Family Values

St. Joseph

The Fourth or Fifth Commandment (there are two numbering systems) reads:

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which Yahweh your God gives you.” (Exodus 20:12).

This commandment raises a special problem for the abused child. What if your father or mother seeks your harm?

Worse, a narcissistic parent will use the accusation with abandon. It is a perfect cudgel for them. Narcissists are entirely likely to be superficially religious, as well, when it suits their purpose. And it usually does. The tendency to hypocrisy a core issue in the New Testament. The obvious ruse for a bad person, so as not to be discovered and punished, is to put on the airs, the external and social appearances, of a good person. It is more or less automatic that they will.

This cudgel can, tragically, then alienate too many abused children from religion itself, which should be their main help. God comes to be seen as on the side of the abuser.

We need to look more closely at this commandment. What exactly does “honouring” your parents mean?

The Greek word “tima,” as it appears in the Septuagint, translated “honour” here, does not mean “obey” and does not imply subservience (https://blog.obitel-minsk.com/2017/02/honor-thy-father-and-mother.html). As for the original Hebrew, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, a respected 19th century Jewish catechism, defines it:

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. (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 143:7).

In sum, then, one owes one's parents material and emotional support in their age and infirmity.

This makes sense. You owe them your physical existence, and, if you are still here, their material support while growing up. Notice that this commandment comes with an explanatory quid pro quo, a promise. No other commandment does. You do this “that your days may be long.” It is a matter of social order. If the entire society does this, everyone gets to live longer. The alternative would be, as in many hunter-gathere societies, leaving older people to starve to death.

Jesus specifically endorses the commandment to honour your parents; it remains in force. However, what he means by the commandment must be judged against some interesting Gospel passages.

For example, Luke 2: 42-49:

When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast, and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. Joseph and his mother didn’t know it, but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day’s journey, and they looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they didn’t find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers, both listening to them, and asking them questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When they saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you.” 

He said to them,“Why were you looking for me? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

It is not clear that Jesus disobeyed an explicit instruction from his parents here, but he certainly disobeyed them in spirit, ignoring their wishes and their right to decide for him. He must, at twelve, have been fully aware of this. And note, as a matter of doctrine, Jesus never sinned.

It follows that one is not obliged, even at the age of twelve, to obey one's parents.

And certainly not as an adult. John 2: 2-4 records,

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, “They have no wine.”

Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”

Jesus does then do as she says, but he expressly reserves his right not to. Some translations soften this rebuff, but the American Standard, Revised Standard, and King James all have almost identical wording here.

And Jesus is making an even stronger point: not just that he is under no moral obligation to obey a parent, but even that he is under no moral obligation to recognize them as anyone special to him. In the story of his visit to the temple, he is implicitly saying that Joseph is not his father, and Mary not his mother. At Cana; he is saying he has nothing in particular to do with “this woman” who bore and raised him.

Nor is this the only time that he says something like this:

His mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him, calling him. A multitude was sitting around him, and they told him, “Behold, your mother, your brothers, and your sisters are outside looking for you.” He answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Looking around at those who sat around him, he said, “Behold, my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, and mother” (Matthew 12: 31-5; Luke 8: 20-1).

Here again, Jesus denies that his physical family is his true family. His physical mother is not his mother; his physical father is not his father.

That sets a pretty low bar for honouring your father and your mother. You honour them as much as you would any stranger.

This lack of obligations to the earthly parents seems consistent throughout and across the gospels. So much so that it seems a core message of the New Testament.

Mark 1: 16-20, for example, describes the calling of the first four disciples:

Passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you into fishers for men.”

Immediately they left their nets, and followed him.

Going on a little further from there, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them, and they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired servants, and went after him.

The scene of the calling of James and John seems almost comical: one pictures the puzzled old man, Zebedee, abandoned in the boat. That's honour.

And Simon apparently similarly abandoned a wife; for Matthew records:

When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her. So she got up and served him. (Matthew 8: 14-5).

