Children, Honor Your Parents

Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Exodus 20:12.

Children, obey your parents as you would the Lord, because this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with a promise, “so that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life in the land.” Ephesians 6:1-3

Yet another reason why honoring parents and long enduring civilization are connected is strong families form a major bulwark against totalitarian regimes. A standard feature of totalitarian regimes is the shifting of children’s loyalty and obedience from their parents to the state. One of the first things totalitarian regimes seek to do is weaken parental authority and replace it with the party or state. In such countries, children are encouraged to inform on their parents if they make critical comments—or even tell jokes—about government leaders or about the dominant ideology (in the modern period, that would almost always refer to communism, Nazism, or radical Islamism). Consequently, parents would often fear to speak openly in front of their children.

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg.258