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An Amateur Parent Poo-Poos the idea of a “Christian Family”

An Amateur Parent Poo-Poos the idea of a “Christian Family”

Last updated on: September 17, 2014 at 5:18 am by Coyle Neal

An Amateur Parent Poo-Poos the idea of a “Christian Family” 2014-09-17T05:18:39-06:00 Coyle Neal

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Review of Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent & Barbara Hughes

A necessary precautionary disclaimer: As of this writing, I am the parent of a three-month old. Which means I have exactly zero real-world experience when it comes to raising children who can do more than eat and scream and poop.

With that said, Disciplines of a Godly Family by Kent and Barbara Hughes is a fine enough book. The theology is solid; the advice is sound; and the writing is clear and readable. If I have a quibble with the book itself, it’s the fact that the structure seems to be loosely based around, well, I don’t know for sure. Stuff that the authors wanted to be sure was included? The appendices are the worst offenders here, including book suggestions, a poem (and not a terribly good one at that), vacation ideas, advent suggestions, and recipes. And while each of these things is somewhat related to the rest of the text, they also could quiet easily have cut the book’s length in half. Again, this is a minor quibble—by and large the book is fine. No better and no worse than any of the other theologically solid parenting books available.

My problem is more of a general theological one with this genre as a whole. The more of these Christian parenting books I read, the more… something I become. Disquieted? Uneasy? Hungry? All three? (Three is too many emotions for a guy to handle, so let’s go with just the first two.)

Here’s my problem: when we’re talking about the family as a covenant institution set up by God and explained in Scripture, I’m not convinced that there is such a thing as a “Godly family” in the first place. Now, before you get your magic underwear in a twist, let me explain just what I mean by that.

“The family” is, to be sure, an institution established by God for specific purposes in the world. One such purpose is certainly the population and subjection of the earth; another is bringing stability and order to society; while yet a third is the development and growth of virtue (both private and civic). And we know from Scripture that the main purpose of institution of the family is, of course, presenting a picture, image, and symbol of the relationship between Christ and His church (Ephesians 5:22-33). These are all purposes that are woven into the covenant structure of “the family” as God has created it and as we see it explained in the Bible. And so far, most of the parenting books I’ve read (including Disciplines of a Godly Family) do an excellent job of explaining and applying these principles.

And yet, I’m increasingly coming to believe that at some point our theology of the family often goes slightly awry. Namely, I’m not convinced that to say that the family as an institution is created by God as an image of the church is the same thing as saying that it is a Christian institution.

To clarify a bit, what I mean by “institution” is something along the lines of “an organization or entity defined by God in Scripture as being characterized by unique rules and structures.” This obviously could apply to any number of things, including the government, education, economic systems, and so on. In terms of the family specifically, we see that the unique institutional characteristics built into its structure include the relationship between the husband and the wife and the authority of parents to discipline their children. (See again Ephesians 5) Disciplines of a Godly Family does an excellent job of explaining these unique characteristics.

But from what I can tell in Scripture, none of these characteristics are just for Christians. Instead, the family as an institution appears to be a common grace covenant given by God to the whole world. True, this institution is increasingly ignored or attacked in the West, and has come under immense pressure in various ways through history (we might think of the establishment of polygamy, or the formalization of consorts, or many, many other examples), but nevertheless all of mankind has some kind of access to this institution. Being a Christian is not necessary to enjoy its benefits.

In this sense, non-Christians may participate in a “Godly” family just as much as Christians. Whenever a non-Christian father self-sacrificially cares for his wife and children, he pictures what Christ does for the church. Whenever a non-Christian mother correctly loves her husband, she pictures the church’s submission to Christ. Whenever non-believing parents lovingly discipline their children and strive to build good habits in them, they picture Jesus’ care for His flock. That they do not understand or believe in what they are picturing does not necessarily hamper their ability to do it well any more than a politician who does not acknowledge Romans 13 is automatically a worse administrator than a politician who does.

