Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God gives you.
The Hebrew term “honor” means to reckon something very serious or grave; don’t take it lightly. It should not be reduced simply to “obey,” as that is not the same thing. Contempt for anyone is wrong, but in the tribal world of the Ancient Near East, it was downright deadly. The whole point is the minute dynamics of every day life must arise from a firm commitment to remain attached to the extended family at all costs.
This one thing must be firmly fixed in the reader’s mind: You cannot abstract the concept out to simply positive regard and familial piety. The entire Western Civilization has no frame of reference for what’s assumed by such commands as this. It is not something which is cast merely in a quaint tribal world where your society was your family, and there was no social outlet. We have wedded all our thoughts to the notion somehow we have advanced by spinning off the nuclear family from its original tribal village setting, and dissolved such structure in favor of the excitement and ferment of the urban individualist culture. No such thing exists, because this merely replaces the family with civil government. You can lie to yourself all you like, but you will either live with your old home folks and the family “government” or you will live under the secular state. The latter cannot be seen as anything but an open rejection of God as Suzerain.
While the context here specifically applies to Law and earthly life, the spiritual view recognizes our reverence to God Himself is depicted here. We are obliged to take family seriously because he take Him seriously. If we do not take family seriously, we surely display a lack of commitment, a lack of faith toward God.
Don’t idolize family like westerners idolize bureaucracy. My dysfunctional family is like the decadent court from Game of Thrones. Notice the verse also says “so that your days may be long”, so this commandment is only for those who want a long life in this world. Not my case, as I plan to kill myself when I’m still a handsome, relatively healthy youth. I don’t want to marry or have children, I don’t even want to have sex. Jesus Himself disobeyed His parents without penalty (Luke 2:41-50), despised His family (Matthew 12:46-50, Matthew 23:8-11), and preached that suicidal, antifamilist detachment is mandatory for christians (Matthew 10:34-37, Luke 14:25-27). Jesus also implied that Moses thought like Him, but taught otherwise because of Israel spiritual immaturity (Matthew 19:8-9). All this implies that “honor your father and your mother” actually means “honor God and the Invisible Church”.
Can’t help you much with this one. Nothing I say will do you any good. It seems like your last few comments have drifted toward trolling.