandments are ordered in dignity; beneficence is nobler than innocence. Hence, the Commandment enjoining beneficence to parents precedes the Commandments defining innocence.
What do we see Bonaventura doing here. Bonaventura is relating Biblical teaching to ancient Greek teaching, especially Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle, the two fountainheads of Greek philosophy in the West, defined justice as giving to each his due. The Double Commandment states what is due God and neghbor. Bonaventura is simply connecting the Greek idea of justice to the Biblical teaching, using making distinctions as is typical of scholastic theology.
After “ordering” the Fifth Commandment in the larger picture of our duty to God and neighbor, Bonaventura focuses on the meaning of this particular Commandment. He holds that there is a literal and a figurative meaning to this Commandment. The literal meaning is keyed to the concept of “the father.” The father is a generative person (persona generantis), a teaching person (persona instruentis), and a nourishing person (persona educantis). The father’s relation to the son, therefore, has three aspects (three ratione) : ratione originis, ratione regiminis and reatione benefactoris. To honor one’s father, therefore, means to honor the father14 as generator, ruler and benefactor. 15 To honor one’s father, therefore, means, to owe the Father a triple honor (debetur patri triplex honor) the honor of reverence, the honor of obedience and the honor of beneficence.
Bonaventura then addresses the promise attached to this first Commandment. He notes that not everyone lives a long time. But God’s promise is to be measured not by mere number of days but the value or worth of the days one lives. (non solum secundum longitudinem dierum currentium, sed secundum valorem. ) Honor is given to those who honor their father; happiness is the reward of those showing obedience to their father, and wealth is the reward of those who show beneficence to their father. (quia honoranti patrem honore reverentiae debetur vita gloriosa sive honorifica; honoranti patrem honore obedientiae debetur vita iucunda; honoranti patrem honore beneficentiae debetur vita opulenta. )16
Having explained the literal meaning of the Commandment, Bonaventura addresses its wider, more general meaning (videte modo latiorem intellectum)
“Father” as a concept refers to any person who has authority, age and amiableness (auctoritatis, antiquitatis et amicabilitatis) in relation to us. We owe obedience to all in authority, i.e., to all who are superior to us in the political, ecclesial or monastic sectors of life. (qui praeest rei politicae et ecclesiasticae, vel rei monasticae.) In regard to agedness, we owe our “fathers” , i.e., anyone in need, our support and sustenance (ducumenta , sustentamenta, patrocinia).
Finally, our “fathers” are those who help us, assist us, and in that broad sense are “amiable”. To these we are to show honor and affection as Paul says in his Epistle to the Romans 12: 10.
Love, however, has a certain order, Bonaventura. (Habet autem ista dilectio ordinem, quia debemus dilegere secundmem rationem proximitatis, secundum rationem similitudinis et secundum rationem obligationis. ) 17 According to the first, we are to love those close to us before those distant from us; we out to love family members before we love those outside the family and we are to help our friends before we help our enemies. 18 According to the criterion of similarity, we are to love human beings before we love non- humans; we are to love believers before we love nonbelievers (saracenum), and we are to love monastic brothers before those who do not belong to the order. Finally, according to the criterion of obligation, I am to love him to whom I am ordered by precept, by reward and by promise, more than to whom I am ordered only by precept and reward, and these more than one to whom I am ordered only by command.
c. The Value of Bonaventura’s Teaching For Us.
Bonaventura’s reception of the Fifth Commandment should interest us in three way. In the first place, he works within the assumption we disussed when we spoke of the natural moral law. Bonaventura (like Thomas Aquinas) believed that general human moral reason and God’s special revelation in Scruoture would not conflict but reinforce each other. That is why he tried to meld Greek moral philosophy, e.g., its concept of justice as giving to each what is due that person, and the Ten Commandments. We, saw, however, that on the question of love of enemies, this melding is only partially successful.
Second, Bonaventura’s distinction between a literal and a “wider” meaning of the Commandment is interesting. In the final sections of this essay we will speak of the “larger framework” for understanding this Commandment. In the Bible, honoring parents is always placed in the larger framework of loving and honoring God above all things. Bonaventura tries to respect this larger framework by speaking of obedience and respect to those who are in authority over believers in the church and in the political order.. We , today, may find his views a too ready submission to church and state authority. But at least Bonaventura was trying to see in the Commandment an honor and respect due not just to our biological parents but to the larger units of his life—the state and the church.
