Images Of The Family: Ours And God's

Though family structures in our society continue to change rapidly and radically (does anyone any longer know what an "intact family" is?), several fantasies of family life still captivate us, no matter how unrealistic they may be. One is that families are islands of safety and comfort in an increasingly bleak and barren, if not threatening and violent world. In this fantasy, home is an always welcoming, always peaceful place of return from weary, workaday life, soothing us after the day's confrontations at the office, on the streets, in the classroom, with disinterested peers and hostile strangers, and on the bottom of deteriorating infra-structures.

Another fantasy is that families are endlessly renewable sources of energy for approaching life in a playful spirit, like entertainment centers positioned as close to wet bars as design considerations permit, like campgrounds that beckon fun-seekers of all ages all the year around, and like circuses in which no one ever tires of cotton candy, ice cream, and daredevil displays. In this fantasy, families that play together stay together, fun is what goes and comes around, and the waves that some members make never capsize other members' boats.

Finally, there is the fantasy that families are open systems of consistent and honest feed-back between warm and loving kinfolk who enjoy one another and have only each other's best interests at heart. In this fantasy, family reunions are like bellying up to the bar at Cheers, "where everybody knows your name," or like delightedly sitting on the floor in an encounter group and being cradled in the fuzzy warmth of others' graciously tendered self-revelations.

Far from being islands of safety, however, many families are seething cauldrons of criticism and abuse. Far from being rollicking playgrounds, many families are joyless wastelands of indifference and neglect. Far from being loops of never-ending positive feedback, many families are static-filled conduits of mutual misunderstanding and mistrust. One of the reasons that so many people are wondering about whether there is any hope for the institution of the family is that their hopes are built on clinging to fantasies about family life in spite of all the evidence which undermines them. When facts demand that they give up the fantasies, they give up hope, too.

Together, the three small fantasies just described point to one much larger one, a Master Fantasy if you will, that families should not rest content providing us with what we need in order to help us to get on in life. Instead, they should sacrifice themselves in order to provide us with everything that we want --- so that we will not have to make a life for ourselves at all. Life under this Master Fantasy is truly tragic. Conflict, covert and overt, is the real story of every family relationship dominated by the fantasy; deep down, each family member blames someone else for making life less than it is supposed to be; and no one truly believes that anything and anyone can change for the better. This Master Fantasy, and all the little ones besides, we are better off without.

Does God dwell in fantasies about human families? I doubt it. Does God have hope for families? I am certain of it. For God has not left us clueless about what his own image of the family might be. To me, one of his most valuable clues is in the letter to the congregation at Ephesus, specifically at Ephesians 2:19: "You are members of God's household." All of us, the writer is telling us, are part of a larger whole, larger than our nuclear and extended families, and larger even than the family which is humankind itself. We are already approved and initiated, full-fledged, lifetime-and-beyond members of the family of God.

What can this mean for us, as we seek greater fulfillment as families? Primarily, that as members of God's family first and foremost, we have a higher loyalty than just to our own families and to making them into refuges, carnivals, and therapy groups. The loyalty that God asks from us, as his children, is a loyalty to building each other up to care about and to serve the needs of others, as he cares about us and sent his son to die for us. For as long as a family's interests remain self-centered only, for that long will that family's quality of life continue to deteriorate. For as long as family members look beyond their own interests, and ask what they can do, together, to make God's world better for everyone, for that long will their bonds become stronger and healthier.