More Than God: Our Responsibility as Children

More than God: Our Responsibility as Children.
By: Henry Kuo, former YG counselor (2002-2009)

Read: Matthew 10: 34-49

Recently, on BBC.com, there was a news article about China making it required by law for children to visit their parents. Elderly parents can now go to court to require their children to take care of them! Apparently, children have been moving far away from their parents to pursue work in metropolitan areas like Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou, but have often been too busy to visit parents regularly, especially those living in interior cities such as Lanzhou, Wuhan, or Harbin. This seems quite unseemly to those of us Chinese who live in America, but in today’s passage, we seem to see Jesus endorsing such behavior! Look at verse 37: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me [Jesus] is not worthy of me!” And Jesus goes on: “Any parent who loves their children more than me [Jesus] is not worthy of me!” Wha… wha… isn’t Christianity all about the family? How could Jesus say something like that?

But if we read carefully, we notice that Jesus was not advocating anti-parentalism, or advocating child abandonment – something practiced in ancient cities such as Sparta. No - Jesus was saying, essentially, that children should love their parents, but they should also love God even more so! This is not about choosing between your parents and God – this is about loving both your parents and God. And not just your biological parents. In the Church, biology does not matter. This is loving your biological parents and the church parents who were important in instructing you in spiritual truths. And the same applies to parents – they should love their children, but they should love God even more than them! And they should not just teach their own biological children, but not be afraid to instruct other children of the Church on Christian truths. As I’ve said before, in Christianity, theology trumps biology.

Not long before I moved to Singapore (this was probably August 2009, if not July), Pastor Ben shared with me the possibility of leaving. He was indecisive at the time; he felt God calling him to a different church, but WCAC was going through a lot of exciting changes which he would very much love to be around to witness. I should remind all of you that Ben loved WCAC, the church he grew up in. Furthermore, his parents lived in the area. All of you know as well as I do that Ben took great pains to take care of his parents, and moving to St. Louis was particularly a worrying step of faith. After all, doing so would put him 5-6 hours away from his parents. But I think it is a testimony to the above passage that he willingly decided to take the plunge and accept God’s calling for him St. Louis, even if it meant a 5-6 hour drive away from his parents. Indeed, he loved his parents very much and wanted to be nearby to ensure their well-being, but he loved God even more so.

Most of us are young – and by “young”, I mean, below 25 – and perhaps we have better things to worry about, such as PSATs, SATs, GREs, college applications, job searches, grad school applications, getting married, etc. But this passage teaches us that there are two groups of people we should always love – our parents (church and biological), but on top of that, we should love God even more so. The BBC.com article reveals that children are often preoccupied with their own goals and dreams that they’ve left their parents behind; that is an example that we Christians cannot follow. Indeed, this is what the famous Fifth Commandment to honor our parents was about – that we take care of them in whatever way we can, even if from a distance. But we are called to go beyond that. We are called to love God even more without sacrificing our love for our parents. Such is the responsibility all of us have as children of our parents, and as children of God.