My earliest memory of an encounter with the Ten Commandments was in Dr. Redding’s class in what was then called the junior department of our Sunday School. Our little group of pre-adolescent boys probably had the typical pattern of engagement with these basic rules of moral and spiritual order, understanding some and wondering about others.
We knew about killing and stealing and the ideal of keeping the Sabbath was probably the reason most of us were there. With help, we were encouraged to think about graven images and bearing false witness, while the concerns about adultery and coveting were not on our near horizon.
One part of our experience that has stayed with me over the years was our teacher’s observation about the commandment about honoring father and mother. Of course, that was immediately relevant and easily applied to proper respect and obedience toward our parents.
But it wasn’t the directive and its obvious validity that was memorable. Rather, it was our teacher’s observation that of all the commandments, this is the only one “with a promise.”
“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). (We were reading the King James Version at the time.) In our experience, that directive translated, “Respect and obey Mom and Dad and as a reward you will live a long time.”
This is good advice for nourishing wholesome relationships within the family and, by extension, to the wider realm of inter-generational life. However, there are clearly variables that affect the outcome of the promise of a long life.
Recent attention to the major anniversary of our national community has prompted some reflection on whether this commandment and its promise might have even broader and deeper relevance. Many voices have called us to remember and celebrate a heritage of commitment to a noble experiment in national governance, where a vision of a different kind of government, coupled with a courageous passion to implement it, started a long journey toward a “more perfect union” that is still in process.
What if “honoring father and mother” on a national scale meant remembering and taking to heart the lessons learned from our ancestors, both the mistakes and the successes and committing ourselves to living out their vision of what a nation so conceived could be?
Just as with healthy parental relationships, it would not involve preserving and nurturing any illusions of perfection, but would acknowledge the personal and cultural limitations as well as noble expressions of what human community can be. Failing to come to terms with failures in previous generations’ expression of what a society of equality and justice means can be a difficult burden to overcome. Still, ignoring and failing to learn from them enables the burden to continue to be an obstacle to the vision’s fulfillment.
Here is where the “promise” of the commandment enters the picture: A community that does not honor (deal respectfully and honestly with) the father and mother of its heritage, but instead fails to learn and grow from an engagement with both the noble and the ignoble aspects of its journey, “will not live long in the land the Lord has given it.” Sustainability, in personal as well as communal life, requires an honest reckoning with both the flaws and the victories of the journey.
Recent reporting of efforts to sanitize (“white”-wash) the portrait of our history by removing references to the periods and practices that reflect our “lesser angels” is a testimony to a failure to “honor father and mother” of our heritage. Honest acknowledgment and appraisal of such features of our history are a part of a faithful stewardship of the truth they disclose and a foundation for continuing to build a future based on lessons learned.
Rewriting the history of a nation or any other relational community to reflect only selected aspects of its diverse and complex story risks losing the possibility of learning from the dialogue among its various elements. It tempts us to create a “graven image” (to borrow from another commandment) that will not sustain that nation in the “land that the Lord has given.”
The eighth-century BCE prophet Isaiah opened his long indictment of the corruption and superficial religion of Judah and Jerusalem with this assessment of their memory of who they are:
(The Lord says) “I reared children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know; my people do not understand … What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? …I have had enough of burnt offerings … even though you make many prayers, I will not listen, your hands are full of blood. … Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds … cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow” (Isaiah 1:2-17 NRSVUE).
The foundational testimony of what happens to a nation/covenant community that fails to honor the father and mother of its heritage can guide us on how to deal with history in an honest and healthy way. Perceptive historians are making that case now.
Let’s hope they get a continued hearing “…that our days may be long in the land.”
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Professor emeritus of religious studies at Mercer University, a member of Smoke Rise Baptist Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the author of Keys for Everyday Theologians (Nurturing Faith Books, 2022).