Honoring Imperfect Parents
Responding with truth and grace
When you attend your parents’ funerals someday, will you be proud of the way you loved and honored them when they were alive? Or will you have some regrets?
Few commandments feel as personal as the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.” For some people, that command feels natural and healthy. For others, it raises difficult questions and painful memories.
In this perceptive episode of our ongoing series, 10 Keys to the Universe, Lynn and Shay thoughtfully explore the beauty, tension, and wisdom of showing honor to your parents—even when it feels challenging.
They’ll talk about the real meaning of the word ‘honor’; what honoring your parents does and doesn’t mean; the importance of healthy boundaries; and practical ways to show honor to your parents in everyday life.
As you listen to or read about this episode, you’ll understand what it means to honor your parents with truth and grace, and the reason that God rewards people who keep this commandment.
Highlights from this Episode
The first four commandments deal primarily with our relationship with God. He should be first in our lives. But the last six commandments, beginning with the fifth one that we’re looking at today, deal with loving our neighbor. And loving our neighbor starts with loving our parents!
The relationship we have with our parents is the most important one of our lives. It’s through them that we learn what it is to have someone in authority over us. We learn to listen to people. We learn to do things that we don’t always want to do. We trust that our parents know better how to live life than we do. We learn respect and obedience and hopefully, experience love and protection.
As pastors and therapists, we often hear the question, “How do I honor imperfect parents?” The answer can differ. When you have good parents, it’s going to be relatively easy for you to do because you have warmth, affection, and appreciation in your heart towards them, and you will be willing to honor and dignify them in your adulthood.
But many of our clients are facing situations where their parents abandoned or abused them, were cruel or mean towards them, and even continue to be so in their old age. Parents who, instead of helping you grow, hindered your growth and even wounded you or brought harm and destruction into your life.
If you bristled at the title of this episode, we will address your situation and just what this commandment means for you—and hopefully provide some wisdom as to what honoring an evil or even a wicked parent might look like.
What’s Behind the Fifth Commandment?
In Exodus 20:12, God says, “Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
The fifth commandment is about how we are to treat our parents primarily when they’re older, which is really important for us because we live in a culture that worships youth. God is reminding his people to not forget their elders. But honoring your parents also applies to young people. That’s why the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 6:1-3, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”
The word honor has rich meaning in both Hebrew and Greek. In Hebrew, the root of the word ‘honor’ literally means heavy or weighty. To honor your parents is to treat them as having substance, significance, and worth. The root of the word ‘dishonor’ means the opposite: light or trivial. Based on this definition, dishonoring your parents means refusing to let them take up weight or space in your life.
The root of the word ‘honor’ in Greek carries the sense of valuing or placing a price on something. It’s where we get the idea of esteem. So to honor someone in this context is to ascribe worth to them. Interestingly, it’s the same word used when Scripture says to honor God. It’s a posture of recognizing dignity in another person.
Honoring your parents involves recognizing their dignity, significance, and worth, and treating them respect and esteem. In the words of John Calvin, “Honor requires three things: reverence, obedience, and gratitude.”
Honoring your parents involves recognizing their dignity, significance, and worth, and treating them respect and esteem. In the words of John Calvin, “Honor requires three things: reverence, obedience, and gratitude.”
What Honoring Your Parents Does and Doesn’t Mean
As a child, you honor them by obeying them. That’s if what your parents ask you to do is not outside God’s will or moral law. When kids obey their parents, what they’re really doing is obeying God, because it’s God who placed their parents over them as their authority.
As a teenager, you want to listen to your parents and come to them with your questions. It might seem like you don’t need them anymore, but actually, you need them more than ever during this time. It’s easy to be swayed by social media, friends, and the world, and your parents can help you make good decisions.
When we honor someone we’re saying that they have significance, which means they are worthy of respect. So honoring our parents is the decision to treat them with dignity. It’s also a decision to give them our long-term loyalty. It also involves speaking to and about them respectfully, and being considerate of their needs, especially in old age.
Honoring them means acknowledging the role that they had in your life for both good and bad. It can be easy to blame them for all of your problems. There’s no doubt that our childhood wounds do shape our lives to a certain extent. But as we grow and mature, we are responsible our own decisions, and we have to be careful not to have bitterness or contempt for our parents.