Third, we might find enlightening how Bonaventura analyzes the notion of “father” to give specific content to what honor and obedience is due parents and those in authority. We see how he analyzes “father” to find the dimensions of generativity, education and nurture. This is an example of Bonaventura, the believer, using his intelligence to gain deeper understanding of what he believes. This is an example of “faith seeking understanding” by analyzing the plain meaning of key words. This is good habit for every Christian.
The Reformation Heritage: Luther and Calvin
As we continue our search for insight into the meaning of the Fifth Commandment for Christians today, we turn to the two greatest theologians of the Reformation: Martin Luther and John Calvin.
1.
Back to the Sources
Both the Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century involved a return to primary sources. For the Renaissance scholars of Italy, Holland and Germany, it was a return to classical Greek and Latin sources in philosophy, literature, and rhetoric and even in what we would call natural sciences. For Luther and Calvin, the return was to the pure Word of God, i.e., the Word of God as witnessed to in Scripture. For Luther and Calvin, the Word of God, i.e., the Commandments and the Promises of God, witnessed to in Scripture, also served as a norm to criticize much of the then current teaching and practice in the western Catholic Church.
Therefore, we would expect both Luther and Calvin to interpret loyalty and obedience to “father and mother” not as passive acceptance of the teachings of the church hierarchy (as Bonaventura seems to do) but to require believers to constantly listen to the voice of Christ and the Apostles as witnessed to in Scripture. What do they actually say about the Fifth Commandment? We turn first to Luther’s discussion of the Fifth Commandment (for him, following the Roman Catholic enumeration, the Fourth Commandment) in his important work, Sermon on Good Works.
2.
Obedience to Biological Parents.
Luther’s interpretation of the Fifth Commandment is, at one level, very straightforward and, indeed, to modern ears, very harsh. To him, the Commandment requires obeying one’s parents, that one keeps their words and example before one’s eyes as guides to one’s own life. (dass man ihnen gehorsam sind; ihre Weorte und Werke vor Auge habe). This obedience, for Luther, also means to provide food and shelter and other physical support, as one’s parents may need them.
Luther does say that the duty to obey one’s parents has a limit. If and when parents require of children something that contradicts the first three Commandments, i.e., one’s duties to God, then the children should not obey their parents.
Otherwise, when a parent commands obedience not in conflict with the obedience we owe God, Luther holds that the child must submit to parental will. Luther points out that this obedience may cause children to experience injustice from parents. How should children react, when their parents treat them unjustly? They should be silent and bear however they treat their children. (still schweigen und leiden, wie sie uns handeln)
Luther also points out that the Commandment does not obligate children to love their parents, but to obey them. We are to love God, i.e., with a love that is also a reverence and respect. But the Commandment does not require us to love our parents as we are to love God with our whole heart, mind and strength.
Then Luther applies the Commandment to parents. If children are to obey parents, what should parents require of their children. Here the Reformation themes come through. Parental duty is to teach their children by word and example to fulfill the first three Commandments (the First Table of the Decalogue.) This is to truly love one’s children, not with a sentimental love according to the flesh, which would coddle children, letting them do and live however they wish.
This brings Luther to voice the most stringent part of his teaching on this Commandment. The gist of his point: children are sinners and by nature do not want to obey the Commandments to love God and serve the neighbor. Children are selfish and want everyone to serve their wills. Therefore, says Luther, their wills must be broken, they need to required to do what their sinjful natures don’t want to do, and if necessary, must be punished and disciplined (da wird dem Kind ohne Unterlass sein eigener Wille gebrochen und muss tun, lassen, leiden, dass seine Natur gar gerne anders taete.).
Luther acknowledges that sometimes children will suffer injustice under this parental discipline; for parents are sinners, too. And, he acknowledges, further that this injustice can cause children to rebel and lose all love and respect for their parents. Only God’s grace can deal with such situations, Luther observes.
From this brief summary of one of Luther’s important statements about this Commandment, we can grasp his main point. Parents are to mediate love and fear of the Lord. Their parental role is first and foremost to bring children up in love and fear of the Lord. Of course providing for their children’s physical needs is also part of their duty. But bending and breaking the sinful wills of their children for the sake of love and fear of the Lord is their spiritual duty.
