There is a moment many adult children know well: you are standing in a hospital corridor, or on the phone with a sibling, or sitting across from a parent who no longer recognizes your face — and you realize that the roles have quietly, irreversibly shifted. The person who once carried you is now the one who needs to be carried. It is one of the most tender, exhausting, and spiritually clarifying experiences a human being can face. And for Christians, it raises an urgent question: What does faithfulness actually look like here?
Bill Davis, professor of philosophy at Covenant College, has written a careful and compassionate guide to this question in Honoring Dependent Parents: Biblical Decision-Making for Adult Children. Andrew Spencer’s review at The Gospel Coalition offers a rich summary of Davis’s framework. Read the source article for a fuller account of the book’s scope and structure. But the deeper question beneath every logistical challenge of elder care is a theological one — and it is worth pressing into that question with the full weight of Scripture and the good news of Jesus Christ.
The Commandment That Does Not Retire
The fifth commandment is among the most ancient of God’s moral instructions to His people:
