Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother

 Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother That Thy Days May be Long Upon the Land

In my scripture study it struck me just how often parents and children killed and imprisoned each other (book of Ether in the Book of Mormon and the Old Testament, particularly the books of Kings). I was blessed to grow up in a family that is very loving and caring all around, even if we do have our disagreements. I was always aware that in history and even just in general things like this happened but for some reason it stuck out to me as extra real this time through my scriptures, partially because I had just had a lesson on the 10 Commandments. As a result these schisms in families seemed directly related to the the command to honor our parents. As a result I decided to do an in-depth study of the commandment (including what various religions had to say) and chart out what it means and how best to nurture this commandment so that its promised blessing comes true.

To organize my thoughts, I am going to first describe what honor seems to mean in this context; then I am going to go into a discussion of the commandment, its blessings, and greater meaning and impact in general; finally, I will go into the details and examples of how this can be seen and played out.

What does Honor mean?

Honor is an interesting word that has had its meaning changed over the years and is very personal with much more nuanced and with far more depth than any description could ever manage, much like love. Like love, there are countless stories, poems, dissertations, and speeches attempting to help others understand this concept. I have neither the time nor inclination to expand on those at this point. I will instead stick to the very surface meanings of the word to provide overall direction of thought and trust your personal feelings to provide the greater comprehensiveness of commitment and virtue associated with the word.

Per the Oxford dictionary, Honor can mean: a high respect, great esteem, adherence to what is right (or to a conventional standard of conduct), something regarded as a rare opportunity and bringing pride and pleasure, a privilege, to regard with great respect, to pay public respect to, or to fulfill/keep an obligation/agreement

Per the Bible Study Tool, the Hebrew word "kabod", used in the Old Testament, means "heavy/weighty". 

So what does it mean then to "Honor thy father and thy mother" in the simplest definition form? In summary I'd say it means to give extra weight/importance/respect to all things concerning your parents, whether it be their instructions, advise, commands, their well being, their happiness, their obligations, or even their pride. 

Knowing what it means to Honor someone, we should also consider what it means to dishonor someone. If honoring someone is to give weight/importance/respect to them, then the opposite of honoring someone is to trivialize them or consider them or their words of no importance. So to dismiss or trivialize our parents, their commands, or counsel, is to not only fail to keep the commandment, but to go directly against the commandment.  

Now that we know what it means to Honor and Dishonor. We should consider what the commandment is not. It is worth noting that the commandment is not to Love, Respect, or Obey thy father and thy mother. While these attributes are often associated with Honor, they are not the same things and they are not all pre-requisites of honor either. 

An article I found from the Living Church I think best expresses why we weren't commanded to Love our Father and Mother. 

Interestingly, the word is not “love.” Why not, we might ask, since most children do love their parents and most parents love their children? Perhaps because “love” as commonly understood is an emotion and an attitude, and thus not enough for a stable home

Taking this thought to its full extent; emotions tend to be fickle and very few children still love their parents when they are being chastised or punished. Indeed, in some families the personalities of the children and parents clash such that the child has a lot of trouble loving one or both parents. We are commanded to have love and charity towards all men, but that is part of the higher law that Christ brought and is something to strive towards. Honor, however, is something everyone is capable of no matter how they feel at the moment or how circumstances change. Thus providing a much more stable and attainable basis for uniting a family via an external commandment.

Respect, like love, is a principally internal attitude and emotion that can change and be lost. It can also be considered a manner in which you treat others. Respect requires no actual obligation and so can be spread freely and abundantly.

Obedience swings too far in the other direction. It is a purely external action with no internal requirement or attitude associated. It is obligation without deference or respect. 

Honor, however, requires both respect and obedience and a bit more still.

It is worth mentioning here that while obedience shows honor to someone, the commandment was to honor or give extra weight - ie consideration, importance, respect, etc. to someone, not to obey them. This will be discussed more later.

What additional meanings does this commandment hold?

So now that we know what it means to "honor" our parents generally, lets look into a few extensions and details about the commandment beyond just its generic meaning.

 First lets again note the full commandment is not just "honor thy father and thy mother" but "honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

The full commandment is worth noting because of the 10 commandments it is the only one that is associated with a blessing. This would seem to indicate that in many ways it is more important and affects our lives more directly than other commandments. As I said at the beginning, there are lots of cases of children betraying and killing their parents and visa-a-versa in the scriptures and so there is at least some correlation that may be found there.

The Apostle Dallin H. Oaks gives a little more insight into this blessing with a story he shared in the 1991 General Conference

"It has been about forty years since I saw [June's mother honoring June's grandmother]. Now I see its effects. I see June and her brother and sisters honoring their mother as they saw their mother honoring her own mother. .. I believe her days will be longer upon the land because of the attentiveness and companionship of her children, who learned the way to honor a parent by seeing how their own mother honored hers.”

