If you asked people familiar with Dr. Bill Gothard (those who favor him or otherwise) what his main distinctive teaching is, many would say “authority.” And indeed, besides the topic of grace, authority is probably the most defining aspect of ATI/IBLP and Bill Gothard’s teaching.
This is an immense topic. No doubt RecoveringGrace.com will have many articles on authority in the future, but right now I want to focus on one specific error in Gothard’s teaching: his use of Exodus 20:12.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” Exodus 20:12 ESV
In practice, Gothard uses this verse to tell youth and even adults that they should obey their parents. I cannot find one instance where Gothard attempts to define “honor,” but it is common to find him using it when making the case for obedience.
So let’s define our terms: what does “honor” mean? Because this verse is in the Old Testament we are dealing with Hebrew. The Hebrew word that is translated “honor” is kabed (1).
The root of kabed means “to give weight.” Forms of kabed are used to describe the power of Pharaoh, the wealth of Abraham, the “mighty men of valor,” the number of Edomites, and the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah (2). In other words: weighty power, weighty wealth, weighty reputation, weighty number, and weighty sin. In Exodus 20:12 we see yet another aspect, which we could call “weighty respect” or “weighty recognition.” Kaber is never used anywhere in the OT to mean “obey.”
I don’t like to talk about what a verse doesn’t mean without talking about what it does mean. In Exodus 20:12 we are commanded to “give weight” to our father and mother. What does that mean? The word picture is weights and scales. When we weigh a decision, we give facts in consideration different weights. We then make a decision by which way the scale tips in our mind.
What Exodus 20:12 tells me is that when my parents have a position on a decision I am making, I must give it weight. This harmonizes with the fact that they should know me well, care for me, that they are older and have more experience, and that they might have wisdom or direction from the Lord on it.
But at the end of the day my parents’ thoughts are still a weight—not more, not less. It would be foolish and even sinful to throw it out, but it would be no better to let it win every time. If the latter, it no longer functions as a weight. Some parents will be right most of the time, others will rarely ever be right. That’s why they are meant to be a weight and not a bulldozer. The final responsibility for your actions lies on you, the individual.
Bill Gothard’s use of Exodus 20:12 becomes more apparent as we examine his writings. In his flier on the Commands of Christ, in Command 26 (“Honor your Parents”) he makes a segue from honoring and dishonoring to blessing and cursing:
“God governs the world through blessings and curses. Our greatest asset is the blessing of the Lord, which He often gives through the authorities that He has placed over us. Chief among these is the blessing of a father.”
“Jacob understood this essential truth and did whatever he could to obtain his father’s blessing. His passion for blessings caused him to become a prince with God.”
(Funny, I never thought lying to your father to steal from your brother was a good thing.) But to continue, Gothard quotes Matthew 15:4.
“For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.” Matthew 15:4 KJV
His take-away: “Jesus affirms God’s law that the death penalty be carried out on one who curses his father or mother.” (3) Throughout the article he makes the assumption that not honoring (which he treats as obeying) automatically means cursing, even though he defines cursing as “to revile, to speak evil of.” The Greek word used in that verse is timaow, which means “to give value,” and is the nearest equivalent to kaber and “give weight.” The word obey, as we think of it, appears in the Greek as heepacuo–a different word, and different meaning. In fact there are 18 Greek words relating to obedience or disobedience, and none of them are timaow. (4)
“But wait,” you say, “What about Ephesians 6:1-2? Isn’t Paul explaining that honor does mean obey?” (5) He does not. To begin with, verse 2 builds on verse 1. It is not a clarification; it is an addition. Also, if you took the Greek word timaow and always translated it as obey, you would get some fearfully bizarre messages:
“If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father obey.” John 12:26 KJV (modified)
“Obey widows that are widows indeed.” 1 Timothy 5:3 KJV (modified)
“Obey everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Obey the emperor.” 1 Peter 2:17 ESV (modified)
It is plain enough that Ephesians 6:1-2 is not meant to change the meaning of honor, but rather to tell children to obey and learn to honor.
