Adrian Rogers: Love Worth Finding
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/live-it-post/honor-your-father-and-mother/
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/the-purpose-of-the-family/
“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.” Dumbledore (Harry Potter)
“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
https://www.gotquestions.org/honor-father-mother.html (What Does It Mean to Honor My Mother and Father?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/respecting-your-parents.html (What Does the Bible Say About Respecting Your Parents?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-obeying-parents.html (What Does the Bible Say About Obeying Your Parents?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/mother-in-law-dealing.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/Family-Integrated-Church.html (What is a Family-Integrated Church and Is It Biblical?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/family-problems.html (What Does the Bible Say About Family Problems?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/leave-cleave-honor.html (How Do You Balance Cleave and Leave with Honor Thy Parents?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/caring-for-old-parents.html (What Does the Bible Say About Caring for Our Aged Parents?)
https://www.gotquestions.org/family-priorities.html (What Should Be The Order of Priorities in a Family?)
One of the most tragic mistakes of my life was the three years during which I did not communicate with my parents. I adopted the cultural milieu of the time period during which I was raised and came to maturity. The ethos of the age was the inexorable "fruit" of the Enlightenment, which raised upon the throne the ego of the individual, bestowing upon it the "right" to decide what is true and what is not true, what is right and what is wrong, that which is good and that which is bad, and finally who is God and who is not God. It was a period of Self-worship, and few there were who ever guessed it as such.
The upshot was that I suffered greatly, without realizing the source of my suffering. I suffered because I was in a continual state of sin due to my unwavering breach of the ten commandments, inasmuch as I abjectly failed to honor my parents. There is no way that you can honor your parents when you refuse to communicate with them. Eugen Rosenstock Huessy in "Out of Revolution," stated that at state of war is invoked when one party refuses to listen to another.
This sin of mine impaired my ability to read and perceive the truths of the Bible, eviscerated my ability to worship the Christ, and led me on a wild goose chase as I tried by my own power to live a righteous life, a life that was unavailable to me.
C.S. Lewis notes in Mere Christianity,
“To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.”
And there is clear and eternal meaning in the Lord's
The English Standard Version of the Bible states in Matthew 15:1-9, the following,
1. Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2. “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3. He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4. For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.'
5. But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,"(or as an offering) 6. he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word (or law) of God. 7. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:
8 8. “‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
9 9. in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
Questions:
1. Do we honor our parents if we do not respond to their questions? If we refuse to read their letters to us?
2. If we do this, then what motivation could we have? It can seem difficult to listen to people, particularly when we do not want to.
3. Why would we make excuses by claiming some good alternative whenever we divert to "a good cause" benefits or resources which otherwise our parents would have gained and enjoyed had we honestly in our word, thought, and deeds consummately followed the love in our hearts and the law of honoring our parents?
4. What else could this clamoring to posit good alternatives as offerings or gifts to God be but a thinly-veiled attempt to cover our shame and guilt to ourselves and any others who might be listening in on our solipsistic conversations.
5. In God's answer to Job, we hear God asking rhetorical questions something akin to: "Dude! Were you there when I created the world? Do you know when the ewes come into labor? Have you walked on the bottom of the sea to where the springs come in? If so, tell me! Surely you know these things."
a. immediately we begin to get a warm, fuzzy sense that the Lord is drawing distinctions of whole categories.
b. Is there a parallel wherein we view the relationship between , can a father or mother take the attitude
