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"Jesus' family values"

Pastors' Bytes

Welcome to faithworks Pastors’ Bytes- an electronic supplement to our print edition. In this page, we capture quotes from the magazine’s featured stories. For greater perspective, you may want to check out the full edition. These pages will be handy to print and file for speaking, teaching or group discussion.

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By Rob Marus

As November 7 draws near, both political parties are trying to cash in on voter concern for “family values.” But whose family? And whose values? Surveys suggest the family is a major issue for the vast majority of Americans. The mention of "family values" often precedes a rehearsed list of hot-button social issues.

Jesus didn’t talk much about preserving traditional families. In fact, he had some rather startling things to say on the subject: At the very least Jesus seems to be pointing us away from idolizing human concepts of family. But modern-day American Christians may have done just that. (For a list of cited scripture, see full article from FaithWorks)

According to author Cameron Lee, “Each side in a political debate wants to portray itself as the guardian of the best and truest values of society,” he told FaithWorks. “The implication is that if you don’t vote with our ‘pro-family’ platform, then you must be ‘anti-family’ and, by implication, anti-Christian or anti-American.”

In Beyond Family Values, Lee cited studies that suggest evangelical Christians both define the concept of family and assign prominence to a hierarchy of family-related values in ways almost identical to the culture at large. Thus Lee concludes that American Christianity -- at least as it relates to the institution of the family -- is a “subculture” rather than an “alternative culture.” In other words, when it comes to how we conceive of family, we really aren’t that different from other Americans.

Clapp concludes that the post-industrial model of family may serve a lesser god than the God whom Christians are called to serve. “What goods or ultimate aims does the post-industrial family serve?” he asks. “Privatized and domesticated as it is by definition, it serves the aims of late or consumer capitalism."

Christian families should cultivate virtues rather than values, and specifically those virtues that are true to the Gospel.“Values are attitudes and preferences the individual chooses for him or herself. They are what the person values," Clapp says. But virtues are “those excellences that exist outside any particular individual’s preference. Faithful monogamy is not one of my values if I don’t feel like embracing it. [However,] it remains a virtue whether or not I am hot for my neighbor’s wife.”

The bottom line: Any time people are more loyal to a human concept of family than to the virtues embodied in the gospel, then family becomes an idol. That doesn’t mean Jesus is anti-family. It just means he wants us to focus on the family of God at least as much as we do on human families. (ref. Mark 3:33-35)

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