The New Testament’s War of the Family

If you are around conservatives enough, you‘ll often hear some variation on this theme: The family is the building block of society. Or, in religious circles you might hear that the family (by this we mean the nuclear family of mother, father, and children) is like a little church. It comes up in politics, in theology of human sexuality, and even in how we provide spiritual education to adolescents.¹

On one level, I can really get behind this. I find some of the beautiful descriptions of the family in the Humanum film series compelling; the complementary male and female coming together to produce life, which creates a sort of cohesive unit. A unit that has a special and unique relationship to itself.

I find it to be a beautiful and description of my own family. When my brothers and I get together, despite the range in age and location (our occasional evening gaming sessions require us to plan through three time zones), there is a low level, instant connection. When I sit at Thanksgiving tables with my family and my wife’s family in a couple of weeks, there will be something special about our gathering.

My wife and my sons and I have a unique bond. Though the boys are still young, we already have inside jokes, shorthand statements, patterns of interaction. And the connection we have isn’t artificially placed there because of some cultural narrative that it should be there. Talking about a special bond within the nuclear family is descriptive – we all know it exists.

Of course, that is why your family of origin has such power to do good or harm to you. Research has shown the incredible power that parents have over their children. Even in adolescent years when children start o individuate and separate from their parents, mom and dad still have tremendous influence over their lives, and the ability to really support and equip them to thrive as adults. But an abusive or negligent parent can do damage that takes a lifetime to repair.

I think all of this is a true and descriptive of how human beings function. The problem is, I think the New Testament and the early church testify against a “nuclear family first” model of human society.

Andy Crouch, in The Tech-Wise Family (a book meant in many ways to provide tools specifically for nuclear families) says this:

As a Christian, I actually don’t believe the biological family is the main place we are meant to be known and loved in a way that leads to wisdom and courage. Jesus, after all, said some pretty harsh things about ordinary, biological family. He said that his way of wisdom and courage would divide children from parents and brothers from sisters— as it did in his day and sometimes still does in ours. When his own biological relatives came to one house where he was teaching and healing, trying to convince him to come home and stop being so messianic, he looked around and said, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? . . . Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12: 48– 50). The first family for everyone who wants wisdom and courage in the way of Jesus is the church— the community of disciples who are looking to Jesus to reshape their understanding and their character. And the church is, and can be, family for everyone in a way that biological families cannot. No matter whether your parents are still living— or whether they were ever loving— no matter whether you have a spouse or children or siblings or cousins, you have a family in the church. ²

This is my main problem with many of the “family first” folks. The model of the early Christians was to build a larger and broader community of interdependent people, not to focus on your biological clan.

Jesus is pretty harsh against nuclear families, but the New Testament has more than just his words on the matter. If we look to Paul’s letters we do get some instructions for husbands and wives in relation to one another (Ephesians 5:21-32, among others), and an encouragement for children to honor parents and fathers not to anger children (Ephesians 6:1-4). Paul seems to think that leaders in the church ought to be good parents as well (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1).

But I think the flow of the logic of the New Testament isn’t: biological families are important and so they are to be the focus of our lives. It seems to me that it looks more like: biological families are important as models for how the church family ought to relate to one another.

Here’s an example of what I mean: in 1 Timothy 5:1-2, Paul lays out the ways in which the early Christians should treat older and younger members: in the same way that you treat your father or mother or sister. The logic is this: you already know how to treat family well, now apply that to the broader church. Of course, a few verses later he openly rebukes those who don’t take care of their own relatives. The point isn’t to abandon your nuclear family. The point is that your nuclear family is a unique relationship that is part of a greater reality: the family of God. Take the natural reality of human families, which you understand, and apply it to the whole church.

All human societies have understood the bond of the biological family. It is why bloodlines have mattered to so many people for millennia. The people who follow Jesus shouldn’t ignore that natural reality. But they should, however, recognize that in Jesus we have been given a larger and fuller picture of what human flourishing and abundant life can look like: the biological family integrated into the community of faith.