Relating to your parents...as an adult

Welcome to ClearCast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman. I'm here with our producer, Martin, and Pastor Dave. ClearCast is a ministry of Clearnote Church in Indianapolis. And today we're going to talk about honoring your parents as an adult. So most Christians know that the Bible tells us to honor your father and your mother. But do those duties end when we reach adulthood? And if they don't... maybe we need to repent of something. So we'll talk about all that and more in today's episodes. So Pastor Dave, what does the Bible say about honoring parents? Well, I think that when we start out with the question of honoring our parents, Exodus 20, the fifth commandment, is going to come to our minds. It says, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. And then that's reiterated again in Ephesians 6.

where Paul instructs the children to obey their parents in the Lord for this is right. And then he quotes from Exodus chapter 20, honor your father and mother in the Lord. And so there's this real strong connection, especially in young children, between honor and obedience. One of the things that I've said to my kids is, as a child, as a young child, you're not going to be able to honor the Lord if you don't obey your mom and dad. What we want to do is tie those things together in young children with no space between them, that you were given by God to us to shepherd, to teach, to train. And the only way that you can honor God right now is for you to do what we tell you. In 1 John, it talks about, he says he loves his brother.

loves God but hates his brother is a liar. If you change out the people there, he who says that I obey God but disobeys his parents is a liar. In young children, there's not any space between those two. Honoring is obeying. As we're going to get into later, as we work through this, the question is how does that change as the kids get older? But I think we have to start from the very beginning. If you've got young kids, You need to not be, as a parent, I would say, you need to not be ashamed of having your kids instilling in them the expectation that they are to obey you and your wife. They're to do what you say. And they're to do it right now. And they're to do it with cheerful hearts. And that it's not oppressive for you to require obedience from them. Right. You've not done them any harm. The data on life outcomes is really stark on this point.

A child who grows up without a clear authority structure in place is going to be anxious. They're going to be afraid. They're going to be uncomfortable. They're not going to be well socialized because kids crave structure, and giving them that structure is loving them. And our society teaches us to think that exercising authority is oppression, but it's not. It's love. Since our topic is honoring parents as an adult, for those of us who are already adults and are now parenting our own children, does the groundwork for... I guess I have two questions, really. Does the groundwork for how our children honor us as adults, is that laid as their children in two things?

We know about expecting obedience, but I've also seen parents who create an expectation of perfection out of themselves and out of their children that sets them up for later bitterness because the children are like, mom and dad, they didn't have a context for their parents failing because their parents didn't have a context for them failing. Does that make sense? Somewhat. Yeah, I think that parents can make... the transition from childhood to adulthood for their children more difficult if they don't understand or don't have proper expectations. I think I've met parents who think that obedience is what's required and that age is not as significant of a contributing factor as it really is. Well, what I was specifically thinking about is honoring parents as an adult is if I have this idea that like, good and godly people don't experience failure. And then I reach an age where I all of a sudden realize, oh, my parents have had real failures. Then it makes it that much more difficult to honor them correctly. Because I'm like, what is this? What happened? Because only bad people fail. My parents failed, ergo. They're bad people, yeah. Yeah, I think one of the things you tell parents is when they're raising their kids, and we're talking about honoring

Your parents as an adult, but the parents have to admit and acknowledge their faults and sins, particularly to their kids as they're growing up. It's one of the things, if I were to ask a parent, do you want your kids to confess their sins quickly and with humility and regularly? We all say, yeah, that's it. Okay. So mom and dad, how do you expect them to learn to do that? Yeah. Unless they never, if they never see you do that. And for a time they'll go, oh, well, I've screwed up because mom or dad told me I screwed up. But apparently mom and dad never screw up because mom and dad never have to say they're sorry or they never have to ask for forgiveness. Yeah. And that can create sort of a seedbed for the future where once the kids individuate a little bit in their minds, all of a sudden they're like, no, I think that dad's doing exactly what he told me not to do. Yeah.

