By Teena Myers
Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.
Ephesians 6:1–2, KJV
Paul made a distinction between “parents in the Lord” and a “father and mother.” It is right to obey “parents in the Lord.” Parents who are not in the Lord may teach or require their children to do sinful things. In such circumstances, a child should obey God the Father. Nevertheless, the command to honor is not conditional. We may not be able to obey our human father, but if we honor him, God has promised us a long, good life.
One of the most appealing aspects of Christianity to me was the good news that God would be my father. My human father was an alcoholic womanizer who was impossible to please. When I ran wild on drugs, he was not happy. When I became a Christian, he wished I were back on drugs. Addiction he understood, but the Jesus stuff was more than he could handle.
The extent of his conversation with me was, “Fix me a drink” and “Get me an ashtray.” Occasionally, he shouted, “Shut up, I can’t hear the TV.” His fatherly advice for the future was twofold: “You will always be in debt,” he said, “and have sex with your boyfriend before you marry him to be sure you are compatible.”
Shortly after I became a Christian, I pleaded with Dad to accept Jesus. He warned me, “Shut your mouth or I’ll slap it shut.” I did not heed his warning. He kept his word. Instead of offering him the other cheek, I went to my room and turned my heart away from him. Excluding my father from my life seemed like a reasonable thing to do because he wasn’t a good father. It was also one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in life.
Ultimately, I became as angry with God as I was with my Dad. No matter what my father in heaven or on earth did, I couldn’t be pleased. The arrogance that I was a better person than my father blinded me to compassion for him. When I turned my heart away from Dad, I also erected a wall that took God many years to penetrate as he slowly and patiently revealed the truth.
Late one night, I overheard my parents discussing my sister. She had made their lives hell on earth for years before a judge sentenced her to a youth detention center. My Dad’s voice was filled with anguish and pain as he told my mother, “I don’t care what she has done. She is my daughter, and I can’t leave her in that place. I have to help her.” That night I realized that I didn’t know my Dad as well as I thought I did. I was the good Christian, yet he had greater compassion than I did.
My Dad consented to group therapy in an effort to help my sister. She told me the things he revealed about his childhood during the sessions. His father was an alcoholic who had raised his family in poverty. The only meat they had was bologna that no one was allowed to eat except his father. My Dad had one simple desire that was never fulfilled: he wanted his father to give him a piece of bologna.
My Dad had a rule about food: the children always ate first. With shame, I recalled the many times my Dad had come home from working all day to find his children had already eaten and left him nothing.
I was on my way to work one morning when I saw my Dad standing in the front yard staring at the ground. I stopped to inquire why he was standing there. He raised his head, and with tears in his eyes, he whispered, “Life is so hard,” then quickly walked to his car before I could respond. To this day, I don’t know if I was more astounded by the tears or his statement. As I watched him drive away, I realized how selfish I was to think that I was the only one hurting.
My Dad and I were as different as night and day. I didn’t drink and smoke. My Dad did. I went to church every Sunday. My Dad didn’t. I fasted, prayed, and diligently read the Bible. My Dad ate his fill, prayed to no one, and watched TV Sunday mornings. I did good things, but I wasn’t a good person. He wasn’t a very good father, but I wasn’t a very good daughter either.
My Dad could not give me what he never received from his father—love. But he did his best to give me a better life than he had. I did not grow up in poverty and always ate my fill before he put food on his plate. I couldn’t obey everything my Dad taught me, but I could have loved him like God loved me and honored him for the things he did right.
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