For example do you think you ought to honor your parents if they are complete degenerates who treat you and your family like trash for no good reason?
Uh, yes, you honor them by obeying them up to the point of conscience and by telling them when your conscience forbids your obedience (because they have given an immoral order, which abrogates their authority). It is a principle of US Con Law that a law repugnant to the Constitution is no law and can be disobeyed freely; but the sovereign citizen must make that judgment in the moment before a court weighs in and rules the law unconstitutional in accord with the sovereign's judgment.
You're supposed to apply discernment and not follow the commandments like a freaking robot.
If they are God's commands I see no alternative but to obey them in exactly the same way that rocks obey his commands. This doesn't apply to immoral human commands as judged by the light of conscience. But your language making it ambiguous which commands shows that, once again, you've placed authority in the earthly institution that you do not count as derivative from the only Lawgiver. And you did that by using your own judgment, which you don't admit using.
If you lie to a demon to save the life of some innocent man is that bringing confusion?
A literal demon is not deceived by human lies because he doesn't trust anything. A demonic human still has the image of God in him and should either be treated as such or, in extreme cases, told formally that his actions have lost him the right of being treated by you as human. If you declare war against him in that formal, regulated way, then what you say afterward is not directed to him and he is left to deceive himself about what he overhears.
You see, this is why commandments cant be taken as universal maxims but should be examined case by case with wisdom.
The specifics do not contradict the generic because they involve different combinations of cases than the generic. If they were perceived as permitting one to punch holes in the generic freely without distinguishing the difference of case, then the generic would no longer be the generic and one would be making a false equivalence.
You're still on the hook for claiming there are times when one might steal or commit adultery or take the Lord's name in vain or have other gods before him. I might call you on that too.
"Genocide", a word coined by a Jewish lawyer, is defined with duckspeak so that a single statement that another takes as offensive is as genocidal as the Great Leap Forward. The reality is, as I've indicated, the just-war doctrine that one does not aggress another. When one declares war one offers terms of peace. The short answer is that 31 kings of Canaan refused terms of peace, and 1 king (in Gibeon) accepted them. There are very long answers on the subject posted here too, but if you start to question moral unity because you haven't yet understood the details of the OT wars then you're in the same position as the atheists, who first made this a fad. I know you don't want that in Orthodoxy.
So I continue counseling you to recognize your assumptions and realize that only God is the perfect self-consistent Law and his expressions of that Law in the Bible are sufficiently inspired formulations that we receive and model with some imperfections. That means that everything in our experience is our limited judgment and only God can count as the source of unlimited judgment. He gifts both the church and the individual with judgment powers and neither takes the other's place.
Uh, yes, you honor them by obeying them up to the point of conscience and by telling them when your conscience forbids your obedience (because they have given an immoral order, which abrogates their authority).
But wait, that means you will break the commandment and you won't honor them? I thought commandments don't contradict each other? Uh oh.
If they are God's commands I see no alternative but to obey them in exactly the same way that rocks obey his commands.
You're in a contradiction, bro. You just said you honor your parents up to a point which is not what the commandment asks. You're making clauses up stuff and adding to God's law.
Reading comprehension, friend. "Honor" does not mean "obey to the point of dishonor". See Acts 4-5, we must obey God rather than men. You honor an unjust command by straitly telling the commander you cannot obey and will take the punishment, Daniel 1. (Also Luther, here I stand ....) Your quest to see contradiction and exception in the moral law is, well, doomed.
I said honor by obeying to the point of conscience and by communicating beyond that point. You changed that to honor to a point (and not beyond). You're the one changing the clauses. The tight place is only misperceived by you.
Further, the argument is becoming needlessly pedantic and unfitting of the true Church you represent. It might be time for one or both of us to take a break. (Guy is doing fine AFAIK, we might both be better off listening to him instead.)
Are you a lawyer irl? I can smell one from any distance.
"Honor" does not mean "obey to the point of dishonor". See Acts 4-5, we must obey God rather than men. You honor an unjust command by straitly telling the commander you cannot obey and will take the punishment, Daniel 1. (Also Luther, here I stand ....) Your quest to see contradiction and exception in the moral law is, well, doomed.
I never said anything about obeying so don't present strawmen. Let's stick to the wording of the commandment and my hypothetical:
For example do you think you ought to honor your parents if they are complete degenerates who treat you and your family like trash for no good reason?