John Calvin, writing in the second generation of the Reformation, basically follows Luther’s interpretation.19 Calvin holds that God has an “economy” for ruling the world providentially. According to this economy, we should look up to those whom God has placed over us, showing them honor obedience and gratitude, not contempt, stubbornness and ingratitude. (Paragraph. 35) 20
Just as Luther, so Calvin observes that subordination to the will of another contradicts the natural human fallen will (human depravity). Subordination to rightful authority will go against the grain of children. But being “gradually accustomed to all lawful subordination” is a way God teaches human beings to submit their wills to God. Calvin can even say, therefore, that those subordinate to lawful authority should “recognize something divine” in those authorities. In other words, teaching children to obey their parents helps children to lean to respect and honor God. The home is a training ground for obedience and love of God.
Calvin says that whether parents and others in authority over us are worthy or unworthy of honor is not relevant. Calvin does not teach that parents or those in authority over us should need to “earn” our respect. That is because obeying them because of their worth is not the primary point; the primary point is learning to honor and obey God who providentially placed them over us in God’s governance of the world. God places them over others not because they are always worthy but because God intends thereby to order human relations providentially. When discussing biblical references to obeying parents, Calvin does include Ephesians 6: 1-4: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. …Fathers doe not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Thus Calvin would hold that parents have a responsibility in relation to this Commandment. It does not authorize arbitrary parental tyranny. Parents are expected to use their authority over their children for the sake of the children’s welfare and especially for the sake of their children’s relation to God. And they should not exercise this authority such that “it provokes their children to anger.”
Calvin’s exposition of the Commandment adds a note lacking in Luther. Calvin says that “nature should teach us” to obey parents. This claim reminds us that Calvin assumed there is a universal natural sense of moral law. Calvin, thus, is one of the theologians who affirmed the overlap between the natural moral law and special divine revelation, exemplified in the Decalogue.
3.
The Basic Direction of Reformation Teaching on the Fifth Commandment
Luther’s language about breaking the recalcitrant will of children by parental discipline sounds harsh to our modern ears. Luther himself admits that this teaching can lead to injustice and a wounding of children that only God’s grace can heal. Calvin’s teaching about a providential hierarchical ordering of society also seems dangerous. It could easily lead to an authoritarian society in which individuals, especially those at the bottom of the social hierarchy, are taught not to question or challenge authority, even if unjust. Both Lutheran and Reformed theologians did a lot of soul searching after WW II wondering whether this Reformation teaching about respecting the authority of the State, paved the way for Nazi totalitarians.
Of enduring value in Protestant teaching on the Fifth Commandment, however, is the traditional Christian teaching grounded in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. Parental authority is not an end in itself but a model, a paradigm, of something more important, more fundamental: a child’s relations to God. That God is the Father of Jesus Christ, a God who is holy and makes moral demands but who also is forgiving and patient.21 Christians should image that “parental” authority.” Parents should raise their children in the knowledge and love of the Lord. This is the teaching of Ephesians chapter 6. This aspect of Reformation teaching, Christians today can fully affirm.
CONCLUSION
1.
The Lrger Framework
Both the First and Second Covenants set honoring father and mother in a larger framework. In the New Testament, the larger framework is love and worship of God the Father, entering the Rule of God, a commitment that is higher than obedience to earthly parents. Obedience to earthly parents and authority of parents over children can and should be a model and a means of teaching children to direct their highest loyalty to God, the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus Christ. The Commandment, though directed explicitly to children, therefore, by implications also obligates parents. They are to model service and love to God in order that this model may be respected and followed by their children. Obedience to parents is, in the Bible, set within a larger framework, in which God is the ultimate norm of righteousness and love to whom ultimate loyalty is due. This is wholesome and positive meaning of the Fifth Commandment for Christians, and is stated in pellucid clarity in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. This larger framework is key to the wholesomeness of this Commandment.
2.
Avoiding the Danger
Any divine Commandment requiring dependent children to honor their parents or anyone else in authority over them is dangerous. The danger lies not only in provoking the tendency of all people, including children, to rebel and seek their selfish wills. The larger danger lies in the limitedness and sinfulness of parents that leads them to misuse the power inherent in the parental role to the hurt of their children. Sadly, every hospital, schoolteacher, court and police station knows gruesome examples of this abuse of parental power.
