I don’t know how sufficient that is to the question. It is such
a difficult question that I hesitate to raise it at all. My only preparation for dealing with it has been the many times people have asked me to explain it to them. Whatever they may have thought, I have not succeeded to my own satisfaction even once.
I have always worried that when I say the insulted or the downtrodden are within the providence of God, it will be taken by some people to mean that it is not a grave thing, an evil thing, to insult or oppress. The whole teaching of the Bible is explicitly contrary to that idea. So I quoted the words of the Lord: “If anyone offend these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he were cast into the sea.” That is strong language, but there it is. Young Boughton just sat there grinning. That’s one thing that has always been strange about him. He treats words as if they were actions. He doesn’t listen to the meaning of words, 130
the way other people do. He just decides whether they are hostile,
and how hostile they are. He decides whether they threaten him or injure him, and he reacts at that level. If he reads chastisement into anything you say, it’s as if you had taken a shot at him. As if you had nicked his ear.
Now, as I have said, I did not expect him to be at that service. Furthermore, there are plenty of people whose behavior toward their children falls far short of what it should be, so, even when I departed from my text, and even though I will
concede that my extemporaneous remarks might have been influenced by his sitting there with that look on his face, right
beside my wife and child, still it was considerable egotism on his part to take my words as directed at him only, as he clearly did.
Your mother looked anxious. That might have been because
I seemed to her to be talking about my own situation, and hers and yours, or it might have been because I did struggle a little to organize my thoughts, or it might have been because my emotions ran higher than they normally do. And if I looked at all the way I felt, even half as weary, there’d be grounds for concern in that, too.
But the thought occurred to me that young Boughton had
told her some version of events, enough so she saw the implications, from his point of view, of my sermon. I don’t know
when he might have spoken to her. If he wanted the opportunity, he could have found it, I suppose. It did strike me as
strange that she didn’t look at him even one time. If she wished not to seem at all to recognize him in the sermon, that would explain it. I felt perhaps others in the congregation might have thought the sermon was directed at him. It was all most unfortunate. I must hope some good can come of it. I just don’t know why he isn’t worshipping with the Presbyterians. Now I will pray. First I think I’ll sleep. I’ll try to sleep.
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Another morning, thank the Lord. A good night’s sleep, and no real discomfort to speak of. A woman in my flock called just after breakfast and asked me to come to her house. She is elderly, recently a widow, all by herself, and she has just moved from
her farm to a cottage in town. You can never know what troubles or fears such people have, and I went. It turned out that
the problem was her kitchen sink. She told me, considerably amazed that a reversal so drastic could occur in a lawful universe, that hot water came from the cold faucet and cold water
from the hot faucet. I suggested she might just decide to take C
for hot and / / f o r cold, but she said she liked things to work the way they were supposed to. So I went home and got my screwdriver and came back and switched the handles. She said she
guessed that would do until she could get a real plumber. Oh, the clerical life! I think this lady has suspected me of a certain doctrinal sloughing off, and now she will be sure of it. The story made your mother laugh, though, so my labors are repaid. Last night I finished The Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine. It gave me a sort of turn there for a while. The old man sees the girl with someone her own age and remarks how well suited they are, and then he starts getting old and shabby and broke, and she’s still very beautiful, of course. But it all turns out fine. She loves him only and forever. I doubt the book would have kept my interest if that particular matter had not arisen. And then I did want to know what there was in it your mother liked so
much. God bless her, she’s a dear woman. I read most of it yesterday evening, and then I couldn’t sleep, wondering about it,
so I crept off to my study and read till almost dawn. And then 132
I went up to the church to watch the dawn come, because that peace does restore me better than sleep can do. It is as though there were a hoard of quiet in that room, as if any silence that ever entered that room stayed in it. I remember once as a child dreaming that my mother came into my bedroom and sat
down in a chair in the corner and folded her hands in her lap and stayed there, very calm and still. It made me feel wonderfully safe, wonderfully happy. When I woke up, there she was,
sitting in that chair. She smiled at me and said, “I was just enjoying the quiet.” I have that same feeling in the church, that I
am dreaming what is true.
It strikes me that your mother could not have said a more heartening word to me by any other means than she did by loving that unremarkable book so much that I noticed and read it, too. That was providence telling me what she could not have told me.
I wish I could be like one of the old Vikings. I’d have the deacons carry me in and lay me down at the foot of the communion
table, and then torch the old ship, and it and I would sail into eternity together. Though in fact I hope they will save that table. Surely they will.