You'll notice that in this case you don't disobey or dishonor God in any way. On the contrary - following your logic, your refusal to follow the commandment is disobedience to God. If you're supposed to follow the commandment indiscriminately as a rock does, then you'd have to agree you should still honor your parents even if they abuse you and your family. I can push the hypothetical even further if you need me to.
I larp, I tell people I'm too smart to take the bar.
I told you that a person in your hypothetical can honor his parents at all times including by obeying when he can and telling them when he cannot, which are two applicable categories of honor. You have not said anything about those not being categories of honor. Since you wish to be more specific, you honor a person who is degenerate by appealing to the image of God in him to rise above his degeneracy as the Lord wills; you honor a person who treats you and yours like trash, or abuses you, by the same appeal, in addition to protection of yourself, and of who and what are yours. A minor in his parents' household is in a position of not having mature knowledge of morality, so the means of judging whether a minor is "honoring" are more limited, but God gives minors enough common grace to show a path to them at the level they are at, such as through common cultural expressions of morality. And, when the church encounters an abused minor, they would not say "dishonor your parents", and they would not dishonor the fact that the child has those parents, but as long as the case is limited to a report of child abuse they would still use deliberative, procedural means to protect the child from abuse, and would not act rashly. That is because society's default stance of according the parents rights over the child should not be interrupted lightly but only on credible evidence.
The cases can get more detailed: There may be other factors beyond a report of abuse, such as risk of abuse to others than the reporter, in which case someone might "take the law into his own hands". The person who does that is declaring emergency jurisdiction over the law and is responsible to judge rightly and to be punished for wrong judgment. That still doesn't involve dishonoring a parent. In the extreme case, we get back to the just war, if a parent is being so belligerent and aggressive that the believer regards it as an act of war against him: in that case the state of war should be acknowledged and the inability to retain relations should be stated upfront. Obviously if a father deliberately tells a son he is no longer his son, the son is also no longer subject to the duty that sons have of honoring fathers, though we still honor people as image-carriers.
Now, you may be referring to individuals you know who have been abused and who have not gotten good answers from believers. You may have in mind a case where your conclusion was that a form of dishonoring parents, or some other exception, was morally justified. Please don't take my case law as specific to a case I have not heard all the details of. But I can tell you confidently and categorically that in any case where you have justified your own or another's action while believing it was contrary to some moral principle, there was always a better way available, and reflection in the Spirit will reveal it to you without judgmentalism. To him who knows what to do and does not do it, it is sin. But he will provide a way out with the temptation that you may bear up under it.
So, yes, one who is a child should honor one's parents at all times. In the most extreme cases, the means of honor are strained but can still be preserved, by God's guarantee.
Uh, yes, you honor them by obeying them up to the point of conscience and by telling them when your conscience forbids your obedience (because they have given an immoral order, which abrogates their authority). It is a principle of US Con Law that a law repugnant to the Constitution is no law and can be disobeyed freely; but the sovereign citizen must make that judgment in the moment before a court weighs in and rules the law unconstitutional in accord with the sovereign's judgment.
If they are God's commands I see no alternative but to obey them in exactly the same way that rocks obey his commands. This doesn't apply to immoral human commands as judged by the light of conscience. But your language making it ambiguous which commands shows that, once again, you've placed authority in the earthly institution that you do not count as derivative from the only Lawgiver. And you did that by using your own judgment, which you don't admit using.
A literal demon is not deceived by human lies because he doesn't trust anything. A demonic human still has the image of God in him and should either be treated as such or, in extreme cases, told formally that his actions have lost him the right of being treated by you as human. If you declare war against him in that formal, regulated way, then what you say afterward is not directed to him and he is left to deceive himself about what he overhears.
The specifics do not contradict the generic because they involve different combinations of cases than the generic. If they were perceived as permitting one to punch holes in the generic freely without distinguishing the difference of case, then the generic would no longer be the generic and one would be making a false equivalence.
You're still on the hook for claiming there are times when one might steal or commit adultery or take the Lord's name in vain or have other gods before him. I might call you on that too.
"Genocide", a word coined by a Jewish lawyer, is defined with duckspeak so that a single statement that another takes as offensive is as genocidal as the Great Leap Forward. The reality is, as I've indicated, the just-war doctrine that one does not aggress another. When one declares war one offers terms of peace. The short answer is that 31 kings of Canaan refused terms of peace, and 1 king (in Gibeon) accepted them. There are very long answers on the subject posted here too, but if you start to question moral unity because you haven't yet understood the details of the OT wars then you're in the same position as the atheists, who first made this a fad. I know you don't want that in Orthodoxy.
