WHY FAMILY MATTERS
Written By Bill Cox
One of the Family, 1880 Frederick George Cotman
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
A couple of recent events crystallized my thoughts on how paramount it is that, as Christians, we practice and champion the nuclear family, God’s building block for healthy, sane civilizations.
The first event I have pondered is the absolute horror show that is the Lindsay Clancy murder trial in Massachusetts. Clancy’s guilt or psychological impairment will be decided by juries, judges, and alleged experts. The madness that shocks me to my core is the widespread support and protest marches by pink-clad feminists demanding Clancy’s exoneration.
I think this is the personification of one of C.S. Lewis’ “four loves” in a negative sense, which is the only way it is used in the Bible. The word I refer to is “storge.” Hence: Storge (pronounced stor-jay) is the ancient Greek word for natural, instinctual affection and familial love, such as the bond between parents and children, siblings, or lifelong family members.
The word “ astorge “ is used in two New Testament lists categorizing last days sins. As we know, in the Greek language, adding an “a” to the beginning of a word means it is the opposite of the original word. Thus “astorge” means “without natural affection”. To elaborate on that, the natural bonds of mother and child are trumped by feminist ideology and narcissism and self-love.
One extremely disturbing short video I saw showed a Clancy supporter weeping because the prosecution wouldn’t allow Clancy to access her dead children’s stuffed animals. Dry eyes for the poor dead children, but weeping for inanimate objects and sick sentimentality.
Ironically, in the midst of the Clancy trial, feminist icon Gloria Steinem went into eternity. As I ponder the moral sickness in our culture, a good epitaph for Steinem might be Shakespeare’s line from “Julius Caesar”:
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
The other event that stirred my thoughts about the importance of family was a sad visit Sunday afternoon to a local funeral home for the visitation for a former client named Danny. He was only 27 and had struggled with opiate addiction for many years, with some seeming recent success. Apparently, he lost his way again, and it took his life. I knew of some of his history of running the streets at an early age in a broken part of the city called Portland.
I met Danny’s mother at the visitation and had to pray for her. Sadly, her face was a roadmap of brokenness and a lifetime of intergenerational pain and dysfunction. It would be nice if these trendy anti-family philosophies were harmless bromides for bored, overeducated people with too much time on their hands, but unfortunately, ideas have consequences.
The advantage that children have growing up in intact, loving, Christian homes can hardly be overemphasized. Studies in human development point out the development of healthy stress processing in children at very early ages. The primitive part of the brain, the amygdala, is where the fight-or-flight response resides. Growing up in loving, nurturing, protective environments makes a huge difference and builds resilience for life. The analogy often used for the fight-or-flight response is: what do you do when you encounter a bear in the woods- run or fight. Living in a broken, dysfunctional home is like living with a bear.
Stanford University and Kaiser Permanente Insurance did a landmark study called the Adverse Childhood Experience Scale. It studied 70,000 persons in what is known as a longitudinal study. In other words, they studied the participants over a lengthy period of time. The study asked participants 10 questions about whether they grew up with addiction, mental illness, incarcerated parents, poverty, neglect, domestic violence, or abuse. The higher the score, the higher the predicted increased chances of the child developing social pathologies as well as having potential dire health outcomes due to the effects of high stress on the immune system.
Psalms 127-128 are celebrations of healthy, godly family systems. Psalm 127:3-5 states:
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
The fruit of the womb is a reward.
4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one’s youth.
5 Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them;
They shall not be ashamed,
But shall speak with their enemies in the gate.”
The obvious truth there is that children are a blessing and privilege from God that we get to help shape their lives and destinies. The other thing that caught my eye is verse 5, which talks about children raised in Godly homes “speaking with the enemies in the gate”. In ancient culture, the gates of the city were the place where the leaders and prominent citizens conducted the business of the city.
This is a great picture of the dominion and gifting bestowed in homes and families that honor God. The nun, Mother Teresa, sometimes had some astute quotes about family. She said, “You want to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.”