Would Focus on the Family correct Jesus?

For a long time I have been puzzled by the pro-family lobby, particularly when they start to talk about the Christian family - by which they mean the nuclear family.  It's not that I don't think family is a great thing.  I think it is, [most of the time anyways]. So great is it that I think everyone who is called to live in a family should be free to do so, and the laws should recognize them.  When family works it is astonishingly good.  I think as many Christian folk who want to can run around saying "We think the family is great, just peachy-keen, the greatest thing since not just slice bread but bread itself."  And they can add, "And we think God thinks so too"  It's just that we/they can't get there from Jesus.  The most you can say about Jesus is that he was ambivalent about family.  If he wasn't ambivalent then he was negative.  No matter how hard you try you can't make Jesus pro-family, not without lying to yourself and everyone else.   Take a look at the following:

1. With typical adolescent impertinence, perhaps, Jesus confronted by his parents for worrying them [by staying in Jerusalem] Jesus seems unconcerned and says “Why were you searching for me?  Didn’t you know I’d be about my Father’s business?’ [That’s gotta hurt poor old Joe, eh?] [Luke 2:47-49]
2. His family thought Jesus was ‘out of his mind’ and, accordingly, tried to control him [Mark3:20],
3. His own brothers didn’t believe in him [John 7:5]
4. Jesus says explicitly that he has not come to bring peace, but to bring family conflict at every level [Luke 12:51-53]
5. When someone expressed interest in following him but wanted first to say good-bye to his family, Jesus says doing this would make him ‘unfit for the kingdom of God’ [Luke 9:62]
6. He told his disciples that their own families would betray them, resulting directly in some of them getting killed. [Luke 21:15-17]
7. When told that his mother and brothers wanted to see him, but couldn’t because of the crowds, Jesus seems to almost disown his mother and brothers, saying his mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and do it. [Mt. 12:46-48; Mark 3:31-34; Luke 8:18-21]
8. He promises those who have walked away from their own families to follow him, a multiplicity of [new] family members here on earth [Mt 19:28-29 and Mark 10:29-30]  In the similar Luke 18:28-30, Jesus says there is a clear reward for those who leave their wives, parents and children in order to follow him.
9. When a woman ecstatically shouts ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you’ he retorts with ‘No! Blessed instead are those who do hear and do God’s will’ [Luke 11:26-28]
10. He tells us to not invite their family or friends to dinner, instead invite the poor [Luke 14:12]
11. Jesus teaches that we are not even supposed to call our fathers ‘father’, because God alone is our father.[Matthew 23:9]
12. Jesus specifically tells his followers that they must ‘hate’ their mothers, fathers, wives and children [Luke 14:26], stronger language than Matthew’s 'loving someone more than God' [Mt. 10:37]. 

I don't want to argue against family. Far from it, I believe in it. I am utterly committed to my call to be a husband/father/son.  I just get sick and tired of the so-called Christian Right doing all this talking about the so-called Christian family and totally leaving Jesus out of the picture.  He's got a lot to say about family, and we need to listen.  And one thing he is saying is don't idealize the thing, it's not for everyone.  Why even Paul, often cited by the pro-family lobby since they can't quote Jesus, says that the best thing is celibacy but since most people are too horny for that marriage/family is a good second best [I Cor 7].

What the pro-family groups are heralding is a cultural expression that they really, really like - and that's fine. I like it too. I just wish they'd stop putting Christian in the name, because it makes it sound like Jesus would agree with them.  And I can't find any evidence in the bible to support that.   

Comments

[michael lee]

It was important enough to get a shout out in 2 of the Big 10 (honor you parents, don't mess around on your wife or husband). It got amped up even more at Jesus' Manifesto on the Mount, when he drew the adultery thing all the way to lust. It's also one of the primary metaphors God used to talk about his relationship with Israel, and Christ's relationship with the church.

Look, I like this Jesus guy a whole lot, but lets not bifricate the sacred writings into two piles, things from his lips (or, more properly, things from his lips edited and and collated and finally written down by the gospel authors), and things not from his lips. The whole thing is the counsel of God. The same spirit that breathed through Matthew and John breathed through Moses.

