The Nuclear Family and the Family of God

Recently, I read what is sure to be a crucial essay by David Brooks in The Atlantic on the rise and fall of the nuclear family in America. Brooks is a public intellectual I respect. He's been a long-time columnist for the New York Times and his many books have been met with high, well-deserved acclaim. Like any opinion columnist, Brooks writes about politics. But over the last 10 years or more he has pivoted his focus to more foundational matters that buttress our political life, such as the fabric of community and what it means to be a person of sound moral character. It could be argued, then, that Brooks is giving voice to an ancient vision of politics. For Plato and Aristotle, being virtuous and being political were one and the same; good politics required good character. In his own way, Brooks seems to be breathing life back into ancient ideas for a 21st century audience. This can be seen in his essay on the nuclear family.

Brooks minces no words in this piece. The idolization of the nuclear family has been a clear mistake, he says. What's more, it's historically anomalous; it only became the ideal around 1950 and its foundation started to crack in the mid-1960s. As you'll see, Brooks' narrative is thoughtful at every turn and it's littered with trusted statistical analysis. Brooks is not a sentimentalist. He's simply showing that (1) the nuclear family is unable to support the enormous moral, emotional, cultural, economic, and political load we commonly place on it; and (2) that it runs against the grain of history. Historically, humans lived in packs, clans, and tribes. Outside a narrow corridor of American history 'family' is defined by more than a mom, a dad, and two kids. It would include those core people, of course, but it would also have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and possibly close family friends all living together or nearby. In cultures other than our own, family is a capacious social structure.

Such a broad web of relationships creates a support system where people find spiritual, moral, emotional, psychological, and economic help. It also roots a person in a community that is essential for the right formation of their identity. That is a load too heavy for the nuclear family alone to bear, Brooks argues. Consequently, those relationships often provided by extended families are supplemented at a financial price that only people with substantial means can afford. Thus the nuclear family is disastrous for poor folks who don't have the monetary resources to purchase a stable social network. I'll end my synopsis there as I want you to read and judge Brooks' essay for yourself, unencumbered by my excessive commentary. Needless to say, it's a fascinating piece of cultural analysis and rigorous argumentation worth your time and consideration.

Reading Brooks' essay got me thinking about the Church. Often I've heard pastors and others refer to the Church as a family -- and perhaps in some congregations it is. But in those moments I can't help but think that the Church in America has largely succumbed to the same insular, isolating, atomistic tendencies Brooks is pointing us to in the wider culture. It seems the Church has been too willing to prioritize and idolize the nuclear family to the exclusion of everyone else. Just ask single persons how they fare in the Church. Sure, there may be a perfunctory Young Adults or Singles ministry hosted by a local church or parish. Mostly, however, single folks are never fully incorporated into the life of the church body -- that is, into other families -- because they aren't married with kids. Singleness is a mere placeholder until marriage.

And this point of discussion speaks to a larger, more foreboding issue in our churches: namely, homosexuality. Let me be clear: I hold to a firm, invariably orthodox view of marriage and human sexuality. But my orthodox glasses do not prohibit me from seeing the grave injustices done by the Church to folks who have same-sex proclivities. Looking specifically at so-called un-affirming congregations (I hate the language that has grown up around this issue), who have rightly told same-sex attracted folks to remain celibate, on the one had, but then have offered them little to no support or means of familial connection and intimacy, on the other. This is sinful.

Every person waging a war for holiness in their body should be fully incorporated into the family of faith as an adopted son or daughter of Abba God (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5-7). Adoption into God's family is not an abstract bit of doctrine, however. Paul didn't write it to makes us feel good about our relationship with God. Adoption is a metaphor we do. It exerts an indomitable force that pushes us to a new way of life. As such, there's an expectation that God's adopted children will act as real siblings do. Baptism is our birth into a new family that goes beyond our small definitions. Other Christians can now make claims on us that others outside the family of faith cannot. In turn, we have obligations to brothers and sisters in the cruciform community that look markedly different than to those who are not fellow pilgrims on the Way. Get this straight: The waters of baptism are thicker than blood.

When Paul told the church(es) in Galatia to "bear one another's burdens" (6:2) do you think he had only individual families in mind? Are these boundaries as firm as they once were now that we've been baptized into Christ? Does not the difference Christ makes confound our easy definitions of what it means to be a family?

There are a hundred directions to take this. For now, though, I'll end by encouraging you to read Brooks' essay and then to contemplate his argument as it relates to the Church. Perhaps Paul's metaphor of adoption is the door we need to walk through to find God's family.