The Fourth Commandment

Finding Jesus in the temple: Tissot

“Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

This is often cited as a requirement to obey your parents. This is probably the context in which most of us know it best, because we probably heard it presented this way repeatedly as children—and quite possible not since.

But this cannot be the core meaning.

It makes sense to advise children to obey their parents; their parents, being adults, will usually know best. But the Commandments are not for children. Below the age of reason, seven according to traditional thought, children cannot sin. Above the age of twelve, they are apparently under no obligation to obey their parents. Because Jesus clearly did not in the Gospels.

That is, he did not depart Jerusalem with his parents, but remained in the Temple, declaring it his true father’s house—implicitly denying his biological parents had any authority over him.

At the Wedding at Cana, when Mary asks him to help by performing a miracle, his immediate response is “What have I to do with you, woman?”

Below the age of twelve, was little Jesus obedient to his parents? There is nothing in the gospels. The one source we have is the Infancy Narratives of Thomas, from the First or Second Century. In it, Jesus is notably disobedient and disrespectful, to parents and teachers, and his relationship with his mortal father Joseph is tense. The Thomas Infancy Narratives were never accepted as authentic by the Church. But some of its incidents are repeated in the Quran. Obviously, some significant group of people took them seriously, for them to be preserved until today and spread beyond the Roman world in the days when all manuscripts were hand-copied.

So obedience to parents or deferring to their authority, is not the meaning of this commandment.

Which ought to be self-evident in any case. The average parent is, necessarily, no better a moral guide than the average person. Greater experience may give them an advantage over someone younger, especially in the case of a young child. But we know this is not conclusive. Otherwise, we would not bother with elections; we would just make the oldest among us king. It is entirely probable that, in any given case, an adult child will be a better judge, or more moral, than their parent.

And after all, deferring to another for moral judgements is an abdication of conscience; we are moral agents because we choose between right and wrong. It is what raises us above the animals.

From this perspective, an adult child automatically submitting to their parent’s will is being immoral.

To defer to another adult is also a violation of the concept of human equality. The consistent teaching of the Gospel is that we are all brothers, and all children of God. To defer to some fellow mortal instead of to our true father becomes an idolatry. Jesus even said, “Call no one father but your father who is in heaven.” “He who does not despise his father and his mother for my sake is not worthy of me.”

The Catholic Church extrapolates from this commandment an obligation to respect civil authority. This seems right. Even though the law is often wrong, even though the government is often corrupt, it is important to obey it in most ordinary circumstances to preserve public order. The same surely applies within the family, as a social institution—so long as it is operating as such. If everyone just does as they want, no social institution can function; the result is chaos. So clear lines of authority must be established.

But then, just as there can be just wars, despite the commandment not to kill, there can be just revolutions. Governments can be oppressive.

In such a case, resistance become a duty. So Augustine, long before the American Declaration of Independence; so Aquinas. Von Stauffenberg led the plot to assassinate Hitler as a devout Catholic. St. Thomas More was executed for treason. Jesus was executed by the civil authority—on the charge, even if false, of insurrection.

So too with a bad parent. Suppose, as with Huckleberry Finn, your father is a hopeless alcoholic. Is it your moral duty to go out and find him more gin?

Jewish sources understand the word we translate as “honour” to mean something like “repay a debt.” And it is a Hebrew word. That is, given that your parents supported you in childhood, you are morally obliged to support them in their age. This explains why the commandment is followed by a promise or a justification: “so that you may live long.” If we make a point of taking care of the aged, we all get to live longer. The alternative, in uncivilized societies, if often to leave the aged on the ice to starve, once they become a burden.