Andrew Fox's Blog

Chapter Five (Taken from the book 'What if Moses was in Congress' free download on www.ikonresources.com

Meet the Parents
“Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You’ll realize this as soon as they are born and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.” (Ray Romano)

(Exodus 20:12) "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

It is a mistake to read this unchanging commandment as a simple charge on how to behave towards parents. It springs from a deeper passion, a greater ethic and a far more encompassing principle. The first four commandments are vertical obligations towards God: ‘You shall have no other gods before me…you shall not make for yourself an idol…you shall not misuse the name of the Lord…remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.’ The next six are the horizontal obligations to each other summarized in Leviticus (Leviticus 19:18) “…love your neighbor as yourself…” Jesus said all the law and prophets hang this and that there was no greater commandment. The Hebrew word for ‘neighbor’ means anyone in close proximity, especially loved ones. We have no country without neighbors and no neighbors without family and no family without a mother and father – at least at conception despite the news that Korea has cloned a human embryo (MSNBC 2004). The first four commandments are led by ‘honoring God’. The second set by ‘honoring our parents.’

Family offer unconditional love, protection and life-long companionship. Family is our first church, school, hospital and government. In it we learn the difference between young and old, male and female, resolution of conflicts, communicating ideas, thoughts and feelings, enjoying life and enduring pain. Family creates perfect parameters for discovering acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Our respective families are the principle place for spiritual, moral and emotional training. In this Fifth Commandment we find that honoring our parents is a virtue even if they do not live up to God’s expectation. There are three areas parents will cover found in the ideal home - biological, legal and nurturing parents. Let me present six illustrations of dilemma.

Firstly, a boy who is abandoned at birth but raised by a man and woman who adopted him, who does he honor – his biological or legal and nurturing parents? Secondly, a girl is born into a loving family and becomes attractive to her own father who sexually abuses her. Is she to honor the man who went way beyond nurturing? Thirdly, two siblings raised in a home of professionals where provision is made for a life of success. The children give their hearts to Jesus in a youth meeting with a married couple in the church become surrogate parents to the boy’s spiritual life. Who do they honor – the mother and father who provided to their worldly needs or the couple who provided to their spiritual needs? Fourthly, a young man raised in a home where his parents have never been sober from early evening to midnight. He has learned to physically fight because his father beats him with fists most nights. Does he have to honor his father? Fifthly, a young girl is raised by her biological mother with a series of men that come into her mom’s life through flings, affairs and illicit relationships. Does she honor her biological father in prison or the various stepfathers who gave her $20 to go out to the mall so they could have her mother that night? Finally, three young children who have a loving mother and father but eventually fell out of love with each other and sadly divorce. Both parents remarry. Who do the siblings honor?

To answer these questions of dilemma we must first understand what ‘honor’ is. The Hebrew word means ‘to be heavy’ or ‘to give weight.’ If an object was heavy, in the ancient world, then it was considered valuable. Gold, silver, bronze and precious stones were valued according to their weight. In the same way we are to give our parents great weight. It has been said not all human beings have a mother and father – meaning Adam and Eve. But they did have parents in God. (Jeremiah 31:9) “…I am Israel’s father…” (Isaiah 66:13) “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you…” God our Father has great weight. If your parents neglected nurturing you or legal obliging you, then you can still honor them for biologically bringing you into the world. If God has commanded that we honor our parents whether they are biological, legal or nurturing – he will make a way for it even if all three are found in three different couples. Remember that ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are verbs as much as they are nouns. A parent may have authority in the eyes of the law but that does not qualify them to be our spiritual guidance. Our parents may not be Christian so God provides, in the local church, couples that can give direction for our spiritual life.

God blesses different forms of parenting simply because he commands it. (Romans 16:13) “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.” When Paul thinks of Rufus he cannot help but think of his mother who recognized the loss of Paul’s family once he became a Christian. (Philippians 3:8) “…for whom I have suffered the loss of all things…that I may gain Christ.” Paul gave weight to her. (John 19:26-27) “Then Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” John was to write three epistles, a Gospel account and under persecution receive the Revelation of Jesus on Patmos. Do not think that Mary had no influence in this. Jesus gave weight to Mary by honoring her in his last dying moments.

Let me share with you a story of how to honor your parents in the most difficult situations. The story is fiction. When Alison was growing up she feared her parents. By evening they were in an alcoholic stupor. There was no help with homework. It led to an insatiable quest for love, which led to promiscuous sex during Alison’s teenage years that led to long tearful nights of contemplating suicide. But she gave her heart to Jesus at a youth meeting. Years later on a woman’s retreat she recounted memories of her parents - how her father would go fishing with her making a big deal out of a small catch and the thrill of cooking it over an open fire. She remembered her mother for the skills she had as a host in the kitchen which led Alison to open her own restaurant. She did not criticize her parents with bitterness and resentment nor did she live in a denial of whom they were making them out to be something they were not. But she made a conscious decision to honor them for all the good memories they had created. What memories can you recall as a focal point for this commandment?