He wasn't right in telling me that it was wrong for me to do it, or he's doing something he shouldn't be doing. Yeah. And when kids realize that sometime in their teenage years, what you hope is that when they start to say, I think my parents are wrong about something, and every teenager thinks their parents are wrong about many things, sometimes they're right and sometimes they're not. But the point, who's going to argue it? Kids think their parents are wrong. You don't want that to be a revelation to them. You don't want that to be the first time they're having the thought, oh, my dad, my mom does the wrong stuff sometimes. They sin. Yep. And so I think that if parents, as they're raising their kids, are confessing their own sins and asking forgiveness, not just of one another, but of their kids, it can go a long way.

creating a an expectation that this is we're all sinners and this is what we do and this is how we get along when you're little and when you're big yeah this is how we're gonna have to get along yeah because the the question of honoring our parents really boils down to how do we honor sinners like how do you see what i'm saying like in other words like it's it's very easy to honor people that never make mistakes Yeah, and it's very easy. I mean, I imagine it would be. I haven't met anybody like that. But I think if I did know somebody like that, it would be very easy to honor them. Well, yeah, it seems to become a prerequisite that whether it's our parents or our mentors or the people we look up to, we're just like, well, they never do anything wrong. And it's like, well, yeah, they do. The question is not whether they do something wrong, but do they acknowledge it when they do something's wrong? Yeah. And I think that's really important for parents in teaching your children.

This is, this is a, this is, it's a sort of like longterm investing. Like you're going to be teaching them something when they're little that you're going to reap the benefit of when they're older. Oh, mom and dad are not perfect. Everything dad says isn't always true and right and good and appropriate. Yeah. So there's actually a good reason for apologizing to your children when you've done wrong. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's a practice. I don't, I mean, I don't want to just make it a practical, you know, Yeah, you should do this because it'll help your kids turn out better. You should do it because you're a sinner. And I think too often when we sin, especially as parents, we think that we've somehow failed our kids in some irreparable way. And that's just a miserable burden to bear. Because the truth is you will fail your kids in a lot of ways that will have lasting effects. It'll leave a mark on them, so to speak.

That is unavoidable. And so the question is not whether you'll do that. The question is whether you'll treat the wound, whether you'll acknowledge it, or whether it will just be committed to the silence only to turn, you know, it's going to turn into the elephant in the room. Yeah. Tim had written down some notes for this, and I was just looking over them as you're talking because he says, you know, what do you do? my parents sinned against me in normal but still damaging ways, or then my parents sinned against me in extraordinary, abusive ways. And the difficulty is some of that, not all, but some of it is actually perspective, isn't it? It's like, how do you view the hurts that were brought on you? And I'm not saying that to be dismissive of the fact that there are children I can't imagine having to deal with a parent who had abused you in a way that was just objectively utterly destructive, severe child abuse, severe neglect, severe emotional abuse. But I've seen people in situations where when you knew their parents and when they explained the situation to you, it didn't seem as big as the effect that it seemed to take in their life. Are you following what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Yeah, I know what you're saying. And generally, I'd say to that adult, that young adult, maybe they're older, but

teens, early 20s, whatever, whatever has occurred between you and your parents in your upbringing, there's not a sin that was committed that somehow absolves you of having any responsibility to God with regard to how you treat your parents. There's lots of... And when the effect of those sins is ongoing, it can't be dealt with. No one will acknowledge it. They're telling you that you lied. That didn't really happen. You're overreacting. The sorts of things that get said in families, the question remains, how are you going to seek to honor your parents in this situation? Well, I think a lot of the difficulty comes in with...

a parent who doesn't want to repent. Yeah. Maybe a harder question or maybe the meat and potatoes of this is how do you honor a parent who's unwilling to acknowledge their sins or their faults, who's unwilling to repent? Am I still supposed to honor them? Am I still supposed to obey them? Am I still supposed to have relationship with them? And what's that look like? Those are really hard questions. And there's not a... We can talk generally about it, but the specifics are going to be something you're going to have to work through with your pastor, your elders, and your elders' wives and stuff where the details can be taken into account in a way that a podcast is not going to be able to address that sufficiently. In fact, the things we say in the podcast, in the particulars, may be exactly what you shouldn't be doing because of the circumstances that you're in.

