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John Bell did a little experiment during one of his workshops as an attempt to discover Christian Family Values in the Bible. One group looked up values that Jesus looked towards that were of the patriarchs and ancestors. Another group looked to Jesus and his own family to see what was displayed there. The third group looked at what Jesus had to say about family values.
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Group 1 (Ancestral): Found things like David who had 700 wives and 300 concubines... Jacob who tricked his father into giving him his blessing... Abraham passed off his wife for his sister... Joseph, whose story is crammed with issues of jealousy...Moses who was a murderer and fugitive had a poor relationship with his wife... Well, it looks to me like we don't have many good examples in Jesus' ancestry to show what Christian family values really are...
Group 2 (Jesus' Family): First of all, there isn't much evidence in this section because the Gospels aren't so much a biography of his family life, so that already proves to be unhelpful. But let's look anyway. Joseph is (according to Matthew) a descendant of Abraham which could tell us why Joseph was so inclined to be a helpful caretaker to Jesus even when he almost divorced Mary for suddenly being pregnant. He was invited to be taken out of his comfort zone... as were so many of his ancestors. His relationship with his mom, Mary, was not ideal. I mean, when he snuck off to the temple his parents were worried but they were upset. He also turned on his mom at the wedding a Cana in a fit of exasperation. Someone comes to him (Luke 11:27b) to say, "Happy is the womb that carried you and the breasts that suckled you!" and Jesus is like, "That has nothing to do with it." So, what we see here isn't convincing that his family modeled the ideal family life.
Group 3 (Jesus' sayings): So, even if his ancestors and his family didn't model these values we're looking for, perhaps Jesus said something that was helpful to this conversation. (I'll give it to them anyway, they were all Jewish......... :]) In at least four instances, Jesus tells people that they will and should be rejected by their family if they follow him for nothing else should matter besides their following him (Matthew 10:21-22, Matthew 10:34-37, Mark 10:29-30). So does Jesus not value family responsibility? Not quite... I mean he asks the rich young man whether or not he honors his parents (Luke 18:20), and he warns against child abuse (Mark 9:42), AND he encourages honest confrontation and forgiveness (Luke 17:3)... So here are three values I suppose. He also enjoys being IN households, right? Lazarus, Susana, Joanna, Peter, etc. He likes being in community, and if a family is supposed to be a community, well then, there you have it. (Besides, family units were way different back then and there were several people in a house.) Jesus says nothing about relationships between same sex couples, male or female, but he does have a word to say about divorce... This is ONLY because someone asked him about marriage. Jesus tells them that a man cannot divorce his wife for any reason, but must be proven adultery. (And I would also say abuse, but women (most times) don't abuse their husbands, and the person asking asked about a man divorcing his wife... stupid superiority complex.) So, we don't really see anything of much value (no pun intended) here in Jesus' sayings.
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So then where do these values come from? Well, it doesn't help that a family in first century Palestine was much different from twenty-first century America. If we're going to take the Bible literally, then one-parent families would be the norm because the death rate there called for the average age of death to be 30. With this is mind, Jesus was not so concerned with all of these issues, but rather created a "family unit" of belonging. Jesus was continually inviting people into "a larger family that is defined by commitment to the Kingdom of God rather than bondage to ancestral tradition" (56). I think he would have been a proponent of the notion "it takes a village to raise a child." We are to be loved by our families, but are also to be in community with others. Marriage nor family life can be mandatory for all people... God calls us to different things.
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So Christian Family Values are a crock... right? The way we think of them today, yes. We all belong to each other and are called to take care of each other. Christ didn't have to say anything about specifics because it is enough to be living with and for each other, outside our family unites.
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"The encouragement that we receive from other people of faith should be a means by which our horizons are extended and the potentials unrecognized by our biological family are identified and affirmed" (57).
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