Should Christians Desire to Live Close to Their Parents?

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People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the work of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. We're your hosts, Harrison Kering and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age-old question, should Christians desire to live close to their parents?

Now Tim, as we kick this episode off, what Bible verse do you have for us related to children living close to their parents as they become adults?

Yes, so Genesis 2 24 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So that's it.

All right, so leave them, never look back, right? Basically don't talk to them ever again, right?

Yeah, don't be Lot's wife, right?

Don't turn back. So essentially what I'm learning here, what I'm hearing from you, Tim, is once I find a wife, ditch my parents, excommunicate them, never talk to them again, or I'll become a pillar of salt.

I mean, yeah.

Okay, I feel like that can't be the answer.

No, no. Yeah, obviously a man should fully take on the role of provider when he starts out his marriage, essentially. So this used to be a common impulse that people had where they thought of marriage as a fundamental leaving of their father and mother and taking on their roles.

I think you have a lot of people right now, I interact with a young lady on Twitter who basically was saying that that was not her non-negotiable anymore, that a man would be fully able to provide for her because the economy is so bad.

I mean, I think, yeah, the economy has always been bad and at the risk of sounding like a boomer even though I'm a millennial. Yeah, I mean, the economy has always been bad and surely a man has some kind of responsibility to take on his role of provider.

And there's times in history where it's more difficult to do that than others. But yeah, I mean, certainly you should make a break from being financially supported by your parents. And typically that's going to involve having your own place of residence.

I mean, it's almost what I mean is there's going to be a leaving their house kind of thing. I mean, people can react to that by basically saying that in biblical times they all lived in a similar geographic location.

Maybe the house was a larger house that was functioning kind of like a village or something along those lines and everything else. Now, I mean, you do have to look at the current situation and think about the way that houses are set up.

And when people start off marriage being financially dependent on their parents from the beginning for their basic necessities, then what happens is the person who is paying the bills is going to be the one who is in charge, right?

Right.

Yeah, so whoever is paying the bills is going to be in charge. And then typically what happens is you have your wife who has impulses to run her household in a particular way and your mom or your mother-in-law who has their own impulses.

Now, if it's her mother-in-law, then they're going to team up against you. If it's your mother-in-law

You just multiplied your opposition, right?

Yeah.

If it's your mom, then there's going to be a constant. You're trying to figure out how to they're going to pit each other against you or pit you against each other and force you to pick. That's just a nightmare.

But yes, I think you should leave the house. You shouldn't be financially dependent on your parents. I mean, I think in the best-case scenario, as a generality, I'm able to generalize in general, I would say you should want to be around your parents.

You should want to be around your parents, right?

Yeah, you should want to be around your parents. In an ideal world, you should want to be located close to them. I've always wanted to be close to my parents. That's a good thing. If you don't have significantly bad relationships with your parents, you should want to be around them.

I think that's part of honoring them. So honor your father and mother so your days are long in the earth. I mean, certainly there are marriages where two people pursue a long-distance relationship and you're going to have to pick which parents to honor.

So there's messy situations you can find yourself in. But as a standard basic impulse, you should want to be around your parents. It would be nice to be a part of their life. It would be nice to have your grandchildren to be a part of their life.

All those things are good. Those are things that should be the standard Christian impulse. There shouldn't be so much bitterness that's in your heart and bitterness in your relationship where you're just like, man, I need to get away from them.

So if that's your standard posture, that's certainly not a good posture. But then I can imagine some situations where you might need to leave. I can imagine some situations where you might need to leave.

I can imagine situations where even though you don't have they're not good influences on your children. They're trying to cause division between you and your wife. I mean, I can imagine situations where you still want to be around them for the sake of honoring them.

So I think I have a pretty high standard of you need to leave for the sake of everyone's spiritual benefit. I mean, I'm not a big fan of all the safe space kind of, I need to set boundaries and protect myself and keep you at a distance because I'm unsafe and all that.

