"Honor thy father and mother"

One of the ten commandments is “Honor thy father and mother.” I would like to clarify what that means.

There are many parents who use this commandment to do things that are wrong. Specifically they use it to dictate to their children their life choices and to do as had themselves. This has shown historically to be erroneous. Where would we be if Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson or Bill Gates did as their fathers had done? And how much is the West ahead of places like Confucianist China, where people did just that?

The correct meaning of honoring one’s parents is having respect for them and treating them rightly. It does not mean perpetuating their mistakes. I had a terrible relationship with my father, but now we get along well and he is proud of me. That is the case even though I took on projects that he thought to be useless.

Sometimes wrong beliefs are a killer. I have seen even the best people become cruel and oppressive when they believed wrong things. That most beliefs are wrong is an obvious fact. People around the world live under mutually incompatible beliefs; which means that, even if one of these groups is right, everyone else is wrong. And that means: majority of the world’s population is wrong.

So if a parent has wrong beliefs, through which he interferes in one’s life, honoring them does not mean sharing along with their misperceptions. It means correcting them.  That being done, parents and children can have meaningful interaction. There can be both family and freedom. And that is the optimal solution to such situations.