It is amazing to me how modern Evangelicalism has allowed so many people to do what is right in their own eyes when it comes to family. If you're not familiar, the phrase, "did what was right in his/their own eyes" in Scripture is constantly a reference to the wicked. The wicked do what is right, not what is wrong, in their own opinion. They don't get it from Scripture. They use Scripture eisegetically to back their opinions but they and their opinions are not in submission to Scripture so as to let it correct them.
I want to begin a series here concerning the obligations that each member of the household has to family members, and I'm going to begin from the bottom up because I see that as the order of egregious behavior toward familial commitments our church culture has allowed us to indulge in.
So we will begin with the child's commitment to the father. What does the Bible say about the commitment children have to their Father?
First, I want to be very clear that the Bible is primarily instructing adult children, not little children. It is a given in every culture that little children would obey their parents. Evangelicals who are completely ignorant of the biblical model of family often think that the instructions given to children are referring to kids under the age of 12 or 18 but this is nonsense, as once we go into these passages, it is clear that (1) the children being spoken of are adults, and (2) the age of a small child, a kid as we would call him or her, is prepubescent and incapable of doing most of what is said of the adult child.
The obligations the adult child has to a father seems to be total obedience, respect, financial commitment, and emulation in wisdom and moral conduct when the father lives a wise and moral life. When the latter is not there, the former is still to be given since the father represents God's authority to the child.
The Ten Commandments of course command the following.
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16).
The commandment indicates that the inheritance of the land of promise is contingent upon the child honoring the father and the mother. Paul reiterates this in Ephesians 6:1-3 when he says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for 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 enjoy long life in the land," and in Colossians 3:20, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord."
The four things to note here from these texts for us is that children are to obey their parents in "everything" or they aren't honoring them, that long life in the land is contingent upon obeying one's parents, and that this commandment is likely of the first table, not the second because it associates the honor and obedience of the parents with fearing the Lord and receiving His reward. Hence, the commandments are to be divided as two tables consisting of five and five, rather than the traditional four and six. And, finally, that living long in the land is applied by Paul in a way to not be talking about having long life in the here and now but inheriting the world to come, which the land of Israel foreshadowed. Hence, obeying one's parents in all things, taking care of them, treating them with honor is the contingency upon which one will inherit eternal life, i.e., is saved or not.
The correct worship of God directly has to do with not worshiping other gods, making divine images, fearing God's name, honoring God's sovereignty through the Sabbath, and honoring/obeying one's father and mother. In fact, Leviticus 19:3-4 has the first table represented in a few of its commands (e.g., observe the Sabbath, no divine images), including the command that "Every man is to fear his mother and his father."
One worships God in whatever manner one treats his parents, particularly focusing in on the father here. He cannot claim to worship God better than he treats his father.
Jesus rebukes the Pharisees who think they can. They think they can treat their parents poorly but treat God well. They even contrast the two relationships by saying that they are giving to God by taking away their obligations to their parents. He confirms to them that they have set aside the commandment (and the reward with it I might add) by doing so. Notice the dialogue.
5 So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
6 He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:
“‘These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.7 They worship me in vain;
their teachings are merely human rules.’8 You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
9 And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)— 12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
Christ here says that they actually do this with many things, but note that this is what he decided to focus on because it contrasts true worship with false worship. They are concerned with externals like physical cleanliness rituals and tithing. Christ is concerned with actually worshiping God through the honor and treatment of parents. The Pharisees, being very devoted, religiously pious men, don't know God and it evidences itself through their treatment of their father and mother.
Now, let's look at some texts that talk about a grown child's commitments to their parents.
If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Notice here that this is not a five-year-old kid. He is a drunkard and a glutton. He also lives somewhere else. Note that it says that they are to bring this son to the elders of "his," not "their" town. So he lives in another town. He is still obligated to take care of them and obey them and yet refuses to do so. God says that he is to be violently executed by all of the men of his own town. He is not to inherit the land any longer. He is cut off from it. This is to purge the evil from among them, a phrase quoted by Paul when speaking of excommunication, and to cause other covenant members to be afraid to do the same thing lest they also lose their inheritance.
Again, this is an adult son who seems to now live in a different town than his parents but is not supporting or obeying them.
Correspondingly, the children of a qualified elder must not be like this without having been cut off by his father, lest his father be disqualified from ministry. In 1 Timothy 3:4-5, Paul states:
He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)
This is stated in different terms in Titus 1:6.
An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of participating in debauchery and disobedient.
