When our children outgrow honoring father and mother

September 9, 2024

Maybe it’s the culture’s relentless push for individualism and self-expression, but honoring father and mother has become a casualty of the times.

We teach our kids, raise them, and love them, pouring years of energy into their little lives, only to watch them grow up, leave, and seemingly discard half of what we stood for. It’s the heartache of seeing the prodigal walk away, and the tragedy is they often don’t come back with an apology, a confession of their wrongs, or even a hint of understanding. No, they walk away from what you taught them, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically, as if rejecting you and everything you believed in was the natural next step in becoming an adult.

And you pray constantly, like Job for his children, hoping they will remember God somewhere under the haze of their poor decisions. You wait, hoping to see a flicker of faith reignited, only to receive sporadic calls for money, or no calls at all, as they drift further into the vast sea of secular ideas and worldly pleasures. It’s as if parenting was just a phase they outgrew, and your love is nothing more than a security net they no longer need or, worse yet, feel entitled to.

It’s not the rebellion that stings the most but the ingratitude and lack of honor. They no longer see their parents as worthy of respect, just relics of a simpler, outdated time. This hurts deeply. Scripture is clear about honoring parents, not just as children but as adults. It’s in the Ten Commandments, and Paul doesn’t let it slide when he reiterates it in Ephesians 6, calling it the first commandment with a promise “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land” (Eph 6:2, 3).

But adult children today seem to interpret honor as a loose suggestion, not a divine imperative. Maybe it’s the culture’s relentless push for individualism and self-expression, but honoring father and mother has become a casualty of the times. Parents are viewed less as authorities and more as people to be tolerated, perhaps patronized with an annual birthday call, if that.

There’s something especially crushing when a fully grown child takes advantage of your love. It’s a weird contradiction. You raised them to understand grace, mercy, and forgiveness, but somewhere along the line, they turned those virtues into tools for exploitation. They call you only when they need something—money, a favor, a bailout—because they know you’ll give in, because that’s what grace does, right? They take and take, assuming that you owe them for all the ways you failed them in childhood, real or imagined.

But you keep giving because love, especially a parent’s love, doesn’t know how to stop. You give not because they deserve it but because you can’t bear the thought of closing the door. Maybe this time, they’ll show appreciation. They rarely do, so you’re left wondering if that’s what the Prodigal Son’s father felt when his son took off with half the estate (see Luke 15:11-24). The waiting, the silence, the hurt—it all adds up. Yet you remember that the father ran to meet his son when he saw him, not with a list of grievances but with open arms.

Still, even knowing the heart of the Father, the pain remains. Watching your child turn away from the faith is the worst part of it all. You pray for them, share the gospel, and live out what you’ve taught, but they’re so busy “finding themselves” that they’re convinced God’s commands are merely cultural relics, best left to history. And you’re torn between frustration, grief, and a sliver of hope that somehow they’ll remember the seed that was planted. For now, however, the world’s thorns seem to be choking it out.

Yet, in all this—the pain, the waiting, the rejection—there’s a strange comfort in knowing God sees it too. He knows what it’s like to have children wander off and forget him. “I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me,” he says (Isa 1:2). How often has humanity ignored the Father’s love, trampled on his grace, and returned only when we were desperate?

The gospel is for wandering hearts.

So we keep praying, holding on to the promises of God, knowing that his love is greater than even the fiercest rebellion. We pray our children will one day come to their senses, as the Prodigal did. And until then, we wait, love, and give—because that’s what grace looks like in the face of rejection.

God willing, we’ll eventually learn that a slow work of the Spirit in their hearts has been happening all along. After all, who are we to question the Lord’s timing?

When our children outgrow honoring father and mother

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