Christianity and family values

Edits to come....

Christianity and Family Values

Christians often claim that family values are at the centre of both the Christian faith and social cohesion.  They may be right – but they should be careful what they wish for.  That's because Jesus' idea of what family meant was radically different to the 'nuclear family' concept that is held up an an ideal today.

Remember the royal wedding?   The Archbishop of Canterbury's sermon spoke of the importance of love, compassion, togetherness and dedication to God and one-another.  The Queen listened approvingly.  The congregation sang the unofficial English national anthem, the opening lines to William Blake's Jerusalem.  All this to send the strong, persuasive message that family was the foundation of England, that authority's first and last causes were family. That authority for a nation based on such values, values so innately Christian, must come from family itself.  

Christians – Protestant and Catholic traditions inclusive – are rarely able to agree on anything  politically.  One thing that nearly every Christian lobby group agrees on, though, is the importance of family values.  Indeed, they are quite within reason to state that family values are deeply embedded in Christian belief, and that these beliefs have formed the 'bedrock' of our society.  However, they are wrong if they think that such a position can be justified through appeals to the gospel. 

In a recent article in the New York Times, Stephanie Coontz claimed to identify a “radical antifamily ideology [which] permeates Christ's teaching” and that “the early Christian tradition often set faith and family against each other.”   She could hardly be more wrong – Christ was radically pro-family.  Christ spoke frequently on the importance of being the sons of God, referred to God as Father and t commanded his followers to go forth and multiply.  St Paul also uses the analogy of the family to describe the human relationship to God.

But that doesn't make the Christian family values lobby right, either.  Christ sent his own family away, claiming they had no more right to access him than any others.  He commanded his disciples to leave their families and follow him.  He never started a family of his own, and was recorded as saying you must hate your family to follow him.  This message is so distressing that of the many books that have 'rewritten' the Bible in every day language, none of them have been able to bring themselves to use the word “hate” - preferring instead to say things like 'you must love me more than your family.'

Lest the 'new atheist' crowd start self-congratulating on the inherent contradictions of scripture, let me state my contention (they have a much juicier morsel coming their way).  Christ was radically pro-family, but he redefined family to align with his religio-political objectives.  These objectives were a wholesale rejection of the authority of law – which St Paul would later refer to as a curse that Christ has freed humanity from – and likewise of the authority of the family.

No longer was your first duty to your family – that bastion of wealth and power as best exhibited by the Great Patrician Abraham and the monarchical dynasty founded by King David. Part of the reason Jesus called Himself the King of the Jews was to supplant the dynastic model of authority with the model of a family based on fidelity to father God.

            As William Blake put it so astutely, as he so often does:

           

            Was Jesus gentle, or did He

            Give any marks of gentility?

            When twelve years old He ran away

            And left His parents in dismay,

            When after three days' sorrow found

            Loud as Sinai's trumpet sound:

            'No earthly parents I confess -

            My Heavenly Father's business!

            Ye understand not what I say

            And, angry, force me to obey,

            Obedience is a duty then,

            And favours gains with God and men.         

           

Fidelity to Father God means absolute service and Love to the whole of Humanity.  This is a model of equality and family so radical that even the Greens wouldn't touch it.  It is a model of authority that is also manifested in his utter disdain towards the local law of the Pharisees, and his belief that money was alien (“give to Caesar what is Caesar's”), corrupting (eg, the rich young ruler) and even “the root of all evil.”  With the one exception of his rage at the money changers at the temple, his attitude towards these two most traditional structures of power was to openly disregard it.  Many of the ensuing confrontations with Pharisees memorably show his general attitude of contempt towards their authority.  However, none serve to illuminate both his disregard for religious and familial authority better than the very foundation of the claim of Christ's divinity and membership of the Godhead, the tenth chapter of the Gospel According to St John, verses 36-39 – Jesus response to the charge of blasphemy for calling himself the son of God:

            “do you say unto him whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, 'you are blaspheming' because I said 'I am the Son of God?;  If I am not doing the works of my father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though toy do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

Now, let me turn my attention to any New Atheists in attendance.  I mentioned there was a juicy morsel coming your way, and here it is:

Jesus did not believe in the authority of law and chose to disregard it.  Moreover, Christ demanded that people disrupt their families at great personal cost in order to follow him and pursue unintuitive, difficult religious ideals that many will not relate to.  Many of his followers then left their own families to join cult-like communities of believers after his death and reported resurrection.  

But here's the rub:  That doesn't get you out of asking yourself some tough questions about family and equality.  Even if you dismiss Christ's high standards of loving our neighbours as ourselves, and doing to others as we would have them do unto us, there are still questions about equality.  Does equality mean providing for your own family before providing for others?  If not, doesn't this help to perpetuate a global class structure that holds generations of people to poverty, or underemployment, or low standards of education?  With massive overpopulation eating up the world's resources at an ever growing rate, is it even ethical to have a family?

Christians and New Atheists alike are most likely to reject Christ's view of a family as sons and daughters of God for the same reason.  It sets too high a standard – it is too radically ethical, and it scares them.