When you think of honoring someone, you may envision attending your teen's award dinner, asking a famous celebrity for an autograph, or cheering for your favorite team. You may also think of honor as a feeling of respect that goes in only one direction—usually toward a superior or someone who has "earned" or "deserves" it. But honor can be passed on to loved ones regardless of whether they "deserve" it, because, like love, it's an act of the will.

Honor simply means deciding to place high value, worth, and importance on another person by viewing him or her as a priceless gift and granting him or her a position in our lives worthy of great respect. It's like what Romans 12:10 says, "Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves" (NIV).

In other words, honor is a gift we give to others. It isn't purchased by their actions or contingent on our emotions. It may carry strong emotional feelings, but it doesn't depend on them. Rather, it's a decision we make daily toward someone who is special and valuable to us.

As with genuine love, honor is one of the greatest gifts we can provide. In fact, honor is genuine love in action. To honor a person involves choosing to highly value him or her even before we put love into action. In many cases, love often begins to flow once we've decided to honor that person.

The opposite of honor is dishonor, which is almost certain to make anger develop in a teenager's heart.

What is dishonor? The essence of dishonor is when who you are (your feelings, opinions, thoughts, beliefs, etc.) is devalued by another.

The Johnson family had been under tremendous pressure lately. Mr. Johnson had lost his job, and the oldest son had been arrested for shoplifting. Realizing the need for a vacation, the Johnsons decided to go camping. But the relaxing trip to Sequoia National Park in California turned out to be a nightmare for 15-year-old Amy.

Amy had been the one to suggest that the family go camping in the Sequoias because she had wanted to see the petrified forest. The towering stone trees were, indeed, the highlight of the trip for her. "This is the best vacation I've ever had," Amy exclaimed as the family sat around the campfire one evening. She was truly having the time of her life.

Before returning home, the Johnsons decided to go on one last hike through the petrified forest. Amy was ecstatic. She felt very honored that they would choose to revisit her favorite spot.

As a family, they wanted to remember the camping trip, so they each picked up a rock from a petrified tree as a souvenir. Walking back to the car, however, they passed a gift shop that had a sign hanging in the window. Amy read: Petrified Wood Should Be Left Intact for All to Enjoy!

Being sensitive and thoughtful, Amy realized it wasn't right for her to keep the wood she had taken. After all, it would probably just end up on a shelf or in a drawer. As she set the stone down, she felt guilty that she couldn't return it to the spot where it had been for millennia.

When the Johnsons reached their camping site, the parents encouraged the children to show the "souvenirs" they had gathered. When her turn came, Amy explained, "I left mine back in the woods so that others will be able to enjoy it." She beamed with pride as she told about seeing the sign and making her decision.

To her dismay, the others broke into laughter. "That's the strangest thing we've ever heard!" her family howled.

"Maybe you'd better go clean up the entire forest so Smoky the Bear doesn't come looking for you," sneered her brother.

"No one is that gullible," her father said with a snicker.

Amy's younger sister even joined in the bashing: "Should I present Amy to the store owners as the only person who has ever obeyed their sign?"

The laughter seemed to last for an hour. Amy was devastated. What had been a wonderful family trip had suddenly turned into a humiliating experience. Amy didn't say a word during the ride home. I was only trying to do the right thing, she thought. Why was I so stupid? The more she thought about the rock, the more she questioned why she hadn't just held on to it. The dishonor was starting to invade her heart like a rising flood of self-condemnation.

Over the years that followed, each time Amy looked at the petrified wood sitting on her family's bookshelf, she was reminded of the way her family had laughed at her.

As Amy learned, when we dishonor others, we treat them (consciously or unknowingly) as if they have little value—as less important than a rock. Tragically, being dishonored in such a way can cause a lifetime of emotional damage.

When do we, in everyday family experience, tend to treat a teenager like that?

• When he has just asked the same question for the thousandth time
• When she leaves her "stuff" out at night, expecting us to clean up
• When he selectively forgets what he's been told
• When she brings home a boy who wears an earring and a leather jacket
• When he screams at us, claiming that "you just don't understand!"
• When she goes out on a date dressed in risqué clothes

Anger, unjust criticism, unhealthy comparisons, favoritism, inconsistency, jealousy, selfishness, envy, disrespect, belittling comments, negative beliefs, and a host of other weapons are "justified" as valid to use against people we consider to be of little value. When Amy decided to leave the rock behind, her family demonstrated how little they valued her through sarcasm. They invalidated her.

Here's something everyone ought to write on a card and read every day: The lower the value we attach to people, the easier we can "justify" dishonoring them with our words or treating them with disrespect. The 5,000 adults we surveyed reported that one of the least-popular things they received from their parents as teenagers was criticism.

Most parents, of course, do their best to genuinely love their teens, and most teens never have to face the degree of dishonor and hurt Amy endured. Nevertheless, we need to understand how our actions can affect our teens and lower their sense of self-worth.

You might be thinking, But my teenager is doing great! Why do I need to learn to combat a problem he's not even facing today?

The answer is that, as we've discovered in talking with people across the country, the results of dishonoring parental actions accumulate over time. On numerous occasions, we have counseled with well-meaning mothers and fathers who were shocked by their son or daughter's self-destructive behavior. Others were just as stunned when they discovered drug abuse, promiscuity, or other damaging patterns in their teenager's life.

As youngsters, many of these teens showed little or no evidence of the problems they face as adolescents today. And often, as we began to look into their history, we found that their parents had had no idea they were failing to honor their teens.

The great British statesman Edmund Burke once said with keen insight, "All that has to happen for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing." In today's distorted society, we parents need more than good intentions to raise secure, confident teenagers—we need to do something. We need a plan. Further, while things may be going well today, we need to take the initiative to understand how to honor our teens and raise their sense of self-worth, as well as what actions to avoid that can lower it.

"It could never happen to my teenager!" some might say. Let's look, however, at some of the problems young people often face because, in part, their parents never understood the tragic impact of their dishonoring actions. Some of the devastating things that can grow out of dishonor, either in the teen years or later in life, are:

• drug and alcohol abuse
• chronic lying
• procrastination
• extreme pride and self-centeredness (narcissism)
• workaholism and the need to achieve more and more
• vicious emotional ups and downs
• repeated absences from church and school
• extreme submission
• unhealthy legalism
• severe withdrawal from society
• sexual difficulties in marriage
• lower academic achievement
• feelings of loss of control
• stress-related heart problems
• homosexuality
• deep feelings of loneliness
• suicidal thinking and attempts
• poor marital mate selection
• clinical depression
• poor decision making
• lowered career achievement
• a pattern of outbursts of anger
• low energy in accomplishing school or work tasks
• extreme self-criticism
• gravitation toward cults and fringe religious groups
• unrealistic expectations of self and others
• eating disorders

Parents don't want to see their teenagers experience such problems. Yet without realizing it, some parents lead their children down these very paths.

As we've said, the key to avoiding such things in our teens' lives is to honor them. To make them (or anyone else, for that matter) feel valuable, loved, and accepted, we must decide to increase honor and help lower their anger. Even if you've unknowingly been in the habit of dishonoring your teen, you can choose today to stop the devastating effects of dishonor—even reverse them—by giving your teen the gift of honor. And when you learn how to communicate in tangible ways to your adolescent that he or she is deeply loved and highly valued, it goes a long way toward combating future problems.

© Copyright 2006 Smalley Relationship Center

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