[Bob]

There is a problem any time we take one side of an argument that has more than one side in God's Word, and focus only on Scriptures that support our side. There is also a problem when we take comments out of context, or take allegorical comments as literal.

I would say that in the context of this post, perhaps Focus on the Family is guilty of the first problem, and the old bill guilty on the second...unless, of course, you are making an allegorical commentary for the purpose of illustration.

[bill]

thanks Bob - the agrument is rhetorical - trying to make the point, not that Jesus was anti-family, just that the scriptural witness does indeed have more than one side, so . . . when pro-family groups start talking all about 'Christian family' they often leave Jesus right out of the picture, kinda skip from Moses to Paul [and even Paul had doubts]. Meanwhile one of my daughters has just returned from months abroad - family seems particularly sweet right now.

[Jordon Cooper]

Thanks Bill for posting this. It has been an idea that has rattled around my head for a long time. There are strong tensions between family and service to the Kingdom and we often like to ignore them because of the cost involved.

[JSA]

Yes, thank you, Bill. This is something I've been thinking about lately as well. Walter Wink makes some similar points about Jesus's view of the family in The Powers That Be, where he suggests that the family is one of the primary ways in which elements of the Domination System is perpetuated (e.g. patriarchy and female oppression), and thus must be transcended, even abandoned by some so that they can enter more fully into the Kingdom.

[stephen.wilkins]

man, i appreciate this blog spot, but i have to say (for what it's worth) that i'm with michael lee's comments above. it sounds rather like you're reading scripture to a specific conclusion you're after. i'm all for jesus, i'm working out my discipleship, but really i'm not sure how to take what's said of him in the gospels as if that reporting somehow trumps everything else. i also think what you have to say about paul is though-provoking, to be sure, but it rings a bit... reductionist maybe? i don't read paul's work and come away thinking, oh yes, paul said it was better not to be married. i come away from paul with the message that it's best for everyone, given the imminent return of christ, to remain as they are, whether slave or free, married or not, christ's return is what we should be looking toward. (but i don't know what to do with that... as i said, i'm trying to learn and i'm a bit thick and slow.)

anyway, i thought it was cool you giving props to focus on the family the way you did--i'm used to people just throwing rocks at ministries they don't like for whatever reasons. it was nice to see you compliment them even while you disagreed. but as i get older (and i'm only 34, pretty young) i tell you, i have more and more respect for people and organizations who stake a claim for something they believe in, something they think is worth celebrating and fighting for. i would wager that none of us know anybody out there in colorado springs, but i'm willing to bet that they are real, regular people who have a lot of crap in their lives, but they love some things and they are willing to support those things and fight for them. i gotta tell you, as someone who has spent so many years throwing rocks, i have a lot of respect for them. they don't have it all right, but neither do you, and neither do i.

anyway, thought-provoking. thanks.

ciao,
s

[[rhymes with kerouac]]

What's a family?

[DJeffery]

I'd agree Jesus is using hyperbole. Obviously he's not asking us to 'hate' our family or anyone else for that matter; but in comparison to the love which you should have for God it would seem like hate. He may seem dismissive because he is truly about His Father's business.

[Clement Ng]

This post is quite interesting. Jordan is quite right to say that there is a strong tension between devotion to family and service to kingdom. Having said that, I have some difficulties:

1) Trading on an equivocation in using the term "family" - when I speak of the school family, church family, extended family, etc., the context usually makes it obvious that I am not referring to our respective household units. We often use family in a metaphorical and/or extended use and it seems that in some of the verses (Mark 3:31-34, Luke 8:19-21) Jesus was not, in fact, disowning his family, but was emphasizing the priority of the believer's relationship with God. Thus, if by "family" we mean our community of faith, then, of course, Jesus claimed that everyone is part of *this* family.

This is not to say that only people related to me by blood are part of my "real" family. If my sister were adopted, I would not consider her any less a part of my family. On the other hand, if four college guys move into a frat house in their sophmore year, we would probably balk at calling that unit a "family".