And that is perhaps a good parallel. Another institution that God has given through a common grace covenant to the whole world is that of the state. Governments are established by God throughout the world with certain purposes in mind—purposes that are nearly identical to those of the family. While there have been Christians who have argued that there is such a thing as a “Christian nation”, we understand that this argument confuses common grace and saving grace. In fact governments of all sorts (whether they have Christians in them or not) are institutions that are available to all peoples at all times under God’s common grace blessings of mankind. Like the family, political institutions have been sinfully abused repeatedly through history, but trying to “baptize” them and turn them into something they are not is the wrong response. (For more on that, see Augustine’s City of God.)

Here then is the statement that forms the heart of this review: the only “Christian” institution established in Scripture is the church. This is not the place to talk about what a church is (much less what a healthy church is). I am simply saying that the church alone is the institution which is unique to Christianity, and the only institution defined specifically by the Christian Gospel. One can be in a family or a nation and not know about the Incarnation, Crucifixion, or Resurrection, but one cannot have a church without those core Christian concepts as its definitive foundation. This may be why the family and the nation will both pass away, while the church alone will last into eternity. The family gives us a picture of the eternal relationship between Christ and His church, but it is not itself eternal. (Revelation 19:6-9

Which raises the question: just what are the differences between families that have Christians in them and families that do not? There seem to be two: understanding and evangelism.

One difference is that Christians read passages like Ephesians 5 and, theoretically at any rate, understand the purpose behind what we are doing as parents, husbands, and wives. As a result, we might more intentionally focus our parenting on the model of Christ’s care for the church, but again this does not necessarily make us any better at the actual work of parenting. I suspect we all know nonbelievers who are better parents and better models of Christ and the church than we are in functionally every aspect of parenting. And if we don’t, we should feel ashamed and make more of an effort to get to know non-Christians in our communities. Disciplines of a Godly Family is an excellent case in point (this is technically a book review, remember), since the vast majority of the “disciplines” encouraged in this book are disciplines which non-Christians pursue just as easily as Christians. One need not be regenerate to build good habits, develop family traditions, or take a vacation together. Again, as Christians we might have a different perspective as we engage each of these disciplines, but we do not necessarily have a different practice. God has made these disciplines available to the world at large and to any who wish to take advantage of them. They are not, in themselves, uniquely “Christian.”

Evangelism is of course a bit different, and the place where non-Christians and Christians within the family (as well as within politics) are going to pretty radically differ in terms of practice. And yet, I’m not convinced that the practice of evangelism is necessarily part of the family structure. We should evangelize, to be sure. And as Christians we should take advantage of the institution of the family to do evangelism—in exactly the same way we should take advantage of every other institution when we can do so. Paul after all commends Timothy’s grandmother and mother for teaching him the Scriptures, and himself uses the courtroom to share the Gospel with public officials. Both are examples of people using established institutions to preach the Gospel.

But! Differences of opportunity are not differences of institutional structure. To say that we have an obligation to use institutions to evangelize is not the same thing as saying that evangelism is inherent to the institution being used. Again, that particular characteristic only belongs to the church. It alone is the institution which is built around the declaration of the Gospel. Only the church has evangelism, as it were, running through its institutional blood. The family and the nation ultimately exist to declare the glory of God in the Gospel, but their joints and marrow are composed of a different, temporary, covenant than that which establishes and shapes the church. Evangelism is something we use them to do, not something that forms their basis.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not saying we shouldn’t evangelize our children. Just as we spend more time with our children than we do with the rest of the world, so too should we spend that much more time evangelizing them. And thank God that in His kindness He seems to use this means of evangelism fairly regularly as a way of imparting saving faith to new Christians! Under the normal course of events God uses Christian parents as a way to spread the Gospel to the next generation. Not always, but often.

So, long review short: the “family” is a common grace gift God has given the whole world, not a uniquely Christian thing. Which means we need to be just as careful in how we speak about the family as we are in how we speak about politics (great damage, after all, has been done by the idea of a “Christian” government). When we defend God’s plan for the family, we need to remember that it is at heart a plan for human beings, not a plan for believers only.

This is not to dismiss books like Disciplines of a Godly Family as useless—far from it! There is much excellent advice on raising and evangelizing children in this and other books. We just have to remember that raising children well is something everyone has the ability to do whether they believe or not.

This book was provided for free by King of the Blog Paul Miller. I was required to write a review (he strongly implied in the subtext of his email that my knees would be broken if I did not), but not necessarily a positive one.

Dr. Coyle Neal is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO.

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