and replace it with a commandment to parents to "treat your children with dignity and respect, that they may come to treat others with dignity and respect."

I say this as a former Christian, and as one who had a very difficult relationship with my father.

My dad did many very good things and many very nice things, and I had many good times with him. He was far from being the worst father anybody ever had. Even so he sometimes behaved in ways that bordered on being abusive.

Oftentimes if I made an honest mistake, honestly forgot something, or something was not quite up to his standards, he would decide in Godlike fashion to treat it like I had committed some kind of crime. And he would always say he was doing it "for my own good". And he was often very poor at understanding, or trying to understand, from my point of view, some sensitive issue which was causing me to be frustrated, upset, or otherwise unhappy.

My dad often seemed to have the attitude (though he would deny it) that being father of his children and head of the house gave him certain arbitrary privileges, and that because of all the good things he did he could do no wrong. If I were angry or upset with him or with something he said or did it was always a problem with me, never with him.

I was a Christian for about 15 years as a young man. I came to realize about a year after my dad died how angry I still was at him, and that he really was at times abusive, or borderline so. I.e. it was not just something wrong, or "sinful" with me that I had problems and issues with him, which problems and issues spilled elsewhere into my life.

Along with the realization that my dad at times bordered on being abusive, I also came to realize that my being a Christian had been of no help to me in enabling me to deal with my dad those times he was obnoxious or borderline abusive. This was the biggest single reason that I became disenchanted with the Christian faith and eventually, after a number of years and some struggle, decided to part company with the faith. I am as certain as I am of anything that doing this was the right and healthy thing for me to do.

I do not consider it to be just simply misfortune that Christianity was not of help to me, especially in dealing with my dad, but also with other things. There is, of course, the commandment to "honor your father and mother", which in the biblical text does not make any exceptions if a parent is abusive or is otherwise undeserving or unworthy of honor or respect. And there is a passage in Hebrews 12 which says to gladly accept the chastening of the Lord, like that of a "good" father (like my father, who always made a point that anything he said or did was done out of "love" and "for my own good").

It is wrong to tell anybody who has had an abusive parent or parents that such a person has an obligation or duty to "honor your father and mother." We hear of those who want to display the Ten Commandments in public places. Anybody who wants to do so might just as well tell me to my face that it was my duty and obligation to meekly submit to and gladly accept the abuse from my dad which came in the guise of "loving" rebukes which he decided in Godlike fashion that I needed "for my own good". Or might as well tell anybody else who has or has had abusive parents that it is their duty to accept and take whatever abuse from their parents.

The Swiss writer and psychologist Alice Miller, in her books and on her web sites, documents the harmful effects of accepting, "forgiving", and exonerating parental abuse in the name of the commandment to "honor your father and mother". These effects include physical illness, and passing on abuse received from one's parents to one's children, or to convenient scapegoats. Alice Miller has an entire chapter on Hitler documenting the abuse he received from his father, and the lack of any real love from his mother, and how that made him into the person that he became.