So I continue counseling you to recognize your assumptions and realize that only God is the perfect self-consistent Law and his expressions of that Law in the Bible are sufficiently inspired formulations that we receive and model with some imperfections. That means that everything in our experience is our limited judgment and only God can count as the source of unlimited judgment. He gifts both the church and the individual with judgment powers and neither takes the other's place.
But wait, that means you will break the commandment and you won't honor them? I thought commandments don't contradict each other? Uh oh.
You're in a contradiction, bro. You just said you honor your parents up to a point which is not what the commandment asks. You're making clauses up stuff and adding to God's law.
It seems you got yourself in a tight place here.
Reading comprehension, friend. "Honor" does not mean "obey to the point of dishonor". See Acts 4-5, we must obey God rather than men. You honor an unjust command by straitly telling the commander you cannot obey and will take the punishment, Daniel 1. (Also Luther, here I stand ....) Your quest to see contradiction and exception in the moral law is, well, doomed.
I said honor by obeying to the point of conscience and by communicating beyond that point. You changed that to honor to a point (and not beyond). You're the one changing the clauses. The tight place is only misperceived by you.
Further, the argument is becoming needlessly pedantic and unfitting of the true Church you represent. It might be time for one or both of us to take a break. (Guy is doing fine AFAIK, we might both be better off listening to him instead.)
Are you a lawyer irl? I can smell one from any distance.
I never said anything about obeying so don't present strawmen. Let's stick to the wording of the commandment and my hypothetical:
You'll notice that in this case you don't disobey or dishonor God in any way. On the contrary - following your logic, your refusal to follow the commandment is disobedience to God. If you're supposed to follow the commandment indiscriminately as a rock does, then you'd have to agree you should still honor your parents even if they abuse you and your family. I can push the hypothetical even further if you need me to.
I larp, I tell people I'm too smart to take the bar.
I told you that a person in your hypothetical can honor his parents at all times including by obeying when he can and telling them when he cannot, which are two applicable categories of honor. You have not said anything about those not being categories of honor. Since you wish to be more specific, you honor a person who is degenerate by appealing to the image of God in him to rise above his degeneracy as the Lord wills; you honor a person who treats you and yours like trash, or abuses you, by the same appeal, in addition to protection of yourself, and of who and what are yours. A minor in his parents' household is in a position of not having mature knowledge of morality, so the means of judging whether a minor is "honoring" are more limited, but God gives minors enough common grace to show a path to them at the level they are at, such as through common cultural expressions of morality. And, when the church encounters an abused minor, they would not say "dishonor your parents", and they would not dishonor the fact that the child has those parents, but as long as the case is limited to a report of child abuse they would still use deliberative, procedural means to protect the child from abuse, and would not act rashly. That is because society's default stance of according the parents rights over the child should not be interrupted lightly but only on credible evidence.
The cases can get more detailed: There may be other factors beyond a report of abuse, such as risk of abuse to others than the reporter, in which case someone might "take the law into his own hands". The person who does that is declaring emergency jurisdiction over the law and is responsible to judge rightly and to be punished for wrong judgment. That still doesn't involve dishonoring a parent. In the extreme case, we get back to the just war, if a parent is being so belligerent and aggressive that the believer regards it as an act of war against him: in that case the state of war should be acknowledged and the inability to retain relations should be stated upfront. Obviously if a father deliberately tells a son he is no longer his son, the son is also no longer subject to the duty that sons have of honoring fathers, though we still honor people as image-carriers.
Now, you may be referring to individuals you know who have been abused and who have not gotten good answers from believers. You may have in mind a case where your conclusion was that a form of dishonoring parents, or some other exception, was morally justified. Please don't take my case law as specific to a case I have not heard all the details of. But I can tell you confidently and categorically that in any case where you have justified your own or another's action while believing it was contrary to some moral principle, there was always a better way available, and reflection in the Spirit will reveal it to you without judgmentalism. To him who knows what to do and does not do it, it is sin. But he will provide a way out with the temptation that you may bear up under it.
So, yes, one who is a child should honor one's parents at all times. In the most extreme cases, the means of honor are strained but can still be preserved, by God's guarantee.