As you have probably already seen, I’ve been working on a new discipleship curriculum for our church – a curriculum which I am hoping to publish eventually.
The second chapter of the curriculum is an introduction to Christian lifestyle and commitments. Thus, I am working on a basic summary of the Ten Commandments, taken from the perspective of Jesus. Therefore, two of the Ten have become rather complicated.
The fourth commandment, that to keep the Sabbath, is difficult to work out, but here’s my general drift so far: in light of Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath and pretty much his out-and-out provocation of the Pharasaic approach to the Sabbath, it seems that God is commanding Sabbath so that his people will have time for healing, restoration and rest. It’s not so much a commandment against work – it’s more a commandment to genuinely rest and experience God’s restoration and sustenance. Jesus’ healings, occurring as often as they did on Sabbaths, are somehow very significant for his interpretation of the Sabbath, and I know I’m missing something here.
The fifth commandment is also difficult for us. First of all, this commandment was written as much to adults as it was to children – if not more so. The adults are the ones to be honoring their parents, not just the children. Only secondarily is this taught to minors. That’s the first thing we have to get straight in our interpretation of the commandment to honor parents.
But the big question for our day and time comes from the context in which I minister. Many teens and young adults – as well as many other older adults – come from families that are just plain dysfunctional. How do you honor a father whose presence in your life was over before the cells that became you were even fertilized? How do you honor parents who are verbally (or otherwise) abusive? How do you honor parents who are acting like total fools?
Understanding an “honor and shame culture” such as the Old Testament might shed some light – but it’s hard to describe this commandment negatively. We could write it “Do not shame your parents” instead of “honor your parents,” and that could lead us to understanding, but does it still miss the point? For in the OT culture, honor and shame were opposites – and there was no middle ground. If you do not shame your parents, that makes some sense, even for this culture.
I’d appreciate some dialogue and feedback on these two commandments, since I think they have deep significance for being truly Christian in our culture. I don’t want to see us go back to even the Pharasaic laws of the 19th century Christianity that kept the world shut down on Sundays. That doesn’t make any sense to me at all. Then your doctors and other emergency personnel have to break the Sabbath to heal - and that seems to go against Jesus’ own practice. And we all need to find ways to honor parents – even when they’re totally disrespectible. I don’t know how to deal with that: I grew up in a (relatively) sane family and my parents are pillars of the community, honorable on all fronts. Yet somehow this “honor one’s parents” must speak both to me and to the fatherless kids I deal with regularly.
Help?