April 11 A Rough Life

April 11

I’ve Had a Rough Life

De 5:16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee

I know a pastor’s wife who is ..well…let me start over. A pastor’s wife should be loving, thoughtful, kind, gentle, caring, personable, friendly and a bunch of other nice things. You know, sugar and spice and everything nice. Well, I know a pastor’s wife who has not yet attained these virtues. One of many reasons she gives for her behavior is the way she was raised. Bad parents, poverty, misfortune and neglect are some of the reasons she has been denied the opportunity to nurture the positive qualities listed above. It just not her fault. She is a victim.

2Ki 24:9 And he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to all that his father had done.

We find this and similar phrases repeated in the Old Testament 22 times! Now who gets the credit for being evil? Does the father get credit (blame) for what the son did? The old expression “fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree”, means like father like son. But it does not have to be that way. Yes, if a child is raised in the midst of wickedness, they may have more to overcome. The point I am trying to make is a person should not excuse bad behavior by blaming their parents. At some point people become responsible for their own decision making, and choose how they want to behave.

The old question of “nurture or nature” comes to mind. If that is an unfamiliar phrase it just means do people become bad because they are raised in a bad environment (nurture) or are they bad because they were born that way. (Nature).

Please excuse a personal story. I was born into a large family of uncles and aunts that had a bad name in the community. Their own misdeeds made up much of their reputation, with gossip filling in the rest. My parents were divorced shortly after I was born. I lived with my brothers and sisters (who were older and married) and was moved every few months to someone else. I attended three different schools when I was in the first grade. I grew up poor until I was able to get a job in high school.  Etc etc.

After I was married for a few years we had some guests in our home and the subject came up about parents. So I unloaded specifics about my parents, and my early hard life. Our guest stopped me and reminded me that we should honor our parents. My anger poured forth as I challenged him. “How are you supposed to honor people who did thus and so?”  His answer was a well-deserved rebuke to me.

“You honor them by not telling everyone about all their faults!”  Wow! His comment sank into me like a knife. I instantly knew he was right and I had been so terribly wrong. I thanked him for such great advice and never again spent time explaining the details of how I was raised. 

I felt great freedom after that. They were not the reason I was who I was. I had been released from carrying that burden of blame.

OK enough about me.

Ex 20:12 ¶ Honour thy father and thy mother …

Now this verse is pretty simple to understand. There is no need for a deep study of Hebrew, piles of thick commentaries or a highly skilled evangelist to explain these words.  Yet as a Christian I ignored these words and felt justified in doing so, because of my past. How is it possible that such a simple verse can be ignored by a grown man who wanted to learn all he could and grow to be a mature Christian?

Oh dear here comes the application. You might want to stop reading here. My dear reader, you may have honored your father and mother and have been a better person than I was. But is there some simple verse from the Scriptures that you avoid, ignore, or make an excuse why you do not need to do what it says? 

If you had a “rough life” a difficult childhood, and it has stayed with you, please consider the following.

Ge 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife…

There comes a time when you can no longer cling to your parents. Any feelings you have for your parents other than love, respect and honor should not be an excuse for you to do what you do or be who you are. “Therefore shall a man leave…” Let it go.  You may not be able to forget the past, but you can keep it from controlling the present.

I sincerely hope no one reads this and finds any application to themselves. I think I have written it to remind myself of my need to study harder and learn more and apply what I have learned.  May God help all of us to do just that. May God bless you for having the patience to read my babbling comments and overlook my faults.

May we all become more sensitive to those parts of Scripture where we need to be more compliant. It is too easy to excuse our disobedience and blame it on someone else.  

Jas 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and

not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.