Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples
praise you. The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God,
has blessed us. (Psalm 67:5-6)

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to
ourselves. (Romans 14:7) How very good and pleasant it is when
kindred live together in unity! (Psalm 133:1)

Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in
behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to
teach what is good. (Titus 2:3) Let deacons be married only once,
and let them manage their children and their households well.
(1 Timothy 3:12) At the same hour of the night he took them and
washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized
without delay. (Acts 16:33)

With all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:2-3)
Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.
(Proverbs 23:25)

So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do,
do everything for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31) And
my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his
riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory,
he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being
with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in
love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all
the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that
you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)
For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord. (1
Thessalonians 3:8)

…..

* From a list of six things that give the greatest
satisfaction to Australians, a 1986 poll found that 70% nominated
‘family’. Next were leisure activities (10%), friends (7%), work
(5%), religion (5%), and possessions (1%). Women rated family
more highly (76% to the men’s 64%). [Age Poll conducted by Irving
Saulwick and Associates, March 1986].

* ‘A happy family is but an earlier heaven’ (John
Bowring). ‘The family cycle has been one of the sanity-preserving
constants in human existence’ (Alvin Toffler, Future Shock). ‘All
happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy
in its own way’ (Tolstoy, Anna Karenina). ‘The family is one of
nature’s masterpieces’ (George Santayana). ‘Our home is like a
petrol station or a garage – a place to refuel or park yourself
at night’ (17-year-old youth).

Families are fundamental to a healthy society. There
is no greater gift than to be in a close, loving family. Families
are the laboratories where all the components for living are mixed
into a nurturing or a volatile brew. It’s the place we learn who
we are, where and whether we belong, whether we have significance
and competence. By the age of two children begin to talk to and
treat others as they have seen the Big People do it. That’s scary!
As someone put it, ‘Sometimes in a modern home the TV set is better
adjusted than the kids!

A good analogy is that of the symphony orchestra.
Successful family living means that each player has his or her
own unique instrument to play, and special skills with which to
do it, but everyone has to subordinate their individual virtuosity
so that the whole symphony is played with a beautiful harmony.
But sometimes there will be a concerto for ‘solo instrument and
orchestra’, and the other performers will join the audience in
the applause!

In happy families:

# Parents realize the best thing they can do for
children is to love each other, show affection, and listen carefully
to each other. The way parents relate is the single most powerful
‘socializing’ factor in any child’s history.

# ‘Blood is thicker than water’ (or, as the Spanish
version goes, ‘An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of
friendship’). In happy families there is strong emotional support
in times of crisis. As Charles Dickens wrote in David Copperfield,
‘Accidents will happen in the best-regulated families.’ And remember
Robert Frost’s famous line, ‘Home is the place where, when you
have to go there, they have to take you in.’

# Who makes what decisions is clear. ‘Authority’
is a matter of firm, gentle strength, but is increasingly shared
with children as they grow older. An ancient Chinese proverb says
‘Govern a family as you would cook a small fish – very gently’.

# The policy of ‘being helpful’ takes precedence
over ‘doing your own thing’. You often hear, ‘What can I do to
help?’ Fathers and mothers teach their children practical skills,
like personal hygiene, cooking, fixing things, cleaning, gardening,
how a car works.

# There’s laughter and games and jokes (but not at
the expense of the sensitive members!).

# ‘What is mine’ and ‘what is ours’ is clear, but
in the best families there is more in the latter category! Everyone
has a little place to call their own, but too much ‘split-level
isolation’ isn’t encouraged.

# Everyone submits to appropriate social disciplines.
This extends from conforming to a tidiness regimen, to keeping
the volume of one’s music down (ie. you don’t invade others’ space
either visually or auditorally!).

# Dinnertime is special most nights. Turn the TV
off (videotape anything important, like the evening news); put
on your phone answering-system. Say or sing ‘grace’. Allow each
person to talk about their day. Have a few rules: when one is
talking others listen; no quarrels, no ridicule; be consoling
if someone spills something. As the kids grow older, have some
passionate discussions about some things – world events, life’s
great questions, what’s good/bad about your country, the kid’s
school, etc.