Honor is not the same thing as trusting. It’s not allowing someone to control or manipulate you, nor is it pretending that harm didn’t happen or ignoring dysfunctional, hurtful patterns in your parents or family. Honor also does not mean close intimacy. You can honor someone from a distance. You can honor someone even while holding to some firm boundaries, like limiting the access that they have to your life and to your heart.
When Honoring Feels Complicated
If your parent has caused you significant pain, but has never apologized or showed signs of growth or change, then to honor them means being honest with them because it is not honoring to lie to your parents, or to placate them or make excuses for their misbehavior.
Sometimes we think honoring a hurtful parent means keeping your feelings to yourself. But honoring them may mean disrupting the dysfunctional patterns in your family. Just as Jesus honored people by speaking truth to them, you may need to honor your parent by speaking truth to them in a way that can lead to repentance.
Speaking the truth to a hurtful parent can go one of two ways. They will either be humbled and want to take responsibility for their behavior and repair the relationship. Or they will be defensive and grow more hardened to you. Talking to them requires wisdom, preparation, and support. We recommend finding a counselor or therapist to talk to about your specific situation. Another great resource is the book Bold Love by Dan Allender.
If you had parents who were or are abusive, you may not be able to speak truth to them. You may need to seek support from others and be able to tell your story to people who love and value you. In this case, the best way to honor your parents may simply be to think of them without anger or hatred.
Regardless of the type of parents you have, healthy boundaries are important to the relationship. In fact, boundaries in relationships are what lead to trust. For example, you can set a boundary that your parents not give you parenting advice unless you ask, and that they not step in and discipline your children. The more difficult and complicated your relationship with your parents is, the stronger your boundaries will need to be.
Honoring Your Parents in Practical Ways
God included ‘honor your parents’ in the Ten Commandments for a reason. He tells us that his favor and his blessing rest upon those who obey this command. If you want to have an abundant life, it starts by obeying the fifth commandment. Practically speaking, what does that look like?
Forgive your parents. There are no perfect parents. And no child gets everything they need during childhood. Honoring your parents may start by acknowledging their failures and entering into the process of forgiveness so that bitterness doesn’t take root in your soul.
Communicate with them regularly. That means calling them on their birthdays and anniversaries, letting them know that you’re thinking of them. It means including them in events going on in your own life, if possible.
Show gratitude. Sometimes you don’t realize how hard they worked or how much they sacrificed until you have children of your own. Make sure you say “Thank you” as often as you can.
Care for them. As they get older, you may need to be the person who steps in and helps your parents to make difficult decisions like where to live or how to manage their finances.
Respect your parents’ need to see themselves in you. If you’re a parent, you know that you want to feel like you had a hand in your child’s successes. So it’s important to give your own parents credit when you can, even if it’s for something seemingly small.
God’s Grace When You—or They—Fall Short
The truth about the fifth commandment is that we break it over and over. What a relief that God doesn’t accept us on the basis of our performance, but he accepts us on the basis of his son. What makes us beautiful to God is Jesus. He died in our place for our sins. He took the wrath we deserved, and he perfectly obeyed the law on our behalf, including the fifth commandment.
All parents will die someday, both difficult ones and good ones. And when they do, they will stand before God and give an account for how they parented. Jesus gives all of us a very strong warning in Matthew 18 when he says, “It would be better that a millstone be hung around your neck than for anyone to cause one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble.”
Parents who do anything that causes their child to be snared by sin or distorts their child’s capacity to grow up in wholeness are going to face severe judgment. This includes any and all types of abuse. God loves children and gives them to parents as a gift to be lovingly cared for and nurtured.
The other side of that is that someday you will give an account to God, not for what your parents did, but for how you responded to their failures: whether you chose forgiveness or grace; whether you held on to your bitterness and contempt or instead offered dignity, even when it wasn’t deserved.
If you have children of your own, someday you will be under their scrutiny because your kids will see your failures with clear eyes and they will have to decide how to honor you. On that day, you may find yourself desperately hoping that they extend to you the very grace that you struggled to extend to your own parents.
As you strive to adhere to this command, our hope and our prayer is that you experience abundant grace from the Lord to help you honor your imperfect parents.
Recommended Resources
Book: Bold Love by Dan Allender & Tremper Longman
Podcast: Engaging With Someone Who Has Harmed You by Adam Young