So it's difficult to work through. But I think the question remains, and I think it's good to ask people who are involved or close enough to the situation to be able to sort out and give particular counsel about what it looks like. So maybe what we should set the table a little bit here is discuss, like, how would you delineate the difference between honor and obedience? beyond just the straightforward obedience is just doing what people say. But there seems to be a degree to which they're the same, and then there's also a degree to which they're different. And how would you separate those two? Well, first, as we already mentioned, you start with the age. There's not a distinction in my mind when the children are young. I think when it comes to raising kids, In America, we do things backwards. When we have little kids, we give them lots of latitude to make their own decisions and to behave how they want to. And as they get older, those freedoms that they were given when they were young, and I'm not advocating this is the right way to do it. I think this is the wrong way to do it, but this is the prevailing way to do it, the common way to do it in America, and it's alive and well in Christian circles, is that one-year-old, two-year-old, five-year-old,

he's really free to do pretty much whatever he wants. He gets to pick his bedtime. He gets to pick his clothes. He gets to pick his food. He gets to play his games. He gets to do what he wants to do. And as he gets older, those freedoms become less. And the reason they become less is because his ability to make good decisions or to do things that are appropriate are less and less. And the potential... or the reality for the destruction he's causing is growing. I've said to parents before when they have a little kid and they're like, oh, isn't that cute? They're doing whatever. It's kind of rebellious, but it's like a little sapling of rebellion. What I'll say to them is that doesn't scale well. When he does that when he's 10, that's going to be a broken window. When he does that when he's 15, he's going to get arrested or beat up. That behavior doesn't grow into something you're going to want your child to be.

participating and you need to you need to stop that right now a lot of really dangerous animals look really cute when they're little when they're babies right like a baby tiger it's like melt your heart yeah just adorable yeah and so and so we start with kids that when they're little and they have all this freedom to govern themselves and as they get older we say the parents start to say no more and more and by the time they're teenagers the parents are just And the kids are just fighting and arguing constantly about every little thing because the kid was taught from a young age, you get to do what you want. Well, by the time they get to be teenagers, the things they want to do can cause real harm to themselves and to others and can affect the rest of their lives. And so the parents start going, no, you can't, no. And the kid's like, well, what do you mean? Why are you telling me this now? Right. And so I think that that structure is...

It's flipped on its head. But actually, when kids are little, obedience and honor are the same thing. Your kids don't get to pick their own clothes out. They don't get to pick what foods they like. They don't get to pick their bedtimes. They don't get to pick their haircuts. They don't get to pick that stuff. And I'm hearing myself say this, and I'm thinking, people are going to say, you're really, you're control of, and you're authoritarian, and you're all this stuff. And I'm like, you should come meet my kids. They're happy kids. They're not perfect kids. Plenty of things we're still working on. But the fact that we expect our two-year-old not to scream when she's upset, and we really do expect it, and we really do enforce that she not scream, has served us well and our older children well who were taught that same thing when they were little. Yeah, right. And so if you give young children lots of latitude...

Which is another way of saying you don't expect them to obey you. We shouldn't be surprised when they get older and they have no category and no muscle memory for honor in any form. Right. Especially as it changes from obedience to respect to deference to a more... Indirect. Indirect or more of a dialogue where we're talking about stuff. Yeah. So what you're talking about is that in American society we tend to get the funnel upside down where we – Have no expectations for young children. We have wide latitude that funnels down into tight constriction in the teenage years when it should be tight constriction in the early years that funnels out to wide latitude in the teenage years. So if you're the person – like let's say someone listened to this. Their parents got the funnel upside down.

what advice would you have for them? I mean, welcome to the club. Did you expect your parents not to make a mistake? I mean, it's not that I want to minimize parents' failures. I'm a parent. I'm also a son. And I'd say early teen, into the teenage years and 20s, kids start to realize, like, I don't always want to do what mom and dad say. And they're big enough or strong enough or stubborn or willful enough. to act on that a little bit more. And so what are they supposed to do? What do you say to that kid? Well, my parents never taught me to obey. Okay, well, I'm sorry about that. Yeah. But it's not going well the way it is. Like you do need to, what I've taken to saying to people, not just to my kids, though I do say it to my children.

