By Grace Sweeney.
Respect
To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem or admire
(Wordnik).
Imagine meeting your favorite speaker, someone who has inspired you throughout your entire life and encouraged you a lot. They’re a wonderful person, and you look up to them. Would you go in front of them and spit on the book they wrote?
No, you’d show it respect. Because you value, respect, and honor the speaker and writer you’re going to also respect their creation.
That’s the same way it is with us and God. God’s very nature demands honor and respect and we should show some sort of respect to the people He created, simply because He created them.
We’ve all heard the word “respect.” As young people, we’re told to respect our elders, respect our parents, respect our teachers, and so on.
But what does the term “respect” really mean? I’ll be unpacking that a bit as I answer these four basic questions: What, who, when, and how.
What Is Respect?
The dictionary definition of respect is “To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem or admire” (Wordnik). Some synonyms for respect are admire, esteem, to hold in high regard, and to honor.
Each of those has a slightly different meaning, and all of them add to the definition of respect.
• Admiration. We won’t admire everyone we meet in life. That’s already a given. I’m sure you can think of several people off the top of your head you disagree with and wouldn’t say you admire at all. That’s alright. But we can still admire them as God’s creation. They still have gifts from God—even if they aren’t using them in the correct way—and we can ask God to save them and bring them to a knowledge of Him, while thanking Him for them as His creation.
• Esteem. To esteem someone is to regard someone highly and prize them. Picture a beautiful pearl necklace. You’re going to value that and protect it and treasure it, because it’s precious. That’s what we should do with all people.
• Holding in high regard. This means to think well of someone. To not immediately assume the absolute worst about a person or instantly think they can’t do it. It means to respect their opinions and what they believe.
• Honor. Honor is on an even higher level than respect. Honor is what is shown to a king, along with respect. Honor is giving someone deference because they’re just as important or even more important than yourself.
Who Should We Respect?
The short answer, everyone!
Every person we see regularly, from parents to siblings to other family members to friends, they all deserve respect. Teachers and pastors deserve respect. Even perfect strangers—every living person you meet deserves respect.
When Should We Show Respect?
Sometimes a person will be doing or saying something we disagree with and dislike. Should we still respect people during those times?
Yes.
Even though we may not respect what they’re doing, we should still respect who they are and the fact that they’re made in God’s image.
What if there doesn’t seem to be anything about a person to respect?
You can probably guess the answer—we still respect them as a person created by God.
How Can We Show Respect?
• Empathy. Showing people that we’re trying to understand their perspective and understand the way they think shows them that we respect them, because we’re not immediately dismissing all their thoughts.
• Disagreeing respectfully. It’s alright to disagree about something, but when we do so, it ought to be done in a respectful way where no one gets overly upset and it’s only the idea or concept being discussed and put down by one side, not the person themselves.
• Building others up instead of putting people down. Respecting others’ opinions and what they bring to the table is very important. Everyone has gifts and a unique perspective, given to them by God. Even if they’re just a little sibling, they still have valid thoughts and points that we should never immediately dismiss. Everyone’s ideas are worth something.
• The Golden Rule. “Do to others what you want others to do to you.” Such a simple sentence, but it’s something that we often look over, I think. Do we want others to validate our opinions? Do we want others to listen respectfully to us? In short, do we want others to respect us? I’d guess the answer is yes. So let’s do all that to others! If we don’t, it may not come to us.
Romans 13:7 says, “Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.”
Our parents, teachers, and pastors deserve more respect than others in our life, being our leaders and teachers, but everyone we meet deserves respect. We owe everyone respect simply because they are made in our Creator’s image.
To practice all this, comment below one way you can try to show respect to someone in your life this week! (Bonus points if it’s someone you sometimes forget to show respect to.) Then let us know how it goes!
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