I feel like that's pretty crazy. Like a pretty crazy way to think about these kind of things in general. But then, I mean, I can imagine some situations where they really are so evil to the point where it's not even helpful to be around them.

But I can also imagine situations where life just takes you away and God in his providence opens doors that you need to walk through and not that you walk through every open door. But what may be desirable in certain ways isn't the wisest move.

So, yeah. I mean, I think as a general impulse, you should want to be around them for sure.

Yeah, because essentially, it's hard to honor your father and mother if you're hundreds or thousands of miles away from them. I mean, you still can. And like you said, there's probably situations where that's just not possible for one reason or another.

But in general, you should at least want to be close to your parents for a ton of different reasons. As they get older, they're going to become more dependent on other people to help take care of them.

Ideally, Lord willing, you're going to be having children, so their grandchildren. And it's good for them to see their grandchildren. And the Bible talks over and over about how that's a great blessing when people get to see their children's children.

And so there's a ton of... Not to mention, I mean, you do still get... Assuming your parents are able to and they prioritize this, which they probably should, there is still significant support that comes from being close to your parents.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times my in-laws have been able to really help us out when we... I mean, we had that fire, right? And so we had to go stay with them for like a week or two weeks just out of the blue.

Because otherwise it would be, hey, we got to spend a ton of money living in a hotel or something like that. And so part of it is just like there's a benefit to you as well, right?

Yeah, I mean, they bless you, you bless them.

Right, right.

I think a lot of young parents, they don't have... This is particularly true, I think, on the mom side of things. They don't necessarily... They have impulses to love their family, but then they don't have necessarily impulses to love their husband's family.

So then they can be very protective of their children and they don't have impulses to necessarily share them with their extended family in the same way they may have impulses to share them with their own extended family.

So that often happens with ladies with their children to where they don't have inside of them this, like I really need to allow my grandparents to be grandparents.

Yeah, yeah.

They think about it primarily in terms of they have a mom responsibility to protect their kids and there's nothing more to it than that. But then grandparents have... They don't have the same rights to the children, but if you want to act like they have no rights whatsoever to their grandchildren, then I think you've significantly misunderstood the nature of why you exist, basically.

Yeah, yeah.

Why this marriage was even possible was because you had people who spent 20 years or more at times, less or more, but a significant amount of time and resources changing diapers for your husband and taking care of him.

Getting your husband to a place where he could marry you, right?

Yeah, cleaning up his throw up. I remember one time when I was sick, I walked out of the room and my dad was down there and then I just kind of looked at him and then I just hurled all over the floor right in front of him and he just kind of looked at me and just kind of shook his head and it was like, all right, go lay down.

I'll get the mop bucket.

But I mean, I understand that because I've had the same reaction to my children when they puke like that. It's just like, why couldn't you just make it a few more feet? Then you're struggling internally to fight it and then you're like, I'm being a jerk.

They couldn't help it, I guess, maybe. Why couldn't they help it? But it seems like they should have. I think, yeah, you need to think about those kind of things. A man can often be a lot more loyal to his mom than he should be to her.

Then he has impulses to be more loyal to his mom and then they're fighting and all that. But I think you really should think to yourself that you have real responsibilities to them that they've earned for sure.

I obviously know of situations where the parents are so evil and destructive to the relationship that you may need to distance yourself from them. I mean, for instance, I know of a relationship where the mom did not want the guy to get married because she almost had this sick kind of relationship with him where she just was very, very possessive of him.

As he's pursuing a spouse, she just took it as a betrayal of her. It's a very weird kind of reaction. He would try to have her over to get to know them and they wouldn't even talk to her the whole entire time.

They would ignore her the whole entire time and not look at her the whole entire time. Then at some point, you just have to say, hey, we're a package deal. We're married. If you can't be nice to my wife, if you're going to ignore her, then we're just not going to come around, that kind of thing.

