The fifth commandment takes for granted that everyone has a father and a mother. It does not take for granted that we will honour them. Hence the command.
Dishonouring parents, and dishonouring authority in general – indeed, dishonouring God himself – is not a problem unique to our modern secular age.
But, as the astute political philosopher Yoram Hazony points out, “What is unusual about the age of liberalism is that the reigning public philosophy, which is studied and taught everywhere, justifies this disregard of parents, teachers, and elders by inculcating the liberty and equality of the individual as the ultimate political and moral principle.”* In a society that idolizes individual autonomy, honouring authority seems “servile, or mere flattery, or ‘living for others.’”
To this we can add another point. Our society not only no longer takes the imperative of honouring father and mother for granted – it no longer takes father and mother for granted, either. All levels of government in Canada actively propagandize people – especially children – to believe that “all families are equal” and that a “family” is whatever grouping of people we (adults) choose.
This propaganda justifies adults in pursuing sexual freedom, avoiding or abandoning marriage and family, or redefining it to suit their preferences. It’s a frightful social experiment that began just a few generations ago. Tragically, Hazony observes, we can now observe that millions of men and women who lived “as if there are no unchosen obligations in life… in the end find themselves discarded by their own children, who owe them everything, and yet are convinced they owe them nothing.”
Consider the “No Contact” movement proliferating on social media. Young adults are “liberating” themselves from their parents and families, embracing “chosen families” online. Katy Faust (of Them Before Us) explains that online “families” appear to offer young people “affirmation without accountability, advice without investment, and belonging without obligation” – the social relationships we need without mutual duties or even a moral framework transcending and governing those relationships.
Our relationship to our parents, like our relationship with God, is both unchosen and unavoidable. We would not exist without them, and we owe them honour.
But honouring them is also good for us. The fifth commandment is the first with a promise: “that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” By learning to honour parents, we also learn to honour God and the authorities God establishes. Hazony observes that no society is capable of conserving any worthy teaching, institution, or form of behaviour from one generation to the next “unless it is permeated throughout by a concern and regard for honour.”
Mary Eberstadt, in How the West Really Lost God, observes that secularization and family destabilization go hand in hand, leaving a trail of social disruption behind them. You might assume that secularization has caused the decline in stable, married, two-parent (father and mother, if it needs to be said) families. There is truth in that, to be sure. But Eberstadt contends that “family decline is not merely a consequence of religious decline, as conventional thinking has understood that relationship.” Rather, it also appears to be true that “family decline in turn helps to power religious decline.” Religious decline and family decline are a vicious circle, in other words.
Indeed, we have witnessed a downward spiral. No-fault divorce. Abortion. Same-sex “marriage”. “Gender identity” eclipsing sex. Erasing “mother” and “father” and “natural parent” from our laws. Intentionally separating children from their natural parents via anonymous gamete donation, IVF, and surrogacy. And all the while, plummeting rates of church membership and orthodox Christian belief.
Christians have been the primary objectors to such developments. For opposing practices and policies that hurt children, we are often shouted down with accusations of imposing our religion on others. This is true even when we make our arguments without appealing to special revelation – which our secular neighbours do not accept as inspired and authoritative. In a secular liberal social order, even appeals to a natural order that transcends mere human will is considered heretical.
But such appeals are powerful nevertheless, because reality – God’s creational design and norms – has a way of making itself known, despite human efforts to ignore or supersede it, to “be as gods” with no God or divine law above us.
Still, the multi-generational decline in marriage, family formation, and family stability brings challenges for Christian witness. God reveals Himself to us as loving Father. Many people have no experience of a loving father, even indirectly (e.g. being raised by a single mother, but in a loving church community). Christianity’s moral code for marriage and sex is so contrary to the spirit of the sexual revolution dominating our culture that people reflexively recoil from it in disgust.
On the other hand, many have eaten the bitter fruit of their parents’ refusal to honour God’s design for marriage and family. Children of divorce. Children of unwed mothers, abandoned by their father. Children of anonymous gamete donors. Children raised by same-sex couples, longing for a mother or father they supposedly don’t need, because all you need is love. Tragically, our society’s rejection of the Christian faith, dishonouring God and our ancestors who followed him, has led to parents dishonouring children.
If religious and family decline are mutually reinforcing, what hope is there? You may have heard Chesterton’s famous line, “Christianity has died many times and risen again, for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” Of course, we believe in the Holy Spirit’s renewing power. We also know that the Spirit uses the church as witness. We ought to pray for spiritual renewal and societal reform. But we should also be wise to understand our cultural moment and see where opportunity lies.
In her penultimate chapter, Eberstadt highlights the observation of the late sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, that historically, “calamities generate two opposite movements in different sections of the population.” One is “toward extreme religious, spiritual, and moral exaltation” and the other is away from it. “[T]he principal steps in the progress of mankind toward a spiritual religion and a noble code of ethics have been taken primarily under the impact of great catastrophes.”
Part of the church’s prophetic task today is to uncover the catastrophe of the sexual revolution, which people are propagandized not to perceive. Another part of our witness is to point to a better way, the goodness, beauty, and truth of God’s design.
This Saturday, September 19, you can watch live online as ARPA explores how we ought to respond to secularization and the sexual revolution with Professor Kevin Flatt of Redeemer University and Josh Wood of Them Before Us, a world-leading advocacy organization for the rights and wellbeing of children. Register here to receive a link.
(All references to Yoram Hazony in this article are from his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery.)
