“Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God: I am the Lord.”-Leviticus 19:32 (KJV)
The phrase “hoary head” refers to a man with gray or white hair. We don’t use the word “hoary” much anymore but to an Englishman from 400-years ago, it would have brought to mind a winter morning when the frost was so heavy it looked like snow. Hoarfrost is produced when warm air hits freezing objects and the resulting crystals look like white hair. A man with white hair has been around a while and deserves your respect.
That is the point of the verse. God wants us to respect our elders and those in authority. When Leviticus was written the average life expectancy was just 26-years-old! A man who lived long enough to have white hair was the exception, not the rule. He knew what wild foods to avoid, wasn’t hunted down in revenge, knew how to live successfully, could skin a buck, and run a trotline. If the hoary head spoke, you should listen or you literally might die young from eating poison berries.
We live in an age with little respect for anything. School principals, coaches, teachers, police officers, and government officials are shown little deference. Teachers and school administrators are struggling to keep order in the classroom, much less teach anything. The faculty is not allowed to discipline, and the kids know it.
For years, specialists in education mocked the idea of spanking students as “teachings kids to solve their problems with violence.” Now that respect for our elders isn’t taught at home and there is no fear of punishment, those same experts have no answers. That brings us to the second part of this article’s title.
Non-Christians have no reason to live upright lives if they don’t fear reprisal. That is why God authorizes human government to punish evil-doers: “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad…he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”-Romans 13:3-4. But that punishment must be handed out swiftly.
The word of God says, “Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.”-Ecclesiastes 8:11. For a government to be respected, it must deliver fair and immediate justice. Allow me a moment to vent here. This year in Montgomery County, eight guns have been brought to school by students. And that’s just the ones we know about! Why are these kids not in jail? My wife works in the school system (as do other members here). It may seem like a harsh reaction and someone might say, “Well, they’re just kids making mistakes.” I guarantee you there would be fewer guns at school if the first kid had to do eleven-months and 29-days in the county jail.
“Spank ‘em and send ‘em to jail” is more than just a catchy slogan, it is an act of love. You don’t institute a plan for corporal punishment because you want to hit kids. You do it because you want them to mind. You don’t send a kid who brings a gun to school to jail because you hate teenagers. You do it because you love the lives of kids and teachers who will never have to experience a mass shooting at their school.
The Bible tells us a white-haired man (or woman for that matter) is to be respected if he has lived a righteous life (Proverbs 16:31). Let us all commit to living a life worthy of respect. Let’s pray for swift justice that demands respect. And let us all fear the earthly hand of God’s vengeance. Maybe we will all live long enough to run a comb through a hoary head.
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