2) Thinking that Jesus was someone for whom domestic life is of primary importance - he walked the earth as a human of course, but he was no ordinary human. Only in a secondary sense do we think of Jesus as the child raised by Joseph and Mary, the student who went to some Bethlehem middle school, the brother who got into fist-fights with his sibligs (hey, it could have happened!). You'd expect Jesus to cast off his blood ties. He had a mission to fulfill, and his mandate did not include marrying a woman, raising kids, owning a house with a white-picket fence, etc.

I'm not suggesting that the verses you alluded to do not apply to us, and only describe his purpose here on earth. Of course we're supposed to emulate Jesus. But sometimes we have to ask what Jesus would have us do. I can't picture Jesus, literally, driving kids to soccer games or helping them with their algebra. Yet these are thing many of us have to do and the nuclear family environment is the ideal context in which these relations are nurtured.

3) Supposing that the Christian Right *needs* to quote Jesus directly - you are right that Jesus has things to say about the importance/non-importance of family. But he also knew that his Father's intentions as made clear in the OT were given to us. The Genesis story makes it pretty clear that God's intended for most people to leave their parents and marry someone (of the opposite sex). Jesus certainly did not feel the need to question that. Why would he?

Andrew Sullivan asked (on his blog) last year why Jesus did not condemn same-sex attraction in the Gospels. But why does Jesus have to do this at all? He took for granted, quite rightly, the divine intentions for human sexuality already revealed in the OT and did not feel the need to add to these.

Jesus was not "pro-family" in our modern sense of the word, but, then again, he isn't *supposed* to be our Ward Cleaver. To think otherwise is to make a category mistake. In our current political climate (e.g. the debate about legalzing SSM), Focus on the Family is claiming that 1) the nuclear family is the divinely intended form of domestic life and 2) that it is the most ideal form of domestic life (irrespective of divine intentions, for non-believers). Nothing in scripture suggests that Jesus would challenge either claim.

Sorry for the long post. I always get carried away.

[Mike]

Loved it, Bill. This has been bugging me for a while too. I think some of your commenters missed the point. Jesus may not have been anti-family, but he also didn't put his focus on the family. If, on the other hand, we want to, lets not pretend it was his position too.

[Mike Somerville]

Most opponents of same sex marriage cite Leviticus or Romans but I am surprised that no one looks to the gospels and the words of Jesus.

Jesus never addresses homosexuality.

He does, however, have a lot to say about marriage and takes a pretty hard line on the topic.

Not only does he attack his opponents for their soft stance on divorce,in doing so he explicitly defines marriage as heterosuxual.

Marriage? And all along I thought it was an innoavtion designed by the Roman elite to exclude people.

[Clement Ng]

If, as Mike observes, Jesus didn't put his focus on the family, and, as Bill observes, the Religious Right leaves Jesus out of the picture when emphasizing the supposed importance of families, then what exactly is the problem? According to Bill the Religious Right is guilty of:

1) leaving Jesus out of the picture when emphasizing the supposed importance of families

But, if I am inferring correctly from Mike, the Religious Right is guilty of:

2) pretending that Jesus strongly emphasized the importance of family

I doubt that both claims could be true (at the same time). If the Religious Right is pretending that Jesus strongly emphasized the importance of family, then surely they would point to some verse or theme in the Gospels. But Mike claims that there are no verses or themes to appeal to in support of the Religious Right's position.

I'm not maintaining that the Religious Right could never contradict itself. That would be the case if they asserted X and, at the same time, denied X. But what we have here is the combined claim that the Religious Right pretends that X has a lot to say about Y and, at the same time, leaves X out of the picture when discussing Y. But it's not clear how one could be guilty of 1) and 2) at the same time.

If Jesus didn't focus on the family, although he was not anti-family (Mike's claim) and the Religious Right leaves Jesus out of the picture when discussing families (Bill's claim) then we aren't really faced with a problem. Since you don't go to a doctor to obtain legal advice, you could never be guilty of disregarding said advice.

Ultimately, I think that Jesus was emphasizing how we must elevate him over our families and, in elevating him, how we must go beyond our natural families.