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A WORD ON MOTHER’S DAY
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, Mother’s Day, 2024 – Just a quick Mother’s Day reminder for those of you who have less than optimal childhood memories: The Commandment to honor your parents is non-negotiable. Even if your mother is no longer with us, you still need to be kind to her in your words and thoughts.
(Let this also be a reminder that God knows all your words and thoughts, and you’ll be judged on them.)
I am blessed to have a mother who is not only still among us but is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside, and oh, what a singing voice! So my memories of her, thank God, are optimal. But I’ve heard and read horrendous comments over the years by people who call themselves Christians or even born-again, denigrating their mothers as “controlling” or “abusive” or “drug addicts” or “alcoholics” or “co-dependent”, etc. While it may be true that these mothers are exactly as described, the Commandment forbids us to speak harshly of our mother.
To honor one’s mother and father means to be kind to them in person and kind in our communications about them, which is not difficult to do if we focus only on the positive: Everyone has at least one good characteristic we can admire. Now that doesn’t mean we put ourselves in a position to be abused again; it just means we choose to forgive for no other reason than that God advises us to forgive, and to honor for no other reason than God commands it.
Again, regardless of how justified you may feel in being angry or resentful toward your mother, nothing overrides God’s commandments. If God says to honor your mother, you honor your mother.
That is non-negotiable.
And for all you mothers reading this – Happy Mother’s Day to you! Though your children may not know (or may have forgotten) how much of yourself you gave to them over the years expecting nothing in return, God knows, and you will be rewarded accordingly.
Enjoy your special day!
A REMINDER TO HONOR YOUR PARENTS
DARTMOUTH, Nova Scotia, June 11, 2021 – Why did God command us to love him but not to love our parents? Why are we instead commanded to honor them?
God made us in such a way that we would naturally want to love him. In other words, we have an inbuilt desire to love him. However, through misapplying our free will, we sometimes give the love that’s meant for God to people and things. This is why God included the Commandment to love him specifically, and to do so with all our heart and all our soul and all our might. If we keep this Commandment, we won’t stray off the “love path” (lol) and mistakenly give the love that we’ve been made to give to God to someone or something else.
Our parents are not God. No matter how hard they try to be good parents, they are all too human and all too prone to the flaws and faults of humans. While God does put into our parents’ hearts a certain measure of his love for us at our birth, that love is conditional and can fade with time. Many things can happen to negatively affect the love. God invites and enables parents to love their children and vice-versa, but his Commandment is for us to love him.
Rather than commanding us to love our parents, God commands us to honor them instead. In simplistic terms, we honor our parents by not speaking badly of them. If we have a grievance with them, we take it to God. We take it ONLY to God. In Genesis, one of Noah’s three sons exposed his father’s nakedness to his brothers, but Noah’s two other sons honored their father by walking backwards towards him as he lay drunk and asleep and covered his nakedness with a garment. They covered their father; they didn’t gawk at him or expose him or ridicule him or blame him for his mistake: They covered him. And for so doing, they were later blessed by Noah and by God. The son who exposed Noah was cursed.
While it seems relatively straight-forward, honoring our parents is one of the most frequently broken Commandments among Christians. I have heard countless professional preachers present themselves as survivors of child abuse and go into gory detail about their alcoholic mother and/or physically abusive father. Then they make things worse by inviting their listeners to share their own abuse experiences.
Most of us born-agains love our parents and have no problem keeping the Commandment to honor them. But for those who do have a difficult relationship with their mother and/or their father, honoring can still be done even in the absence of affection. All that is required is a respect for the role played by the parents (not respect for how well the role is played; respect for the role itself). And at the same time, we should always speak kindly of our parents, covering their mistakes like Noah’s two respectful sons covered his. Do this, and you’ll be blessed. Don’t do it, and you’ll be cursed, because you’ll be breaking a Commandment, and nothing good ever comes from willfully breaking God’s Commandments.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 