What I've come to say to older people when things are tense or difficult and I'm saying something that they may not like is to say, listen, I want you to remember everything I'm saying to you is motivated by me wanting the absolute best for you. I am not trying to spoil your fun. I'm not trying to ruin your life. I'm not trying to make you a weirdo. I'm not trying to make you miserable for the sake of it. I'm trying to guard you, to warn you, to guide you away from danger. and try to instill in you a principle of considering what it means to serve God and to honor him. So what I'd say to that kid is, if you don't honor your parents, if you don't have something you can point to in your life as an expression of your honoring of your parents, you're not honoring God. And where they may have failed you, Hebrews tells us, we had fathers who disciplined us as they saw fit. And I've always read that as Hebrews acknowledging that parents...

Don't do everything right. And he says, but we have our Father in heaven who disciplines us for our good. But the part in between, he says, we have fathers who disciplined us as they saw fit, and we honored them. How much more ought we to honor our Father in heaven? So there's this parent in front of us that we have to deal with who's a sinner, and there's God who's perfect behind them. And the way that we honor God is through our disposition and our behavior toward. the parents that he's given to us. I think one of the beautiful biblical examples of that is Noah's, two of Noah's sons, Shem and Japheth, where they didn't deny that their father had gotten drunk. They didn't deny he was laying naked in his tent. Right. But they come in and they cover his nakedness. And scripture says that love covers a multitude of sins. Yeah. That if...

that honoring our parents doesn't, doesn't mean we pretend that nothing went wrong, but there's a certain kind of covering that love and respect place over the failures of the people that were called to honor. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think some of the trouble of honoring your parents for kids is one, and it happens in what there's all kinds of different homes. You know, there's homes where parents really expect their kids to do everything they say, and they really don't see. as a good thing. I find this more in sort of cloistered homeschool families that honoring their parents means obedience, obedience, obedience. And it means that into the mid to late teenage years. Oh, wow. And that if the kid ever wants to do something that the parents don't want to do, then the argument back to the child is, well, you're not honoring us. But the son is, there's a situation I'm thinking of where there's a young man.

This family was, they were all about their family and honoring and obeying. And their kids from the outside and from a distance, growing up, just looked like model children. They were very smart. They were very active. They were very attractive. There were all these things. Well, then the boy wants to, the teenage son, as he's getting older, he wants to date a young Christian lady, Christian girl. And he's, I think he was 19. 20 or something. Oh, wow. And his parents, for various reasons, I think they may have been theological, she didn't check all the boxes. And they were like, no, you can't. No, we don't. You may not. And at that point, all at once, he said, yeah, I am. And the parents felt like, oh, we have just lost our son. And I thought, Only if you continue to drive him away by having inappropriate expectations, he is and has been becoming and is now an adult and is going to make decisions and is going to have to bear the responsibility of those decisions. What I want as a parent is I want to be able to have my children's

disposition toward me. What I would, it may be a way to answer the question is what would I consider honoring to me as my kids enter into adulthood? I was actually going to ask that exact thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so my oldest son is going to be 17 in a few, in a few months. And so we're not there yet, but what I'm working for, we're well into the teenage years with in our family, with our older kids and they're getting opinions of their own. And they're getting desires of their own and they're trying to reconcile both their desires and opinions with Vanessa and my expectations. And they're trying to reconcile what they think, what we think with what their friends think and their peers. And they're just kind of stuck staring at these, at this fork in the road. Like, who am I going to listen to? Everybody's talking, right? The friends are talking.

the music, the whatever that they're everybody, there's all this input, but then there's mom and dad who've been there way longer. Right. And who are they going to listen to? Well, I can double down and say, you're going to listen to me. You're going to listen to me, but that has an expiration date. That only is going to last so long. Right. And at some point they're going to go, no, dad, I'm not, I'm not going to listen to you. And then what is there any, is it even dishonoring for them at some point to say, dad, I'm going to do, I'm going to make my own decision. I'm going to be my own man. And I'm going to bear the responsibility of those choices. And so what I've taken to doing with my sons, our older kids are all boys, is I've gone from saying, this is what you will do, to saying, son, I want to talk to you about the thing you were talking about. We've been talking about investing and flipping houses and finances. And these are questions my older son's asking me.

