God’s command to honor your mother and father comes naturally to some people but can feel extremely difficult — or even impossible — for others, especially if they grew up in an abusive home.

But the fifth commandment isn’t caveated by any exceptions for dishonorable, difficult, or abusive parents. God requires us to honor our parents unconditionally.

For the person who seeks to uphold God’s commandments but comes from an abusive home, what does that look like? Is God requiring them to endlessly endure torment?

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” BlazeTV host Rick Burgess addresses this difficult scenario.

After Rick published his book “Men Don’t Run in the Rain: A Son’s Reflections on Life, Faith, and an Iconic Father,” he started receiving feedback from people who couldn’t relate to his positive relationship with his father. They came from backgrounds where abuse, cruelty, or severe mental health issues were rampant in the home.

“I cannot keep allowing [my abusive mother] into my life. … I’m much better off when we do not have a relationship,” one “Strange Encounters” listener wrote in an email to Rick.

“I want to do right by God, so I’d love a little bit of wisdom on how to move on with my life respectively and continue to be right with God,” he added.

Rick, expressing deep sympathy to those who grew up in difficult homes, says that people often mistakenly equate God’s command to honor our parents to a lifelong prison sentence where they are not permitted to distance themselves from the toxicity.

“When the Bible says to honor your mother and father, it does not mean that if your mother and father were bad people or treated you poorly, that you’re just supposed to disregard that or that somehow that’s OK because they’re your mother and father,” he corrects.

Honoring our parents, Rick explains, is less about our parents and more about our own freedom and spiritual health.

“What Scripture is talking about is not how they lived their life. It’s talking about how you, me — their children — how we live our life. It’s calling us to a high standard. It’s calling us to not repeat the mistakes that they made,” he says, encouraging people from toxic homes to “[break] that generational cycle.”

“[Demons] love bitterness, and they love to manipulate you through it. Unresolved anger, this kind of stuff, it’s damaging you. It’s not doing anything to the people you’re upset with,” he continues.

It is entirely possible, Rick argues, to physically and emotionally distance ourselves — maybe even cut off contact altogether — from our parents and still honor them simply by living honorable lives.

“We live our lives in a way that brings honor to them, whether they deserve it or not,” he says.

“I’ve got people even in my own family … where, honestly, my life and even theirs is a lot healthier if we just don’t interact very much,” Rick admits.

“But what I have done is, I have no bitterness toward this family member. … I have forgiven for anything that they did that hurt me, and I’ve asked them to forgive me for anything I’ve done that hurt them. But that doesn’t mean that we hang out all the time because it’s just not healthy, and that’s OK.”

To those who want to uphold God’s command to honor their parents but feel that distance is the best path, Rick’s advice is simple: “Get rid of the bitterness. … Get rid of the anger, and offer them complete forgiveness, but you’re under no obligation to continue to be manipulated by people.”

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, Rick burgess, Abuse, Abusive parents, Blazetv, Blaze media, Fifth commandment, Bible, Christianity 

Late last month, Elon Musk’s X.com launched a landmark legal challenge against a $140 million fine issued by the European Commission last December under the Digital Services Act, an EU censorship law. The case was filed at the General Court of the EU, which hears high-stakes challenges to EU regulatory and enforcement actions.

The commission claims the fine, the first to be issued under the DSA, was for alleged transparency and procedural breaches, which X denies. But the real reason the company was targeted is clear: X is a free-speech platform, and Elon Musk refuses to implement online censorship in the EU and around the world.

This case is the first-ever challenge to Europe’s bid to become a global censor. The outcome matters deeply for the free-speech rights of billions of people around the world.

This case, which ADF International proudly supports, underscores the grave threat the DSA poses to free speech. The law, which took effect in 2024, requires “very large online platforms” — such as X, Meta, and Google — that operate in or are accessible from the EU and have more than 45 million monthly users to remove so-called illegal content.

“Illegal content” takes its meaning from a host of speech-restrictive laws across EU countries, including Germany’s ban on insulting a politician. The law also requires platforms to “mitigate” so-called “systemic risks,” such as “negative effects” on “civic discourse,” “electoral processes,” and “gender-based violence.”

Codes of conduct have also been added to the legislation regarding “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and guidelines on electoral processes and the protection of minors, resulting in 153 pages of additional regulations that were never voted on. Platforms face massive fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover for noncompliance with the DSA and can even be suspended in the EU.

The vague terms used in the legislation and codes of conduct are extremely broad and lack precise legal definitions, meaning they are ideal tools for the commission to censor disfavored views. And the commission’s reach extends far beyond Europe.

A recent report from the House Judiciary Committee showed that Big Tech platforms face immense pressure from the commission to set their global content moderation rules to censorial DSA standards. This means the EU law is censoring speech not just in Europe, but also in the United States and around the whole world.

The case of Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen demonstrates what DSA censorship will look like in practice. After six years of criminal prosecution, Päivi is awaiting a verdict from the Supreme Court of Finland for tweeting a Bible verse. She was prosecuted under the “War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity” section of Finland’s criminal code. Under the DSA, censorial laws like this will become the global baseline.

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) and turned it into a free-speech platform, Brussels has been clear about its hostility toward the platform. Former European Commissioner Thierry Breton issued a stark warning in 2023, stating: “You can run but you can’t hide. … Fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA. … Our teams will be ready for enforcement.” Former commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourová added: “Twitter has attracted a lot of attention, and its actions and compliance with EU law will be scrutinized vigorously and urgently.”