At the level of the larger society, the danger of an authoritarian social culture is totalitarianism and a political passivity. If parents demand obedience of their children outside of a larger framework in which parents and children are subject to the ultimate norms of a righteous and loving God, the result can be an authoritarian society, a citizenry un- schooled in democratic habits, a society relating passively to the powers that be. Christian teaching, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, can rightfully be accused of fostering this authoritarianism in different countries at different times and in different ways. Only the larger framework mentioned above can prevent this abuse. “Believers are to serve God rather than humans.”
3.
The Goal
Loving Christian parents, exercising their parental authority for the sake of their children’s developing their own inner controls for their children’s own good, all the time orienting them to God’s righteousness and love, are beautiful to behold. Children want limits; parents who let their children do whatever their children’s momentary urges demand, are not helping their children. Many children in these ideal relationships to their parents may not agree with a particular disciplinary measure their parents impose. But if these parents are truly Christian, their children will know that their parents mean the best for them. And Christian parents know they are finite, fallible and sinful and their being forgiven by God can give them the humility to apologize to their children when they have misused their authority. Many are the Christian households where the parent-child relationship is suffused with this deep trust, openness, readiness to forgive and ask for forgiveness. The graciousness of such Christian family relations is enabled by, shaped by and shows forth the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God.
David Scott, Ph.D.
Murnau, Germany and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
January, 2006
1 Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons ( New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.) A modest suggestion from the author of this essay: Every high school student, especially those planning to attend college, should read this novel. Not only is Tom Wolfe at his hilarious best, but his novel offers an unblinking searching look at what passes in the US as “undergraduate education.”
2 For those with access to German writings, see the instructive article by Ilone Ostner in Eine Kunstaustellung des Deutschen Hygiene-Museums a (Dresden: Hatji Cantz Verlag, 2004: 134-139.
3 See the insightful editorial on rudeness in today’s children in The New York Times, December 12, 2005.
4 Lack of space and the complexity of the problem requires passing over a massive challenge to the Fifth Commandment emerging in modern societies. The emergence of melded families, of children born to surrogate mothers, children created in labs by artificial insemination with donor sperm or egg or by in- vitro fertilization with donor sperm or donor egg mean that children may not know who their parents are. How can one honor a mother and/or father whom one has never met and may never be able to meet?
5 For instance, in Chapter 19 Jesus challenges the current interpretation of the Commandment about adultery.
6 The scholarly debate over whether or to what extent St. Paul authored this Epistle is irrelevant to its authority as part of the New Testament canon.
7 One argument sometimes made by advocates of a radical revision of sexual norms in Christian teaching is that Jesus’ not being married and his subordinating earthly family loyalties to the will of God means that traditional Jewish-Christian norms affirming heterosexual relations over homosexual; marital sexual relations over sexual relations outside of marriage or before marriage and the procreation of children as a Christian norm for married couples should be cancelled and new sexual norms put in their place. However, this idea does not follow from subordinating family loyalty to the Rule of God. It means that heterosexual relations, marriage and procreation stand under the norms of God’s Rule; not that the norms of God’s Rule negate these loyalties or render them irrelevant One evidence that this is so is that Jesus stringently affirms one-flesh, i.e., heterosexual marriage; that he welcomes children into his circle and presents them in their dependence as icons of discipleship. Further, no where does Jesus affirm homosexual relationships as normative and natural. The pervasive Hellenistic culture in Palestine would certainly have allowed Jesus to know these practices. Jesus’ affirmation of traditional Jewish sexual relations—heterosexual, marital, procreative was therefore conscious and intentional.
8 See Reinhard Huetter’s essay on the Decalogue in Pro Ecclesia XIV (Winter 2005) 46-57. Huetter says that three voices are discernible in the Decalogue: Natural Moral Law, a mirror for our sins and freedom for God’s Word. He very properly claims that the gradual disappearance of the Decalogue from Christian worship, catechetical instruction, from teaching in the home and school, leads to a Christianity of forgiveness without law and sin, to a picture of God whose major attribute is “niceness.”
9 See Robert Haas “Chinas Zivilization des Todes “(Xv) China Heute XXIV (2005), 242ff.)
10 The Silk Road, linking China and the Mediterranean Basin developed in the Tang Dynasty, in the eighth century A.D, long after Confucius.
