Do we need Families? (Exodus 20:12)
Billy Milton - November 27, 2005
“Honour your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God will give you.”
Statistics
22% of American children come from a fatherless home. Reports from the US show the effect that absence of a father has on these children is that:
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: US DHHS Bureau of the census)
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes
85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Centre for Disease Control)
80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behaviour, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978)
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principles Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: US Dept of Justice Special Report, Sept 1988)
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
These statistics translate to mean that children from a fatherless home are:
- 5 times more likely to commit suicide
- 32 times more likely to run away
- 20 times more likely to have behavioural disorders
- 14 times more likely to commit rape (boys)
- 9 times more likely to drop out of high school
- 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
- 9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution
- 20 times more likely to end up in prison
Now I am aware that putting such statistics up in any gathering of this size is likely to raise people’s hackles a bit. Please don’t get too defensive here. These statistics are factual but it doesn’t necessarily mean that because you are a single parent mother that your kids are going to go to pot. Being in a church environment will certainly make that less likely. But these statistics do mean that, given the enormous increase in single parentage, our society is heading towards the rapids at a very fast pace and if we in the church don’t begin to speak out in love then they don’t even have a paddle to try and escape. That’s why we consider it important to speak on these matters in church, today.
Introduction ‘Honour your father and mother‘. A command given in a specific cultural setting that has now largely vanished - how can it still be applied with integrity in today’s fragmented society? At an even more difficult level – how can someone who has been so badly hurt by parents or family that they don’t even want to think about the matter, honour their parents or family? And what about people who feel that they themselves are bad parents?
I want to suggest that this command can still apply today at two levels:
- 1. How we can literally honour our parents?
- 2. At a broader level, how we can honour the whole concept of family in today’s world?
Neither is easy! In both we need the wisdom of the Bible.
Families and Parents in the past
In the Middle East in Bible times, the family unit formed the basis of society. Kingdoms might rise and fall but the family went on. Extended family was the norm. Still is in much of the Middle East today – big pressure to conform. Major question – will the family approve?
Family was the source of:
- a) Mutual support – no state help in those days. No pension.
- b) Stability – it defined who you were. Biblical genealogies.
- c) Security – family is honour bound to retaliate. Mafia.
In this type of set up the parent was supreme:
- a) Source of discipline – parents decided what the children studied; what they worked at; whom they married. They were also judge, jury and (sometimes literally) executioner.
- b) Source of learning – normally skills passed on from father to son and mother to daughter.
- c) Source of religious teaching – normally be re-iterating the grand old stories of their history.
- d) Source of identity – the ‘son of Joseph’ etc. Even today in rural Middle East, one of the first questions would be, “Where are you from?” Whose family do you belong to?”
So, honouring parents was not just a good idea, it was essential. For a son in particular to dishonour his parents was an abomination. (Think Prodigal Son).
2 wrong attitudes we could have towards this type of system:
1. Be snobby about it and dismiss it as primitive and tyrannical – yes it had the potential for cruelty and abuse but given the levels of crime and family breakdown in our society we hardly have room to criticise.
2. Hold it up as a social model to imitate exactly. Difficult because they were a largely agricultural society, and also it did not always work – Joseph, David.
Best thing we can do is to take the principles of that time and re-apply them for today. However, before we do that we need to just take a quick look at where we are today.
Parents and Family Today.
Until recent times this traditional extended family pattern still applied in the UK. Now, however it has changed radically and maybe even irrevocably.
Reasons for this rapid change are as follows:
- The increasing rate of cultural change has heightened the gap across the generations. DVDs, mobiles, computers, etc etc.
- The greater mobility within society has weakened family ties.
- The high frequency of divorce is causing major harm to families. If parents are no longer ‘til death us do part’ then why should children view the family as so important?
- The state does much of what the family used to do.
- The rise of individualism has had a negative effect on the family.
The result is fragmented families that only meet up at weddings and funerals. So, what should we be doing about it?
We are to honour our parents.
