Honored and Not Obeyed

The same words open every page on this site and this one is no exception. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If somebody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today. That is the whole of the useful advice on this page and it comes first.

Now. In a family like mine, and I suspect like yours, there is a sentence that ends every conversation.

It is not an argument. It is quieter than that. Somebody suggests doing something differently in a sick house, and an older person looks at them, and that is it. The conversation is over and nobody had to say anything.

And what makes it so strong is that it is built out of something good. In houses like ours, the elders are honored. Genuinely, properly, not as a formality. And so any suggestion of doing it another way arrives, in everybody's ears, as a criticism of the person who did it the first way.

So nothing changes, for generations, and it is not stubbornness. It is love, doing a thing love was never meant to do.

The command is honor, and honor is its own word

There is a commandment everybody can recite, and the exact word in it is the one that solves this.

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. (Exodus 20:12, King James Version)

Honor. Not obey. Not copy. Not continue.

There are other words in the language for obey and they are used elsewhere in that same book. The word chosen here is the one about weight and worth. It means treat as heavy, treat as significant, do not hold lightly.

And a person can treat somebody as significant and still do something differently from them. In fact, that is the only way honor stays honor rather than becoming fear.

You are commanded to honor them and you have never once been commanded to copy them. Exodus 20:12 uses the word for weight and worth rather than the word for obedience, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody do a thing differently without breaking a commandment.

That distinction is not a technicality. It is the whole of the thing that has been stuck in your family for three generations.

You have been keeping a command that was never once written the way you were taught it. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a familiar commandment back its actual wording, and it is written that the command is to honor, which is about how a person is held rather than about what they are copied on.

What changing something actually says

Let me say the practical half, because the fear here is specific and it deserves a specific answer.

The fear is that doing it differently says: she was wrong. And in a family like ours, saying an elder was wrong is not a small thing.

But doing it differently does not have to say that, and the difference is entirely in whether you say her name.

If you change the practice in silence, it looks like a verdict. If you change it and say out loud, with affection, that she did it the other way and that she was doing her best with what she had, then everybody in the room hears honor and change at the same time, which is the thing they have never once heard together.

You are able to do both in the same sentence, and they have never once been in competition. Exodus 20:12 asks for weight to be given to a person rather than to a method, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a family hear affection and difference in one breath.

And I would say this about the elders themselves, because I have watched a lot of them. Most of them are not the ones enforcing it. It is the middle generation that enforces it, on the elders' behalf, without ever asking them.

You were never told by her that this was binding, and no elder has ever once been consulted about the rule made in her name. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a rule off a family that nobody ever actually made, and what is written commands honor and leaves the method entirely open.

The plain routing, and it outranks the custom

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and in a family like ours it is the one that has to be said clearly.

If somebody in that house is in trouble right now, that is 911, and no custom in any family outranks that call. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And if anybody there is unwell, ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, whatever the house has always done first.

You are permitted to go straight past the custom, and going past it has never once dishonored anybody. Exodus 20:12 commands honor toward people and does not put a family's practice above a person's life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets somebody to break the order of things in a house where the order is sacred.

And if somebody objects, say her name while you dial. That is the whole of the diplomacy required and it works better than any argument.

You have a call to make that has never once been outranked by anything a family does. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody phoning out of a house that has always handled things itself, and what is written asks for honor and says nothing at all about procedure.