Parents, Children, Slaves, and Masters - Ephesians 6:1-10

6:1-3 - The household code continues with a basic Mosaic commandment for “children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother… That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” I struggle with this commandment because I don’t have the type of parents that I can depend on to have my best interest in mind. In fact, repeatedly throughout my life, they have screwed me for their own personal reasons, so the whole “obey your parents,” yeah, no thanks, I’m good. So I don’t really know how this applies to me personally, I know that it was actually detrimental when I was growing up because I had so much guilt over my broken relationship with my parents because I was supposed to “honor and obey” them, so I felt guilty when I didn’t do that because of self-preservation. The IM quotes For the Strength of Youth, which says, “Honor your parents by showing love and respect for them. Obey them as they lead you in righteousness. Willingly help in your home. Participate in wholesome family activities and traditions. Join your family in family prayer, family scripture study, and family home evenings. Keeping these commandments strengthens and unifies families.” From this perspective, I think I did a really good job honoring my parents then. I raised their other kids without complaint, I worked like a dog keeping the house clean and doing yard work and I didn’t tell anyone what was going on, which was my mother’s worst fear, that someone would find out what was going on, and I never said a word to anyone, except the stake president when I was 16 and went to get some help, and that went horribly, thus why I left the church. Anyway, I think I did a good job, and where it says “lead you in righteousness,” when it’s not righteousness, then you have to do your best. I think now, I honor my parents by still being in contact with them but just maintaining boundaries. I forgive a lot of their still occurring victimization of me by thinking “they are doing their best,” and asking myself, “what is the best course of action for them to progress spiritually?” while still maintaining my boundaries. It’s not a perfect system and it’s very exhausting a lot of the time, but I haven’t cut them out completely, so I think that this is me doing my best to be a good daughter in a less than ideal situation. 6:4- - But the honoring your parents thing goes both ways, because Paul advises “ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The IM quotes Elder Kevin W. Pearson as saying, “There is no other thing in which we can have absolute assurance. There is no other foundation in life that can bring the same peace, joy, and hope. In uncertain and difficult times, faith is truly a spiritual gift worthy of our utmost efforts. We can give our children education, lessons, athletics, the arts, and material possessions, but if we do not give them faith in Christ, we have given little.” This of course is very specific to our religion because parents who don’t know or believe in Christ have a different obligation to their children, and honestly, I would rather have children who were good people than children who believed in Christ but were bad people. It’s an interesting concept of “provoke not your children to wrath,” because what could Paul possibly have meant by that? For me personally, I think that this means to not be the one who brings up negative feelings in them, meaning to only deal with them positively. This is hard because kids are monsters sometimes, especially teenagers, of whom I have two. I think about my own parenting, and admittedly, I’m not good at it, but I try. I get into screaming matches with my son and he’s screaming and I’m screaming and I realize now that that doesn’t help. I think that this verse might also be translated into avoiding criticism, avoiding negativity, avoiding being harsh, avoiding lectures. I really try to gauge what my kids are feeling when I interact with them, and I think that by paying attention I am able to understand how they feel depending on how I am acting. For instance, I used to get home from work and immediately go into “this house is a mess” and my daughter told me eventually “when you come home upset, it makes us not want to be around you,” and when I looked at it from her perspective, I could understand. I try very hard to not be critical of them, I try very hard to listen when they speak and be engaged about everything they have to say. I heard a saying a while ago that I really liked and it was basically, “listen to your children talk about the small stuff otherwise they won’t come to you with the big stuff because to them, it’s always been big stuff.” I really like that and have tried to use that as a motto. I try not to be negative or to be critical of them because I know what it’s like to be a child in that environment and I don’t want that for them. But again, I am very lacking as a mom, but I am trying. There’s also a point where you have to know when to let go of making them do the church stuff. I struggle with this because neither of my kids like church and to be quite honest, it’s not my favorite thing either. I love the gospel, but church? Meh. When they were little we always went to church and I spent a very concerted effort into reading the Book of Mormon everyday and doing Family Home Daytime once a week, and we had gospel and spiritual discussions all the time and I really feel like I spent about 7 years really spending a lot of time teaching them the gospel, like it was very intensive. But they still don’t like it, and we’ve even had some excellent discussions on why my daughter thinks it’s wrong, and I love the critical thinking that she does about