4 reasons why:
- a) The Bible commands it. For a child at least, a parent stands in the place of God. Mal 1:6
- b) God shows the high value he places on being a parent by referring to himself as a parent. (“Our Father” Matt 6:9)
- c) Jesus honoured his earthly parents. Even on the cross Jesus was caring for his mother.
- d) There’s a promise attached to this commandment. Paul repeats this in Eph 6:3.
How are we to honour our parents?
3 stages can be identified:
- a) Obedience in our early years – however this is not unqualified obedience when being asked to do something wrong. Comes to an end at some point. Respect is also a part of obedience. We may not agree but we should respect.
- b) Interaction in our adulthood – Does our responsibility end when we leave home? No – but we will honour them in different ways:
- a. By involving them in our lives – key events; key decisions; difficult times.
- b. By acknowledging them – tell them when you realise that you are indebted to them for some life skill or other.
- c. By loving them – not a warm, fuzzy emotion but an act of the will. To love parents is to seek their best, maybe to do for them what we would like our children to do for us in turn. This could mean speaking positively about them, tolerating their idiosyncrasies and generally humouring them. Quite frequently it will mean holding our tongues and saying what is kind rather than what might be damaging to them. Perhaps – and this is the hardest of all – it will mean forgiving them. Remember though, God is the only parent who has not made a mistake.
- c) Care in their later years – however hard this might be, we are to honour our parents until their dying breath. I’m not going to suggest that this means you must take ailing parents into your own home with all the trauma that that could cause but you must work out how you can honour your elderly parents
How do we become parents who will be honoured?
- a. Love your children – praise and encouragement not always critical.
- b. Be a good example – not perfection but behaving like men and women of God. And remember, how you treat your parents is often the example your children will copy.
- c. Give teaching and advice – don’t be afraid to teach Christian truth to them. Use the soap operas and kids cartoons to find examples.
- d. Be disciplined – both in dealing with yourself and in dealing with your children.
- e. Allow freedom and responsibility – this is one of the main tasks of being a parent.
- f. Pray for your children.
The Family and The Church
The Bible is very specific about honouring parents. Although the Bible is less specific about the family it would seem that, by extension of this commandment, we are to honour the family as well. The family is God’s training ground for learning to deal with other people.
Churches have a vital role in connection with families. The church should be a place where the family is strengthened. But, what type of family should we be in support of? Traditional; single people; gays; extended ‘eastern-type’ families; whatever?
Bible is surprisingly not very specific about what constitutes a family unit. However, one thing is sure, when we gather together as a church family it should exhibit the character of a traditional family rather than the gathering of the cricket club.
How do we express that practically? How do we deal with those who have suffered bereavement, divorce, family break-up, geographical separation, and so on? The church ideally should be that replacement place to relax in and be safe and secure.
Conclusion
The Bible commands us to honour our parents when we live rather than buy them a fine tombstone when they die. How we do this will depend on their age and our age and where we are in life.
It also means that we have to work at being the type of parents our children will want to honour.
The church can have a very important role in being the extended family to all sorts of people who for one reason or another have not got a nuclear family around them.
Maybe you are struggling with your parents. Remember this, God is with you. You might think that no one understands but, be assured, God does. If he gives you the command, he will most surely give you the power. And remember, there is a blessing for keeping this one!
Equally, there is forgiveness and grace for those who have failed in this area (and for some of us its too late to make it right.)
Gods knows what it is to struggle with disobedient children.
He knows what it is to struggle with the pain of rejection.
He knows what it is to struggle to build relationships within a family.
Maybe you feel that there is nothing in your family to copy. I believe that it is possible, with God’s help, for anyone, no matter how dysfunctional the family they come from, to create a working, loving, successful family. Ask God for his help.
Finally, each of us needs to remember that, when we meet together, we do not meet as a club or a social gathering, we meet as a family. In a time when the family is under severe pressure and in decline, God wants us in the church to build tight-knit and genuine communities where people care for each other. As God has brought us into his family so we are to live it out in the community of the church.
THIS SERMON IS TAKEN FROM (MAINLY) J JOHN’S BOOK ‘10+’ (Published by Monarch Press)