By Banji Ayoola
Sadly, we have dishonoured certain designations, which are meant to help us in our existence on earth and in all our wanderings.
We have dragged into the mud and roundly abused everything lovingly designed to bring us true joy, happiness and peace. Even the highest of all designations, the Holy Name of the Almighty, is not spared this disrespect.
The way we live on earth today is nothing but dishonourable. We do not even bother to seek the true meanings of these designations, Words that should automatically invoke in us nothing but the fervent wish to be closer to our Creator.
How many adults, how many parents have the time really to concern ourselves with activities connected with our Creator? How many truly wish to be useful connecting links between the earth and the luminous gardens of our Creator high above us?
Many parents today are so engrossed in conducts or activities unworthy of any honour. Little wonder then why children of today outmatch all adults in everything that is base and empty. Little wonder why children find it difficult truly to honour their earthly fathers and mothers.
Today, many adults have little or nothing left in us for true children to honour. How could a child honour his earthly father who comes home late every night dead drunk? It is either the father is a drunkard, a womaniser, a swindler, a liar, a religious fanatic, or something else horrible. The mother is similarly soaked in immorality.
Painfully, the child watches his parents indulge in various forms of moral decadence – promiscuity, drunkenness, smoking, fraud, envy, dishonesty, backbiting, tales-bearing, quarrelling and much more.
Daily, the child sees his mother in dresses, which show off half her body to every onlooker. He observes painfully how his mother throws herself into the madness of fashion craze as she wears dresses that are nothing but rags.
He sees the mother dances frivolously into the waiting arms of other men apart from his father at night parties, after which she is led into slaughter slabs by these strange men.
The child watches other men cuddle his mother in the name of friendship even in broad daylight. He sits by helplessly as the mother sinks at an alarming speed into the depth, dragging a whole section of the Universe down with her.
The mother speaks, walks and dances ungraciously, copies man in his coarseness, and even overtakes man in his depravity. She smokes, drinks, wears trousers and competes with the man in all his masculine pursuits including sport.
She turns her home into hell, breaking all peace and harmony by her caprices. And yet mother shall be honoured.
Helplessly, the child observes his parents strike dirty deals that lack consideration for the welfare of the other man. He watches as his parents think and strive only after their selfish interest in all things.
He grows up to learn sadly how uncaring and insensitive to the feelings of others his parents are in their base earthly pursuits. Even the real welfare of the child is of no consideration in the rat race, which the parents run on a daily basis.
For the sake of material wealth, the parents are willing to sacrifice everything, forfeit everything else, leaving no time to care for the genuine need of the child. And yet father and mother shalt be honoured.
The designations “father” and “mother” should awaken in every true human being conceptions or intuitions that belong to the highest heights, intuitions which should evoke in us the earnest wish to gain and sustain connection with the luminous heights.
Man will bow in reverential worship if he gets a faint perception of the true meaning of the designations “father” and “mother” and what lies behind them.
“Father” is one of the foremost words from out of the Divine, which the Great Master, Jesus Christ used in His earthly life when speaking with or about “His Father,” the Almighty.
With this example, He points our attention to the fact that “father” is one of the uppermost designations, which we must truly honour if we are to find peace, joy and happiness in our wanderings on earth and throughout our existence.
Similarly, “mother” is a foremost word from out of the Divine. The designation “mother” should serve as the bridge between “Father” and whoever or whatever stands or exists below Him.
For as human beings, “father” and “mother” are words or designations, which should help us to always cast our gaze to the luminous heights. They are like bridges linking this earth to the heights. Embedded in the words “father” and “mother” for the earth man is the assumed knowledge of these heights towards which every genuine human being strives.
Man disregards, disrespects or dishonours these designations at his own peril.
Thus, the Commandment “Thou shalt honour Father and Mother!” in the first place addresses the parents, all fathers, all mothers, all adults.
We must honour father and mother in the general sense in the careful way we live our lives, in the exemplary manner we conduct ourselves in everything and in the quality of the activities we engage in on earth.
There is the crying need for all adults to enforce a change, a renewal or rebirth of the conceptions, the intuitive perceptions arising from the designations “father” and “mother”, and truly strive with our whole being to accord our life to the new.
Then, new human beings will populate the earth who will truly honour father and mother, and who will devote themselves completely to activities connected with seeking out the true Will of their Creator, in order to earnestly serve this Will with their whole being.
Then, true joy, happiness and peace will envelope the earth for all its inhabitants.
