I was reminded a couple of weeks ago about the importance of scripture by a certain speaker who had come to our church who, during the heart of his sermon, just as he was about to pull out a biblical stunt like all prophets do, he said something that really stuck with me, “All scripture is important….” Later on as we were sipping on some juice, he went as far as to say the book of Numbers was equally important to the book of Corinthians. WHAT? The book of numbers? The book of numbers? Surely he was joking! The beginning of the book of numbers is like a biblical class register, where God documents all his homies? I’ve tried to read the book of Numbers once, I read it until I realized that this was a census, the only thing missing was income, education and employment rates, then I paged to David and Bethsheba, you know some real soapy and scandalous stuff, Bold and the Beautiful style.

Anyway I took that statement to heart and have approached all scripture more analytically ever since.
You can imagine the revelation-overflow when I came across a piece of scripture in the book of Ephesians 6:4 that said:
“And, ye fathers (note: other versions say parents), provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

I was astounded by this piece of scripture, I had to whoop out my more analytical bible the Amplified Version and it quoted:
“Fathers, do not irritate and provoke your children to anger [do not exasperate them to resentment], but rear them [tenderly] in the training and discipline and the counsel and admonition of the Lord.”

Honestly, the people who are entrusted to share on the pulpit the precious mysteries of God have neglected to quote this piece of scripture. Maybe because they are part of the gang being referred to.
Too many times have we heard the echo of,”Children honour your parents, so you may live longer.” This piece of scripture was drummed down my throat since before I could read or write, to Sunday School, right till I celebrated my 21st, but never ever have I heard any pastor preaching about our parents provoking us. The preaching is extended fr chom to our traditional black families. In any black family whether it be Sotho, Zulu, Xhosa or Swati (I don’t know about the Chinese and Indians), disrespecting an elder is the equivalent of 1st degree murder. I have heard elders referring to a disobedient as aft child as if he had leprosy, “Stay away from that child, he will contaminate you with his, disobeying-his-mama-ritis.” One of my aunts even went as far as to threaten to revoke my family membership if I ever disobeyed my mother again, alas she did not ask what my mother had done for me to disobey her word.

You would swear that the only people who ever do wrong in the parent-child equation, are the children. The weak chains in the link are the offspring and the Allmighty- Parents are never prone to wrong-doing.
The graphic language that Paul uses in his statement is, ‘provoke to wrath’, I don’t mean to take you on an english lesson but wrath is a pretty strong term, and behold it was used by an Apostle of the living God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

How do our parents provoke us, well they provoke us when they:
Promise us one thing and then turn around and break their promise, after we had put all our trust in them
When they talk to us like we are little kids
When they undermine our hopes and dreams and substitute them for their own
When they refuse to listen to our side of the story
When they unreasonably favour one sibling over another, I mean if you didn’t want the other one why didn’t you just kill her instead of putting her through the pain of watching her suffer this horrid injustice.
When they are adamant they are right, when they are blatantly wrong.
The list goes on.

One thing that parents should learn is that the fact that they birthed us, and raised us with sweat blood and tears, does not absolve them from the laws of right and wrong, of the golden rule: Treating others as you would want to be treated.
We want to respect them and even though our respect for them may not necessarily end but it diminishes everytime they do us un-repentantly wrong.
But then again what do I know, I am a child right?