# Sexual behaviour is regulated. Happy families are
not prudish, but they are not ‘exhibitionistic’ either. Adults,
in my view, should keep overtly sexual behaviour private. And
each child is privileged to have some privacy.

# People are allowed to ‘be themselves’. Parents
do not have to succeed vicariously through their children’s performances.
In happy families everyone wins. And the family itself doesn’t
have to anxiously grade itself for performance either.

Happy families are possible but they don’t just ‘happen’.
They are the product of selfless, hard work, disciplined loving,
and a lot of patience. Yours can be one of them.

…..

Some form of family meets a basic human need for
relationships with other people who care. Despite bitter revilement
by some and interesting experiments in alternative ways of living
by others, nobody… has yet come up with a long-term alternative
that works. Families are important because they provide people
with a sense of personal identity and with other people whose
basic concern can be taken for granted.

Penelope Leach, Who Cares?, Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1979, pp.12,13. [68]

What is a family, anyhow? I think the family is two
things: a nest, and an altar. Nest building is our best hope of
trying to perpetuate the species, and to defend ourselves from
going mad in the world’s chaos. The family is also the altar at
which human beings worship their own archetypes, and offer up
sacrifices of themselves – from Abraham to Mrs. Portnoy.

Shana Alexander, ‘The Silence of The Louds’, Newsweek,
January 22, 1973, p.34. [65]

Families are the building blocks of a strong society
because family is the strongest factor influencing human development
and competence.

We know what are the characteristics that distinguish
families who build human competence from the families who undermine
and destroy competence and confidence, and these factors all relate
to the way family members relate to one another and to the outside
world. Families create social capital, that is why they are vital.

Let us look for a moment at some of the evidence
of the impact of families on human growth and development.

Family outweighs any other factor in influencing
intellectual growth and development, success in schooling, mental
and physical health, social awareness and responsibility, moral
growth, social skills.

Families mediate social stresses to individuals,
and have an amazing power to ameliorate or exacerbate socially
induced stress. Families have a strong impact on the economic
viability of family members.

Moira Eastman, ‘Families – the Building Blocks of
a Strong Society’, in The Australian Family, Quarterly Journal
of the Australian Family Association, Volume 12, No.4, December,
1991, pp.23-24. [149]

[There are] six characteristics of a functioning
family: 1. It has a legitimate source of authority, established
and supported over time. Mother and father have the right to make
the rules, and the children have the right to heard. Families
cease to function when parents abdicate their role and give their
parental work to one or more of the children. It is especially
difficult if one parent forms an alliance with the children against
the other parent. 2. It consistently operates on a stable rule
system. Families need consistent structure. Children and adults
function best when family guidelines are clear and fair to all.
Difficulties arise when rapid or unexpected changes take place.
3. All members are affirmed, loved and appreciated. No human being
can have a quality existence without being nurtured. This is the
‘stuff’ of which relationships are made. 4. It has effective and
stable child-rearing practices. Strange as it may seem, few people
are born with all the knowledge necessary to rear children. Stranger
still, each child is unique, and each family system different.
There has to be constant upgrading, relearning and adapting. But
this principle does not conflict with the need to have a consistent
approach that recognises the dignity of each family member. 5.
It works at maintaining the marriage. Many parents feel that they
need to invest the major portion of their nervous energy in their
chlldren. But the most important relationship needs maintenance
and nurture. 6. It has a set of goals to which the family and
each member works. This calls for making decisions together, cooperating
and supporting each other. But cohesion does not mean conformity,
and unity does not mean uniformity. 7. It is adaptable enough
to accommodate normal developmental challenges as well as unexpected
crises. Each year brings the family to a new stage in its development.
Children grow and mature. Family practices that worked for juniors
will not work for teenagers. And the types of intimacies that
satisfied the newly married may not be sufficient for the more
mature.

