Proverbs 17:6 passes on the wisdom that “Children’s children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.”
This piece of wisdom literature reminds us of the importance of strong family relations. However, we are not only advised to maintain strong intergenerational family relationships but also within nuclear families; as Ephesians 5:25 says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” God established the family before any other institutions, including the government; it is the most important and foundational institution in human history.
The Bible persistently reminds us that protecting the family is a central tenant of the Christian faith. Unfortunately, our culture has shifted away from glorifying the nuclear family to vilifying it. Articles published by Vice under the headline “We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family” are no longer relegated to harmless absurdities.
These are serious propositions being made by thinkers like Sophie Lewis: “Her radical proposition is that we practice “full surrogacy” by abolishing the family. That means caring for each other not in discrete private units (also known as nuclear households), but rather within larger systems of care that can provide us with the love and support we can’t always get from blood relations.” [2]
This kind of dialogue has eroded the status of the family within the Western world. However, there are still those who are pushing back. Efforts across the nation to support families have ramped up over the last few years. Although the expansion of crisis pregnancy centers and similar organizations has been met with hostility by those who support Sophie Lewis’ dystopian future, they are nonetheless growing in influence across the country. [3] Recent news of a bill that would mandate the teaching of breastfeeding in public schools is yet another example of a positive step in this direction. [1]
As Psalm 127:3 teaches, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.” Christians have an obligation to support the creation and sustenance of families, not just as a policy matter but in our day-to-day lives. It is sometimes easy to be bogged down by the rhetoric and politics of the day, but the most important thing for us to remember is the need to live out our values.
In one of his articles, Billy Graham argued, “we must not conform to the world socially. The world attempts to absorb us into its secular society and to conform us to its earthly image, but Christ urges us not to conform. Clearly, He says of those who believe in Him, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:16).” [4]
Practically speaking, this means that Christians need to support family-oriented policies while also making sure that they are supporting family values in their personal lives. As we are reminded in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
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