What Are Parents For?

Last time I wrote about some of the questions that the youth I spoke with asked regarding their parents. One statement they didn’t make, but which they all admitted they had exclaimed at their parents in frustration was: "I didn’t ask to be born!".

That’s entirely true. None of us asked to be born. Why did God give us parents? Are they just there to keep teens from doing what they want? Or, is there a deeper, transcendent purpose for which God gave parents?

Unsurprisingly, God has a lot to say about the subject in His Word. In his letter to the Ephesian Christians, the Apostle Paul devotes long sections to establishing principles to guide the relationships that believers have with one another. He spends the first three chapters talking about the unity we enjoy because of what Jesus has done, and the last three outlining practical ways in which these principles can be applied to how we live our lives. So it is that in chapter six, after having given guidance to husbands and wives on how to relate, he comes to speak to children:

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 BE WELL WITH YOU, AND THAT YOU MAY LIVE LONG ON THE EARTH.
- Ephesians 6:1-3

The first thing to note from a reading of Ephesians 5-6, is that not only is a parent’s relationship with his children one of many, but it is not even the most important relationship. A husband and wife should make their marriage of greater priority than their children, and each must give primacy to their individual relationship to God. So, the first point I wanted to make to the teens was that they are not, and should not expect to be, the top priority for their parents because their parents have other God-given responsibilities that they can not neglect. In our day of hyper-parenting, it is good to remind ourselves that our lives ought not revolve around our children, or any other human relationship, but they ought be centred on God.