R.J. and D.S. Becvar, Systems Theory and Family Therapy,
Lenham: University Press of America, 1982, p.82. [332]

Almost everyone belongs to a family, or at least
has belonged to a family at some stage during their life. Sons
and daughters brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, step-parents
and siblings, in-laws, foster parents, live-ins and defactos,
aunties and uncles, cousins, grandmothers and grandfathers, end
even Godmothers and Godfathers, all contribute to that human patchwork
quilt we call ‘family’…

The family [is] a social institution: regulates sexual
intercourse, assigns responsibility for children, conserves lines
of descent, orders wealth and inheritance, assigns roles for the
division of labour for everyday living, supports the roles of
its members in the external economy, participates with other institutions
(church, state, school, economy, mass communications, etc.) in
the socialisation of the coming generation, plays a role in the
physical psychological welfare of family members. ‘The family’,
understood as a special relationship between its members: contains
voluntary members (parents) and involuntary members (children),
forms and expresses the identity and character of all of its members,
and can grow or decrease both naturally (birth and death) and
socially (adoption, separation and divorce, remarriage). Families
therefore are networks and not just households and change form,
shape and content over time. People move in and out of relationships
and change their status in existing relationships. Consequently
families are continually being reconstituted… Families are of
course inter-generational, containing people of all ages. In Western
nations at least as people are living longer this inter-generational
factor is becoming more significant. Many marriages are not sustained
over the length of people’s lives. Whereas in some countries in
previous times remarriages generally occurred because of the death
of one of the spouses, today in some modern societies the spouse
may be living in the next neighbourhood! In other words increasingly
people are forming new relationships thereby further complicating
family structures and networks.

From the very beginning of life we are shaped by
the strong and intimate attachments which form within our family.
We receive our identification this way. We begin to grow personally
in this environment. Our father, mother, brothers and sisters
play an important role in this development, and the absence of
any of these family members makes a difference. This is not to
suggest that there is such a thing as an ‘optimal’ family or a
‘deficit’ family, since human beings are adaptable and flexible.
But what is essential for all of us is the intimate, accepting
and forgiving environment which we call ‘family’. If the immediate
community around that family is also welcoming and accepting,
it provides us with an even wider circle of security.

But like all other human experiences, the family
environment is a mixed blessing: it is filled with promise and
hope and everyday satisfactions, and yet can be full of frustration,
broken promises and even violence. Unemployment, poverty, poor
nutrition and homelessness all put massive pressures on the family.
Then there are the more internal responses to those pressures
or to personal inadequacy: violence, alcohol and drug dependency,
incest and child abuse all occur. The daily rhythms of family
life are predictable and secure, but they are interrupted by external
traumas and internal crises.

Alan Nichols, Joan Clarke, and Trevor Hogan, Transforming
Families and Communities: Christian Hope in a World of Change,
Sydney: AIO Press, 1987, pp.5-6. [524]

Social order is impossible unless the conduct of
individuals is predictable. In human beings, predictability of
conduct depends on the development of a stable character and of
reliable habits. Everything we know about social psychology indicates
that both have their origins in family life… The family has
been particularly effective in providing a haven of stability
in a rapidly changing society…

The family, today as always, remains the institution
in which at any rate the very great majority of individuals learn
whatever they will ever learn about morality. It is very unlikely
that this will change. Once again, this means that the family
has a political function of the greatest importance, especially
in a democracy.

Brigitte & Peter Berger, The War Over the Family,
New York: Anchor Press, 1983, quoted in The Australian Family,
Vol 13, No. 1, March 1992, p.7. [115]

American Dr Margaret Sawin has been working for the
past 26 years on strengthening the family unit. She has developed
a model called Family Clusters, in which a group of families make
a contract to meet each week for about three months to learn,
and possibly improve, how their family works. Dr. Sawin believes
families are simultaneously the most valuable and most threatened
structure in the developed world… Most of the social problems
facing society today – drug abuse, a rising crime rate, an increase
in violence – can in large measure be traced back to the family,
says Dr. Sawin.

