My Dear Fellow Human Beings, Fellow Chilren, Fellow Future-Parents and Grand-Parents, Fellow Teachers, Fellow Neighbors, Fellow Brothers and Sisters:
Here is a clip from the Religious Forum which was posted under the topic "Revisiting the Ten Commandments - With Love."
It is a discussion of the modern-day application of the fourth commandment which addresses honoring others in the "family". I thought some people might find it relevant to this discussion. Enjoy!
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT:
"Thou Shalt Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother."
When we discuss the Fourth Commandment we are essentially speaking of "family". To speak of "family" is in some way always addressing society in general - since society at large is no more than a composite of the families within a community. Despite the changing patterns of family life - throughout the history of mankind, the family has remained in all civilizations and cultures throughout the entire recorded period of man's history (and, one suspects, long before recording began) the family has been and remains even now the cornerstone of society. It is relatively safe to say that the health of any society can be measured by the general condition of family life within it. Healthy family life usually signifies a healthy society, a healthy culture.
Each of us is the product of a home and family. Even those of us who grow up in some measure abandoned or orphaned are in some way the product of family - family fantasized, family adoptive, family desired. But family is and remains the norm. Our lives have been shaped, marked and formed by the family life we experienced...or the lack of it. It is not surprising, therefore, to insist that the Fourth Commandment has a profound significance for each of us as individuals and for society at large.
When the commandment was given (in the Book of Exodus) the background of the history and purpose of the Law was the intense love and friendship of God for His people: "...so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God has given you." The Israelites had a very strong sense of being "a people," "The Chosen People," "The People of the Law," "The People of the Book." It was God's wish that it be so - it was the function of most of the ritual observances laid down later in the Bible to build this sense of "differentness" and bring them to a consciousness of "being different." The commandments themselves are expressions of the covenant which bound them, both to Yahweh and to the community of Israel itself. In the same way that the first three commandments have to do with God Himself, the remaining seven have to do with the community He had established by this covenant, and with the relationships between and among His people. As the first three say "Give to God the place that is rightfully His," the remaining seven say "Give to each person the place that is rightfully his/hers." The Fourth Commandment was the commandment of the covenanted people, the commandment of community....the commandment which ordered the people to BE a community.
What is the deepest central meaning behind this commandment, the element which endured and would be valid for the people of all ages and every nation throughout time? God has linked the lives of each of us with all other men. There is no such thing as a "private sin," or a "private virtue" in that we can have elements of our lives that have no impact on the lives of others. There ARE no sins we can commit by which we "are hurting nobody but ourselves."
We must, therefore, permit people to be what God wishes them to be for us. We are not to make those determinations for Him. We must also be, for ourselves as well as for the benefit of all others, whatever it is that God has wished for US to be. The core value is RESPECT. RECOGNIZE AND RESPECT THE PLACE THAT OTHERS HAVE IN YOUR LIFE....not only those people and places that we find pleasant to our tastes. For the Israelite, honor for father and mother was a realistic and practical expression of that respect. It fit into the social pattern of life as it was then known. Since that time, society has changed a great deal, not always for the better. Both the patterns of life have changed, and the significance of relationships. We live in a complex society. We belong to many different groups: family, the work team, the town, city, parish, club, bowling league, volunteer fire company. In the meantime, something has happened, something of profound significance for the People of God, for the lives of people living together. The great reality of the community of God's Kingdom has come among us.
The Fourth Commandment points to the sanctifying power of human relationships, such as those between parents and children, employer and employee, elected official and citizen, pope and laity, teacher and student. We are all part of the New Israel. We are all part of a new community, a community of believers and non-believers gathered together into unity and oneness. There is a wide range of gifts accorded each of us, but there is only one Spirit who works in each of us for the benefit of all. The togetherness of the Gospel is now the channel of God's redeeming grace. So, respect means a good deal more than simple reverence and obedience toward the head of the family. It means, instead: "Listen. Listen to all those whom God has given to you in your life. In a word, this commandment enshrines *listening*. Listening to one another."
No relationship stands simply on the right of authority to command and the duty of submission and obedience from the rest. The primary relationship is that of persons who have been drawn together by the unifying Spirit of God, who works differently in each of us, for the benefit of all of us. The primary duty we each have, in the light of all our relationships taken all together, is to listen. To listen to what it is that God is telling us through all those whom He has placed in our lives.
Parents are not parents merely because they have a God-given right to command; nor are children only children because they have an equivalent duty given by God to obey. In the New Covenant, there is more to it than that. A parent can and should command, but only if he or she has first listened to the child. A parent may say "are you serious? How do you listen to a gurgling infant or to the childish prattle of a five-year- old, or to the tantrums of a fifteen-year-old?" The point I'm trying to make is that the parent has to try to listen to what is growing in the child, not to the words of the child. The cry for love, the cry to be assured of love, the hunger to know what things are, to know the meaning of life, what to do and how to do it -- these are the significant things behind the gurgling, the prattling and the tantrums. And through the years there is the longing to become independent, to accomplish something worthwhile in life. The child will usually listen - if the parents have listened first.
We are all part of a group. Children cannot grow to full adulthood alone. God has so arranged it that they need the love, guidance, and direction of parents if they are to grow properly. Children should obey, to be sure; but obedience will be fruitless if all it is is submission, if they do not first listen to the concern and the greater wisdom of their parents.
In this sense, home may be described as a place where everyone listens and where everyone is listened to. Authority will be respected and honored, or spurned and mocked, depending on the fairness and wisdom with which it is exercised. [As testified to above]. There are two extremes to be avoided - as are, indeed, all extremes. A repressive, overly severe use of parental authority where parents fail to listen and become unreasoning, unreasonable and inflexible; and, what is perhaps an even greater danger today, a too permissive and too passive attitude on the part of parents. When children are allowed to do whatever they like, when parents seem not to care where children go or with whom, there is another failure in real listening. Why? Because parents fail to listen to what their children need and to what is growing in them.
The listening spoken of here in the context of family must touch all other groups as well. It should touch the school, the workplace, the Church. It should touch even the relationships between and among nations themselves. This doesn't happen nearly often enough. In educational, industrial and in international relationships, all too often only force is listened to, only personal gain is attended to or heeded. Negotiation becomes a sparring match, a means by which to gauge another's weakness. We live in a society filled with calculated deafness.
There should be no such thing as an "entrenched position." That is, a position which pretends to be self- sufficient, able to meet all eventualities alone and without assistance or accompaniment. There is no position so right that it can afford to close itself off to all others. In the grand scheme of things, each gift, good in and of itself, must work together with the other gifts, given to others. Embrace each other. Respect and appreciate each other's differences and position in life. Realize that we are here FOR each other. Honor each other.
With Love,
Michael