it. But during ward conference last year, the stake president said, “don’t force your kids to go to church or else they will resent you and it.” I’ve really prayed about what that advice means for me and my kids and covid has honestly really helped because we do a short sacrament thing at my brother’s house, it has taken a lot of the pressure off. But I have really relaxed a lot of what we do, we don’t do mandatory scripture study anymore, we don’t do mandatory family home evening anymore, and the pressure and guilt around the house has dissipated, which has been nice. They know what I believe, they know what the standards and rules are, and I feel like I gave them a decent foundation to where if they ever want to come back, then they know where to find it. 6:5-10 – Now Paul branches into a part of society that was really common previously, but is not so much of our daily like now, slavery. I just want to put a note here that while slavery isn’t as out in the open in many societies today there are more slaves now than there ever have been in the history of the world so we don’t get to pat ourselves on the back thinking we’ve overcome this huge evil because we absolutely have not. I think it’s important to be involved in some sort of anti-human trafficking organization, I personally recommend Operation Underground Railroad or O.U.R for short. Anyway, Paul addressing the role of slaves and masters during his time is “does not imply that he approved of the institution of slavery, but it teaches members of the Church living in a culture with servants and masters how those relationships should be guided by the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com quotes Bruce R. McConkie as teaching, “these servants were slaves. The social structure which kept them in bondage was outside the power of the Ephesian Saints to change or overthrow. Paul thus has no alternative but to recognize their state and counsel them how to live under it.” Paul counsels “servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ… Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall be receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” When the people of Alma were enslaved by Amulon, they were righteous, knowing that God would deliver them when it was His will to do so. Because righteousness was their main objective, they were rewarded with joy and light burdens while they were enslaved. Another way a righteous people might be blessed while enslaved is to have their crops and animals be prosperous, having enough food to eat, keeping illness away or at bay by the power of the priesthood, and possibly by softening the hearts of their captors toward them. There are slaves up can have this level of happiness and billionaires who have nothing but heartache and misery, because it’s not the amount of money or power that you have, it’s the level of righteousness that makes the difference. I fully understand the irony of this being said by me who is full after just eating lunch while working at a job where I get paid way more than most other people. As far as how this relates to us today, the IM quotes President Spencer W. Kimball as teaching, “Paul speaks of ‘unholy maters’ and surely has reference to those who would defraud servants or employees and would not properly compensate for labors done or goods furnished. He likely has in mind men who are unkind, demanding and inconsiderate of their subordinates… Paul likewise enjoined a lofty stands upon employees: We may that this to mean, in modern terms, that the servant and employee should consistently give honest service, full and complete, and do for his employer what he would want an employee to do for him if he himself were the employer.” I believe that the Church has said that your priorities should be your family first, then your employer, then your church callings. There are sacrifices to be made for sure, but I distinctly remember hearing somewhere that you should never short change your employer to work on your church stuff. That’s why I will never start on scripture study before all my paperwork is done. They’ve said “don’t prepare your church lessons at work if it means you neglect your duties to your employer.” Do a good job, do what you would want someone to do if they were working for you. Do your work with your employers best interests in mind, and even if they don’t have yours in mind, then it is up to the Lord to take care of you because it doesn’t matter what they do, your care is in the hands of Jesus and the only thing that can persuade that is your own personal righteousness, which includes fulfilling your obligation to your employer. Paul also has counsel for those who are the masters, “do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.” In our day, this could mean being kind to those who are “under” you at work, or socially. He says to get them to do things without threatening them because living in a constant state of fear because of threats is a horrible way to live. If we think about the atonement, we know that Jesus felt all of our fears and if someone has been threatened and is now afraid, Jesus felt that fear and it was awful for him. And it’s also important to remember that we are all servants to God, the Master of us all, and we wouldn’t want him to treat us unfairly or harshly, so we need to treat others the way that we want God to treat us. It’s the ultimate leadership style. Paul says, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” Even though this counsel was contrary to a lot of Greco-Roman culture and would be difficult to live by at times, Paul assures them (and us) that we can live according to God’s commands if we rely on him for strength and resolve, motivation and ideas.