With all things through God, there are likely many other tangible, intangible, direct, and indirect ways this blessing comes about. However it occurs, the important thing is to note that it was important enough a commandment to get a specific blessing mentioned and important enough a blessing to be worth mentioning.

Just how important is this commandment then you might wonder? Well, in Deuteronomy 21:18–21 it proscribes a procedure for parents to bring a persistently disobedient son to the city elders for death by stoning (Note that the reference to the son being a drunkard would suggest that he is not a small child). So evidently it was important enough that God decided the punishment for failure to uphold it was death - as in death sooner than the natural denial of the blessing would account for. This may seem a bit extreme, and clearly is as we no longer follow this particular practice since the coming of Christ and the higher law, but at the same time, we should not forget the many instances in the scriptures - and I dare say on the news - of children and parents killing or abusing each other. Not to mention the long term scars and affects such actions have on the survivors and family of such cases. 

Next, its worth noting that in one form or another, the commandment is repeated 8 times throughout the Bible. That is quite a lot and again shows how important it is. Even better though, it is not repeated exactly the same and so we can learn more about it. In particular, we can see that sometimes it says father first, and other time, mother. This would indicate that the honor given to our parents is equal and neither one deserves more or less than the other.

On top of that, we can see in Malachi and Ephesians that God is to be consider the Father of Heaven and Earth and this commandment applies to him as our heavenly parent, as much as it does to our earthy parents.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.,...

-Ephesians 3:14-15 (NIV)

A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master. If then I be father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my fear?" saith the Lord of hosts... "

— Malachi 1:6

So what are the implications of that? It would seem to indicate to me that both our earthly and heavenly parents should be treated with the same "weight", or deference and respect, accounting for our earthly parents being imperfect. We are instructed to be as little children in the Book of Mormon and it is often commented within the Church how parenthood is preparation and training for future Godhood. However, how often do we take that to the next step that we should, to a degree, maintain and treat the earthly and heavenly relationships as the same? Are we preparing ourselves to be God's children in the way we treat our parents to the same degree we are preparing as parents to be gods with children? 

 

Going off that that it is worth considering where in the list of the 10 commandments this commandment falls. It is generally agreed that the first 4 commandments is about our relationship with God (No other Gods, No Idols, name in vain, Keep the Sabbath) and the last 5 commandments are about our relationship with mankind (kill, adulatory, steal, false witness, covet). When considering this commandment as meaning both the Heavenly and Earthy parents, it makes a nice bridge that connects the two section of commandments together. In a sense you could say the family relationship is where the divine and the physical meet in all things according to the order of the commandments. 

To take this further, we can use the family as a natural translation to move all the commandments into one category or another. Per the pervious point, it would be natural to extend the first 4 commandments to our mortal parents making a list of purely mankind centric relationships. Similarly, breaking the later commandments against our spiritual family (mankind) is an affront to God, and so we must treat all mankind as our family. As mankind in the sense of "others" and mankind as an extension of the heavenly family are essentially the same thing, the later 5 commandments show no distinction between our relationship between the divine and physical. Between our physical and spiritual families we can see that all commandments are Spiritual before the Lord (D&C29:5) and nothing is physical or temporal.

Furthermore, if we were to consider the commandment's order as a hierarchy of importance/authority then the position of this commandment means that the order of charity/deference (per the Catholics) is first God, second Family, and third Mankind. Or in other words, this is the order we should serve and obey; making sure our obligations to God take priority over our family, and our family is taken care of before concerning ourselves with the rest of mankind. This order does make a lot of sense and I personally see value in it, but in no scriptural place does God indicate that these commandments provide such meaning. It does not take much effort to see how this arrangement when taken to an extreme could backfire. For example, failure to mankind at work could lead to an inability to take care of the family, which could result in it falling apart and ultimately leading a person away from God. The prophet President Hinkley also suggested a different order of obligation in a first presidency message in 1999. As such, to apply this order of commandments judiciously, I think they are best seen as a priority of life's asperations and less as how things should be applied in the minutia.  

Specifics of how to Honor

Ok, We now have a firm understanding of what the commandment means both in meaning and in context. But how do we apply it? For this I looked up the practices of many religions and cultures to see where they lined up or if anything stuck out to me. To start it is clear that all cultures agree that honoring parents is different for Children/Youth, adults, and those no longer with parents. However I will start with a few universal points that always apply.

