Most Christian messages about relationships rightly encourage us to honour our parents. Yet, we know there are subtexts to practically living out that command. For Indian Christians, raised in a culture that emphasises respect, honouring our parents is deeply ingrained in us. This, of course, is a good and godly thing. Honouring our parents is one of the Ten Commandments. It echoes through the wisdom literature of the Bible and in the New Testament. Yet, it is possible for honouring our parents to slowly slip into worshipping them.
In Indian culture, venerating parents as ‘gods’ may originate from the teachings of the Upanishads, which state “Matru Devo Bhava, Pitru Devo Bhava.” It means “May you be one for whom the mother is a god, and the father is a god.” In our cultural context, there is no difference between honour and worship.
But as followers of Christ, we are responsible to obey God’s command to honour our parents. It is a command to all people in all cultures at all times. And he wants us to obey it without disobeying the first command: You shall have no other gods before me.
How can we do this practically?
We Can’t Control Anyone
As a parent of a teenager who is nearing adulthood, I can testify that all parents are imperfect. We are fallen people whom God has given the task of stewarding our kids’s lives. Yet, so often I confuse stewardship for control. I get in the driver’s seat, and I try to steer my children’s lives in the way I think best. Sometimes, I even (perhaps unknowingly) use fear and guilt as tactics to get them to do what I want, which obviously is the perfect direction for them. I try to play “god” in their lives.
I know I am not alone. I think back to a parenting example from the Old Testament: Rebekah’s favouring of her son Jacob to the point of manipulating situations and convincing him to steal his brother Esau’s blessing. Sure, God had already promised Rebekah that Jacob would rule over Esau. But did God need her to “help” him? I think not.
As an adult child to your parents, how can you honour them without implicit obedience? We start with the very first step to wisdom: the fear of the Lord.
When God’s surpassing glory, beauty, and power have utterly captivated our hearts, then our priorities fall into place. He takes first place. He compels our undivided worship. He desires our wholehearted obedience.
We Can’t Please Everyone
Jacob could have refused his mother’s prodding to deceive Isaac. Why didn’t he do it? Was it years of being attached to Rebekah’s apron strings that led him to be pulled into her plans?
Maybe as an Indian Christian, you have found yourself in a similar spot where you try to please your parents more than you try to please God. The two do not have to contradict each other. But the question is, when they do, where is your allegiance? Whom do you regard with greater honour?
Several years ago, someone close to me was engaged to be married to a young Christian man. A few weeks before the wedding, the groom’s father insisted on a substantial dowry. Instead of fearing the Lord and doing the godly thing, the young man simply complied with his father’s wishes with the excuse, “It’s not me, it’s my dad.” He had put his father, a Christian priest, ahead of God.
Eventually, the bride called off the wedding, as she did not want to subject herself or her parents to ungodly demands. There was a cost to her and her parents’s obedience to God. Their “reputation” in Indian Christian circles was under attack. But it was her way of honouring her parents and worshipping God.
The Example of Ruth: Loyal, Godward Honour
Though Naomi was Ruth’s mother-in-law (not mother), she wanted to hold her in high esteem—not through unthinking, obligatory obedience, but with real compassion and care.
I love Ruth’s words to a bereaved Naomi: “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God… May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16–17)
Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi was rooted in uncommon selflessness. She makes a profound sacrifice for her mother-in-law. But in doing so, she forsakes the gods of Moab and commits to following the one true God of Israel. Her loyalty did not stem from guilt or self-preservation but from love. As she honoured Naomi, she drew closer to God, who folded her into the lineage of Jesus.
As with any relationship, the parent-child dynamic requires dying to self. But respecting our parents does not mean we cannot refuse them anything or risk disappointing them. It runs deeper than that. It requires serving them selflessly, while always putting God first.
Looking to Jesus: Perfect Honour, Rooted in Love
On the cross, Jesus’s words reflected his love for humanity. But in the amalgam of people, past, present, and future, he remembers his mother. Scripture records that “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, ‘Woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother’” (John 19:26–27).
Even in his most painful hour, Jesus honoured his mother by entrusting her to the care of his beloved friend, John.
True respect goes far beyond fulfilling social obligations or meeting our parents’s cultural expectations. It is rooted in love and demonstrated through empathy and compassion. Our parents, like us, are flawed and fallen human beings. That’s why Scripture does not prescribe that we worship them or treat them as demigods. But it does repeatedly emphasise that we honour them.
Jesus himself demonstrated that utmost reverence for his mother in his darkest hour.
Letting the Gospel Shape Our Honour
Can we let the gospel shape our relationship with our parents? When we see ourselves as fallen and frail—in desperate need of a forgiving God—we can extend that same grace to our parents without allowing guilt or resentment to dictate our actions. The power of God sets us free from overextending ourselves to earn acceptance from our parents because we find ultimate approval in the love of God. Through his agape love, the Spirit of God empowers us to honour our parents with radical selflessness.
