“And you shall keep My statutes, and perform them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you. For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He has cursed his father or mother. His blood shall be upon him” (Leviticus 20:8)
How much stronger is this warning than that in the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and mother.” It transcends respect, demanding obedience and loyalty. You can hear the outcry of protest from young Americans. It’s not our way. We are free to do as we please, even when it hurts our parents. From “Abies Irish Rose” through “The Graduate,” toss in “All in the Family,” and you see the way we have made disrespect a perverted virtue. Such rebellion will eventually destroy America.
The largest party in Switzerland, the “People’s Party,” is searching for signatures to have a policy appear on the coming elections which would expel from their country entire families for the crimes of any member. The Swiss are a people who welcome guests but do not encourage them to become citizens. This policy is considered by many to be mean-spirited, aimed at foreigners and recent immigrants. Some call it “Nazi.” But it is greeted by many indigenous Swiss as a welcome response to what they see happening in surrounding European countries. The wave of fanaticism sweeping parts of the world by radical Muslim extremists is not for them. France, England and Spain, even tiny obscure Denmark, have experienced tragic incidents of bombings and assassinations in the name of Allah. The Swiss and Danes might say that it was inevitable that the colonialist nations who profited at the expense of the Third World countries would one day be made to deal with those countries they had exploited. The Swiss and Danes had no part of that program of colonialism.
Ironically, one would think that Muslims, children of Abraham like the Hebrews and Christians, would understand the concept of responsibility that a family assumes for its members. Since the middle of the last century Israel has been punishing families and whole villages for the attacks against their people and places. One person daring to cause an incident against a Jewish settler would be enough to precipitate clearing out all members of a village and bulldozing it into the sand. Arabs were and still are incapable of retaliating in kind. But they all, Semites alike, Jews and Arabs, understand the rationale of family and tribal loyalty.
The sadness is that many decent, law abiding and hard working Muslim families have been able to escape to countries where they have the opportunity to enjoy the peace and freedom of western civilization, only to raise sons and daughters influenced by the radicals that instill into their minds a cause that transcends all other loyalties. Religion is what one is concerned with and committed to more than anything else in life—indeed, it’s what one would die for. A religion of comfort is no religion at all. Why we honor our saints is because they gave their lives for Jesus Christ.
Our ultimate loyalty is not to our parents, but to the Holy Trinity. Jesus said: “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37). He tells us that because He is including us into a far greater family than that into which we have been born. Indeed, many of our relatives by blood will be absent from that glorious family of God. We are born not accidentally, but by a plan that is a mystery to our reason; but we are invited to become children of the heavenly Father, by the invitation from Jesus Christ and the triumph over the flesh that He achieved by His life, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension on our behalf.