So as he was wandering about with empty pockets, across the empire to ultimately be crucified in Rome, there was apparently a family at home who just stopped hearing from him.

Not only was this abandonment of family morally proper; it was demanded. Consider Matthew 8: 21-22:

Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

Mark 10:30:

“Jesus said, `I tell you the truth. If any man has left his house, or his brothers, or his sisters, his mother, or his father, or his children, or farms, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, he will receive his pay in this life.”

Luke 14: 25-6 is even stronger:

Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple.”

Literally, Jesus says here that you must hate your father and mother if you are going to be a good Christian. It's required.

This is a bit awkward: the Bible says that we must both honour and hate our parents.

This particular passage is always taken as hyperbole; but that is the literal meaning. You must hate your parents to be a good Christian. And there are theological problems with dismissing it as pure hyperbole. It paints Jesus, God, as deliberately misleading at least some of the faithful.

The two commands can be reconciled, however, if we understand “honour” as meeting our parents' physical needs, in return for their physical contribution to our being, while “hate” implies not giving them any higher moral status than this because they are our parents.

Which makes sense; giving priority to one's parents is a violation of universal love, which should not discriminate. You judge all in accordance with their moral worth, not by birth or race. Family is an idolatry, only selfishness writ large, just as nationalism or racism is an idolatry, a form of extended self-love.

Mark 6: 4 and Matthew 13: 57 even expect any good person to face trouble from their family. Mark:

Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.”

In his original commission to the apostles, reasonably understood as the charter of Christianity, Jesus warns them:

“Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. ...

For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me isn’t worthy of me. (Matthew 10: 21-7).

If, then, you are being opposed by a parent, this is not a sign of sinfulness. It is a sign of your moral worth. Blessed are you. Moreover, Christianity even positively encourages such strife. Jesus says it is what he came for.

At Matthew 23: 9, Jesus requires of his disciples:

Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven.

Again, this is usually just dismissed as hyperbole; but this is not satisfactory for theological reasons. It has to mean something reasonably close to what it actually says.

This is actually a key teaching, surely, of Jesus: whatever special place the family might have had in the old covenant, that place is taken by a new conception of God as Father, “Abba,” in the new; the same covenant by which we are now all brothers, whereas before race, Jewishness, held a special place.

Seems pretty clear now on the face of it. You owe your parents material support as needed, but nothing more--except as towards anyone else, based on their merits.

If we are Catholics, we must turn now to Catholic teaching. Catholics are not free to read the Bible as they like. What does Church tradition say?

To begin with, it says that the state of celibacy, being without a family, is preferable to family life. So much for the primacy of family values.

The Catechism sees the obligation to honour parents as the obligation to honour those in social authority in general: “We are obliged to honor and respect all those whom God, for our good, has vested with his authority” (CCC, para 2197). “It extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it” (CCC, para 2199).

So much is required to maintain social order; we cannot all be going off on our own, or life becomes a war of all against all. Yet this obligation to obey secular authority has limits, and known limits. We render unto Caesar only what is Caesar's. In general, secular authority, the powers of this world, are understood by the New Testament as a necessary evil. They're the guys who crucified Christ. The same would then apply to the family.

Our obligations to government, or family, are strictly dependent on the behaviour of that government, or family. As the framers of the American Declaration of Independence explained, if a government or a family oversteps its bounds, it loses legitimacy, and it becomes both our right and our duty to oppose it. This comes from long Christian tradition. Contrary to much popular nonsense, Christianity has never recognized a “divine right of kings.” Aquinas recognized a right and obligation to civil disobedience.

Just so, the Catechism notes:

“This commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons.” (CCC, para 2199).

Accordingly, Clement of Alexandria, among the Church Fathers, writes, “if one's father, or son, or brother, be godless ... let him not be friends or agree with him, but on account of the spiritual enmity, let him dissolve the fleshly relationship.” (“Who is the Rich Man Who Shall be Saved?”, v. 22)

In the early days of the Church, it would have more or less gone without saying that family relations would have been godless: the other family members would be pagans. One hopes matters have improved since. But one sadly cannot assume it.