But you're not doing that as a petulant child. I don't deserve to be treated like this. You're doing that as a husband who's saying, yeah, you're not going to ignore my wife.

Right, right.

You need to figure out how to make the adjustments. You need to figure out at that point. I have categories for things like that. I mean, those are rare situations.

Sure, there's exceptions to it, right?

Yeah, I mean, those are rare. I mean, most relationships are not like that. I mean, is Gloria Amanda overlooking a fence? I mean, I think there's a lot of offenses you overlook kind of things. I mean, just like completely pretending like a person does not exist is pretty extreme.

Sure, yeah.

But I mean, I do think that, yeah, if you're only going to hang out with your parents if they never sin, then you have a pretty good excuse. I mean, you're doing what the Pharisees did, right? They're saying, whatever profit you may receive from me, let it be Corbin, a gift from God.

I'm trying to serve the Lord, and you're disrupting me from my sanctification or something. Therefore, I need to remove myself from your presence. It's like, no, come on. There's a lot of offenses.

You have some kind of category for grace and mercy.

Yeah, I mean, I think most—.

Or you're not going to be shown any, right?

Yeah, I think most mother-in-laws are going to be tempted to be tyrannical in certain ways, right? Like in terms of—. I mean, those are just very common kind of situations where they overstep their bounds at certain points, and as a husband, you have to draw certain lines and say, hey, yeah, this isn't going to happen, that's not going to happen, and whatever else.

I mean, those kind of things happen. I don't think you just get offended and say, yeah, we don't want to have anything to do with you because you're making our life hard or whatever. I think you win them over.

You win them over slowly, and that's the way it works. So yeah, I mean, there's obviously in-law problems that can happen and everything else, but even if your parents weren't wonderful and they weren't great, I mean, you still need to pursue them as an act of honoring them.

So your impulse should be to—. I want to be a part of your life. I want to be around you. That's a standard kind of thing that most people should have that kind of impulse. Now, I mean, at the same time, I mean, yes, serving the Lord may require you to have other priorities at times.

And so you do have to think about, well, as a man, how do I provide for my family? You may be looking and looking and looking where you're at, and there's just no opportunities there, and you have to take what you have to take.

And so there's things like that. There may be ministry opportunities where you say, hey, I need to take this ministry opportunity, and that's fine. We have technology that makes a lot of honoring your family easier than it's ever been throughout the history of the world.

But certainly Abraham left father and mother and went to the Promised Land. So there are categories for doing that as an act of faithfulness for sure.

So you're not wholly condemning the international missionary then?

Yeah. No.

I mean, I think that there are things like that. We do have to preach the gospel to the people who haven't heard it. So, yeah, there are opportunities like that.

Well, it's good to know that Paul wasn't in sin when he was helping establish the early church. So I guess you mentioned this earlier, and I wanted to come back to it just briefly and ask, when we look back at the Israelites and then later on the Christians that made up the early church right after Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven, was it typical for the Israelites and for the newly converted Christians to remain close to their parents?

I mean, I know there were some circumstances where that wasn't the case. Obviously, you have a couple different captivity. The Israelites are taken into captivity. They're driven out of their own land.

And so you certainly have exceptions to that. But then in general, did they stay close to their parents? The same thing for the early Christians. There were certain things that drove them out, mainly through persecution.

But then did they, in general, stay close to their parents? Or was that just not something that was a priority that we see exemplified among them?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of these are covenantal concerns, essentially. Meaning, so when you think about the Abrahamic blessing, it was a blessing of a land, like a particular land, right? So this is a blessing tied to the promised land.

And this blessing was passed from generation to generation. So once the Israelites went into the promised land, the land was divided by tribal divisions and family divisions, and then that was an inheritance that's passed down.

And so you have an agrarian society, a largely agrarian society, where a piece of land was given to particular families that was their eternal possession. So then you can think about the Naboth's vineyard kind of example at that point where he's making an illegitimate land grab to Naboth's property, which was his possession that he's not really allowed to surrender at that point.

