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Responsibilities to Abusive Parents
Tuesday, June 25, 2019This is my question: my mother and father are very bad people; they use people and hurt people. They abused us until we were old enough to get away. Now that we have moved away, we want nothing to do with them at all. We don’t hate them and have forgiven them in our hearts, but my father gets our number every now and then and tells us that we are ugly souls because we won't let him and my mother back into our lives and that we need to talk to a preacher and ask for forgiveness. He said that if we really forgave him, we would let him back around us. My father has come into our house; the last time he was here, he wrecked it by dumping trash everywhere and punching holes in the wall all because he was having a bad day, and my mother has stolen from us on many occasions (one time in the amount of $1,500). My mother and father have never apologized for any of this and continue to behave in this manner; this is why we choose to have nothing to do with them. Are we in the wrong? Should we let them come around again?
Sincerely,
Bruised Kid
Dear Bruised Kid,
Showing forgiveness is not the same as trusting someone. You have every right to set boundaries in your life if someone is corrupting you with their bad company (1 Cor 15:33). If you have respectfully tried to show your parents the boundaries (and it sounds like you have), there comes a time when you must put your immediate family before your extended family. You have a responsibility to your parents, but you have a greater responsibility to your work out your own salvation (Php 2:12). It is unfortunate that you are in this situation, but Christ even said that sometimes Christian morality will divide families (Matt 10:34-35). We cannot tell you exactly what lines to draw (that is a matter of wisdom, not doctrine), but you are perfectly scriptural in setting boundaries if they aren’t trustworthy or good influences. SB