Let's face it. We've all complained about our parents at least once in our lives. Even the best of human parents have yet to achieve total perfection!

In one way or another our parents are likely to be in our thoughts for the rest of our lives. Indeed, how we think of our parents has very much to do with how we think of ourselves and of our relationships with others. And this is important for us to recognize, since, as Christian Science teaches, our thoughts determine our experiences—our health and relationships—for better or for worse.

The Fifth Commandment in the Bible indicates clearly that the need to respect our parents in a healthy way is an important factor in our own well-being. "Honour thy father and thy mother," the commandment tells us, "that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" (Ex. 20:12).

It's easy to skirt the issue of facing our own thoughts concerning our parents—to dwell perhaps on wishing that they were different in some way. A statement of Mrs. Eddy's puts the ball back in our own court in a helpful way, though: "To the child complaining of his parents we have said, 'Love and honor thy parents, and yield obedience to them in all that is right; but you have the rights of conscience, as we all have, and must follow God in all your ways' " (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 236).

"Follow God in all [our] ways." That's the bottom line isn't it! It is the one way truly to honor ourselves and others—to adhere faithfully to the moral and spiritual laws of God as His obedient children. God is the one perfect Parent. He is your Parent and mine. He is the true Parent of our parents —and their parents and their parents and their parents—indeed, all parents. And He is the Parent of our children. God is Spirit, the origin and sustainer of all; and all that He creates is spiritual and good, expressing the perfection of His nature. In proportion as we grow to love God and His laws, we gain a love for man as His spiritual image and likeness, which enables us to be compassionate and helpful toward ourselves, our parents, children, friends—everyone.

The advantages of honoring God, the divine Principle, by obeying Him as the one perfect Parent are illustrated definitively in the life of Christ Jesus. Jesus proved the superiority of spiritual law over material belief through his obedience. We each need to prove it through our own. By honoring and obeying God, we can achieve mastery over the belief in material laws of limitation—heredity, domination, adulation, dependency, family inharmony, and so on. What greater way to honor our parents than to live for the sheer joy of being true to our Maker!

Each one of us is free to express the spiritual goodness and love that come to us directly from God, divine Love. Our spirituality is in no way dependent on, or circumscribed by, genes, the thoughts and behavior of others, or any other material or human condition. We suffer the illusion of limitation only to the degree that we allow ourselves to be hoodwinked by the false belief that we have a material, rather than a spiritual, origin and makeup. Thus it is a necessity to think of our parents —whether they seem to be nearly perfect human beings or very imperfect—as actually the spiritual offspring of God.

It is desirable to think of our parents in their spiritual perfection whenever they are in our thoughts. Recently, when I spoke to an acquaintance about some outstanding achievements of one of my parents, he remarked, "Well, now I know what your genes are." I immediately saw and acted upon the need to correct that thought in my own consciousness by knowing that man—each one of us, including my parents— has all good from God, who never imparts anything unlike Himself.

Neither healthy nor unhealthy characteristics are transmitted to man through genes or any other form of matter. God, Mind, imparts wholeness because He is whole. And man manifests wholeness because he is Mind's own perfect expression, or idea. God and man are inseparable as cause and effect, in which matter plays no part at all.

When you and I acknowledge (in any given instance) the allness of divine Mind and its perfect manifestation, and yield to that Mind—let Mind's pure thoughts be fully reflected in us—our bodies become subordinate to Mind's harmonious government. Then even the genes are subordinated to God; they can do no ill. In this way, the claims of material heredity, pro or con, are annihilated.

We can be very specific in our prayers regarding heredity, as is shown by Mrs. Eddy in this paragraph in Science and Health: "If you have sound and capacious lungs and want them to remain so, be always ready with the mental protest against the opposite belief in heredity. Discard all notions about lungs, tubercles, inherited consumption, or disease arising from any circumstance, and you will find that mortal mind, when instructed by Truth, yields to divine power, which steers the body into health" (pp. 425-426). This Christianly scientific method can be applied to any belief of heredity—whether it has to do with physical well-being or with character traits.

If we think of our parents as having character traits carried down from their parents or ancestors, which, in turn, have been transmitted to us, then we are going to be hard pressed to realize that we have it in our power as God's children to express His nature in all our ways. We must come out from under the belief in genealogical chance and let God's perfection be the frame of reference within which we decide what is possible for us—ourselves, our parents, and others—as His children. Our own self-esteem must come, not alone from knowing that we are actually God's expression, but by putting the qualities of God into practice in the overcoming of ungodlike characteristics that do not really belong to us.

One of the negative characteristics most of us need to work diligently to overthrow with Truth and Love is the tendency to see and judge others in material terms. It's a wonderful boon to our relationships with others when we devotedly hold our thought to a Christlike view of them, unconditionally—whether they appear to deserve it or not. Have you thought of doing this for your parents?

Whatever your present family situation, or position within your family, any gain you make in honoring your parents through obeying the one universal Parent, divine Love, and through identifying them spiritually, will be good for everyone. It will be good for your health. It will be good for the health of your family. In fact, it will bring health to all your relationships.

Barbara M. Vining