"Consider, then, a father who is neither a doctor nor acquainted with matters pertaining to health and sickness. Suppose he ordered something for his sick son that he thought would help but which was useless, if not harmful. Suppose, too, that the sick son knew this. If the son did not do what he ordered, is he disobeying his father and is he disobedient? This is unlikely."
- Lecture 16, Paragraph 2
One of the 10 Commandments is "Honor your father and mother." I don't think that honoring them means 100% blind obedience, as is expected in some cultures. I have seen in some Asian cultures, for example, that seniority is more important than correctness. This is even to the extreme example of "older" twins having authority over the "younger" twin.
Doesn't having a healthy child bring honor to the father and mother?
Doesn't having an educated child bring honor to the father and mother?
Doesn't having a morally upright child bring honor to the father and mother?
If the father asks the child to do something immoral, and the child obeys, aren't they both dishonored? But if the child picks the correct path, isn't the father honored for having raised such an upright child, despite the seeming disobedience?
If my father were to bring to me a multi-level marketing scheme and ask me to buy into it, and I knew that it was a fool's errand and would only lose him money, should I throw my money away to support my father? Or should I respectfully decline and let the scheme fail sooner, thus bringing my father back to reality?
Doesn't having a healthy child bring honor to the father and mother?
Doesn't having an educated child bring honor to the father and mother?
Doesn't having a morally upright child bring honor to the father and mother?
If the father asks the child to do something immoral, and the child obeys, aren't they both dishonored? But if the child picks the correct path, isn't the father honored for having raised such an upright child, despite the seeming disobedience?
If my father were to bring to me a multi-level marketing scheme and ask me to buy into it, and I knew that it was a fool's errand and would only lose him money, should I throw my money away to support my father? Or should I respectfully decline and let the scheme fail sooner, thus bringing my father back to reality?
Rufus, Musonius, and Cynthia Ann Kent King. "16. By Musonius, from the Lecture on Whether Parents Must Be Obeyed in All Things." Musonius Rufus: Lectures & Sayings. United States: Createspace, 2011. 65-68. Print.
