All in the Family

An illustration for The Classic of Filial Piety.

Family values are a scam.

Here’s my evolving take on it. We are all brothers and sisters, and we all have one king, one teacher, one father: God. To elevate any human in this way is idolatry: “name no man father but our father who is in heaven,” and so forth.

“Filial piety” is not a virtue; it is an instinct. Evolution has given us this instinct. When we are small, our entire existence depends on our parents, and we will be inclined to take them as the measure of all things.

Since this is the natural instinct, we get no moral points for it. In general, morality comes from suppressing instinct. So too here; we need to resist the natural idolatry of parent, teacher, or king. We must, that is, for it is the same thing, avoid idolizing family, or nationality, or race. We must judge all men not on their relationship to us, but on their own morality.

What, after all, if your parent, or teacher, or king, is depraved? Is it moral to obey Hitler if you are a German in Nazi Germany?

Surely it is not moral to follow an immoral order simply because it is given by your government, your society, your parents. The Nuremberg Trials assumed as much.

Let’s take it down now to the level of the family. Necessarily, on average, parents will be average in terms of their morality. Some will be better than average, and some, the same proportion as in the general population, will be very bad people. The children will necessarily know; you cannot conceal that much within a family.

Where is the morality in supporting and aiding an immoral parent in their immorality? Or in obeying them in general?

So where is the morality of “filial piety”? One supports a good parent in the same way one does a good person otherwise encountered.



I ran this by friend Darius. Friend Darius has some ties to the Unification Church (the “Moonies”), a group that especially stresses family values. He responded, in part:

I don't buy any idea that it's immoral to support sinful parents. God didn't tell us to honor father and mother unless they are wrong; more, parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character. They will rarely give their children an order to do something immoral unless they be ignorant of what that means. Even a bad father will hope his son turns out better than he was. Of course, at the extreme there will be exceptions.

To which I respond:

You are referring to the fourth/fifth commandment. But it is important to know what the word translated here as “honour” means. It does not mean “obey.” Greek “tima,” used here in the Septuagint, means “repay” (a debt). The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, an influential 19th century Jewish catechism, defines the original Hebrew sense:

What constitutes “honour?” One must provide them with food and drink and clothing. One should bring them home and take them out, and provide them with all their needs cheerfully.

The point is that you are obliged to look after your parents in their old age, just as they looked after you when you were very young. It was a social security system, as is confirmed by the second part of the commandment: “that your days may be long in the land.”

So it has nothing to do with obedience or assuming that they are wiser or better morally than anyone else. That is the idolatry. 

You write:

“parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character.”

This, I fear, is exactly wrong. This is true only if all parents are good people—an obviously false assumption.

All of us have flaws, and good people sin; we all sin. Even St. Peter sinned. Good people will regret this, and indeed not want their children to sin.

Bad people sin too, the difference is that they do not repent. There are goats as well as sheep. Bad people will want their children to sin as they did, and will tempt and encourage them to sin. This is human nature: it justifies their own behaviour. A lecher will want his children to be lecherous; a drunkard will want his son to drink with him. It is surely this sort of parent Jesus was speaking of when he said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”



Darius:

If I thought the NT told me it is wrong to call my father "father" and my teacher "teacher" or, if I were subject in a monarchy, to call the king, "king," then I'd question my interpretation. I think backtracking a few verses to the beginning of Matthew 23 will give an idea of what Jesus meant. I don't take everything in the Bible literally word for word.

Also, the "very bad people" to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison, any children they might have had likely to be with the other spouse or, often, in foster care with a potentially far more loving family.

Me:

I think it is faulty to assume that the New Testament cannot be saying anything radical, counterintuitive, or surprising. It is radical and shocking to say that God walked the Earth performing miracles, and that Jesus rose from the dead. In his day what Jesus said was shocking enough to have him put to death. Accordingly, the radical interpretation should be favoured. Had the message all along been just “go about your lives as seems most convenient and natural, as you always have done” there would have been no need for the incarnation, the passion, or the Bible.

This is not an issue of taking the Bible literally or not literally. Of course one should not take the Bible literally at all times; nobody ever did, until about the early 20th century. But the alternative is not reading it to say whatever you like. If and when a Bible passage is not meant literally, there must be clear textual warrant for this, and for what you assert it to mean. If, for example, a historical character or date is named, you are not reading a parable but history. If an animal starts talking, you are not reading history, but a fable.