The message a parent, particularly an authoritarian one, could take away from Gothard’s entire message is:
- If my child (any age) is not obeying me, they are cursing me
- They deserve death, even under the New Testament
- God curses them (therefore I am justified to judge them)
- I should withhold my blessing from them (conditional relationship)
The tragic thing is that I am not speaking in theoretical terms, but from the actual knowledge that there are many parents under Gothard’s teaching that do think this way about their children. Even if it is not what Gothard is trying to teach, these parents only find justification and encouragement without contradiction in his words.
Finally, as he often does, Gothard puts the burden of responsibility on the child rather than the parent:
“The character deficiencies of parents that cause children to “curse” them are simply opportunities to bless them. We bless by asking God to give them the power (grace) to develop needed qualities, which He will do. Meanwhile, we should implore our fathers to also give us their verbal or written blessings.”2
This is a characteristic side-stepping while the real issues are avoided. We went from talking about honoring and dishonoring to teaching on blessing and curses; making the assumption that the dishonoring child is disobedient, that in disobedience they are cursing their parents, and that parents can withhold blessing on a child based on performance (“let them die the death”), and a child must always bless their parents despite performance.
What shall we say then? Gothard does not use Exodus 20:12 accurately, and he presents honoring in a way that is both threatening and damning to children and empowering to abusive parents.
Footnotes:
1. From Whittaker’s revised Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon, pg. 457: B4359 [kabed] vb. be heavy, weighty, burdensome, honoured…
2. TWOT (Topical Word Study of the Old Testament) Hebrew Wordbook, entry 0943.0.
3. Commands of Christ, Command 26 Flier: “Honor your Parents”
4. Louw-Nida Lexicon, Section 36.C12-30
5. This will be addressed at length in a future article
"Finally, as he often does, Gothard puts the burden of responsibility on the child rather than the parent... he presents honoring in a way that is both threatening and damning to children and empowering to abusive parents." ~precisely his problem with his extrabiblical teaching of authority. dangerous. so dangerous. this is a great article!
I concur with Donna: this is a great article. I really wish I had understood this concept when I was coming of age during my time in IBLP. We were taught that God directs through your parents. So if you disobey your parents, you are, in effect, disobeying God. Wow, how it would have drastically altered the course of my life had I understood that my only obligations was to give honest consideration to my parents' wishes rather than absolute obedience. This one will boggle my mind for days.
This teaching actually carried over into training center life. I grew up with parents who were not ultra authoritarian. As soon as I went to the training center I was expected to blindly obey my "authorities" there. As an unmarried woman the thought was that my parents gave them their authority when I stepped foot into the training center. That totally opened the door for many abuses if you didn't do things exactly as expected. As another side note you were not supposed to "tell tales" to your parents. Thus keeping them completely in the dark as to what was truly happening. Thanks for this article.
Thank you so much for posting this for over the past 2 1/2 years I have been praying, seeking counsel, reading scriptures, researching the internet and other books to see if Honor truly meant obey. I have never read nor heard a more clear definition of this verse a principal. I was raised in ATI for over 15 years and this principle has been much abused. Thank you for also researching and showing the escotology of the verse and its root meaning. A huge burden has been lifted off of me. Thank you, for all of your hard work and this wonderful site.
Thank you for this thought-provoking piece, Jonathan.
I'm having trouble putting something into words but the idea of not obeying in lock step, yet still honoring - this is important to be able to do.
It actually sets up a family for breaking apart when the kids (up into their young adulthood) only have the 2 options of being constantly and continually bulldozed or of being "rebellious." By this overreaching, Gothard's teaching ironically often does damage to the very family unit he was trying to preserve.
Wow!!! Really wonderful and researched article!! I love it!
It's kind of like if we take all the responsibility to maintain the relationship with our parents by blindly obeying, then we aren't taking responsibility for our own actions as adults... we were obeying our parents!!!
Add to all this too that Gothard put so much pressure on the parents to have perfect children. 1. the promised success, 2. the young people that he showed off at the seminars as examples of this success. So parents took their eyes off of parenting and turned them onto controlling who their children were... trying to mold them into the perfect image in anyway they could. That is how so many parents became irrational in their disciplines and instructions to their children, anything to at least make the appearance of children who blindly obeyed their authority because that's what they were "suppose" to have.
