Because, of course, they always know best, right? It’s not like they’ve fucked the planet and cooked the housing market, is it?
Yes, that was sarcasm.
*Rolls eyes*
Exodus 20:12: “Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”
If you look at other references to this in the Big Book of Shagging, Smiting and Slaying, in Ephesians 6:2, Paul the apostle says it is “the first commandment with promise” (but in 6:5 he goes on to say: “Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling”, so maybe he’s not such a good example of human decency).
2 Timothy 3:1,2 tells us: “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy … ”
OK, so admittedly we are seeing a lot of that “lovers of money, boastful…abusive” shit in governments of today (I’m looking at you Trump/Musk), but that disobedient to parents part raises some concerns. Why do children owe anyone anything? You should love someone because you love them, not because you are ordered to. You should respect someone because you respect them, not because you are ordered to. That would be a dictatorship, and that would be nothing at all to do with love or respect.
Honour your parents? Sure, honour them, love them, respect them, even obey them. If that is your choice. But what about parents who abuse their children? No love, respect or obedience is required there and any silly book that says there is … well it’s bull.
So honour them if you want to. Try to live up to the magical, perfect standards set by the people who somehow survived their own childhoods while giving you life advice based on “how it was back in their day” if that’s what floats your boat.
Listen to your dad’s 45-minute monologue about the best way to mow the lawn and absorb the pure wisdom, and appreciate your mother’s insistence sharing every ridiculous AI-generated “I’m 105 years old and baked my own birthday cake while knitting this ugly blanket” post she finds on Facebook.
I suppose surviving dinner-table debates about why your music isn’t “real music” is, indeed, honouring them.
If you are lucky enough to have had parents who truly cared about you, and if you are lucky enough to still have them around today, embrace the debate, give their “oldies” music a try (you might be surprised) and grit your teeth at the never-ending forwarding of memes from 2005.
Just don’t be a snarky cunt.
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