The Rights of Parents

1. The father and mother are two sacred beings that must be respected above everyone else. If you do not respect your parents, you are disobeying God Almighty. Those who treat their parents badly eventually are treated badly by others.

2. From the very moment of conception, a growing and developing child is a care and responsibility for its parents. One cannot estimate the depth of attachment and compassion parents feel for their children, or calculate the troubles and hardships they endure because of them. For this reason, respecting parents is a debt of human gratitude as well as a religious obligation.

3. Those who value their parents and regard them as a means to obtain God's mercy are the most prosperous in both worlds. Those who regard their parents' existence as a burden or who become weary of them inevitably suffer the most severe hardship in life.

4. The more you respect your parents, the greater the respect and awe you feel before your Creator. If you do not feel and show respect to them, this means that you feel no fear, awe, or respect toward God. It is a curious thing today that both those who disrespect God and those who claim they love God disobey their parents.

5. Children should respect and obey their parents as much as possible. Parents should give as much importance to their children's moral and spiritual education as they do to their physical growth and health, and should entrust them to the care of the most honorable teachers and guides. How ignorant and careless are those parents who neglect their children's moral and spiritual training, and how unfortunate are the children who experience such neglect.

6. Children who are inconsiderate of their parents' rights and disobey them are "monsters derived from a deteriorated human being." Parents who do not secure their children's moral and spiritual welfare are merciless and cruel. Most brutish and pitiless of all are parents who paralyze their children's moral and spiritual development after they have found their way to human perfection.

7. Families form a society's foundation. The reciprocal respect of rights and obligations within a family results in a healthy and strong society. When such familial relationships disappear, the society loses its compassion and respect for others. [Criteria or Lights of the Way, vol.1, 9th edition, Izmir, 1996, pp.98-101]