Familyolatry in the Church?
Queer Brit over at Queermergent has a nice piece on a topic I’ve been wondering about a lot the past few years: the idolization of the family by the church. We hear it from several corners: marriage and the family are the foundation of Western civilization and without them, our culture will crumble. This sounds nice, but in effect, it makes the family into a kind of god — an idol.
Queer Brit writes:
From the beginning Christianity was radically about a new form of extended community, as a visible expression of the invisible kingdom of God. This is the reason why the early church was persecuted, because in so doing, these little Ecclesia’s challenged the power of the Empire which sought to disempower minority groups, which the church, counter-culturally, sort to include. If you look at the book of the Acts, where people shared a common purse and lived together in extended friendship groups – it is all completely different from the ideal of conservatives with their 2.2 children, man at work and woman at home….
I’ve been reading the same thing in Kierkegaard: the family is not a Christian value, and there is no Biblical way to claim that it is.
I see this idea from the perspective of the Gospels and Paul, but it is hard to reconcile it with the Hebrew scriptures, which value family fairly highly — think of how many of the miracles have to do with having children. So, how do we find a biblical understanding of family that values them properly without making them the idol on which civilization is built?
Reason for the Season?
Why is it so difficult to focus on Christ during the Christmas season? Advent is a penitential season, a season of examination and expectation, a season of quiet, hopeful waiting. Yet it seems impossible to live this season outside of a monastery. Traffic, noise, busyness, adornamentation, wish-lists (argh! to do away with the evil of the wish-list for Christmas! Christ has given himself completely to us; how dare we think we need or even desire anything more?), spend and buy and eat and drink and be merry and be busy and don’t slow down or you’ll be behind.
I continue to say, Save Christ from Christmas! Bad music, bad clothing, bad decorations. Teaching children all the wrong lessons, instilling them with the worst expectations. Was it for this that Jesus became the bread of the world?
How have we gotten so far away? Kierkegaard and Ellul were right: Christendom is the exact opposite of gospel Christianity. American Christendom even more so (more the opposite? is such a thing possible?). The true god of the season is greed/luxury. Celebrate the economy. Celebrate the capitalist virtues. Celebrate Jesus for one day when we ignore him all year.
The Christmas season does not start the day after Thanksgiving. It starts on Christmas Day and runs for 12 days. We have it completely backward. But do we care?
Christ be honored and glorified in spite of it all. May our hearts and minds return again to the bread of the world, born in the House of Bread (Beth-Lehem) and lying in the feeding trough. Eat of him and live eternally. Glory to God, Peace to mankind. O come, o come….