11 Today many are concerned about civil rights and human rights in China and other nations influenced by the Confucian tradition. To understand Chinese culture, the notion of filial piety is central. Chinese tradition does not know an abstract human nature possessing inalienable rights given by a “Creator.” In Chinese philosophy, either Confucian or Taoist, “heaven” (Tian) and God Tiandi, are not absolutely transcendent of the world, as Yahweh is for Judaism or the God and Father of Jesus Christ is for Christians or as Allah is for Moslems. Interestingly, the Chinese symbol can mean both “God” and “emperor”. In Confucian and Taoist thought, an essential link connects human nature and heaven or the cosmos and human nature. Confucian philosophy focuses on relationships as grounded in family relations. A Chinese person thinks of himself or herself first of all as a member of a specific family, having a very specific place in the family order, with very specific rights and duties. Identification is with the family and then with the Chinese society or state that is the natural family writ large. One consequence of this is that Chinese people don’t look on non-Chinese persons as sharing the same, essential “human nature.” Another consequence is that the individual Chinese person feels loyalty for his or her own family in contrast to other family members. A third consequence is that individual family members don’t regard the local neighborhood as part of a civic society for which they are responsible in the same sense as westerners feel responsible civilly and politically for the conduct of their state and political system.
12 This is the view of H.G. Creel, Chinese Thought: From Confuciius to Mao Tse-Tung (New York: Mentor Books, 1953) chapters 2 and 3.
13 No doubt Bonaventura was prompted to make this (very common in medieval theology) comment about the danger of curiosity because this verse occurs in a chapter of Wisdom literature counseling obedience to parents. We discussed chapter 22 of Ecclesiasticus in the Old Testament section of this essay.
14 Bonaventura keys the literal meaning of the Commandment to the father and not to the father and mother. As he explicates his meaning, however, he refers to the chapter of Ecclesiastics in which honoring of father and mother is mentioned.
15 In modern western liberal circles, the notion of honor is quite foreign. Modern, western liberals are more likely to speak of the legal and moral responsibilities of the parent for the child, and thus of what the parents’ duties are to their children. This duty, as we discuss elsewhere in this essay, is basically to help the child become an autonomous adult. The fifth Commandment stands in contradiction to this notion of who owes whom what. The modern notion, perhaps profoundly influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau, is that that the parents are duty bound to their children, but that children, in relation to their parents have no duties, only rights. We do not intend to exaggerate this contrast. Many children today have a sense of duty in relation to their parents. This sense of duty may, however, be grounded more by the feeling of gratitude rather than of honor. Tocqueville may be the first commentator on modern liberal values who was aware of the crisis these values caused for the aristocratic notion of honor by modern notions of equality.
16 St. Bonaventura Collationes de decem praeceptis Collatio 5. para. 6
17 Collatio 5, paragraph 16.
18 Owing love to those who love us more than to our enemies seems to contradict flatly Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to love our enemies. Bonavengtura (and St. Thomas) here follow the Greek philosophical theory of obligation. We see that, despite the efforts of the scholastic theologians, the “fit” between Greek moral philosophy and Christian ethics was not always good.
19 Calvin discusses the Fifth Commandment in Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book II, Chapter viii, paragraphs 35-38.
20 Calvin, in reviewing biblical texts regarding subordination to authority calls attention especially t I Timothy 5: 17:”Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor…..” This verse does link “ruling well” with honor.
21 Some Feminist theology condemns the reference to God, the Father’s relation to Jesus, not only because of its male imagery but also because Jesus ‘s Father willed that Jesus die. This, claim some feminists, both models and religiously legitimates, child abuse. This Feminist criticism usually does not take into account Jesus free submission to the will of his heavenly Father, and that, at least in Christian understanding, Jesus’ relation to God as heavenly Father is unique to Jesus and is not applicable without qualification to Jesus’ disciples. Some cult leaders may command their followers to commit suicide; Jesus commands his followers to take share his cross, but this is a witness to God’s grace in Christ, not a meaningless death. Feminist critics, however, have an important point. Sometimes so-called believers justify cruely to their children ( and their wives) in the name of the Fifth Commandment. This violates the Law of love and should be acknowledged to unhappily exist, but to be a misinterpretation of Christian teaching.