Notice that, like in Deuteronomy, the children are to obey their father, and that these are adult children who are partaking in debauchery and are disobedient. The New Catholic Bible translates this phrase as "free from any suspicion of licentious or rebellious behavior." Most translations translate it as dissipation and rebellion," which would likely then see Paul as referring back specifically to the passage in Deuteronomy, as dissipation refers to a participation in drunkeness or sexually immoral behavior, a throwing off of one's duties to parents, and so they are not faithful children, which is what the phrase tekna pista actually means in context here.
Christ reaffirms the command in Matthew 15:4, a parallel to the Markan passage above, by noting not only the original command but the subsequent understanding that if one speaks poorly of his father or mother he is to be put to death. The word kakologion means one who insults or speaks bad about one's father or mother. Christ is alluding to the LXX of Leviticus 20:9 here that expands the original command concerning cursing father and mother and makes it even a lesser speech of just speaking bad about them. Nothing is said of whether the things spoken are true or not. It is the fact that the adult child (the Pharisees being spoken to here are all adults, and mostly much older adults) who is commanded to honor is dishonoring by speaking about their parents in ways that would cause others to think less of them. In Proverbs 20:20, the one who does this has his lamp go out, metaphorically meaning that he will lose the ability to see what is true and be blinded to what is right and good.
Proverbs 23:22 commands, "Obey your father who begot you, and do not reject your mother when she is old."
Notice that a mother who is old is not usually a mother of a young child. This is to an adult child, which means that the adult son be spoken to here is to obey the father who begot him. The idea of obeying is that the wisdom of the father is not dismissed but listened to, since only the fool goes on his own thinking or the thinking of his peers. The wise man listens to his father.
It should be noted here that the mother is included because she is one with the father. The father is in unity with the mother and vice versa so that one cannot disrespect one without also disrespecting the other. Some situation where the mother has divorced the father is not something that is in view, as the woman could not divorce in ancient Israel, so the Bible assumes a unity. Hence, it is father or mother because the mother is the father (see for example how this is assumed in the sexual laws of Lev 18:8, 20:11, Deut 22:30, and 27:30). Hence, the command is really about the father being honored, which includes the mother who is in unity with him. The Bible considers the children as those who belong to the man, and only to the woman because she is joined to the man. Hence, the proverb notes that the father begot the son.
Hence, in Proverbs 6:20 (also 1:8-10; 15:20), the command is given to the adult son to "keep your father's commandment, and do not abandon your mother's instruction." The two are in parallel because they are viewed as one and the same.
In Deuteronomy, the actual covenant promises that are made by the people who are stating they wish to be in God's covenant include the declaration, "Cursed is anyone who dishonors father or mother." All the people are to shout, Amen!
Proverbs agrees and says that "the eye that mocks a father and refuses to obey a mother will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by vultures."
The eye represents one's thinking about his father and mother. Again, his eye, his ability to see, is cursed.
In fact, the entire Book of Proverbs demands that the adult son obey his father's instructions and listens to his advise or he is branded a fool and wicked (Prov 4:1; 13:1).
Notice that the wise son in Proverbs 13:1 obeys his father's instructions but the scoffer does not listen to rebuke. In other words, the wicked and foolish son rolls his eyes at his father in contrast to the wise son who harkens to his fathers instructions.
All of this is the obligation of the adult child to his or her father. All of this must be adhered to if one is to claim that he or she is fulfilling this command. As Christ notes, honor cannot be divided up so that some of these are obeyed and others set aside. One only need to dishonor someone in one area for them to be dishonored. It is only one insult, one neglect, one dismissal, one rolling of the eyes, one stubborn rebellion, one refusal to care for a need, one act of disobedience that is persisted in or justified without repentance that evidences the damnation of the individual.
You see, we think that the obligation of the little child is to listen to a parent while young, but the children are extensions of the father and his household. Even when married, a son in particular is not then free to disrespect his father and to be a stubborn idiot who no longer has to listen to him. The son is to continue his father and his household. The adult child is not the judge of the father but to be judged by him. This does not mean that the father should insert himself into everything his son does but that is an issue for the father's obligations to his children we will deal with later. The point here is that even when married, as almost all Pharisees were btw, the obligations do not subside. While the father remains upon the earth and even after he leaves it, the adult child is to honor him in every way by adhering to his instructions, commandments, speaking well of him always, and continuing his household in acknowledgement of his good work and wisdom given to the child during his life.
All fathers are sinners, so one could easily excuse himself from obeying the command here by saying that his father doesn't deserve honor, but God doesn't position authority over us and then allow us to judge them as unworthy of that honor. God is the judge of those things. We are to honor and obey a father in the Lord who, like any authority, is exercising an authority on God's behalf and to the glory of God. Excuses are the roadways of the damned, or as Proverbs puts it, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is the pathway of death" (Prov 14:12).