When I started my post on idolatry a couple of days ago this is more where I was headed than where I wound up.
In our church our pastor has been taking us through the book of Mark and two Sundays ago he comes to this passage, "Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent {word} to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, "Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You." Answering them, He said, "Who are My mother and My brothers?" Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, "Behold My mother and My brothers! "For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother." (Mark 3:31-35)
In our culture today, if you are doing something and your mother and father show up, what is our response? We drop everything and run to greet them. In this passage, as my pastor so aptly pointed out, Jesus doesn't do that. Instead He uses is as a lesson in priorities. Now I am going to make it perfectly clear where I stand on this so there is no mis-conception about what I believe regarding my family. I am a steward of what God has blessed me with. My family is part of that stewardship. There is a difference though between them and the other things God has blessed me with, like money, a place to live and a car and that is the fact that they are my first ministry. If I can not minister to them then I should not even try to minister to the church body as a whole. If I do not evangelize my kids then I shouldn't even try it anywhere else. With that I believe that our culture has driven many Christian families to idolize their families. I think that due to the fear of being inundated with sin some Christian families have taken on a bunker mentality.
Families today have taken themselves our of the social mix in the name of "family time". I will give you a couple of examples of what I mean.
Families that miss Sunday night church service because that is family night. Really? Well what do you call Monday through Saturday night? Ignore the family night? Now I don't want to become legalistic about attending the Sunday night service, but I am a person who believes that any time the Word of God is being taught I and my family should be there. I can think of no better family time then to be with my family and my brothers and sisters in Christ and taking hat opportunity to instill in my kids the importance of church.
Another example would be the home school family that uses home school as a way to shield their kids from the world. The last time I checked we are to be "in" the world. If you shield you children from the world then how can they evangelize those in the world? They will only be in contact with believers. Now I do know many families that home school correctly, but often times parents use this avenue of education to protect their kids from the world outside. Now I am not talking about you families that may need to home school due to a bad neighborhood or another extreme and I am not talking about allowing your kids to watch bad Television shows. I am talking about the families that see a good school system, like the one here in the SCV and think that their kids need protecting from it. It is hard to parent a public school kid don't get me wrong, but what an opportunity to talk to my kids about what is going on in our culture and how we can speak into that.
There are also parents who feel that they alone can disciple their kids. In my experiences now as a parent it has been a blessing to have some select few college students in my kids lives. They have been able to talk to my kids when they couldn't exactly talk to me. For you parents who think that's wrong, all I have to say is "Get real". Are telling me that your kids should only see you as a mentor? Are you telling me that a youth pastor or bible study leader could not come along side of you and help?
We as a body of believers need to start acting like just that, a body of believers. Sometimes I think we as Christians try our best to isolate ourselves from the world. We must go forth into this culture and evangelize it and that means not seeing our families as reasons not to be biblical in our walks. Serve others with your family, go to church with your family and fellowship your family and other families. Develop relationships with the unsaved neighbor next door. Allow your children to develop relationships with that unsaved neighbors kids. Be like Christ and train your family to be like Christ. Are your priorities like Christ's? After all He did say that we must "hate our mother and father, brother and sisters" in an effort to show us that He must be preeminent in our lives.
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