Kathy Kizilos, ‘Family Clusters: helping people to
help themselves’, The Australian newspaper, May 22, 1986, p.10.
[98]

One of the most persistent myths in our society is
that the normal and healthy family does not experience problems
and stress. This myth remains despite the fact that every significant
study of the family demonstrates that the normal family does not
always live in perfect harmony, does get ruffled at times, and
does not always cooperate with one another. The difference between
the healthy and destructive family is not the absence of problems
but how those problems are seen and dealt with.

Kenneth Chaffin, Is There A Family In The House?,
Minneapolis, Minnesota: World Wide Publications, 1978, p.31. [83]

Culturally, there has been a temptation to take a
particular form of the nuclear family as it emerged in America
after World War II and make it the ‘biblical norm’ for all Christian
families. The image of the ideal suburban family, with the woman
as full-time homemaker, is a model of very short duration throughout
church history. Scripture gets used, in this case, to support
a view of the family that is shaped by culture. For instance,
black women have always worked, and the church has never really
debated whether the poor black woman must work. Ruth worked. Priscilla
made tents alongside Aquila. The biblical patterns are much more
varied.

Roberta Hestenes, in Context, published by World
Vision of Canada, Spring 1991, p.1. [111]

‘Show us the Father’, the disciples asked Jesus.
Good families should do that, helping us to experience a loving
God who understands our problems, who knows all about our sense
of loss, rejection, powerlessness, the struggle to survive, who
loves us as his own children.

The Bible is full of wisdom about family living.
The creation ordinance is foundational (Genesis 2:24), but the
Fall distorted family relationships (Genesis 3:16). Humans are
made in the image of God – and we become more like God as we grow
into loving, truthful, responsible people. Marriage and family
are signs of God’s love for his people. The Mosaic law was family-centred
– eg. the prohibition of adultery and the command to honour parents.
When God became one of us in Jesus Christ, he was born into a
family and raised and cared for in that family (Luke 2:51-52).
Jesus’ followers, the apostles, affirm a stable family life within
the family of the church (Ephesians 5:22-6:4); we are to care
for members of our family (1 Timothy 5:8). Some who forbade marriage
or encouraged extramarital sexual relations are strongly rebuked
(1 Corinthians 7:2, 1 Timothy 4:3). Earth is the place where God
wants us to bear the family likeness of his Son (Romans 8:28f),
and heaven will be a grand family reunion, where we shall belong
to a spiritual, eternal family rather than a biological family
(Matthew 22:30).

Rowland Croucher, excerpts from an unpublished sermon

…..

Are we sensitive to others?

Does a teacher show his love for his students by
giving them the answers to their problems for fear they’ll make
a mistake?

Does a mother show her love for her baby by refusing
to teach him to walk for fear he’ll fall?

Does a father show his love for his son by forbidding
him to go out for fear he’ll get into trouble?

We learn

to give, by receiving; to love, by being loved; to
forgive, by being forgiven; to tolerate, by being tolerated; to
accept, by being accepted…

In spite of our deep-seated craving for love, almost
everything else is considered to be more important than love:
success, money, power – almost all our energy is used in learning
how to achieve these aims, and almost none in learning how to
love.

I give you a new commandment: love one another, just
as I have loved you, you must also love one another.

Terry C. Falla, Be Our Freedom, Lord, Adelaide: Lutheran
Publishing House, 1981/1987, pp.342-344. [160]

O God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth
is named, the pattern of all parenthood who rules in love as our
Father, and who, like a mother, nurtures and protects us, we worship
you.

Give us a special gift of love for all in our families.
As parents and children may we never graduate from the school
of Christ.

Watch over all our loved ones this day and this night.
May the angels assigned to each of them do a good job! Keep them
safe from harm and danger; supply their material, emotional and
spiritual needs; guide them in your way; comfort them in sorrow;
heal them in times of tension or bitterness; and bring each of
them at last to your heavenly home.