What do you think about this? What do you think about that? And I think, praise God, my 17-year-old son is asking me questions about the stuff that he and his friends are talking about. And I'm sure there's things they're talking about he's not asking me questions about. But like what to do when I get out of high school? How do I, what should I do with my life? What should my priorities be? What should I be about is basically what he's, is the conversations we're having. It's not, son, you'll do this, you'll do this, and then you'll do that. You may not do this or that or the other thing. Everyone's asking him, how are you going to go to college? You're going to go to college. What are you going to do when you get out of high school? He's like, I don't know. Probably not going to go to college is his answer right now. He's like, I'd like to get in the trades. I'd like to work with my hands. And I think that's fine. You've got room to do that. I'm not going to be mad at you if you go to college or you don't go to college. I would push much more on him being a learner.

I care more that he be curious and be interested and be learning about things than whether he goes and gets a degree or goes to college. You can go to college and not do what I've just described, or you can not go to college and actually do what I'm describing. When I think about what it might look like on the ground to honor parents as an adult, I think there's an extent to which, if you think about the funnel, You start out narrow, and then as the kid gets older, they've worn more fur. If you took those lines and just extended them out to where it's now a really, really wide funnel, maybe trying, when possible, to stay inside of that, even as an adult, where there's things that you might do if your parents were different, but you're not going to do them. Or there's things you might not do, but you are going to do them, or whatever it is.

And, and I think there's, there's an extent to which like in a much, much smaller, like finding maybe smaller, somewhat symbolic ways to still kind of obey your parents, even as an adult. Yeah. I mean, I think as an adult child, you have to think if you're, if your disposition is, I just can't wait to get away from these people so I can go do my own thing. There's no honoring your parents in any meaningful sense in that sentiment. That's just sinful. Like your parents, however, however bad they were or are, they have done good for you. They have, they have given for your sake. And I think the idea that I'm just going to shed all of that is, is dishonoring. Now what that looks like is going to have, it's going to look, it can look really different. I tend to think that as a child, you should, I think young people, especially young men, like to fight and argue and fighting and arguing and debating and disagreeing. When you're doing that with your parents, it's not any fun. Maybe you're having fun. Your parents aren't having any fun with you arguing with them. I'm sure there are moms and dads that might enjoy that. Most parents don't, though, because they see it as opposition, as conflict, as unpleasant.

yeah what's that confrontation yeah like they're not like i don't want to be arguing with my teenage and adult children about about their life and what they're doing i want to be help to them i want but what i want is to transfer their their allegiance i think a parent's job is to transfer your child's obedience and their allegiance to you as when they're little that you need to be getting out of the way and transferring that allegiance to god and that as they come to care more about what will God have me do? We can talk about all the jobs you can get in the world and all the money you can make or whatever your kid wants to talk about. But the first thing and the most important thing we need to say is, does this desire and these priorities, do they honor God? Are you convinced of that? To the best of your ability, are you sure of that? That's what matters the most. Well, that means that some of my desires are going to have to get out of the way as a father.

Because the answer to that question is for you to honor God, it may be something that I wouldn't, I don't want you to do. And that could be as simple as moving away. Like, I'm not waiting for the day when my kids are like, hey, man, I'm gonna go move to some other state. Like, I'm not looking forward to, I don't want that. But it is true that God could be calling them to do that. And I don't wanna be found as a parent making my, like being the cause of my child's suffering to serve God. And so I think I'm talking more to the parents about their expectations in raising their children. But if you're a child listening to this, you can flip all the things I'm saying around and say, okay, so are my parents doing that and how am I responding to it? Am I just trying to get away from them? Am I just trying to prove to them that I'm right and they're wrong? That's not the point.

The goal is not to prove to your parents that you're right. Right. And something else I think about when I think about when my kids are older and they're in adulthood, what would I like them to do for me at that point? One of the things I think about is not necessarily that they're always going to do what I say, but if they're thinking about moving across the country or making some sort of major life decision, maybe give me a call. Yeah. And let me weigh in on it. And what I say, Have some weight. Even if it's not determining the decision, it's still having some weight, and it's an important consideration that you thought about before you made this decision. And you didn't just make the decision and then inform me of it later. Yeah. I'm thinking about the fact in one of the earlier episodes we've talked about before, when you were talking about pastoral care, you've mentioned that there are people that are so opposed to any pastoral discipline.

