Here is the remedy to all our contemporary ills. This simple instruction, if observed, would change the world and reorient it to its true purpose, a purpose that has now been tragically lost.
I mean it spiritually, of course, but first of all let us consider it in the original sense. The family is the basis of civilisation. It is the creative hub of life, where love and goodness can flourish and human beings grow to maturity, cared for and protected in a way that is not possible in any other environment. But the family has been systematically dismantled over the last 50 years with the result that many of us have become broken and rootless. If they are to be honoured father and mother must be together, a unit with each half fulfilling its natural, ordained and complementary role, but how often does that happen now? Modern ideologies have torn the family apart and because many fathers and mothers have listened to the siren voices of these ideologies they are no longer worthy to be honoured. Yes, you should certainly honour your father and your mother but the other side of that is that your father and your mother should be worthy of honour. If they put themselves before their children they are not worthy.
But, as I say, I am really talking about this commandment on the spiritual plane. Who are your father and your mother? Clearly, they are your divine parents, namely God, the transcendent Creator, "Our Father who art in Heaven", Universal Spirit, the root Person, and the Virgin Mother who is identified in Christianity as Mary, mother of the incarnate God, and by extension, the soul of Nature, she who gave us and who nurtures both body and soul. Today we not only do not honour our divine parents, we have forgotten them and replaced them with idols, whether that be science or reason or any number of the false gods of contemporary materialism.
So, remember your divine father and mother and honour them. You honour them best by seeing them as both who and what they are and then trying to conform your soul to their pattern. They are your parents and the idea is that you should grow to become like them.
This post may well be one of the simplest I have written but it is one that contains the most basic truth, a truth our world has forgotten and which is the case of its confusion and disarray.
8 comments:
@A Touch of hyperbole, but this would indeed go a long way. It would necessarily involve answering the question 'why?'; and a proper answer would itself provide further necessary assumptions.
If it could be agreed that the ideal family is the best ideal; then it would give many people (parents and children) a genuinely Good goal around which to structure their lives; something worth making sacrifices to attain, as nearly as possible - or at least work towards.
And I have also begun to wonder whether part of such honouring would be that families should (by and large, mostly) stick-together, stay near each other (rather than dispersing across nations or the world); so that 'honouring' would be a truly personal matter - not just an abstract and theoretical business.
"families should (by and large, mostly) stick-together, stay near each other (rather than dispersing across nations or the world);" Until recently that was how it was. However, I can't really comment having dispersed myself on a few occasions. But the post is really about acknowledging our divine origins. Get that right and the rest will follow.
Simple this post may be, but the concept of God and Mary being the divine Father and Mother had somehow eluded me. So thank you for this.
In this morning's Bible study we read the passage in John, chapter 8, where Jesus explains to the Jewish authorities that they do not recognize him, or understand his words, because their father is the Devil. The whole passage makes a striking distinction between a natural and a spiritual father. We begin our life in the house of our natural father and end it in the house of our spiritual father. Reflecting on the passage in John, I was impressed by the way that Jesus said that the fatherhood of God was evident in the resemblance of the children to the father. We nowadays so often represent the fatherhood of God solely in terms of paternal love and care. You might say we turn God the Father into God the Dad. I once heard it suggested that we should think of God as "Daddy"! This morning's reading cut close to the bone because I have been wondering if I was and am too much of a dad, and too little of a father.
I think you make a good distinction. Nowadays we seem to have reduced Father to Dad which is probably part of the ongoing egalitarianism and destruction of hierarchy. But God as Father is a God of love and authority at one and the same time.
William, your ideas are exceptional but you might consider altering a few of them through reading the following books: Love Without End by Glenda Green (professor or art and true story of Jesus manifesting to her. Just Google details. Also, look at Murdo MacDonald-Bayne books (free PDF's on Divine Healing, Beyond the Himalayas and Yoga of the Christ). The only other books that should be on the same shelf as The Boy and the Brothers.
I did read a couple of MacDonald-Bayne's books years ago and still have Divine Healing though I'm not entirely convinced of its authenticity even if it does have an authority to it. I'll look up Glenda Green.
A balanced post with revealing distinctions.
With high levels of divorce and selfish actions and selfish justifications over decades now in the Western world it's clear that John 8 is more fitting as the poster above noted.
However the Creator allows or causes creation for some higher purpose even if we don't know what it is so the concept of honouring that spiritual source is a good revelation of a deeper meaning.
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