Commandments #5 and 6

Undoubtedly, one of the greatest miracles we can point to is the miracle of birth. The idea of one sperm meeting one egg, at a microscopic level, then gestating in the body of another until it is so large that it has to leave the mother-host is something on the same level of a science fiction horror movie. The idea of something growing inside another, using specific internal structures for their supposed purpose is mind-boggling. Add the fact that in these two zygotes are all of the cellular data necessary to grow these two cells into a fully formed and functional being is so profound it seems that you can’t just make this stuff up. This process is begun and completed millions of times a day and the successful product is pretty will in line with the blue print that was designed thousands of years ago.

It just doesn’t stop there, the product grows to the same approximate size of the host organism and all of this is so the population of the species continues. The idea that something of this complexity can be just a matter of chance or trial and error seems a little specious, especially since this process has been duplicated for thousands of years without substantial design change or real time modification shows that the design has been determined sound and there are no expected alterations coming down the pipe. With all of these infinitesimal, minute actions having to be followed in a specific sequence to get to the end of the process shows that without a doubt this is designed by God. I don’t know of anyone who has the knowledge, creativity, or ingenuity to put something like this together.

This process requires two individual beings that have gone through this process before as well and thus the process continues ad infinitum. This is something that we all have in common, two predecessors, mom and dad. To them we directly owe everything. They fed us, taught us, cared for us, wiped our behinds, etc. They took our unformed psyche and molded it into what we are today. This bond that we have with our parents is something that God specifically addressed in the Decalogue and was the first commandment that dealt with the relationship between man and man. It was also the first commandment that dealt with interpersonal sin, where man can sin against man. Naturally however, it doesn’t stop there since all of God’s commandments also have God’s involvement.

Looking at the Scripture Exo 20:12, it reads:

The Holman Christian Standard Bible Chapter 20

12 Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

There are two things that jump out at me when looking at this. First, there is the relationship that God built by establishing the parent-child bond. What basis is this bond? Why should we honor our parents? Because they are broken, selfish, and inherently evil, what have we to gain by honoring and serving them? We sometimes come out of our childhood even more broken then if we were left alone to be raised by animals. Look at the examples of pedophiles, serial killers, child abusers, and such. They were raised by parents, but their parents invariably distorted or warped their sense of right and wrong or even mere normalcy, so why would we want to put our hopes in our parents when they can’t or won’t put our needs in play?

The first reason is that God put these individuals into our lives and trusted them with the responsibility of raising us. God gave them the ability to care and love their creation.