Honoring One's Parents

One of the most poisonous ideologies about relationships is that social or familial authority is absolute, even when it is being used to endorse fallacies and injustices.  Evangelicals are quick to selectively affirm this with regards to government, but they are also quick to defend parental authoritarianism even when they object to a particular application of it.  A favorite verse of parental authoritarians is Exodus 20:12, a verse that is often assumed to mean something more than what it actually says: that people are to simply honor their mother and father.  This damaging assumption is automatically petty by nature of being an assumption, but it is also outright false.

Honoring your parents does not mean doing everything they demand.  In fact, to regard one's parents with an authoritarian reverence is the antithesis of a Biblical (and rational) approach to authority.  An authority figure, whether or not he or she is a parent, does not have moral authority by virtue of raising a child or being respected by others.  Likewise, they do not have intellectual authority because of a title or familial position.  The very nature of social authority is that it is legitimized only by one's worldview and actions, not one's perceived status by comparison to other people.

It follows that an authority figure who either prohibits someone from doing innocent things or instructs them to do something immoral (or believe something irrational) has no right to be treated with submission.  Conservative Christians are more willing to admit this when the context is a political inquiry about the role of government and law, but when the focus is shifted to family, they embrace a cognitive dissonance in order to preserve the illusion that parental authority is surpassed only by divine authority.

Of course, the political landscape is far more significant and vital than that of any individual household is, and yet conservative Christians place emphasis on authority as if the opposite was true (political authoritarianism, therefore, is far more devastating and damnable than parental authoritarianism could ever be on its own).  It is true regardless that parents have no right to go beyond their obligations and seek to influence their children in controlling or legalistic ways.

One can honor one's parents without submitting to their every whim, perceiving them to hold authority they do not wield, and excusing their intellectual and broader moral faults.  To treat them any differently than this is irreconcilable to Mosaic Law and the New Testament, no matter how deeply conservative evangelical feelings are harmed or offended by this.  If a parent expects their children to view them as above rational criticism and legitimate moral rebuke, they cannot be truthfully said to have a Biblical understanding of parenting.