So if we're supposed to "revere" our parents, what do we do when our parents are destructive, manipulative, are flat-out evil, or (to quote some old school Will Smith before he was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air) they just don't understand?
Steve here called us to put up some real boundaries. But he framed it in a really unique way: we withdraw from our parents in situations like this in order to help them to stop sinning. In other words, we are revering them by blessing them with the freedom from the sin that so easily entangles.
I wanted to riff off of this for a second.
The way that the Scriptures talk about God is that his word to his creation and his people is always "yes." Yes to love, yes to goodness, yes to rest, yes to joy, yes to life, yes to joy.
The only time God says no to us is in response to our no. God comes to us and says "I want to bless you with every good thing in Christ." We say, "No, I don't want that, I want my own blessings on my own terms, thank you very much" And so God says: "No. I that won't actually bless you. No, here's the blessing I have for you."
God's only "no" is to our "no" so that ultimately we might receive his "yes." Put another way, God's no always serves his yes.
And so it should be with our relationships. We say "no" (in this case) to our parents when they are abusive or manipulative towards us, we do so that they might know the "yes" of God.
I encourage dating students to break up as soon as they are pretty sure it's not going to work out. That "no" frees them and the person they're dating to enter into the "yes" of begining to heal and move on.
In the New Testament, Paul commands the people of God to "take off" certain practices in order to "put on" these other, better, practices--saying no, in order to say yes.. "No" is never the last word in this life. God's no is always to serve the bigger yes.
When we are in step with the Spirit, we are called to be "yes" people. Ultimately in Christ we are full participants in God's whopping, giant "YES!!" to all his creation.
That means there's plenty of places where we have to say no. But it's always a no that serves a bigger yes. When we hold onto that yes, we are free and joyful people, indeed.
1 comment:
Hey Alex, Jon from UR here. I'm studying for STII w/ Deddo and came across a great paragraph. I love the way you articulate the God's "no" being for a greater "yes", so when I read this, it made me think of you:
"The temptation narratives assume that jesus' temptations were real, not imagined. He entered the gravitational field of genuine temptation, but was sufficiently centered in his own filial self-identity and vocation that he never succumbed to any degree. His temptations were real appeals to his real freedom. His resistance was a real act of freedom in saying no on behalf of a larger yes to his vocation."
-- Thomas Oden, The Word of Life
Jon
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