{"id":73,"date":"2017-12-14T06:53:03","date_gmt":"2017-12-14T14:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.celestialsanctumparish.org\/blog\/?p=73"},"modified":"2018-04-07T23:02:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T06:02:33","slug":"the-duty-of-parents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celestialsanctumparish.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/14\/the-duty-of-parents\/","title":{"rendered":"The Duty of Parents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The instruction to children to obey their parents presupposes, as we have seen, the fact of parental authority. Yet when Paul outlines how parents should behave towards their children, it is not the exercise, but the restraint, of their authority which he urges upon them.<\/p>\n<p>The picture he paints of fathers as self-controlled, gentle, patient educators of their children is in stark contrast to the norm of his own day. William Barclay adds: \u2018A Roman father had absolute power over his family. He could sell them as slaves, he could make them work in his fields even in chains, he could take the law into his own hands, for the law was in his own hands, and punish as he liked, he could even inflict the death penalty on his child.\u2019\u00a0Completely different was the Christian father, especially if he remembered what Paul had written earlier, namely that his fatherhood was derived from the \u2018one God and Father of us all\u2019 (Eph 3:14-15; Eph 4:6). The overarching theme of Ephesians is that through Christ\u2019s reconciling work there in now one multinational, multicultural family of God. So human fathers are to care for their families as God the Father cares for his. And incidentally, mothers are surely included too. Although the word in verse 4 is, in fact, \u201cfathers\u201d, yet it could be used for \u2018fathers and mothers\u2019, much as \u2018brothers and sisters\u2019. Certainly, it is parents, both father, and mother, who are referred to in verses 1-3, so that it is entirely legitimate.<\/p>\n<p>Negatively, they are told: &#8216;Do not provoke your children to anger&#8217; (verse 4), or \u2018do not exasperate your children\u2019 (NIV). Paul recognizes how delicate a child\u2019s personality is. Some authors have speculated that in his own childhood he was comparatively deprived of love\u00a0and that in this instruction to parents there is a flashback to some early childhood reminiscence. We do not know. What we do know is that\u00a0parents can easily misuse their authority either by making irritating or unreasonable demands which make no allowances for the inexperience and immaturity of children, or by harshness and cruelty at one extreme or by favoritism and over-indulgence at the other, or by humiliating or suppressing them, or by those two vindictive weapons sarcasm and ridicule. These are some of the parental attitudes which provoke resentment and anger in children.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How many angry young men, hostile to society at large, have learned their hostility as children in an unsympathetic home?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There is a place for discipline, as Paul goes on to say, but it must never be arbitrary (for children have a built-in sense of justice) or unkind. Otherwise, they will become discouraged.<\/p>\n<p>(Col.3:21) Fathers provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Conversely, almost nothing causes a child\u2019s personality to blossom and gifts to develop like the positive encouragement of loving, understanding parents. Indeed, just as a husband\u2019s love for his wife is expressed in helping her develop her full potential, so parent\u2019s love for their children is expressed in helping them develop theirs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The instruction to children to obey their parents presupposes, as we have seen, the fact of parental authority. Yet when Paul outlines how parents should behave towards their children, it is not the exercise, but the restraint, of their authority which he urges upon them. The picture he paints of fathers as self-controlled, gentle, patient educators of their children is &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-admonishment","category-bible-study","category-teaching"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Duty of Parents - Sanctum Blog, a Christian blog from Sanctum Parish n California<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/celestialsanctumparish.org\/blog\/2017\/12\/14\/the-duty-of-parents\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Duty of Parents - Sanctum Blog, a Christian blog from Sanctum Parish n California\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The instruction to children to obey their parents presupposes, as we have seen, the fact of parental authority. 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