When the meaning is not literal, it is also not arbitrary. Metaphors and parables are more precise in their significance than literal statements; you cannot make them just mean anything. What point are they meant to convey, and why is the point not being stated more plainly? This must be justified from the text.

The rest of the chapter in Matthew seems to me to confirm the literal reading of this passage. Yes, Jesus is saying you should not refer to anyone but God as father, and anyone but God as teacher.

Moreover, Jesus seems in the gospel to follow this rule himself. He refers to no one as teacher. The Pharisees were the professional teachers, and he does not speak of them with any great respect, does he? When his mother appears and asks him to do something, he answers, “woman, what have I to do with thee?”

When brought before Pilate, Jesus could probably have saved his life by making some simple act of obeisance to Caesar, saying, as the crowd did, “Caesar is my King.” He remained silent, although it exposed him to the capital charge of treason.

The meaning is clear. We just don’t want to read it as saying what it is saying. Because it goes against our instinct, which is to say, against what we want to do.

I grant that the important thing is to follow the command in spirit, not by the letter. It does no harm to call your biological father father, or your teacher professor. The harm is in thinking this means anything special, or that they are anything special because of this social position. They are just brothers playing a role.

“Also, the ‘very bad people’ to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison”

Psychologists say that this is a common misconception. Most bad people, that is, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and borderlines, to use the psychiatric terminology, are not in prison, but in responsible positions in society. In fact, psychopaths and such are especially likely to occupy high positions in government and management. They want power; they seek it ruthlessly; they are more likely to get it.

Only stupid psychopaths end up in prison. Along with lots of other people who are not psychopaths. We all sin; we all make mistakes. Some are even prisoners of conscience.

I do not have stats, but it also seems to me common sense that psychopaths and narcissists are more likely to have children, and more children, than the general population. Having a child gives you someone to control and own—control and own more totally than you can control another human being in almost any other social situation. It’s a no-brainer that anyone who is power-hungry, or who enjoys bullying and abusing others, is going to want children. Lots of children.

Besides, making children feels good, and a bad person may not care so much that a child results, or what might become of it.



Unificationism is often seen as a blending of Christian with Confucian ideals. Darius defended the Confucian system, which sees filial piety as paramount, and the government as equivalent to the parent.

He summarizes the Confucian virtue of “filial piety” as a refusal to rebel against authority.

“Of course, when authority is clearly wrong,” he adds, “then we are obliged to go our own way…”



I think that puts it too mildly, and a bit askew. As a general principle, we are obliged to respect whatever authority is present, for the sake of social order. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Prudence is a virtue.

However, if a government reveals itself as habitually immoral—if it, like an individual, succumbs to settled vice— “it is [our] right, it is [our] duty, to throw off such Government.” As some wise men once said. Not just a right to go our own way, but a duty to resist such government for the sake of our fellow citizens, our posterity, and mankind.

You may recognize where I am getting those quotes. It is a certain famous political document; but based on universal principles enunciated long before by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, established Christian principles. It is selfish to continue to support and obey an immoral government. It is almost always in one’s own best interests to do so: to grow wealthy, receive its patronage, and not get either imprisoned or hanged. It is the more selfless act to rebel; it might, if you are lucky, also benefit you, but the odds are against this. More likely, it is a sacrifice, for your neighbours, your descendants, or the others one’s government is oppressing.

Even if a government is completely moral, it is in not really to your moral credit to obey it; to do so is simply in your interests. Otherwise they fine you or put you in prison.

This is all most easily illustrated at the level of government, because one can refer to historical parallels; but all logically applies to the family as well.



Darius:

“Confucian mores did, in the lack of the Judeo-Christian value system I fear we often take for granted, keep Far Eastern society together for 2,000 years or more.”

This is true, and speaks well of Confucianism as a tool; but says nothing about it as a moral system. If a system succeeded in keeping a bad government and society together for 2,000 years, that would make it immoral.

I think it speaks poorly of surviving Confucian traditions that the people of North Korea have not yet rebelled; that Mao, the greatest mass murderer in history, is still revered in China; that Japan, unlike Germany, has never really come to terms with its pre-war racism and war guilt.

I admire Confucius and Confucianism in general; but this reveals a fatal flaw.