South Woods Baptist Church

Essay on the Family

    The question, "What is a family?," is at the forefront of a series of attacks on the moral and religious fabric of our nation.  As Christians, we must look at this question from a biblical worldview, not looking to the world to answer it for us.  If we say that Scripture is the revelation of God, and thus is our authority of life and practice, then we must first find out what bounds it puts around the semantic domain of "family," and then we must change our outlook accordingly.  Only then can we enter into serious conversation and debate with the world.

    The family is the foundational institution of God's creation.  When God finished creating the universe and creatures to inhabit the earth, He created Adam to be His viceroy over the earth.  It is important to note that while at the end of each day of creation, God evaluated His work and called it good, but He deemed it not good that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18).  He remedied this situation by creating a helpmeet corresponding to Adam from the rib of Adam.  The man recognized that this creation was like him and for him by his declaration, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man" (Gen. 2:23).  This one flesh relationship, marked and preceded by the leaving and cleaving aspect of marriage, is the model for the beginning of a new familial relationship, specifically that of the nuclear, or traditional, family.

    Scripture, though, does not strictly define "family" as marriage.  After their creation, Adam and Eve were commanded by God to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (1:28).  It is evidenced by Lot's daughters wish to lie with their father to preserve their "family" that family is more extensive than the one flesh relationship (19:30-36), in this case extending to grandchildren.  Even uncles and uncles' sons are considered to be family with regards to the kinsman redeemer (Lev. 25:47-49).  We even see that Joseph of Nazareth, many generations after the life of David, was considered to be of the "family of David" for the purpose of the census (Luke2:4).

    As is seen in the above short textual search of the term "family," there are different semantic domains in which this term is used.  Dr. Daniel Block in his article, "Marriage and Family in Ancient Israel," delineates four major levels of relations in Israel in the Old Testament: a people, a tribe, a clan, and a house of a father.[1]  This final level of "father's house" is closest to what we mean in the present day by "traditional" family, though it is still not quite the same thing.  The "father's house" was predominantly multi-generational, thus consisting of several "nuclear" families.  Achan in Joshua 7 is shown as married, having children, yet still being considered as in the house of his grandfather Zerah.[2]  Blood relatives, though, were not the only ones considered to be in the father's house.  Sojourners and slaves were also considered to be within the bounds of the father's house, thus making the patriarch of a given family to be responsible for their health and well-being.[3]  An example of this can be seen in Genesis 19, where sojourners are given rights in the father's house as family, thus being protected from the men of Sodom.

    Now having a better idea of what Scripture defines as a family, it is necessary to contrast this definition with another that some are purporting in the present day.  Those who are fighting for same-sex marriages to be legal in the United States argue that homosexuals have just as much "civil right" to civilly bond to someone of their own sex and call it marriage than a heterosexual person has to marry someone of the opposite sex.  The mainline argument is that those who wish to uphold marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life are simply reading their own private, religious beliefs into their civil union called marriage.  The state should not discriminate against the homosexual couple that wishes to join together and call it marriage because there is no basis for a civil law against such a union. 

    The underlying presupposition of the gay-marriage movement is that of naturalistic philosophy.  They understand that all matter in the universe is the result of a process of evolution, not the work of God.  If this process is absent of God and is reality, then there can be no basis for "moral law," because all one could have with regards to morals is merely tradition.  If species are capable by process of evolution of ridding themselves of undesirable traits, then why cannot societies do the same?  So, if a society decides a moral law is undesirable, and wishes for it to cease and another one to take its place, who or what is there to stop them? 

    The main problem with this line of argumentation, if not at least the underlying assumptions, is that if one holds to naturalistic evolution, he should not hold to same-sex marriage.  It defies the utmost tenet of Darwinism, that the species must survive at any cost, and if they cannot, then they must change their habits.  There can be no human survival without a sperm and an egg coming somewhere into the picture.  