The problem faced in Mr. Gothard's teaching is his hermeneutics. Hermeneutics are the rule which govern the manner in which ANY document is evaluated. He is too mystical in his hermeneutics and does not do the kind of study that is required for clear explanation of a passage. This leads to all kinds of misunderstanding and improper teaching.
Wow, great article, I really enjoyed it.
Wow! You explained that so well! I've struggled with the idea that obeying my parents was the only way to honor them for a long time. Growing up in ATI the message that was conveyed was that it was an all or nothing thing. We were under our parents complete control or Satan had control of our lives. This left many people I know with the feeling that they had to take control of their own lives in any way they possible could.
WOW....this was good, needs to be shared with incoming ATI families. Thanks for your research.
Many, many years ago I struggled with my responsibility to my father in the area of "honoring" him. He had really not been a very good nor responsible father -- among other things, he had refused to pay child support for many years, while my stepfather had spent those years supporting us without complaint (at least, not that we ever heard).
So I struggled with the whole honor concept as it applied to him. One day my dear godly grandmother told me, "I believe you can honor your parents by the person that you become."
Now, as a parent of grown children, I understand the truth of that simple statement, for I often find myself feeling honored to be the mother of the people *they* have become.
It is such a simple statement -- and of course the issue can be more complicated than that -- but it gave me a basis from which to start as I work/worked out my difficult relationship with my father.
Ellen, that's awesome! I'm going to remember that one!
Thank you for making this so clear! I had come to this conclusion quite a while ago, but wasn't able to articulate it.
Excellent article.
As a parent to 5 children (two of which are adults), I whole heartedly agree! Listen to us because you love us and we will lovingly listen, as well. They will make mistakes, no doubt, just as I did (and do). God is certainly big enough for any mistake either of us make. I have no desire to be the dictator god over their lives. As adults they have total freedom because they have taken total reponsiblity for themselves.
Our younger children have less freedom because we still carry the majority of the responsibility. This situation will change. It's healthy maturity that we are naturally moving them toward. Not stunted, warped growth. It sickens me to think of how damaging this can be. May the Lord be merciful to all of us! We certainly need it.
My in-laws sat down with my husband when he was about 16 and told him that he was officially "out of the chain of command" and in the "chain of counsel." Obviously he still lived with them and still lived by their rules, but I love the way they granted him adulthood in advance. I hope to do the same with my kids.
Excellent post...very well said.
Something to think about. 2 Timothy 3 v 1-10 describes the evil of men in the last days. Paul is clearly speaking about adults and not children. He speaks about lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, brutal, headstrong, dispisers of good. He goes on to say they have a form of godliness but deny its power. He also says that such people will be disobedient to parents.
If Paul is speaking about evil adults, not children, then why does he include disobedience to parents as one of the sins?
Honouring parents is a command, but so too is obedience and unfortunately the bible puts no age limit to it. Far better for parents to recognize the maturity of their children and to release them. If all parties abide in Him, parents and children, then we live in harmony, not confict.
Interesting thoughts, ChristopherS. Both here and in Romans 1:30 "disobedient to parents" is a Bad Thing. You got me to thinking. Here is a long comment to try to interact with your comment.
At net.bible.org, you can click on Notes, and read Constable's notes. I like the research that Constable put into his notes. Here is his description about this list (the numbers 70 and 71 in brackets are footnotes):
This passage is not a treatise on parent-child relationships but rather a general "vice list". Rather than being a command for adult children to continue to obey their parents no matter what, it is an overall negative description of godless people that in addition to being narcissistic, arrogant, greedy, treacherous, and rebellious to God (among other characteristics) they will also be rebellious to parents.
One thing I have noticed about parents who expect continued obedience from their adult children is that these parents themselves almost always are quite free from their own parents' active rule. That of course does not nullify anything from the inspired Word of God, but it is an internal inconsistency in the practical outworking of a certain teaching.
Certainly, an attitude of rebellion is not acceptable for a child of God. Taking the weight of the NT as a whole, I consider Jesus' words where he says to "hate" our parents (a figure of speech to indicate we love Jesus more than anything) and the fact that we will stand alone before the throne to give account for our lives - we will not stand behind our parents. There are a lot of instructions in the NT, including Gal 5, Eph 4, Col 3, etc. that do not simply reduce down to "obey your parents". It seems the closest thing we can get to a summary statement is "Love God with your whole heart and love your neighbor as yourself."