Because in their mind, that's just pastors making them do whatever you want them to do. And they reject that. And you said it's those very same people that when their child goes off the rails or their husband goes off the, spouse goes off the rails or whatever, that they want you to do something about it. And you're like, what am I supposed to do? Duct tape to the chair. And I think so many of this, so many of these things really boil down to, do I have a context for honor and respect apart from, abject obedience and complete agreement. Like, as an adult, when I respect my parents, can I respect them and honor them without doing everything they tell me to do, even their, and I'm speaking of adult, once again, adult children, without doing everything they've said and without agreeing with everything. And I think that there is a sense where we can grow to, just as we can grow to respect and love and honor elders,

Without calling them every morning to say, what should I do today? Right. And even having a context where there are times where they say something, we say, I just disagree, and I don't think that's the right decision. But we still honor them, and there's a way that we approach it. I think of Paul's instructions when he says, don't rebuke an elder, but entreat him as a father. Right. And Paul had the advantage of evidently working in a culture where people knew what it meant to entreat someone as a father. Nowadays, if you said to somebody, like, you should entreat them as a father, you'd be like, What does that even look like? What does that mean? I think that's where a lot of the argument comes from is that we don't know how to approach people or a disagreement or conflict in a way that is respectful or God-honoring or gracious. It seems to be that the only outcomes are either agreement and then we walk together and we might fight like cats and dogs to get there.

Or disagreement and we have to part ways. And that is not true. That's not what honoring your parents requires is that you agree with everything and obey everything or that you sever relationships. Now, in some ways, those are easier because there's definite boundaries to them and they're attainable where if you have to go to Christmas dinner and there's these. skeletons in the closet or elephants in the room, so to speak. There's these disagreements. How do we negotiate those? How do we navigate those in a way that honors them? That's hard. I can think of family situations where it's not the way the child would like it to be. The child may be okay. You may be okay with that disagreement. Your parents may not be. Yeah.

Your parents may be okay with the disagreement. You may not be because you feel like if they don't affirm you that they are opposed to you and like wishing the worst things in the world on you, which isn't always the case. Sometimes I'm sure it is if parents are being wicked, but yeah, that's not the rule. No. Yeah. So if we boiled everything we've talked about, we've kind of covered a lot of ground in the past 35 minutes or so. But if we boil it down to a, Just a piece of wise advice that we can give somebody listening, what would you make that be, Pastor Dave? I mean, I think that in every relationship, you're going to have to have forgiveness be sort of the bedrock of those relationships. And so I think one of the things children have to be able to do if they're going to honor their parents as adults is be able to forgive them for the ways that their parents sinned against them. And sometimes you're going to have to do that for unbelieving parents because your parents aren't Christians. You don't get a pass on...

honoring your parents because they're not Christians. You don't get a pass because they're Christians and they're not sorry for what they did or don't know what they did or blame you for what happened. You're going to be sinned against by everyone you get close to. And that's especially true of your parents. You're going to spend the first 20 years almost just living in their house and around them every day. There's going to be lots of sin. And the fact is you sinned against them too. And so you ought to remove the log out of your own eye. And I'm afraid, as I'm talking about this, I'm thinking like, okay, but what about the extreme cases? What about when there was terrible stuff? And I don't think we should formulate an answer to the question of how to honor your parents as an adult based on these extreme examples. Those extreme examples are going to have to be handled delicately and with care and are going to be all the more difficult. But for the most of us, that's...

probably not what happened well and even in the most extreme can we say that that the piece of advice you just gave the issue of forgiveness how what that how to get to that point might look different and it might be extremely difficult but it doesn't change the expectation of obedience to god's command to forgiveness right yeah that makes sense yeah i mean even when i mean if you want to talk about being sinned against in the most egregious ways you have both jesus and Stephen, who are being unjustly put to death, praying as they're being killed, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And so in those most extreme cases, I'm saying that's the goal. What's the path to getting there? That's going to take particular counsel to figure out. And it is possible that you may end up in a situation where you have to work through forgiving someone that you have no longer have contact with because they are gone and you don't know where they're at because re-engaging with them would be a step in the wrong direction. You may be in that situation because they're dead. Yeah, yeah. And yet the effect of the past events still has to be worked through. And the goal is that we can forgive them. And so forgiveness doesn't require you to go back in and act like nothing has ever happened. There's no more danger. There was never any hurt. That's not really what forgiveness requires.

