How The Definition Of Honor Has Evolved Through Time
To honor means to grant someone a position of respect, dignity, and wealth. Honor is defined as the pleasure that comes from integrity, high respect and great esteem.
Most people grant honor only based on position, their status and wealth income. What they should also grant honor for is character. While honor is an attitude of great respect, integrity, virtue and courtesy it should also be associated with potential attention and strong obedience. God, as an example, is always pleased when we obey his word, same with our parents, they feel satisfied and honored when we achieve and follow their teachings to us. Honor has its roots on the basis of what God, our Father has done and said. He, the Lord, bestowed on his son his honor by bringing him to the Earth, He bestowed his honor on humans by creating men and women, He bestowed his honor on government and churches by giving them their unique importance. God created all these so that honor would be shared among people without qualification.
Most people misinterpret the definition of honor. Nowadays honor has nearly thousands of definitions. How is this possible? Sometimes people decide to give the definition that advantages them the most. Adolf Hitler, a man whose name is written all over the history not for the good he did but for the fact that ruled nearly 11 years in cruelty and misery Germany and parts of Europe. A man whose “honor” was depended on what profited him. If honor for him was to kill innocent people than probably that is what he would do, and did. This type of defining honor leads to a bad influence even to the churches. Hitler made sure for honor to be redefined along Nazi priorities and for all those that would go against, death penalty was in the way.
James Bowman disagrees with the fact that honor still maintains its potential values. He says that honor is no more as important and that only the 19th century western norms are the right conception of what honor is. Bonhoefer, theologian, believes that honor’s definition is only found in God’s word and in our obedience to His word. He says that the one who seeks honor to please only themselves is no longer seeking God’s love. Selfishness i one factor that makes people redefine honor as they want it to be. Bonhoefer defined honor too narrowly, completely different of how honor is defined by today’s society.
Differently from Bonhoefer, Bill Johnson claims that all people have a unique why of defining honor. He says that we are all sinners and as sinners it is too difficult to create an honorable society within us because there is always going to be someone who’ll disagree of what is honorable and dishonorable.
Alexander Welsh attests that there is no word such “honor” because people have substituted it with other words like respect, personal duty, integrity, virtue etc. This shows that even though people tried to erase honor deeply they value it.
Most Americans wrongly and very quickly have changed their minds on reconciling what is honorable and dishonorable. Gay marriage centuries ago was considered as a brazen act that did not have place in people’s society. Instead now the same America that said that centuries ago, two decades later is strongly persuading most countries to make gay marriage legal and recognized as a human right and liberty.
