We are all God's children. God is our parent. His love is like this: He gave His
only begotten Son so that we might have Heaven (total forgiveness of sins). Also,
God's love is like this: if you do not believe in Him, God will deliver us an eternity
of suffering. That is God's love. You get to live in the world, but you obey the
rules or you're out of any enduring happiness. If this seems harsh or cruel, consider
a Godless world of physical laws. Physical disasters and supernovas will just as
soon kill us as help us. In many ways, God's universe, which we study through science,
requires us to adapt to the truth, sink or swim with no second chances. Believing
in God allows us to engage with an already harsh world with our feelings as in a
human relationship rather than as just so much flotsam in an otherwise impersonal
reality.
Analogously, in the home, the parents make the rules. What they say goes. If you
don't like it you can leave. This is the ultimate point of tough love that parents
face when their growing children strain at the boundaries set, in love, for them.
One of the ten comandments is: "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may
be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee"(Exodus 20:12). This is
to instruct children that they should treat their parents with a special reverance.
God labored to make the Earth, life and us. Parents have labored to make a home,
a marriage and enough income to afford the needs of their children. I would say
children should obey their parents, so long as what the parents require doesn't
go against God's law or human law and, of course, so long as the children live in
their parent's home. When they can take the burden of the world upon their own
backs then they can live a life of their own making and conditions.
The Book of Job Chapter 38 and 39 describes God's response to Job's complains about
his suffering and why he must endure it. Similarly parents may not justify why
it is they set the limits they do. By virtue of the struggle undertaken to be a
parent, to take care of one's self and, beyond that, to partially or fully support
others, you have authority to make the rules of the home. If your heart and mind
are guided by the Holy Spirit, then you have nothing to explain or to justify.
Of course, explaining why limitations and rules are in place can be very instructive
to the child, but the child may only want to get hold of a reason in order to argue
for an exception, not in order to understand. Whether the reason is valid or not
comes down to the decision of the parent. In the end, the parent has authority
backed by God as stated in His commandment, to say what goes.
On Parenting (11-04-2005)