Honor

Ephesians 2:3 says: “Honor your father and your mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.”

“Honor your father and your mother” has more the flavor of a life principle, I think, than just meaning honoring one’s physical mother and father. Of course it includes honoring those two individuals who brought you into the world, who made it possible for you to even have the life with which you choose to honor or dishonor anybody, but it goes beyond this basic application.
Hmmm... But isn’t the command to honor father and mother part of the Old Covenant, which doesn’t apply to us any more? Well, even if so, it is repeated in the New Testament, and modern science has shown that gratefulness and thankfulness do tend to produce and maintain better health.

I remember many years ago I was really struggling with honoring my ex’s parents, as I was starting to really see the huge fissures in their church-face facade (which IMHO were not honorable!). I was so relieved when God made it clear to me that I was not required to honor them in the same way or to the same degree that their own son was. They did not give me life. They did not choose me as part of their family (in fact, quite the contrary). My level of “required honor”, as it were, was to be grateful for them giving my then-spouse life and honor their APPROPRIATE place in his life. This freed me from the intolerable burden of feeling required to respect insane behaviors and to love the unloveable.
Note well: the command is not to love your father and mother, but to honor them. We’re not talking about the warm fuzzies here. One cannot command an emotion. Some people don’t know their birth parents. Some parents are very difficult or broken people, impossible to love. But it should still be possible to honor the very fact of their parenthood: the fact that they joined forces to make me possible, the fact that they did not abort me, but granted me life. Honor in time may well eventually lead to love, but love can never develop from disrespect.

To me, taking the principle beyond its ground-level application means choosing to honor (not necessarily feel love for) many people and institutions in my past, including those with whom I may disagree. What I am honoring is the role they played (and sometimes still play) in my life to have formed me into the individual I am now, the one with the power of choosing to honor or to dishonor.

I honor the American Baptist church I attended in my childhood (with neighbors; ours was not a church-going family). This church, though it did not expose me to life in Christ, did awaken in me a hunger for heavenly things, a love for hymns and part-singing, and provided a community which embraced me. I honor the Whittakers, a younger couple who joined the church in the midst of the Jesus People revival and took me under their wing and to many meetings. I honor Kathryn Kuhlmann, in whose choir I had the privilege to sing and where I saw my first undeniable miracles.
I honor Father Al and Sister Cecilia at Mt. Mary Immaculate, the charismatic Catholic retreat house in Lafayette (now a Buddhist center) where I worked weekends in high school. This was at the tail end of the Jesus People movement, and we teens went everywhere anything Christian was happening. Al and Cecilia embodied love to all the teens who gathered there for prayer meetings and retreats, some of which were truly life-changing. (I heard Father Al eventually left the ministry and married. You go, Al!)
I honor the Baptist church I attended as a teenager, whose pastor was a bit odd and did Primal Scream therapy on the side, but where the youth group was thriving and I joined their (quite good) youth musical touring group. I honor our director Brian Beavers, who worked very hard with a bunch of lazy teens and brought out the best in all of us before going off to L.A., where I’m sure his huge musical talent was more appreciated.

I honor CCBS, the Bible school I attended in Southern California, which turned out to be cessationist (which I did not discover until I started attending). CCBS taught me to use the Bible as a tool (this had both positive and negative effects) and gave me the astounding and freeing revelation that my life was NOT blueprinted out by God ahead of time, and it was NOT my only job to “find God’s will” and fulfill that, but that I had free will, I had a choice. My choice was P, now my ex. (But hey, we made our marriage last over 30 years.) And after a few years of marriage, our choice was missions work in Austria.
I honor International Teams, which trained us in leadership and cross-culturality, and prepared us better than most other missionaries I met on the field for what life overseas would really be like. I honor CMML, the missions organization which first sponsored us (with whom I now would quite violently disagree on many points, or more vice-versa!). Their prayers, kindness and generosity made it possible for us to choose to return and make our life in Austria after our first 3 years there were over.
I honor Floyd Schneider (who doubtless considers me a heretic), the Plymouth Brethren missionary with whom we first worked on the field. I learned so much from him, both intentionally and unintentionally. He was a man who lived what he believed, though I now share few of his beliefs.
I honor the Pentecostal/charismatic pastors in Austria, especially Helmuth and Uli Eiwen, who “took us in” as one of their own after Holy Spirit blew apart our lives and our previous church affiliations in 1990. I didn’t then and don’t now agree with all their doctrines, but they made room for us and we had family of sorts in our transition time. I honor the Baptist church in Graz for the same reason: the pastor welcomed our family in for a season, knowing full well we would leave and start something else. This was essential for our children’s stability, and I am grateful.

I honor those who trained me in inner healing in the power of Christ, first Betty Tapscott but most especially John Sandford. John is so genuine and patient, and it was very easy to lay out all my skeletons. He’s been a father figure to me in various stages of my life, most recently my honeymoon with A. I honor Dave Olson, who has been a good friend and a trusted counselor to me for well over ten years. Dave always has a listening ear, some sound advice and prayer which gets to the root of the issue.
I honor the Vineyard movement in the German-speaking world, especially Martin and Georgia Buehlmann, who welcomed us in on the ground floor and allowed us to help shape a fledgling movement. Many happy and productive years were spent in this context and I will always be grateful for all I learned and all I was able to give away. Buehlmanns also personally took me under their wing after my first marriage fell apart and encouraged me to look ahead and keep believing.
I honor Randy Clark and his ministry Global Awakening. Randy saw spiritual and leadership potential in me and gave it space and encouragement. I found myself doing what I had always done at home in Austria, and finding it treated as something extraordinary! Randy was a mentor to me not only in healing prayer but in so many ways; his keen mind and always-questing spirit an inspiration. His friend Bill Johnson I also honor. Bill has a way of saying things that I’d found to be true but never heard anyone put out there before. I made so many life-long friends in the 10 years I was active with GA and will always be grateful for all the travel and ministry experiences I had in that time.

I choose to honor (this is admittedly a bit of a hard one) all the people who served with me in Vineyard Graz, right through from its founding in 1990 as Immanuel-Gemeinde up to the time in 2012 when I could no longer find a home in the church I had started. Though I left it in painful circumstances, so many good people had come and gone through the years. So much good was done and so many people saved, trained, helped, healed and blessed. I am still hearing stories of its impact I did not know anything about. Thank you for sharing life with me for over 20 years.
And I honor the church we visit now, and their founder and leader. It is amazing what they have built out here in the middle of nowhere: farmland all around, not a single highway in the county. Yes, there are problems with it and yes, I would do it differently; but they have accepted us, loved us and welcomed us in. All the people we’ve met in this fellowship are full of love and light. They are good people doing good work.

In conclusion, I find that to consciously honor my heritage and my journey is to honor those who have shaped it, and me, by finding and affirming the positive in it. It’s a choice: to cultivate gratitude.
The thankfulness that results not only benefits us personally, but it honors Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Honoring our life path honors Holy Spirit, who has been with us every step of the way, through dark and sunny times; and it honors Father God, our source, our head, to whom we will eventually return.

What’s not to like about honor?