Continuing our journey through Oklahoma’s Ten Commandments, we come to commandment the fifth:
“Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”
This is the first one that I really want to affirm. My wife and I are raising three children, and we wouldn’t mind in the least if they’d mind us a bit more. Once again, though, the Bible goes completely overboard on the punishment for failing to follow the commandment, meting out the death penalty left, right, and center. How many times must I point out to my Christian friends that you don’t get to honor the commandments as a standalone document? One must carefully consider the entire context in which they arose, with particular emphasis on crime and punishment. Of course it is generally a good idea to honor one’s parents, but how can you possibly accept moral advice from a people so barbaric as to believe the punishment for estranging oneself therefrom should be death?
That might not be the worst of it, though, because the latter half of the verse contains an unveiled reference to the genocidal invasion of the so-called ‘Promised Land’ which was supposedly carried out by ancient Israelites and is arguably ongoing to this day.
All that said, I still like the basic idea of honoring one’s parents, insofar as they are honorable, so I’m giving this commandment half a point for modern relevance. That brings the running total so far to one out of five.