Always:

• It is generally agreed that this commandment applies to honoring anyone who is raising or taking care of you, including teachers, or in general you are dependent on, though priority will go to actual parents to the degree they are available.
• In Matthew 10:37 Christ says "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." So while we should honor our parents, we should not prioritize their wishes over God.
• Along those lines, multiple groups agree (though primarily Jehovah Witnesses and Judaism) that since honoring parents is part of honoring God, the commandment does not depend on the worthiness of the parent. Bad parents should still be honored. Similarly, a child can choose another faith from their parents and still continue to honor them, as Abraham, Moses, Paul, and many other scriptural examples of prophets had different religious beliefs from their parents.
• One that stuck out to me from Orthodox  is "Every time we do something good, just, pure, holy, we bring honor to our parents."
• I particularly appreciated the Jehovah Witnesses emphasis on how in Proverbs 17:6 says "the glory of children are their fathers" and so we can honor them by being and expressing pride in them and appreciative for them, what they do, and what they advise. Though this sentiment of having and expressing esteem for parents is also found generally across all the faiths.
• The Protestants added one small detail that I liked that no others mentioned that follows the definition very well: "Act with consideration of parental advice, direction and consent"
• Finally the Church's Apostles and Prophets I feel sum it up pretty well 
• Spencer W. Kimball: “If we truly honor [our parents], we will seek to emulate their best characteristics and to fulfill their highest aspirations for us. No gift purchased from a store can begin to match in value to parents some simple, sincere words of appreciation. Nothing we could give them would be more prized than righteous living ..."
• Elder Dallin H Oaks: "... if you honor your parents, you will love them, respect them, confide in them, be considerate of them, express appreciation for them, and demonstrate all of these things by following their counsel in righteousness and by obeying the commandments of God."

As Children/Youth:

• It is undoubtedly, universally, agreed, per Ephesians 6:1–3, that Children/Youth should obey their parents in all things, as we should obey our father in heaven in all things. 
• I personally would add a caveat here. If we are following the example of Gods interactions with his children, then children should obey unquestioningly, but youth and older children should obey questioningly (note they should still always obey). In the scriptures we see an evolution of prophets where some are known for doing whatsoever the Lord commands them (Nephi) and others who questioned and grew from it (like Jacob who wrestled with the Lord, Mahonri who was given an incomplete ship design by God and had to question it to receive further instructions), and finally Prophets given sealing powers and whatsoever they asked because the Lord knew they would not ask amiss. (like 3rd Nephi). I think it is important to be aware that while children should be obedient to honor their parents, they, like us and God, need to be allowed to question and grow and are not required to give unquestioned obedience.
• Most religions also have lists of things that children are not required to obey - like breaking commandments, marrying someone they don't want to, etc. Per the definition at the start, honoring parents is to give additional weight and consideration to their counsel which accounts for growth and exceptions far better than saying they should obey in all things.
• Judaism had a couple very important specific ones that I think should be more widely adopted:
•  Namely that a child should never put a parent to shame or cause disharmony between their parents. As an example, a child shouldn't ask one parent and then the other. Nor should a child tattle on a parent - especially not to the other.
• A child who is travelling has an obligation to communicate with his/her parents to let them know he/she is safe in order to prevent them from worrying
• A child must not interrupt a parent's sleep. I heartily agree with this one as sleep is so important to the physical and emotional health of both the parent and the family. While this clearly is not enforceable with little children, older children should learn it and it is a good way of expressing to teenagers why they need to be home before curfew.
• Protestantism, and I'd say the Book of Mormon, would also say children must be submission to their parents rebukes, instructions and corrections

As Adults:

• It is undoubtedly, universally, agreed, per New Testament that adults should provide for their parents materially. Jesus calls out those who avoided this (Matthew 15:3–8, Mark 7:9–12) and is shown as an example of this when, at his death, he gave the care of his mother to the Apostle John.
• The Church's Apostles and Prophets have some unique additions:
• President Ezra Taft Benson encouraged families “to give their elderly parents and grandparents the love, care, and attention they deserve"
• Dallin H Oaks said "The best way to care for the aged is to preserve their independence as long as possible."
•  However, it is generally agreed the Bible teaches that the marriage bond takes priority over other family relationships. Genesis 2:24 says: “A man will leave his father and his mother and he will stick to his wife.” As such, the honor due to a spouse and consideration to maintaining and raising children supersedes honor to parents if and when they should conflict.
• Along those lines, getting married and having children is also a way to honor your parents by extending the families legacy.

Those no longer with parents

• As mentioned before, this commandment is generally accepted to apply to anyone you are dependent on.
• It is generally agreed that deceased parents should be honored:
• Judaism recommends honoring their death anniversary and giving charity in their memory
• Others recommend family reuninons
• The Church recommends family history, temple work, and commitment to "the great causes in which departed parents spent their lives"

Conclusion

Well, that is what I have discovered about honoring our fathers and mothers. A lot of it is obvious or stuff that I knew intuitively. Over all though there were many nuggets I gleaned from this and I hope you can find too. As with all commandments, its simplicity does not diminish its depth or importance and this one in particular I feel the world has ignored and even been attacking for far too long.