What about the 5th Commandment?

If you have been reading these posts for awhile, you may think I have been harsh on KatieLyn's parents. And yet, from my point of view, I have been extraordinarily even tempered in my comments.

KatieLyn's family is Christian, yes. But based on the parents' actions, they seem to be more of the sail-in-the-church Christianity that is lived in front of others and less of the dig-for-a-personal-relationship with Jesus kind. Gwen identifies more through her church work than through her intimate confidence in scripture.

The fact is, for whatever reason the parents had, they raised a daughter who was still very dependent, both emotionally and financially, and who was still living at home at age 29. I am not the kind of person who thinks parents ought to kick their children out of the house at age 18 or 21 or whatever random number they set as a limit, but generally, if an adult child has not been trained in the skills and built up in the confidence that they can survive on their own, the parents have failed to be parents. KatieLyn seemed mostly trained in the skills, although unpracticed in a few things. But when it came to raising a confident adult daughter, her parents had tanked.  Joe understood this far better than most men. God had given Joe special revelation and insight into this. And for that reason and others, I remain confident that God was directing His plan for their marriage and providing a relatively gentle journey for KatieLyn to grow into God's call on her life.

Now, on to the topic: What about the 5th Commandment that is found in Exodus 20:12?

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. King James Version

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. English Standard Version 

The command is to honor. It does not say to kowtow, to proceed from, or even to obey, although obedience is certainly an honorable act for young children. Honor is ethical behavior. It is being true to what the Lord has entrusted you with. 

Planning a wedding and inviting one's parents to sit in the front row is an act that honors them. Secretly eloping and telling them what you did after the fact is not. (There may be a few cases where a parent is so mentally ill that the safety of eloping trumps a marriage announcement ahead of time, but those special cases are few and far between.)  In this regard, KatieLyn was honoring her mother and her father. 

Fighting with your mother, especially when your mother is the provocateur, is not honoring her. KatieLyn knew this, and she determined to end it.  But she made a catastrophic decision and walked away from the wrong person. She ought to have walked away from her mom on this one. Refusing to fight would have honored her mother, it would have honored her love for Joe, and it would have honored God's provision for her life. Instead, she walked away from Joe, disobeyed God, and caved in to her mother's mechanization. That was not honor. 

I know it was tough living in the same house 24/7 with a mother who is jealous of your first love and who is constantly seeding doubt into your life.  When I met Gwen, she was treating KatieLyn as though she was a 14 year-old girl. Given that, I though KatieLyn had fared remarkably well, so that even though it was evident that her self-confidence was not up to what a woman her age would usually exhibit, I thought that she'd done extremely well under the conditions and would be able to mature quickly up to speed in the marriage that would boost her self-assurance. 

KatieLyn would have honored her mother simply by seriously listening and evaluating what her mom said. When KatieLyn saw that her mom's emotions did not align with what God had already told her about His plan for her life, she should have done the Jehoshaphat thing listed in last week's post and let God fight the battle for her. But because her parents had never allowed her to fully stand on her own often enough to get good at it, and because her mom did not trust Katie's being able to hear the Shepherd's voice, that did not happen. 

The Lesson
   This is precisely the way the devil exploits weaknesses. It is a classic illustration of how people miss God.  KatieLyn wanted to "do the right thing" and honor her mother.  Satan could make her feel guilty for not listening to her mom; yet all the while her mom had not been confident about hearing God's plan for her daughter. In Katie's attempt to honor her mother, she went beyond what the command says and she made an idol out of her mother's words, even though they were in conflict with what the Lord had originally told her. 

When Paul taught on this command in his letter to the Ephesians, he pointed out, "this is the first commandment with a promise." Paul's expansion on the 5th Commandment shows both that the command given through Moses had not been done away with, and that honor was higher than obedience.* 

When KatieLyn ran home in the middle of the night, she was behaving like a daughter, not like a wife.  Her parents, whom she was commanded to honor, had failed to help her mature into the transition that God was calling her to make. Her mother even went the other direction—not only did she fail to help her daughter establish her own identity, but Gwen hampered KatieLyn from achieving it by supplying phony rationalizations, such as, "Katie was just in love with the idea of a wedding; she wasn't in love with Joe."  No. KatieLyn was falling in love for real with the man whom God had sent, and that is what her mother was jealous of.




* Honor - The Hebrew root (kabad/kavad) and stem (piel) actually has a two-fold meaning: 1. to make heavy, make dull, make insensible; 2. to make honourable, honour, glorify. It implies a weighty gravitas. The Greek word for honor used by Paul when he quotes the law is τιμάω, which stresses reverence and value. An adult child is required to value his parents, but not to give blind obedience. God will hold an adult responsible for his/her own decision, and will not accept "I was obeying my parents" as an excuse the same way He would work around the intent of a child's heart when the child was trying to do the right thing, even though the parent was wrong.