Even the Holy of Holies was broken open. The deep darkness vanished into ordinary daylight, and the mystery of God
was only made more splendid. So my dear hoard of silence can be scattered, too, and the great silence will not be any poorer for it. And yet thank God they are waiting till I die. Sometimes I almost forget my purpose in writing this, which is to tell you things I would have told you if you had grown up with me, things I believe it becomes me as a father to teach 133
you. There are the Ten Commandments, of course, and I know you will have been particularly aware of the Fifth Commandment, Honor your father and your mother. I draw attention to
it because Six, Seven, Eight, and Nine are enforced by the
criminal and civil laws and by social custom. The Tenth Commandment is unenforceable, even by oneself, even with the
best will in the world, and it is violated constantly. I have been candid with you about my suffering a good deal at the spectacle of all the marriages, all the households overflowing with children, especially Boughton’s—not because I wanted them, but because I wanted my own. I believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don’t have. From the point of view of loving your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18), there is nothing that makes a person’s fallenness more undeniable than covetise—you feel it right in your heart, in
your bones. In that way it is instructive. I have never really succeeded in obeying that Commandment, Thou shalt not covet. I
avoided the experience of disobeying by keeping to myself a good deal, as I have said. I am sure I would have labored in my vocation more effectively if I had simply accepted covetise in myself as something inevitable, as Paul seems to do, as the thorn in my side, so to speak. “Rejoice with those who rejoice.” I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep. I don’t mean that as a joke, but it is kind of funny, when I think about it.
If I had lived, you’d have learned from my example, bad as well as good. So I want to tell you where I have failed, if the failures were important enough to have had real consequences, as this one certainly was.
But to return to the matter of honoring your mother. I
think it is si
gnificant that the Fifth Commandment falls between
those that have to do with proper worship of God and 134
those that have to do with right conduct toward other people. I have always wondered if the Commandments should be read
as occurring in order of importance. If that is correct, honoring your mother is more important than not committing murder. That seems remarkable, though I am open to the idea.
Or they may be thought of as different kinds of law, not comparable in terms of their importance, and honoring your mother might be the last in the sequence relating to right worship rather than the first in the series relating to right conduct.
I believe this is a very defensible view.
The apostle says, “Outdo one another in showing honor,”
and also “Honor everyone.” The Commandment is much narrower. The old commentators usually say “your father and
mother” means anyone in authority over you, but that is the
way people thought for a long time and a lot of harm came
from it—slavery was “patriarchal,” and so on. Anyone who happens to have authority over you is your parent! Then there have been some vicious, brutal parents in this world. “What do you mean, grinding the faces of the poor!” Does the text anywhere say, “Children will be given good things and parents
will be sent empty away”? No, because parents are not equated with the rich or those in authority. Nowhere in Scripture is there a father who behaves wickedly toward his child, but the rich and powerful in Scripture are wicked much more often than not. And if honoring authority means only that you don’t go out of your way to defy it, that really cheapens the notion of honoring as it would apply to an actual mother. It would not be anything beautiful or important enough to be placed right at the center of the Ten Commandments, for goodness’ sake.
I believe the Fifth Commandment belongs in the first tablet, among the laws that describe right worship, because right worship is right perception (see especially Romans 1), and here the Scripture commands right perception of people 135
you have a real and deep knowledge of. How you would honor someone differs with circumstances, so you can only truly fulfill a general obligation to show honor in specific cases of mutual intimacy and understanding. If all this seems lopsided in
favor of parents, I would point out again that it is the consistent example of parents in the Bible that they honor their children. I think it is notable in this connection that it is not Adam
but the Lord who rebukes Cain. Eli never rebukes his sons, or Samuel his. David never rebukes Absalom. At the very end, poor old Jacob rebukes his sons as he blesses them. A remarkable thing to consider.
There’s a sermon here. The Prodigal Son as the Gospel text. I should ask Boughton if he has noticed this. But of course he has, of course he has. I must give that more thought.
My point here is that the great kindness and providence of
the Lord has given most of us someone to honor—the child his parent, the parent his child. I have great respect for the uprightness of your character and the goodness of your heart,
and your mother could not love you more or take greater pride in you. She has watched every moment of your life, almost, and she loves you as God does, to the marrow of your bones. So that is the honoring of the child. You see how it is godlike to love the being of someone. Your existence is a delight to us. I hope you never have to long for a child as I did, but oh, what a splendid thing it has been that you came finally, and what a blessing to enjoy you now for almost seven years.