There are sociological problems as well.  For those homosexuals who choose to adopt or to be artificially inseminated, though the supposed scientific evidence is varied, the experiential and biblical evidence is rather palpable.  If you rear children in an atmosphere of outright, unadulterated moral sin, then they are habitually skewed to the same sin if intervention is not made at some point to show them the wrongness of what they learned by experience.  An example of this can be seen in the continual sin of the sons of the kings in Israel.  From the time Jeroboam split the kingdom, almost all of his descendants followed in his same sins.  Another biblical example is Abraham attempting to pass off his wife as his sister so that he would not have a chance to be killed by her admirers.  His son Isaac did the same thing.  

    This naturalistic line of argumentation is a main attack against marriage and family in our day.  It very difficult to counter because the presuppositions from which they argue have been slowly seeping into the groundwater of knowledge in the large majority of schools in the world over the past century.  It has taken this long for the radical implications of this naturalistic worldview to infiltrate into the broad base of society and to effect change.  Many of the sex-radicals in the early twentieth century saw some of these implications, but were shot down quickly when they tried to assert them into the culture.[4]  As a line between public and private thought was slowly being drawn, and as Darwinian evolution was becoming the only scientifically viable theory taught in schools, the ability to say that something was morally right or wrong was pushed up into the realm of private thought, as only scientifically allowable laws of action (i.e., those actions which seem not to offend a certain lifestyle) were pushed down into the realm of public law.

    Another attack on the family has been mounted with good intentions by many conservative Christians.  They tend to frame their arguments for the family around no more than the "traditional" family.  The result of this kind of omission of the biblical family (i.e., the house of the father) has led to the under-definition of the family.  This point may not seem like that much of an attack, but it is to those who may not fit into the mold of the nuclear family.  If we can get back to a Biblical view of the family as the father's house, then issues surrounding single-motherhood and other non-traditional family structures could be largely lessened because there would be a caring household, Biblically accepted as a "family," to meet needs and to nurture or discipline as needed.

    A final attack that has been made against the family comes from within the family structure itself, and it assaults the idea of roles for all members of the family.  At first thought, this point may seem like a theological abstraction about which only a seminary student would be interested.  Looking at the shape of many families in present day churches, though, begs one to ask the question of Scripture whether or not families have defined roles for each family member.  Once again, Dr. Block had done well in pointing to the patricentrism of the Old Testament household.[5]  This patricentrism, over against patriarchy (father rule), "is consistent with the overall tenor of the Old Testament, which views leadership in general to be a privilege granted to an individual in order to serve the interests of those who are led."[6] 

The father is to be the leader of the household, but he is to be so as a loving head, just as Christ is to the church (Eph. 5:23, 25).  Wives are to respect and be subject to their husbands.  This subjection is not meant to be understood as slavery.  Our ideal is that of the relationship of Christ and the Church.  Christ is our loving head, even going to the cross because of His love for His people (Eph. 5:25).  In the same way, Husbands must love their wives for the purpose of serving them as their authority.  The Church is subject to Christ because He is the one who gave Himself for her, to sanctify her so that He might present Himself a holy and blameless church.  In this way, wives are to be subject to their husbands because God has established him as her authority.

Given these attacks on the family, it should be apparent that much is at stake in these debates of the definition and function of the family.  The first attack, that of the naturalistic culture, is dangerous because the result of their understanding of marriage is that marriage, as an institution, will have no meaning.  If a term can have every meaning, then it has no meaning.  The second attack of the family comes from the opposite end of the spectrum, and it threatens to constrict the meaning of "family" only to what has been the norm in recent centuries in the industrialized world.  They run the risk as much as the former group of having an unbiblical view of marriage.  The final attack comes from within the family itself and the risk involved in its success is the implosion of the family, where there is no mutual love or submission, thus no direction or purpose.

In conclusion, as Christians we must begin to study the Scriptures so that we may gain a better understanding of what was the expected norm and actual teachings of the inspired authors.  Until we know what we believe, and have a valid basis for believing it (i.e., being proved from the Scriptures), then we should not even attempt to enter into the marketplace of ideas present in our culture.  When we do enter this marketplace, we must then go to the heart of the presuppositions of our opponents, just as they have been doing to us for years, and point out that their worldview is also built on a faith-based foundation, and the results of their logic is much more detrimental to society than ours.  Only when we meet our opponents with equal footing and candor can we argue for the sanctity of marriage, and only when we argue for a truly biblical view of marriage can we call it sanctified.