So yeah, I mean, in the old covenant economy, there was a sense in which you stay around and build your inheritance. And part of that is because God had a plan to send his Messiah to be born of the Jews, and there is a vested interest in verifying that he's coming from the right family line.

Right.

So some of it's that. I mean, I don't think that Christians think enough about the idea of inheritance like they should. So I mean, even a righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

We don't even think in those terms. We think in terms of you have all the boomer jokes that people make, which I mean, I don't think you should. If you're going to make those, you need to figure out some respectful way to do it.

But they make these boomer jokes about how boomers basically have no interest whatsoever in giving an inheritance to their kids. They're off going on vacations and wasting all their money and everything else.

And I mean, some of those accusations, this testimony is true, right, in the language of Paul.

Yeah.

I think there's a respectful way to say it, but certainly there's some truth there to it. But yeah, I mean, I certainly think that we should be thinking in terms of inheritance and building a legacy, so to speak, and to the extent to which a father could train their children in some more definite future plan that's more tied to a particular place.

I think all those things are good. So I mean, I think Trump would be a good example of someone doing that thing to where he's thinking in terms of incorporating his family members into the family business, right?

And I mean, you look at his kids, you say whatever you want to say about the dude. But I mean, look at his kids, and they are responsible people. And he's given them a hand up in the world, right?

Yeah.

I bet a lot of people would really appreciate the kind of help that his son's gotten, right?

Yeah, but I mean, the thing is they're not undeserving people. His son is not like Hunter Biden kind of situation, right? He's been given a hand up by his father, and it's just a scoundrel. These are respectable by the world standard kind of people who are stepping into roles of responsibility they've been trained for.

So I mean, I think there's that. So yeah, I mean, you think about the nature of the New Covenant. Jesus says, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. There is a missionary impulse in the New Covenant that wasn't persistent to the same degree under the Old Covenant because it's a different covenant with different promises and different expectations as far as that goes.

So yeah, I'm not saying the promises are diametrically opposed. They're just differently applied for sure. So you think about the nature of the covenant. There is a missionary impulse in the way that there's not the same Old Testament expectations of being tied to one particular land and one particular place.

But at the same time, I mean, I don't think I mean, to the extent to which you could build like a legacy where you're at that's intergenerational, I think that's good. That's a good thing. That may not be God's plan, but I mean that should be

I think it's perfectly reasonable to be working towards that. And I think a lot of this question hinges on should you desire to be around your family? I think, well, absolutely. Why not? I mean, unless you're just filled with bitterness and all this kind of lack of forgiveness, I mean, why wouldn't you want to repay your parents for all the sacrifice and support that they've given you over the course of their life?

Yeah, yeah. One thing I think about is talking I think there's like a when you stay close to your parents, assuming your parents were Christian, when you stay close to them and you're still intimately involved in each other's lives, I do think there is sort of a witness that's being given there to the faithfulness of the parents.

I think of Doug Wilson. I wish I I've probably heard this from a couple different people talking about Doug Wilson, but there's someone I'm thinking of in particular whose name is escaping me right now, but they were not big fans of Doug Wilson.

But I guess Doug invited him out to Moscow, and so the guy goes over there. He spends like a weekend or four or five days maybe in Moscow just being around their church and talking a lot to Doug Wilson and spending time with Doug Wilson's family.

And this guy said that the thing that really won him over on Doug was not the one-on-one conversations with Doug. It was not seeing the way the church operates on a day-to-day basis. It was him going to eat dinner with the Wilson family.

And I mean, there's children. His children are there. His grandchildren are there. And it's just like the house is stuffed with people that are all coming from Doug Wilson and his wife. And he said that was the thing that really won him over on Doug, regardless of the disagreements they might have had.

