If you want to raise sons that grow up and honor women, you don't simply say to them "honor women" you model for them what it looks like when a man honors a woman.
The question becomes from where do we glean the notion of honor and how do we, as fathers begin to practice it?
If you're anything like me, watching all these women in the entertainment industry and in politics come forward with stories of abuse scares you. You never want your son to be the subject of an allegation as heinous as the ones we're hearing about today. Again, if you're like me, you want to make sure that never happens you're just unsure of how to do that.
There's no guarantee that even if you are the perfect role model for your kids that your kids won't decide to go down the road of rebellion. In fact society today almost encourages young boys to do just that. So our job is to equip them with the knowledge and the tools they'll need to become good, God fearing men that honor women.
HOW DOES THE BIBLE DEFINE HONOR?
Isaiah 29:13 The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
This writer's definition of honor is written really well.
"These people honor me with their lips..." Meaning they talk the talk but don't walk the walk. They honor God by what they say, but they dishonor God by what they think or feel. To honor someone demands a level of respect for them. So when the Bible talks about honor it's not just by what we say to them, it's how we treat them and how we feel about them.
The Apostle Paul wrote a large portion of the New Testament and one of the things he repeats several times is that men are to honor women. 1 Timothy 5:2, Philippians 4:3, 1 Timothy 3:1-7, 1 Corinthians 11:11 to name a few. Peter also talked about honoring women in 1 Peter 3:1-22. There simply is now way around it, if you're a Christian man, you are to honor women, and you're to want to do it, it's not an obligation, it's a fruit of the Spirit.
Practicing what the Bible says truly is the hard part, it's where the rubber meets the road. We know what we want our sons to become, we know what we don't want them to become, but from now until they become whomever they're going to become, it's on us - the parents.
I wish I could give you three easy steps to ensuring they grow up and know God and treat women properly. And anyone who says that all you have to do is A, B, C and easy peasy you've got a good man is lying to you. There's nothing easy about raising kids that become good people, if you want to know if you're doing it right ask yourself if it's been easy, if you answer no, you know you're on the right track.