So again, while an attitude of rebellion is not OK, neither are we anywhere in the NT expected to walk in lock step with parents as authorities, nor are we to be passive and let our parents do all the heavy lifting. In fact, that attitude would be at odds with 1 Thess 4:11-12, "...make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."
I certainly want to never brush aside Scripture, even when it is uncomfortable. At the same time, it is not good interpretation to cherry-pick one term out of a list and build a doctrine out of it. I am not saying this about you, but I do know parents who are selfish and manipulative and who play power games with their children, even after the children are grown. Such parents would love to use a comment like yours to suggest that if an adult child fails to continue to obey the parents then the now-grown children are in the same camp as lovers of money, boasters, proud blasphemers, brutal, headstrong, despisers of good, etc. But that would clearly be a twisting of the text.
Which raises the question: What is the main point of this passage? I believe Paul's point comes later down - "evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse" BUT "as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures..." The big idea here is that people in "the last days" will grow worse but the servant of God belongs in God's Word, studying it, letting it teach, rebuke, correct, and train.
Where does true authority come from? God's Word is authoritative. If someone wants to speak with authority, they need to speak in line with God's Word. This is true for both the parents and their children.
Thoughts?
Clearly at some point a person is an adult and not a child. As a child grows the wise parent allows the child more and more freedom to make their own decisions and indeed their own mistakes. Becoming an adult is therefore a transition that begins at birth and is directed by loving parents to a fruitful outcome. The trouble with society is that it places an age upon being an adult as though one moring the child awakes as an adult. This denies the structure of progressing to maturity that God has designed for us. Scripture never places an age on adulthood.
In a godly family love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfullness, gentlness and self control govern how that family interacts with each other. There is no ruling over children, adult or otherwise, in unjust and harsh treatment, nor any other ungodly attitude towards each other. Idealistic? Not really, it's the practical outcome of God's plan for our lives.
All of scripture can be distilled into one aim, "Build Godly relationships". Firstly with God and then with each other, including our children. Everything we do must have this goal. Sripture is about redemption and reconcilliation under grace. If we live a godly life the issue of adult children being in conflict with their parents becomes a mute point. Parents release their children and the children are obedient in that process. This way they are guided in their walk under the wisdom and experience of their parents. Leaning through wisdom rather than consequences. It is the same rebellious nature of man towards God that is mirrored in our relationships with our earthly parents, it's all about self.
Of course there will be tensions and we will bumble and fumble along but if we abide in Him he will make our paths right.
Please forgive my ramblings.
In a godly family love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfullness, gentlness and self control govern how that family interacts with each other. There is no ruling over children, adult or otherwise, in unjust and harsh treatment, nor any other ungodly attitude towards each other. Idealistic? Not really, it’s the practical outcome of God’s plan for our lives.
I wholeheartedly agree. Some of the major images in the NT are fruit of the Spirit, our walk (walk in faith, walk in the Spirit, etc.), taking off and putting on. Along with the "one another" passages, these tend to have a lot of overlap and I think they describe the essential lifestyle of the believer, including family life and also church life and spiraling out into the rest of life as well.
1 john 2:26-27 were a huge enlightment for me
Jonathan, is that promised future article going to be posted any time soon? I'm waiting with great interest!
How many ATI parents demanded strict obedience of their grown children while at the same time defying their OWN parents by being involved in ATI in the first place?
That is such an irony. Totally true in my family.
I took a seminar in 1980 and it had a lasting effect. We bought the Character Sketch Books (which I am tossing out today). This website has helped clarify many things for me. I am thankful we did not get more involved other than the one seminar. But my main point is to wish I had read this article as a young adult. I was 50 before I finally thru off the tyranny of my dad. The guilt of breaking the commandment about honoring my parents kept me in bondage and depression for too long. At 50 I finally broke free, guilt or no guilt....judgement from God or no judgement from God. Thank you for this article. It helps tremendously.