Related articles - Dishonour and Disease
I get a kick out of advertisements for certain drugs: “This drug may have certain side effects of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of sexual drive and weight gain!” Wow, sign me up right away – that’s just what I’m looking for!
Or consider cigarette commercials. “Smoking these cigarettes may cause you to stink, have yellow teeth and fingers; may lead to liver disease, cancer and sexual impotency.” And how much do we have to pay to get all these things? About $10.00 a day – sure. I’ll take a carton!
Warning labels are good things to attach to life threatening products: “poison keep out of reach of children;” “do not swallow if you do, you’ll die!” Maybe we should be hanging another one on our fridge door: “Beware of anger: it can cause serious damage to your health! – ulcers, colitis, high blood pressure, coronary thrombosis, disorders in the urinary system, headaches, back pain, rheumatic arthritis, psoriasis…”
Add fear, resentment, unforgiveness, guilt, hate and anxiety to the mix and doctors tell us that we’ve almost got a guarantee of physical malfunction and disease. Someone said, “it’s not necessarily what you eat, but what eats you that triggers the bulk of our physical problems.”
We’ve been considering, over the past couple of weeks, the negative effects of disobeying the fifth commandment. “Honor your father and mother.” The Bible actually put a positive spin on the command “if you do you will live longer and enjoy success and fulfillment in your life’s destiny.” But there are negative consequences inferred in our choosing to dishonor our parents.
This is what happens when we make a cognitive choice to devalue our parents. Think of your brain as a computer. The outer cortex would be the programmer. It takes incoming information from the five senses and punches in the raw data. It also makes a decision on the data and sends the equation to the inner brain.
The inner brain would be the actual computer. It simply responds to the inputted data. The computer does not sort out whether the information is good or bad, but follows exactly what it has been directed to do – garbage in garbage out! The man I wrote about last week who didn’t like his dad, hardly even realized how many negative signals he was imputing into his brain. Every time he made a decision (consciously or subconsciously) to dishonor his father, chemicals were being released into his body that could’ve shortened his life span.
When something triggers my friend John to be hurt, distressed or angry with his dad, his body goes into alert mode. His inner brain reads the instructions it receives and chemically transmits them to the many important glands it controls. Adrenaline is released, the heart pumps faster, blood pressure increases, sugar content is increased, digestion and elimination are put on hold. Ongoing sustained anger or dishonor will cause or exacerbate clinical depression, colitis, bleeding ulcers, anxiety attacks, lower resistance to all disease and respiratory failure. Thus the negative of God’s promise is fulfilled by our choice to dishonor our parents – our life is shortened.
In a couple of weeks, the news will be better. What good will come from choosing to honor our mom and dad?
