The F word and human flourishing...
I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty sensitive about the F word. It just seems to get overused some times in Christian communities. It crops up everywhere, it’s used in seemingly any context, as though it’s some kind of solution to any problem. I’m talking, of course, about family.
It’s a word that is used to convey several different concepts and contexts. In Christianity we have family as a unit made up of parents and their children, family as the wider community in a local church context, and family as the global body of believers. And I’d like to start by affirming the importance of all of those groupings.
I’m not writing to be dismissive of traditional family units. They’re important. They should be cherished, valued and invested in. But they’re not the only people that matter.
A distorted belief
What has been the orthodox Christian belief in how family works has become something bigger, however; it’s become the evangelical bulwark against the changes in sexual ethics in society at large. The intent here has been to reinforce the view that sex belongs only inside heterosexual marriage.
The effect of the strengthened focus on family in modern evangelicalism though has been to elevate the status of the traditional family into a position that it wasn’t designed to occupy. It’s a subtle one of course, because family is a good thing. But it calls to mind Keller’s definition of an idol as ‘good things turned into ultimate things’.
Idols are not usually bad things but good things turned into ultimate things--things that constitute our most fundamental significance and security and so function as 'gods' in our lives.
- Tim Keller
Many churches now attach so much significance to the concept of the family unit that it diminishes the importance of other relationships and can become alienating for those who are not part of traditional families within that community.
If that seems like an exaggeration, then consider for a moment this statement recently made by The Archbishop of Uganda:
From the first page of the Bible in the book of Genesis to the last page of the Bible in the book of Revelation, it is clear that God’s design for human flourishing is that we are part of a family – a family that is defined as one man and one woman united in holy matrimony for life and, God willing, a union that produces children.
- The Archbishop of Uganda
God’s design for human flourishing is for us to marry and produce children? It’s ironic that in a statement in which the Archbishop aims to defend what he believes to be the biblical position on sex, he affirms an unbiblical position on the importance of family.
If God’s design for human flourishing is the traditional family unit, what hope is there then for unmarried people, LGBTQ people, divorced people, widowed people? In short, what hope is there for a large proportion of humanity?
The good news
The Christian worldview is that God’s design for human flourishing is a relationship with Jesus, learning from his way of life and being transformed into his image. Jesus shows us God in human form.
The bellicose language from those in the church who proclaim marriage and family as the primary issue in Christianity undermines centuries of Christian teaching.
The gospel is not that we can get married and have children. That is often good news for those who do but it is not the good news. The good news is that through Christ’s death and resurrection we can be brought into God’s family.
By pushing into the traditional family as a defence against changing sexual attitudes outside the church, we’ve devalued many of those who had value placed on them by Jesus welcoming them into his family.
The boundaries of family
There’s a story recounted by Matthew, where Jesus’ mum (most likely widowed by this point) and brothers arrive wanting to see him. His response is interesting:
While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
- Matthew 12:46-50
This statement doesn’t devalue those within the traditional family unit but rather extends that value to all of the faithful.
We see this play out on the cross when, moments before his death, Christ asks his teenage disciple John and his mother Mary to look after one another. Family in Christ’s worldview extends beyond the traditional nuclear family.
The problem is that the more emphasis on the nuclear family unit as the core of our belonging, the more we deemphasise and devalue the other bonds that are important within community. The effect of that will be felt most keenly by those within our communities who either don’t have a family unit, or whose family unit is remote or estranged.
People of promise
Church is community. It’s definition is a called out gathering, it is people. And, importantly, it’s a group of people with promise. We’re both recipients of promise and carriers of promise.
Promise is the thing that brought us together.
I’ve sat in plenty of church services and heard the service leader quote the psalmist, ‘God sets the lonely in families’, yet I’ve arrived alone, am sat alone and, if you’ll excuse the irony, I’m not alone in this.
God sets the lonely in families.
- Psalm 68:6a
I have heard from other people, across numerous types of church, that their experiences are similar. That instead of being the place where they feel most connected, for those not in a traditional family unit church can be the place where they feel most alone.
There’s often an expectation gap; other environments do not promise us familial bonds. If we go to work or study and don’t find deep connection with our peers, it doesn’t feel like we’ve been let down because those places don’t hold that promise.
Church on the other hand not only holds that promise but often sells itself on it. We use intentional language around family, we speak of verses like the psalm above, we talk about how we’re a global family with local expressions.
But in practice what we’ve often created are events and programs for families, or parts of families to attend. A family of families where those not part of a traditional family unit within the community can easily fall through the cracks.
A house doesn’t make a home
Many churches are structured around family, kids and youth. This isn’t just that churches have provision for those groupings but that the program of what happens is dictated by meeting their needs. The implicit thought is that the unattached can fit around this, and often that their role in community is to help make it work for families.
Central to the work of Christ on earth is bringing outsiders in. He radically shakes up who is and isn’t included. He removes obstacles to inclusion in the family of God by forgiving sins, healing, and inviting to the table.
At a time when loneliness is endemic in our society, the church should stand out as a place where people find authentic and meaningful community. As Barth says of the church’s place in the world:
The church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner, and contradicts it in a way that is full of promise.
- Karl Barth
We’re supposed to live a different and better way. To return again to the words of Christ:
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
- John 13:35
Not by having the best programs or events, but by authentically loving one another. Creating an environment where people gather is not enough, we need to have cultures that drive loving relationships.
Family for followers of Jesus should not merely be, as the Archbishop referred to it, ‘defined as one man and one woman united in holy matrimony for life and, God willing, a union that produces children’ but also as the gathered community.
The core family unit is important, of course, but it is only one expression of relationship within the church. We need families that include relationships forged in the waters of baptism, not just the blood of a family line.
For many Christians who fall outside of the boundaries of a traditional nuclear family, be that because of singleness, sexuality, or anything else, the house doesn’t make a home.
The first step is the first step
It’s hard to know how we as a community can address this. That’s partly because it doesn’t feel like starting from neutral ground. Many of the singles I know in churches are exasperated by the situation, so merely putting on an event or trying to do a little more to make community isn’t going to solve the problem.
Trust needs to be built. We might need help to get past cynicism borne from years of the situation. We may need to feel we belong before we can really trust new programs, events or approaches to community. And cultural change is really hard to achieve.
As the big book says, the first step is admitting that there’s a problem.
This can be challenging, because we all want to view our churches as welcoming environments where everyone belongs. But if we believe the marketing department’s description or the pastor’s vision over the situation being experienced by people within the community then we sell those people short.
For people who feel undervalued and unseen, someone actually owning the problem and saying, “we’ve not always done this well and we need to do the hard work to create a better culture,” might be a good start towards rebuilding bridges.
Time and again churches intentionally focus on groups within community things improve. When we focus our attention and resources on families, building a crèche or hiring a family pastor, we see more families attend. Likewise when we focus on a group for social action, we often see that area of community grow.
But in forty years of being in church I’ve never seen anyone build a strategy for keeping unattached people part of the community. I’ve heard frequent conversations about if the right people are employed in roles for families, but none about whether we employ anyone to pastor or build community for the disconnected, unattached or lonely. I’ve seen intent in the way we engage with and welcome parents and children. But never a real focus on helping the unattached and the lonely find their place.
It’s hard not to see this as a decision that some are not worth the effort. Our problems and experiences are not worth consideration or intentional approach. Families are the majority therefore they’re the ones that matter most.
People drift away from church all the time because of lack of real connections. It’s long past time we valued them enough to admit that and look at how we can try to change it.
If we’re going to use the f word; we need to live family, not just talk it.