We ask this of you, the life, the truth, the way.

Amen.

A Benediction

May God, who created us as sexual beings, and designed
marriage, family and community for our wholeness and the well-being
of children, loved ones and friends, make your home a colony of
heaven. May his peace rule in your hearts; may his grace enable
you to accept one another as you have been accepted; may his love
empower you to serve and forgive others. For Christ’s glory and
our wholeness. Amen.

…..

CAPSULE 4: EXTENDED FAMILIES

I’m at airports frequently, and notice that when
a crowd of people is farewelling someone they are almost always
from a minority ethnic group. Extended family networks by which
immigrant Irish, Jews, Southern and Eastern European immigrants
to the New World or Australia enriched the basic nuclear family.
I believe we have lost something vital in highly industrialized
countries, where we live further away (geographically and emotionally)
from in-laws and others who can enrich our own family life. Surely
it’s time to re-tribalize, and the contemporary revolution in
business towards a greater emphasis on information and service
industries may be a bonus for the family. It has generated a ‘work-from-home
revolution’ (aided by faxes and modems): perhaps this will help
us create the village community again. (However, a warning: I
work principally with pastors, most of whom ‘work from home’.
These people are not necessarily ‘present’ to any greater degree
to their families simply because their study is under the same
roof! You have to work hard to separate ‘work’ from ‘family’ in
these contexts).

The approach of this book is that no family can provide
for all the needs of its members. The ‘extended’ family rather
than the nuclear family is the best model (and always has been).
Let us work hard to bring surrogate extended families into being:
every kid, for example, should have a ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa’
who is or is not biologically related to them. Margaret Mead was
right: we are expecting our nuclear families to do the impossible.
The single mum up the road; the retired couple around the corner;
the young boy trying to play cricket by himself; the latchkey
kids across the street waiting until their parents come home after
dark – we could form extended families in our own neighbourhoods.
A study of 64 Australian families found that there are times when
every family needs outside support. Two kinds of families – those
of immigrants whose relatives were overseas and those in which
the parents had grown up in unhappy homes, tended to suffer through
inadequate access to others in an extended family-group. Many
families, preserving their autonomy, do not seek help when perhaps
they should; others are overwhelmed with problems, and sink into
apathy and passivity. [Jean McCaughey, A Bit of a Struggle: Coping
with Family Life in Australia, McPhee Gribble/Penguin Books, 1987,
pp.216,217, 226].

Here’s a quote I like from well-known Australian
pro-family crusader Dr. John Court: ‘The nuclear family is not
the kind of family which will survive until 2000, nor indeed would
I want to fight for it. It is the extended family which has a
long history of stability and the backing of Christian teaching.’
[John Court, ‘The Family in the Year 2000’, ANZAAS Symposium,
University of Adelaide, August 1975 p.2].[40]

The local church is ideally placed to enrich family
life. In chapter 23 we will look at some ways in which that can
happen.

Think about this:

Even though the nuclear family will continue, the
lessons of the commune should not be lost on the American family.
Father should not be expected to be the lone, isolated source
of male psychological support in the family. Children should not
be brought up in rows of houses where nobody knows or cares about
their neighbours. Nor should children deprived of their own father
or mother be deprived of fathering or mothering in general.

Thus, we do not advocate communes, but we do advocate
communities, complete with a firm sense of social-fathering and
-mothering. Reestablishing the community of families might involve
measures as diverse as a larger involvement in community social-fathering…
or even the revival of the old architectural concept of houses
grouped around a town square. It would mean increasing the availability
of block clubs, civic groups, and special-interest groups, and
breaking society into geographical sub-groups to which the individual
family can relate as a unit… Above all, it would mean encouraging
men to become aware that they have the power as fathers and as
social fathers to keep the bonds between family and society strong.

Henry Biller and Dennis Meredith, Father Power, NY:
David McKay Co Inc., 1974, p.360. [191]