It's hard to look at that kind of fruit and say there's something bad here, there's something wrong here, because how does it produce a family that is this healthy and has this much love for one another?

And so I think it does. Along with all the things you're saying, it does produce a very strong witness to the faithfulness of the heads of that family, the patriarch and the matriarch of that family, and the work that has to be put in that is undeniable to bring about that kind of fruit.

And obviously, it's enabled by God. It's not as if Doug Wilson's just this amazing person who has all this power and authority. It's all done by God, by the Holy Spirit working inside of them. But certainly a very powerful testimony when your children are willing to be close to you, right?

Yeah, I mean, they have their weekly Sabbath dinners. And so, yeah, I think having a practice like that where every week you're hanging out with your extended family, I think that's a good thing too. I mean, it's not just hanging out to pursue entertainment.

There's some spiritual thing happening there too, focused on things that matter. So I think that's a very good thing. I think a lot of people, they should have an impulse to want to honor their father and mother and to the extent to which they're so bitter at them that they're just kind of proving themselves to be children still, if that makes sense.

So, I mean, you know that you grow. One of the ways you know that you've grown up is when you get over all your hangups or whatever. I mean, it's funny. Part of having a sinful nature is that you're predisposed to see only the flaws in other people.

And so a lot of people, I mean, that's their childhood. All they see is the flaws in their parents. They're not thankful for them whatsoever. And then they get out on their own for a little bit, and they're filled with bitterness about all the problems of their upbringing and all that kind of stuff.

And then at a certain point, it begins to dawn on them after they have kids that this wasn't nearly as easy as what they thought. And then they begin to appreciate their parents more and more. And at a certain point, it's like, well, I guess maybe they're better parents than I was.

I mean, I think a lot of people go through that kind of cycle. But I mean, the quicker you assuming you're going through that cycle, the quicker you get to the other side. I mean, that's really kind of when you grow up.

Quit being a petulant, sinful, bratty, self-centered, entitled kid where all you can see is the bad or whatever. So, I mean, I've noticed that about people. A lot of my friends, they just have all this baggage with their parents.

It's like, well, my parents were perfect, but I don't feel like I have any of that. I mean, I can see areas where they're not perfect right now. Yeah, they're not perfect. They were never perfect. But I didn't feel like I ever had this just weighed down by all this frustration and all that.

So, yeah, I do think when you grow up, you kind of learn to say, all right, well, I see the good. I don't see all the bad kind of thing.

Yeah, that's definitely the true that's been. My experience with having kids is the realization that, man, I actually probably had it really good as a kid with my parents, way more than I ever thought I did when I was a kid with my parents.

You have a whole new generation of parents right now who everything's so different now in certain ways. But it's funny to be where I'm at in life to where I can see there's a generation of parents coming up after me.

Yeah, I still have kids in the house, but there's a generation of parents coming up after me. And it's funny to watch them because they all know it all is about their kids kind of things as they've reinvented the wheel at every single point.

And their impulses are very different than my parents' impulses. With my parents, you'd I mean, I think my mom would drive around the car breastfeeding a kid while she's driving. And then parents your age, you'll have kids in their car seats until they're like 18 or something with helmets on or something.

I think it's only 16 and a half.

But then they'll look at I mean, they'll look at people my parents' age as if they have nothing to offer because But then they have all these gluten intolerances and all this like food allergies and all these problems.

They'll have their kids on these rigid schedules where they can't Like if they don't get naps, then they're going to lose their mind and they're all overstimulated and all this kind of stuff. And so they just have no sense of awareness that

Your grandparents, they raised you and you didn't die. Maybe they have something to contribute here. Maybe Now, I mean, at the same time, maybe the breastfeeding the kid while you're driving thing wasn't very smart too, but I mean

I was about to say my father-in-law, he actually told me a story last week actually where he was when he was two, when he was growing up, they didn't really have car seats like we have now. And he said when he was two, he ended up going through the front windshield.