A parent, grandparent or great-grandparent will sit in the center of a family portrait surrounded by other generations. But never pretend that our parents were something they never were. The portrait may place them in a seat of honor but their parenting towards you might not have been great. Even so, if you have never met your parents you can still honor them for giving you life. A kind word like that will heal many wounds. If your biological, legal and nurturing parents are found in one couple remember what is required of you. (Luke 12:48) “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” If you have legal guardians remember your obligations. (Colossians 3:20) “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” I believe there are many children, of all ages, that can reclaim this commandment in practice for themselves. Listen to the scriptures. (Leviticus 19:3) “Each of you must respect his mother and father…” (Proverbs 6:20) “My son, keep your father's commands and do not forsake your mother's teaching.” (Ephesians 6:1-3) “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’--which is the first commandment with a promise—‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." These were the scriptures that America stood by for nearly 200 years. During the 1960’s they were lost as parents became bothersome, irrelevant and an imposition. The rebellion of that era is now institutionalized as the mainstream for life in our country. There is now growing contempt for the elderly captured in the Wall Street Journal on caring for parents over 90 ‘Is it really worth it?’ I read several shocking stories that belong to the European Middle Ages, but sadly, belong to our own generation:

In April 1996 the Howard family in Missouri sat down with their 76 year old mother suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. She consented to a mixture of orange juice, alcohol and sleeping pills. As she fell unconscious her son placed a plastic bag over her head in front of his own son. Before their trial federal judges in California and New York struck down laws against assisted suicide. Prosecutors then dropped all charges against the Howard family.

The New England Journal of Medicine in July 1994 stated 54% of physicians in Washington State approve of assisted suicide for the elderly. The lawsuit: Compassion in Dying verses State of Washington saw the court of appeals strike down laws against suicide for the terminally ill elderly. The Supreme Court overturned it but they left a door open to reconsider it in the future. Judge Steven Reinhardt stated: ‘we also realize that terminally ill patients may well feel pressured to hasten their deaths…out of concern for the economic welfare of their loved ones. Faced with the prospect of astronomical medical bills, terminally ill patients might decide it is better for them to die before their health care expenses consume the life savings they planned to leave their families…we are reluctant to say that…it is improper for competent, terminally ill adults to take economic welfare of their families…into consideration.’

This is terrible, but many live a life captured in the statement: ‘Parents are to provide for me when I am unable to do so for myself. Once I’m on my own, so are they.’ But the Fifth Commandment elevates parents to supreme value. Parents are repositories for wisdom. When we forget the experience of our parents we are doomed to repeat it. There are no new moral dilemmas. They may be cloaked in new technology and terminology, nevertheless, nothing is new. The debate of assisted suicide for the elderly is not a new one but was argued in the days of Socrates the Greek. Parents possess a knowledge we have not lived through yet. They obtained it from their own experience or from their parent’s experience. Each generation has entrusted to it a wealth of experience but are we listening to parents anymore? In the 1950’s our parents knew that an immoral lifestyle caused pain both physically and relationally in syphilis. Because we did not listen to our parents we have the same dilemma with a different name – aids. Long before the 1969 Stonewall riots promoting gay rights, homosexuality injured the psychological makeup of a man. We have to relearn some of the painful lessons already understood by our parents. Experience handed down by parents will initiate the promise of the command in you “…that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” When you honor your parents it creates a vehicle of mercy to another generation. (Matthew 5:7) “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”Jewish Rabbis considered parents partners with God. They cooperate with God by conceiving children. God is the author of life but has chosen parents as the medium of it. There are no other two human beings connected to you like biological parents. NKJV (Luke 2:40) “And the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” (Luke 2:52) “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” What was the key to Christ ‘increasing’ as a person? (Luke 2:51) “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and he was subject to them…”

“How handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant” (Song of Songs 1:16).

In Casino Royale, a former KGB agent called Le Chiffre had captured the icon of masculinity, namely, James Bond. It is a rare scene for 007 to be totally naked onscreen about to be tortured in a manner that makes everyone wince, straddled over an abandoned dining room chair with the seat kicked out. The hands of Britain’s most famous agent are tied behind his back while his genitals are suspended in a seat-less chair, hidden from the camera’s lens. Le Chiffre confidently looks at Bond while swinging a rope with a knot tied in the end like a lead weight.

“You know, I never understood all these elaborate tortures. It's the simplest thing, to cause more pain than a man can possibly endure. And of course, it's not only the immediate agony, but the knowledge that—if you do not yield soon enough—there will be little left to identify you as a man. The only question remains: will you yield...in time?” Le Chiffre swings the rope several times and then lunges forward full pelt under the seat-less chair where the most excruciating pain was inflicted.

This question of yielding has almost been transcendent in the history of sexual masculinity. From the moment Adam took the forbidden fruit to this moment in time, men have yielded their sexuality until there is little left to distinguish from femininity. We have been perceived by our mothers and wives in the journey of masculinity from filthy little boys to dirty old men. We have been neutered, gelded, and castrated like an ancient eunuch looking out for the domestic duties of family life. The irony is that such eunuchs had their genitals preserved in alcohol euphemistically termed “precious treasure” and had them returned upon death and interred with them, so that in the next life they could be a real man.

