Are parents God?

Is service of parents
the highest service?

• God has given us our parents

According to the holy scrip-
tures, the debt owed to parents
can never be repaid, they are
certainly respectable. But God
has given us our parents. When
children choose wrong ways
in life, even parents seek help
from God. There have been
millions of children who have been saved from the wretches
of drug abuse and alcoholism, just by prayers and willpower.
This willpower is given by God. So, parents should help their
children to learn how to respect and worship the Supreme par-
ent – God.

• Greatness of the creator

Everything we are made of is a gift of God. Neither our parents
nor the scientists have created the things that we are surviving
on: the sunlight, the
air, the rain, the earth,
the food grains, and
our very body. Our
mother and father
were just the instru-
ments in the hands of
God to produce this
body. God protected
us even in the womb
of our mother. God
has made every hair
on our head and every pore on our body and has given us ev-
erything we need for our survival.
Therefore, a man should worship and serve God. Imagine a per-
 son who keeps on taking everything from you and does nothing
for you in return. How bad and fallen that person would be?
Similarly, how fallen and sinful are those who do not serve and
worship the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna.
Parents are available in any kind of birth. Either one takes birth
as a human being or as an animal, there is a set of parents. But
God can be attained only in the human form of body, so God
is more important than the parents. So one should not miss the
opportunity of the present human form of body to understand
the supreme Lord, hence making one’s life successful.

• Role of a true son

According to the Vedic version, there is a hellish planet called
Put, and one who delivers a person from there is called Putra.
The purpose of marriage, therefore,
is to have a putra, or son who is able The Sanskrit word
to deliver his father, even if the father for son is putra.
falls down to the hellish condition of Putra= ‘put’ + ‘tra’
put (hell).
For the son to deliver his father or ancestors, he must be a great
devotee of Lord Krishna or Vishnu. It is, therefore, the duty of a
father to worship Krishna and raise his children to become His
devotee; then even if by chance the father falls into a hellish life
in his next birth, such a son can deliver him.
For example, The boy, Prahlad, happened to be the son of the
most atheistic person and the most materially powerful as well,
Hiranyakasipu. Because of the materialistic society, Prahlad had
no opportunity to glorify the Supreme Lord. The characteristic
of a great soul is that he is very eager to spread glorification
of the Supreme Lord. Just like Lord Jesus Christ: he was very
much eager to broadcast the glorification of God, but demoniac
people crucified him; people misunderstood him.
So, Prahlad, a small child of five years, only became the object
of enviousness of his great father Hiranyakashipu for his only
fault of becoming a pure devotee of the Lord. The demon father
 applied all his weapons
for killing the devotee son
Prahalad but by the Grace
of the Lord he was saved
from all sorts of danger-
ous actions by his father.
He was thrown in the fire,
in boiling oil, from top of
the hill, underneath the
legs of an elephant, ad-
ministered poison, and at last the father himself took up a chop-
per to kill his son, and thus Nrisinghadeva appeared and killed
the heinous father before the son. Thus, nobody can kill the
devotee of the Lord and similarly Arjuna was also saved by the
Lord although all dangerous weapons were applied on him by
his great opponents like Bhisma,
etc.
After killing of his father,
Hiranyakasipu, Prahlad prayed in
Lord Nrishingha’s presence that
his father might be forgiven for
his offences and granted libera-
tion. The Lord assured the child
Prahlad that not only would his
father be liberated from the hell-
ish conditions of life in the ma-
terial world but also many gen-
erations of his family, both in the
past and into the future, would
be granted liberation. Such is
the purifying influence of a pure
devotee in a family.
• Role of parents
Those parents who do not teach their children how to respect
and worship the Supreme Parent-God, are not fit to become par-
 ents. However, even they are to be respected, since we should
not become like them, but they are certainly not fit to be obeyed
in spiritual matters. It is said in the Srimad Bhagavatam 5.5.18:

gurur na sa syät sva-jano na sa syät

pitä na sa syäj janané na sä syät
daivaà na tat syän na patiç ca sa syän
na mocayed yaù samupeta-måtyum

One who cannot deliver his dependents from the path of repeated
birth and death should never become a spiritual master, a father,
a husband, a mother, or a worshipable demigod.

Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita,

“If you make friendship with Me, the Supreme Lord, then you can
understand perfectly that everything that exists in this world or
another world is all the property of Krishna—and I am the Pro-
prietor (owner) and the Enjoyer of Everything.”