The Christmas Gift of Parents

or, Why Your Parents Aren’t as Dumb as You Think They Are

By Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. - Mark Twain

There are few things in life more annoying than parents, especially when you’re between the ages of about thirteen and eighteen. They are intrusive, ask too many questions, have all of the rules down, and more than anything, they just don’t get what you’re going through.

Mark Twain was right. To the fourteen-year-old, parents just don’t understand what life in high school is like. They are awkward and embarrassing to be around. So, what are you to do? Live in a box under the highway? Pretend you’re adopted and that you don’t really know them? Make every conversation into a battle zone where you pick the rules?

You can do all these things and probably have. Well, maybe not the living in a box part. But high school is hard enough without having to face a war every time you go home. So, how do we understand parents as a gift from God and not as a trial to undergo each time we see them?

Here are a few tips for the teenager who wishes his parents would be less seen and heard.

Parents don’t understand what high school life is like today.

They can’t. If they could, they wouldn’t be your parents. It’s not their job. Do you really want your parents talking like you, acting like you, and being a part of your social life? Blech!

You don’t understand what a parent’s life is like.

In just the same way, there is no way you can understand the responsibility and plain work being a father or mother is day after day. They sacrifice, they worry, they pray, they hope, plan, dream, and hurt for you every day. Usually, you don’t know about these things until much later, but every once in a while there may be a glimpse.

Frankly, understanding is overrated.

You don’t have to understand one another to love and appreciate one another. Oh, I suppose a certain level of understanding is necessary. But your parents love you and want to take care of you whether they understand you or not. I guarantee they are just as mystified by you as you are by them. But that’s okay. There are lots of things that I don’t understand in the world (e.g., math, geometry, physics, chemistry) that I can appreciate and benefit from. Parents and children should love and be loved by each other, even without some great level of understanding.

Honor and respect for your parents isn’t based on what their failings are but on the fact that they are a gift from God.

Martin Luther put it this way:

We must, therefore, impress this truth upon the young (Deuteronomy 6:7) that they should think of their parents as standing in God’s place. They should remember that however lowly, poor, frail, and strange their parents may be, nevertheless, they are the father and mother given to them by God. Parents are not to be deprived of their honor because of their conduct or their failings. 1

Now, what these things mean for you is that even though it may appear that your parents are ignorant, behind the times, and don’t know everything they should, they are still your parents, they still love you, and they sacrifice for you every day whether you realize it or not. If we want to talk about mutual understanding, think of what it must have been like for our Lord.

And He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And His mother treasured up all these things in her heart (Luke 2:51).

There you have a twelve-year-old who really does know all things and a mother who really doesn’t understand what her Son is going through! Yet, our Lord was submissive to His mother and stepfather even though they didn’t understand Him. Furthermore, He did this for you. Sons and daughters will always go through a time when they have trials with their parents. But Jesus kept the Law for you, so that you are free. You are free to receive your parents for who they are and not for what you want them to be. You are free to recognize their weaknesses and failings and to love and honor them nonetheless, knowing that our Lord perfects what we cannot do on our own.

So, even if parents are as ignorant and dumb as you may think they are (even though they’re not), God would still have us honor them, hear them, and follow their instructions. Why? Because God has given them to you. They are your first birthday gift, just as Mary was to our Lord as His birth. Merry Christmas!

Rev. Todd Peperkorn is the pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He was the grand poo-bah of Higher Things Magazine from 2001–2006. He can be reached at pastor@messiahkenosha.org.

1 Book of Concord, Large Catechism, p. 371.