"Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart." Colossians 3:21
The fourth commandment is a one-way street for children: "Honor your father and your mother"
(Exodus 20:12). No word there for parents. Not so the New Testament. Here parents get a
mandate too--on how to use their authority.
To be sure, parents are bigger than their kids--for a while, at least. But that's not what gives
them their authority. Biblically viewed, all authority is an assignment from God for a specific
purpose: to help some other specific person(s). God authorizes parents be God's sort of
father/mother to these specific children so that they do not "lose heart."
Authority is not tyranny. It's the requisite "clout"to carry out a task. Jesus even jolts his
disciples with his words in Matthew 20. Authority, he says, does not put us over, but under
others, to support, nurture, care for them. To do that you've got to be under those over whom
you have authority!
Parental authority is God's authorization to shape the next generation to be God's kind of grownups.
"Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" was how yesterday's reading
put it. The fallen world equates authority with privilege. No wonder there's a crisis of authority.
But authority as authorized service, as God's tender loving care, is God's calling for parents, and
our calling as well in any authority role we have.
Prayer: Your own exercise of authority, Jesus, brought you to the cross. And there you execute
that authority in coming all the way down to suffer our death, suffering it out of existence.
Inform our authority roles with that same lordly lowliness to be unto others as you have been to
us. Amen.
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