Article: My Friend Honored God and His Parents — Why Did He Die Young?

Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

While attending a Christian school, the teachers used the Biblical phrase "that your days may be long" as a way to threaten stress the importance to obedience to not just parents but all authority. "God says right here, that if you honor and obey your parents, you will live a long time. So, if you want a long life, then you have to honor and obey your parents and those in authority over you." 

It was very confusing to many of us when a classmate died. He was a good person and loved his parents, so why did God not keep His promise to let him live long? Why didn't that promise apply to him? What about parents who weren't so honorable? They were sexually, physically, and emotionally abusing their child. Are children suppose to honor and obey their parents who are abusive so they could have a long life? How was the child suppose to do that? I have several friends whose children have died who have really struggled over the teaching they received in church on this matter. "Did my child have some secret sin I didn't know about?" I have friends whose parents have died young but had been very dutiful children. "Why didn't God keep His promise? If this promise does not apply to this person, then what ones do not apply to me? How can we rest on God's promises if they may or may not apply? " they asked.

God's Word is not in error. It's our interpretation! John Piper solves that problem in the article I've shared below. I feel there needs to be a clearer teaching on this in the church so that it does not cause people to question God's goodness and faithfulness. If you have wondered about these passages and the life happening around you, I encourage you to read the article in its entirety and see what God is really saying.

My Friend Honored God and His Parents — Why Did He Die Young?
"So, if we have been trained to see these patterns, if children have been shown this, we won’t be as likely to give Ephesians 6:3 a meaning Paul surely did not intend for it to have. In the Old Testament, this promise was made to the people of Israel as a whole that they would endure from generation to generation in the land of promise if they were the kind of people who kept the law and honored their parents. It is not a promise to each individual Israelite who honors his parents that he will live out his full three score and ten. You can read it. You will remain in the land, meaning you, the people of Israel, won’t be swept away into Babylon if you are law-keeping people. And they weren’t, and so they were swept away. ...

Here is my suggestion: If you put the two halves together, “it will go well with you and you will live long,” I would suggest in view of all we have seen is that it means it will go well with you and you will live as long as it going well with you implies. In other words, “it will go well with you” defines “you will live long,” not the other way around. Living long doesn’t define how it will go well with you. Going well with you defines how long you will live. And that is exactly the way, I think, we should say it to a child who is dying or who has lost a friend or a parent — though we don’t speak glibly or say it without tears — but we do say, “In God’s mind and God’s good heart, it is going well. It is going to go well with you.” ...

If God takes a child — he gives and he takes, he gives and he takes — blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21). If God takes a child in the most ultimate sense, it has gone well with them and that is what he promised. It will go well for you and you will live as long as is good for you on this earth and then forever in heaven."

Please note what I feel is a most crucial point. I know firsthand that truth without love is very harmful to tender hearts. 

"And that is exactly the way, I think, we should say it to a child who is dying or who has lost a friend or a parent — though we don’t speak glibly or say it without tears — but we do say, “In God’s mind and God’s good heart, it is going well. It is going to go well with you.”