As for the child honoring the parent, I believe that had to
be commanded because the parent is a greater mystery, a stranger in a sense. So much of our lives has passed, and that is true even for your mother, who is a good generation younger than I am but who had a considerable life before she came to me—by which I mean only that she was well into her thirties when we were married. As I have said, I think she experienced 136
a good deal of sorrow in those years. I have never asked, but one thing I have learned in my life is what settled, habitual sadness looks like, and when I saw her I thought, Where have you come from, my dear child? She came in during the first prayer and sat in the last pew and looked up at me, and from that moment hers was the only face I saw. I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow. That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it’s fair to say that. There is something in her face I have always felt I must be sufficient to, as if there is a truth in it that tests the meaning of what I say. It’s a fine face, very intelligent, but the sadness in it is engrafted into the intelligence, so to speak, until
they seem one thing. I believe there is a dignity in sorrow simply because it is God’s good pleasure that there should be. He is forever raising up those who are brought low. This does not mean that it is ever right to cause suffering or to seek it out when it can be avoided, and serves no good, practical purpose. To value suffering in itself can be dangerous and strange, so I want to be very clear about this. It means simply that God
takes the side of sufferers against those who afflict them. (I hope you are familiar with the prophets, particularly Isaiah.) Now, your mother never talks about herself, really, and she never admits to having felt any sort of grief in her life at all. That’s her courage, her pride, and I know you will be respectful of it, and remember at the same time that a very, very
great gentleness is called for, a great kindness. Because no one ever has that sort of courage who hasn’t needed it. But you might not realize that, when you are young. I have often worried a little about the way the people in the church act toward
her. She is distant, but she can’t help that. So they are distant, too. On the other hand, I have often thought that she and I are well suited, no matter how we appear, because I have seen enough of life to understand her. They are not unkind, and 157
they will give her whatever help she will accept. But most of them cannot see her youth in her as I do. I believe she may even seem a little hard to them.
I have written a letter to her, with instructions. I will add this to it—I have given money to people over the years, not a large amount, but a fair portion of my salary. Generally, I
made up stories about forgotten funds and anonymous donations. Whether most of them believed me I doubt. At the time
I had no idea that I would ever have a wife or a child, so I didn’t think much about it, as I have said. I didn’t keep any
record, and I have no certain memory of individuals or circumstances. I have also paid for things around the church,
paint and windowpanes and so on. We had some bleak times when I couldn’t bring myself to ask anyone to provide what I could provide myself. I say this only because I want you to
know that any help you receive, even to a fairly substantial amount, may be thought of by you not as charity but as repayment. I have never thought of the congregation as being in my
debt, but the fact is that I have cast considerable bread upon those waters, and whatever bread returns you will be receiving
as from my own hand. By the grace of God, of course.
But I wished to say certain things about the Fifth Commandment, and why it should be thought of as belonging to the first
tablet. Briefly, the right worship of God is essential because it forms the mind to a right understanding of God. God is set apart—He is One, He is not to be imagined as a thing among things (idolatry—this is what Feuerbach failed to grasp). His name is set apart. It is sacred (which I take to be a reflection of the sacredness of the Word, the creative utterance which is not of a kind with other language). Then the Sabbath is set apart from other days, for the enjoyment of time and duration, per138
haps, over and above the creatures who inhabit time. Because “the beginning,” which might be called the seed of time, is the condition for all the creation that follows. Then mother and father are set apart, you see. It seems to me almos
t a retelling of Creation—First there is the Lord, then the Word, then the
Day, then the Man and Woman—and after that Cain and Abel:—Thou shalt not kill—and all the sins recorded in those prohibitions, just as crimes are recorded in the laws against them. So perhaps the tablets differ as addressing the eternal and the temporal.
What the reading yields is the idea of father and mother as the Universal Father and Mother, the Lord’s dear Adam and His beloved Eve; that is, essential humankind as it came from His hand. There’s a pattern in these Commandments of setting things apart so that their holiness will be perceived. Every day is holy, but the Sabbath is set apart so that the holiness of time can be experienced. Every human being is worthy of honor,
but the conscious discipline of honor is learned from this setting apart of the mother and father, who usually labor and are heavy-laden, and may be cranky or stingy or ignorant or overbearing. Believe me, I know this can be a hard Commandment
to keep. But I believe also that the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always the sense of the sacredness of the person who is its object. In the particular instance of your mother, I know that if you are attentive to her in this way, you will find a very great loveliness in her. When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself. That is why the Fifth Commandment belongs on the first tablet. I have persuaded myself of it.
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I slept decently. I stay at home Mondays when I can—my day of rest—so I had the morning to think and pray and also to do a little reshelving, and while I was doing that, it came to my mind that I should consider what I would say to myself if I came to myself for counsel. In fact, I do that all the time, as
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