Catechism
The Gift of Parents and Other Authorities By Rev. William M. Cwirla
Honor your father and your mother.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serveand obey them, love and cherish them. (The Fourth Commandment)
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magine a world without authority. You could do whatever you wanted. Drive whatever speed you thought was best. Take anything you needed without paying for it. Stay out as long as you wanted. Go to school, or not, whenever you felt like it. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t. If you can do whatever you want, others can do the same. Imagine traffic where everyone drove according to his or her own rules. They have a name for that: Demolition Derby. Imagine running a business where employees showed up whenever they felt like it. They have a name for that, too: bankruptcy. Imagine a classroom with no teacher, or a community in which there was no law enforcement, no laws, no order. We call that “anarchy.” The word “anarchy” literally means “no head.” There’s no one in charge. If the police announce they aren’t coming to work on Monday, you’re going to lock the doors on Sunday and not leave the house. God is a God of order. He creates things in an ordered fashion and sets things in order. In His temporal kingdom, God has three orders or authority structures: home, civil society, and the church. The home is the first order from which the other two flow. From the household flows community and nation. Temporally speaking, the church as we see it is part of God’s temporal government, too, as He arranges to have the Gospel preached in this world until Jesus shows His glorious face again on the Last Day. Each order has its own authority. In the home, it’s husband and wife, parents and children, masters and
servants. In civil society, it’s governors and citizens. In the church, it’s preachers and hearers. God has established these orders for our blessing and to keep our old Adam in check. Our sinful nature, the “old Adam,” doesn’t like authority or order. He’s an anarchist and rebel. He prefers to do what is right in his own eyes and doesn’t care about what happens to others. And so he despises parents and other authorities, including teachers, bosses, pastors, presidents, governors, legislatures, the police— anyone in authority. What the old Adam hates the most is when the authorities say, “No, you can’t do that.” It kills him. Literally. “Honor your father and your mother,” and, by extension, all other temporal authorities in home, society, and church. These authorities are God’s gift to you. The word “honor” is usually reserved only for God Himself, but in this commandment, it applies also