So I don't know. Maybe we've learned a little bit. Definitely taken it way too far, way too far.

Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, I think there has to be some way to recognize that all the new impulses aren't just best. And I mean the science on a lot of these things goes back and forth too. So like should you have your kid on your stomach or should you have your kid on the back?

And all that kind of stuff. I mean it just goes back and forth. So it's interesting where you have so many young people right now, there's a lot more medical influences on parenting than there used to be to where you're almost crippled with fear without following the doctor's advice from start to finish.

But I mean there's certainly lessons. Just because there's a new technology and new rules and new whatever, your parents have a lot to offer in ways that you don't realize. I mean I'm kind of like in between where I'm looking at a lot of things that are happening now and I kind of chuckle at the stressed out generation of parents I see coming after me where they're all stressed out and like in a way that we weren't.

But then we were like that to my parents too.

Yeah.

So it's funny. I mean like you learn certain things along the line and they can really help you if you let them. You should let them be a part of your life. You can learn a lot from them even if you don't take everything they say.

I mean parents, a lot of parents, they need to let go too. They can be kind of overbearing and do what I say and trying to micromanage your relationship in a way that is inappropriate. But that doesn't mean you just throw your hands up in the air and say, well, it's too much.

I'm not even going to try. You keep on pursuing.

Yeah.

So the last question I wanted to ask you is probably the one that maybe a lot of people listening have been probably wishing I'd bring up a little earlier than this. But when you're thinking about honoring your father and mother, I mean the Bible tells us to do that.

It tells us to honor our father and mother. And then it even, I think you mentioned this earlier, but there's even a promise attached to that command, right? So if we honor Deuteronomy 6, right? No, Deuteronomy 5.

Honor your father and your mother as Lord your God commanded you that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land and that the Lord your God is giving you. So there's a promise attached to this.

And Paul echoes this same exact sentiment in Ephesians chapter 6. That's where I got the 6 from. Right at the beginning of the chapter, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother.

This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well for you and that you may live long in the land. So Paul's echoing that same sentiment. Makes sense. He's a Jew. He knew the law really well.

That's one of the first commandments, or it's the first commandment with a promise, one of the Ten Commandments. But Jesus says something that seems different. So if you look at Luke chapter 14, verse 16, let's see.

This is, sorry, I don't have it pulled up. I don't have it pulled up. I don't have it pulled up. I thought I did.

You said Luke 14.

I think I have the wrong verse pulled up. But essentially, you know, he.

If anyone doesn't hate to come to me and hate his own father and mother.

Yeah, what is that? I wrote down the 1426. I had 16.

Okay.

So Luke 14, verse 26.

Right.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters.

Yes.

And even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. So it seems like he's saying something different than what Deuteronomy said and what Paul said, you know, and there's other examples of this too.

Right.

Jesus's family comes to him and some people inform Jesus. Hey, your mother, your brothers, your sister, your sisters are here to see you. And, you know, he basically rejects them. He says, who's my who is my brother.

You know, and so my mother and sister and brother.

Right. Right. So it seems like Jesus was it seems like he was saying something different. You know, he didn't live near his family. As far as we know, he was traveling around. So are the, are, you know, is Moses and are Paul, Paul and Moses at odds with Jesus here?

Are they saying two contradictory things? Are they competing with each other here? Or, you know, how, how do we harmonize these various passages of scripture so that they all make sense together?

Yes.

I mean, what Jesus is doing there is it's a very Hebrew way of speaking. So basically he's basically he's saying that your love for me should like in, in contrast to like your love for your family. There's no comparison essentially.

Right.

So like you should love me so much in comparison to them that your love for them feels like hatred in comparison to your love for me. Like meaning you have a primary devotion to God. And I mean, there's certainly families who are dead set on trying to keep you from loving God for sure.

You know, I mean, that's obviously something that will happen. So Jesus says, don't think I've come to bring peace, but a sword commands enemies will be those of his own household.