4. Now children are not to obey parents who are so foolish that they bring up their children after the fashion of this world. God is to be more highly regarded than parents according to the first three commandments. I call it being brought up after the fashion of the world when parents teach their children to seek nothing but the pleasure, honor, possessions, or power of this world.

To wear decent clothes and seek an honest living is a necessity, not a sin. Yet in his heart a child must be reconciled to the fact that it is an awful pity that this miserable earthly life cannot well be lived, or even begun, without the striving after more adornment and more possessions than are necessary to protect the body against cold and for nourishment. Thus the child must be taught to do against its own will what the world wants. The child must put up with fools and with that kind of evil for the sake of something better and to avoid something worse. Queen Esther wore her royal crown, but yet she said to God, “Thou knowest that the sign of my high estate which is upon my head has never at all delighted me, and that I abhor it as a filthy, menstruous rag. I never wear it when I am alone, but only when I have to and when I face the people.” The heart that is so minded wears adornment without peril, for it wears and yet does not wear, it dances yet does not dance, it lives well yet does not live well. And souls such as this are the secret hidden brides of Christ. But such souls are rare, for it is hard not to take delight in great adornment and display. Thus St. Cecilia wore golden clothes at the command of her parents, but underneath she wore a hair shirt next to her skin. (Luther’s Works, v. 44 p.83-84).

Thus God’s commandment falls absolutely to the ground, unwittingly, and ostensibly for good reasons. Then is fulfilled that which is written in the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, that the children are destroyed by their own parents [Isa. 57:5; Jer. 7:31; 32:35]. They do what King Manasseh did. This king sacrificed his son to the idol Molech and burned him.⁴⁷ What else is it but to sacrifice one’s own child to an idol and burn it when parents train their children more in the love of the world than in the love of God, and let their children go their own way and get burned up in worldly pleasure, love, enjoyment, lust, goods, and honor, but let God’s love and honor and the love of eternal blessings be extinguished in them?

O how perilous it is to be a father or mother, where only flesh and blood are supreme! Indeed, it is because parents are commanded to teach their children that the knowledge and keeping of the first three and the last six commandments depend on this commandment. As Psalm 78[:5–6] says, “How strictly has God commanded our fathers to make known his commandments to their children, that the generation to come might know them and declare them to their children’s children.” This is also the reason God bids us honor our parents, that is, to love them with fear; for that other love is without fear, therefore, it is more dishonor than honor.

Now see whether everyone does not have enough good works to do, whether he be father or child. But we, blind men that we are, neglect such works as these and seek elsewhere all sorts of other works which are not commanded. (Luther’s Works, v. 44 p.83).

3. There is still another kind of dishonoring of parents, much more dangerous and subtle than this first, [a dishonoring] which decks itself out and lets itself be regarded as a true honoring of parents. That is when a child has its own way and the parents allow it to do so out of natural love. In this case they honor one another and love one another. On all sides it is a precious thing; the mother and father are pleased and the child is pleased.

This plague is so common that instances of the first kind of dishonoring are very rarely seen. This second kind of dishonoring arises from the fact that the parents have been blinded and neither know nor honor God in the sense of the first three commandments. For this reason they cannot see what the children lack, or how they ought to teach them and bring them up. It is only to please men and to get ahead that they train their children for worldly honors, pleasure, and possessions. The children like this, and, of course, they obey very gladly without any back talk. (Luther’s Works, v. 44 p.82-83).