absolutely requires of you. But it does require for you to seek to honor God, and even with people who have really sinned against you. That's a beautiful, beautiful answer of wisdom. Thank you, Pastor Dave. Tim, do you have anything else? What I think about as far as forgiving parents, I think that we in modern society have a tendency to want to We want to be the person who has suffered. And I think that for some people, forgiving their parents might be giving up that identity as a victim. It might be giving up, like, maybe they were really sinned against and they were really victimized. But forging an identity that's different from that, like, that might be an important step in the process here. And the other thing I think about is that a lot of the people listening to this, didn't have the abusive parent they actually had pretty good parents and so i think if you're if you're hearing this and your parents were actually good and godly even though they were sinners like the the closer they they are to christ the more you ought to be able to honor them and the more um like the bigger ways you can do that because if you transition from obeying parents to obeying god and your parents are obeying god then there should be more continuity

with the more godly your parents are. I guess my challenge would be if your parents were godly, how much more should you be honoring them? How much more can you have some continuity even with your childhood in a lot of ways? How much more can you consult them and weigh their advice and take seriously their concerns? How much more can you spend time with them and maintain those contacts? This is an interesting conversation for me just because my parents, even my decision to be in a Reformed church has been a difficult, challenging issue to work through for all of us. And that's not easy for any parents, but I had parents that really, that did love God and really tried hard to raise me to love God as well. In fact, when you were talking about the issue of forgiveness, the thing that always comes back to me, I remember I was 13 years old. My parents were pastoring a church in states away.

multiple states away. And there was a young lady that was part of the church that had been through a divorce and still had a really defensive posture towards the divorce that she went through, and I really don't know many of the circumstances. I only met her former husband one time, and I was 13 years old, if that gives you an idea. But I remember in the living room, I think, her saying, you could tell she had a chip on her shoulder about all of it, and she said to my mom, She said, don't you think that trust is the most important thing in marriage? And the context of that was she had made different accusations against her ex-husband and there wasn't really any way to litigate them. But at one point she found like a white powder kind of thing in his wallet. And he said it was a Tylenol that had gotten smashed. And she smashed up. She went to the trouble of taking a Tylenol pill and smashing it up to see if it would smash up the same way what she found in his pocket was.

was crushed. Just all these different things that she felt like, there wasn't really any other evidence of drug use, by the way, just to clarify. But she says to my mom, don't you think that trust is the most important thing in marriage? And my mom said, no, I think it's forgiveness. And it just, I've come back to that conversation over and over again, just remembering the best of relationships, the most quote unquote godly, where there's not lots of baggage, if there isn't the oil of forgiveness that that is like you can have a perfectly tuned engine and if you empty it of oil it will blow up that's right and you can have an engine that is has had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles but has been reasonably well maintained and as long as you keep oil in it it will work it will keep working and you look at the ferrari that blows up because there's no oil in it and then you look at your old beater you know 87 ford f-150 and it's still going because you kept the oil in

Yeah, I think forgiveness is important. And the last thing I'd say to you is, if you're an adult, you probably, and you're thinking about how do I honor my parents? One of the things you should be thinking about is how you behave is teaching your kids what to do with you when you have that same relationship. So true. And so there's a motivation in saying, okay, I want to teach my kids to do this because it's not as uncommon as we might like to think it is to. be hypocritical and expect things of other people that we are not willing to do ourselves. And Jesus tells us that's exactly what hypocrites do. They tie up heavy burdens around people's necks and that are unwilling to lift a finger to help themselves. And so confession of, in every relationship, the way that it's going to go along is with forgiveness, confession of sin, repentance, grace. These are the things that are the lifeblood of any relationship and are most important.

Or the lack of them is most evident in family relationships where there was plenty of time to sin against each other. And then what did you do with it? So that's really the question.