Honor thy father and mother

By Tyler Tankersley

The relationship we have with our parents can be complicated. Some people are raised in wonderful homes with loving parents, others were born into situations in which their parents are not sources of comfort, and some people have never even met their parents.

I belong to the group of people who had loving parents. My mom and dad are not perfect, but they gave my siblings and me a caring home in which to grow up.

In the Ten Commandments, the fifth commandment reads: "Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you" (Exodus 20:12).

What exactly does it mean to honor our parents? In his book on the Ten Commandments, biblical scholar Patrick Miller points out that the Hebrew word for "honor" that is used here (kabbed) literally translates as "to make heavy." The point of the commandment is not about our parents' body weight, but about how much weightiness they hold in our lives (Miller, 176). To honor our parents is to regard them as persons of great importance in our lives, to treat them with high regard.

The task of a child is to give respect and weightiness to our parents. However, I would also argue that those of us who are parents are also called to be of such loving character as to earn that respect. Some people have parents who have abused and mistreated them. Yet what I have seen in many of these peoples' lives is the amazing ability to find honorable "mothers" and "fathers" in their lives who may not be blood-related to them.

Mark Twain is attributed to have said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." The relationship we have with our parents tends to change over time, and we (usually) begin to realize that despite their flaws they had some wonderful qualities as well.

I remember the first time I realized that not everybody had a family that operated like mine. I was in third grade and had a friend over to spend the night. My mom walked into my room and told me it was time to clean up my toys out of the living room. I nodded and got up to pick up the toys. My friend's eyes grew wide and he said, "Your mom didn't yell at you." I gave him a weird look. "YeahÂ…" I said, then I left to go pick up my toys. It was a few minutes later before it dawned on me: My friend did not know what it was like to have a mom who could ask him to do something without yelling at him.

I just want to say thank you to my parents for being kind, loving people who do hold a lot of weight in my life. Because as I now take up the mantle to be a father to my three children, I have two great examples that went before me.