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Nadzeya Haroshka/Getty Images

It’s clear why the commission gave X.com the first-ever DSA fine last December. It was sending a message to all Big Tech platforms about what will happen to platforms that refuse to accept censorship.

That is what makes X.com’s legal challenge so important — the company is fighting for the right of citizens around the world to freely express their views online. In this case, the social media giant is challenging the centralized powers given to the commission by the DSA, which it argues violate its right to due process and are contrary to the rule of law.

The commission is able to set the rules for content moderation, set up the infrastructure, launch investigations, and issue penalties under the DSA, all with no meaningful oversight. If this is allowed to stand, the EU will have the unchallenged ability to police the global public square, with dire consequences for online free speech.

Now the court has an opportunity to hold the commission to account. An oral hearing is expected in the case, potentially by the end of 2026, and the subsequent ruling will affect how all Big Tech platforms are moderated by the DSA. X.com is arguing for the fine to be withdrawn, and if the basis for the fine is found not to be compliant with other EU laws, specific provisions in the legislation could be annulled.

This case is the first-ever challenge of the commission’s bid to become a global censor. The outcome matters deeply for the free-speech rights of billions of people around the world.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​X, Elon musk, Eu, Free speech, Free speech laws, Social media, European commission, Dsa, Content moderation, Opinion & analysis, Censorship, Lawsuit, Brussels, Illegal content, Dissent 

Mary Clarke grew up in Beverly Hills, surrounded by mink coats and parties hosted by Hollywood stars. She died in a ten-by-ten concrete room inside a Mexican prison.

In between, she raised seven children, survived two marriages, ran a business, and eventually walked away from comfort to live among violent criminals and forgotten men. If her life unsettles your assumptions about what holiness looks like, it should.

The institutional Church, for its part, did not immediately know what to do with a twice-divorced woman living inside a men’s prison and calling herself a nun.

She was born in 1926 to Irish immigrant parents who had clawed their way into California comfort without losing their faith or their social conscience. Her father built a successful business and moved the family to Beverly Hills, but he made sure his daughter understood that glamour was not the point. Mary absorbed the lesson, even if it took several decades and two divorces before she fully acted on it.

Broken promises

Her personal life was, to put it charitably, complicated. She married at 19 and watched the union fail due to gambling debts and broken promises. She married again and eventually found herself running her father’s company and managing what looked, from the outside, like a well-ordered life. It wasn’t enough. She hadn’t failed at life. She had excelled at a version of it that no longer satisfied her.

The turning point came in 1965, when she crossed the border into Tijuana with a priest and walked into La Mesa prison. What she saw there — the overcrowding, the degradation, the absence of basic dignity — did not strike her as someone else’s problem. She drove back to California and could not stop thinking about the faces she had seen.

So she went back. Then again. And again.

Each time she loaded her car with medicine, food, and clothing. Eventually the prison visits stopped being a charity project and became the center of her life. Beverly Hills was no longer home. It was the detour.

Heroic or insane

By 1977 her children were grown, her second marriage was over, and she made a decision that most people around her considered either heroic or insane. She sold or gave away nearly everything she owned, sewed herself a simple habit, took private vows, and moved into a concrete room inside one of the most feared prisons in Mexico, with nothing but a cot, a Bible, and a Spanish dictionary.

La Mesa was not a rehabilitation center in any optimistic sense. Drug traffickers ran the economy. Poorer prisoners slept on bare floors. Violence arrived without warning or apology. Into this world entered a middle-aged American woman with no official authority, no institutional backing, and an apparently unshakable conviction that every man in that prison still bore the image of God — however obscured it might be by crime, cruelty, or despair.

She walked into riots. She stepped between armed men. She spoke calmly into chaos. And more often than seemed statistically reasonable, people put their weapons down. She coaxed dentists to offer free clinics, persuaded bakers to donate bread, and reportedly sourced secondhand toilets from junkyards so that prisoners might have something the rest of the world takes for granted. She sat with the dying, prayed with guards, and confronted judges who handed lighter sentences to the wealthy than to the poor.

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The weight of years

The institutional Church, for its part, did not immediately know what to do with a twice-divorced woman living inside a men’s prison and calling herself a nun. For years she lacked formal status and could not even receive Holy Communion. She carried on anyway.

Eventually church leaders recognized the depth of her vocation. Bishop Posadas of Tijuana and Bishop Maher of San Diego both blessed her work, and she was received as an auxiliary Mercedarian, an order with a historic mission to prisoners. She later founded her own community, the Eudist Servants of the 11th Hour, specifically for older women called to serve after raising families or finishing careers.

That last detail matters. She was not looking for women who had not yet lived. She wanted the ones who had — women who carried the weight of years, of mistakes, of choices made and unmade — and she asked them a simple question: What now? It lands differently when you are old enough to realize that time is not infinite.

Mother Antonia Brenner died on October 17, 2013, at age 86. By conventional Catholic measures, she was a complicated figure: divorced twice, lacking formal vows for years, living far outside the expected parameters of religious life.

By any other measure, she spent three decades feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the imprisoned — the precise works the gospel names without ambiguity.

She was fond of saying she had never met a prisoner not worth everything she could give.

The record suggests she meant it.

​Faith, Lifestyle, Christianity, Converts, Mother antonia, Mother antonia brenner, Mary clarke, The prison angel, Mexico, Eudist servants of the 11th hour