I am not speaking about Lance Armstrong or the comedian Tom Green and their fight against testicular cancer, having one testicle surgically removed, but the willful and deliberate emancipation of our sexuality from our most precious treasure—the penis. The ancient victors used to castrate their captives as a sign of removing their power as men, enslaving them in domestic service. Sounds like the average bedroom in America today!

Pierre Abelard, the twelfth century French scholastic philosopher, theologian and preeminent logician, had a legendary love affair with Heloise. He wrote to his lover 113 passionate letters seducing his way into her home until the relationship was separated by her guardian and uncle, Fulbert. The Frenchman still met with Heloise in secret, pursuing her despite the dangers of being caught. Abelard wanted to make his bed verdant and charming, seducing his lover with masculine passion. How many men today, like Abelard, deeply desire a verdant bed with their wife in place of porn and masturbation? Ultimately it cost him his testicles—literally. Fulbert castrated him, leaving Heloise in a convent and turning Abelard into a monk. There is a cost to making a verdant bed, although our testicles are not on the line in our culture, the price can be unbearable for a man. For instance, transparency of the heart, emotional openness, and honesty are just a few of many deadly sacrifices a man will have to make to ensure a verdant bed.

Literal castration was more about the testes and the ability to reproduce, but since Freud, castration has been centered on the penis. This is the context I am speaking to, the ability to fully satisfy your wife as a man. It is less Renaissance and more Freud today. For example, a full-size imitation of Michelangelo’s David was put on public display at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, with the single exception of a fig leaf covering his penis. The public demanded that David should be displayed as its original artist intended. The leaf was removed but the public outcry was at least tenfold more than before. David’s penis was, how can I say, a little small, but in Michelangelo’s day, the size of a man’s scrotum mattered, because reproduction was his honor, not the pleasure of his wife. How times have changed! David was taken away and several inches were added, unlike the reality of many bedrooms where every inch has been rejected. Why? Porn used to be rejected in suburbia but has now become openly accepted as a way of life, thus, rejecting the real thing. Porn distorts every inch creating huge and borderline monstrous men like Greek gods, who are able to give pleasure again and again, making the real man unable to compete with it. He is castrated.

In June 1993, the world of men heard of a story you might only find in a Bond movie. A young man called John Bobbitt was rudely awakened by his wife Lorena, as she cut off his penis with a kitchen knife. Every man who heard it on the radio, watched it on the television, or read about it in the newspaper, thought of it as the worse nightmare imaginable. Every woman heard, saw, or read the same thing with a much different perspective. Lorena had driven off with the amputated appendage and then tossed it out of the window. The bottom line of this tale from the crypt is that police launched a sensitive hunt to look for the penis! Isn’t that irony in itself? Men were out looking for the penis that was lost! Needless to say, John and Lorena divorced in 1995 from a marital bed that was hardly verdant but more horrific.

The age old question, “Is it the size or quality?” is a question no man is comfortable in asking his wife, but he wants someone to reassure him. The answer is not necessarily the size but what it represents, as history shows us. It is our symbol of sexual authority and power, castrated to humiliate or exploited to exhilarate. John Bobbitt went on to star in three porn movies about his penis, among other misadventures, making the focus of male sexuality the penis. We know inherently that porn is a lie and the gelding that takes place in the bedroom is not normal, natural, or a reality to us. The answer is not in asserting the penis once more against a strong tide of feminine cliché but a rediscovery of our sexual masculinity that lights up our world when the words, “Our bed is verdant,” slip from the lips of your wife in a stolen moment over a romantic dinner for two.

James Bond wanted Vesper Lynd, although she is a double agent, but he is cornered and captured by Le Chiffre and straddled in a torturing chair, naked and in pain. Was it the size of Bond’s penis that loosed him from the clutches of pain, as John Bobbitt would have us believe, or was it something else? The castration of masculinity in its figurative sense is not something we can break out of by measuring our members and posting them online with visual proof, or a three-step program that can be purchased for $19.99 with a money-back guarantee. Bond was rescued from his torture. Likewise, men in America need to be rescued and restored with power and authority that makes a bedroom verdant, green, and flourishing. I am not suggesting men across the country make a naked stand like Buzz Lightyear, leaping from the footboard of their beds shouting, “To infinity and beyond!” What I am suggesting is that the bedroom is cultivated to be verdant by removing things that should not be there in the first place.

It always surprises me how much of the rest of the home is in the bedroom; utensils from the kitchen, various forms of entertainment from television, X-boxes, Playstations, and Gameboys, with magazines and books to compete with the local library. These things, and more, make a bedroom desolate. Take a good look at your bedroom and ask yourself, “Does this represent a verdant room where my masculinity meets with femininity in the passion of sex?” Let me even suggest, photographs of your children looking lovingly at you, no matter if you are in the bedroom, can be a distraction. It’s not just a makeover but an extreme makeover that your bedroom may need. Are the colors sensual and arousing, or plain vanilla? Is your bed comfortable, or is it like sleeping in a cot at a youth camp? Is it lit up like Las Vegas, or can the lights be dimmed so the eye is forced into focus on the silhouette of your lover? Is it—verdant?