Curious Christian

Reflections on culture, nature, and spirituality from a Christian perspective

How ‘Family Values’ Undermine the Lordship of Christ

Published by

Matt Stone

2006-12-15

When Phil asked me if I’d like to join a gridblog on syncretism in the church, you know, the first thing that came to mind was the contemporary Christian obsession with family values. Family values? Yeah, family values.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘family values’? Generally it is ‘Christian’ teachings on abortion, homosexuality, pornography, how we raise kids, who wears the pants, that sort of thing isn’t it? Generally it’s not discussions on war, global warming or commercial exploitation is it? That stuffs different, that’s public, not private.

It is precisely this bracketing of values into two domains – the public and private – that I find so problematic. If Jesus is Lord, period, then we should just be talking about values, period. The ‘family’ tag should become irrelevant. The values we apply to the private domain should also be applied to the public domain and visa versa. As soon as we start talking about different value systems for different arenas we are effectively denying the universal sovereignty of Christ.

How does this work out in practice? Well simply that if we conclude pro-life is a Christian value, we need to be consistently pro-life in economic arena (agora) and political arena (polis) as well as the domestic arena (oikos). If we think grace is an essential aspect of the Christian life then we need to exercise it in our business relationships as well as our marital relationships. As soon as we concede that the public realm is governed by rationalist principles such as the profit motive, and not something higher, we have marginalized the Messiah.

This popular restriction of Christian ethical focus to family issues should be called out for what it is: a capitulation to consumerism and nationalism; a species of syncretism; an effective confession that Christ’s sovereignty does not extend across all areas of life. If Jesus is Lord, period, then we should be striving to live according to his values consistently across all areas of our life, simple as that.

For more reading on syncretism in the church follow the links below:

Phil Wyman on The Consumerism of the Altar Call

Sally’s Journey on “Time out from Tinsel”

Steve Hayes with an interesting turn on where we find syncretism!

Mike Crockett on Church and Culture: a double-edged sword

Carl Nystedt on
Syncretism: Pros and Cons

Billy Calderwood – It’s the Economy Stupid…

John Smulo’s Blog

John Morehead’s Musings

Tags Family

4 responses to “How ‘Family Values’ Undermine the Lordship of Christ”

sally

2006-12-15

Thank you Matt, I guess what you are challenging us to is a consistent approach to real Christian values, not simply squeezing them to fit our small agendas.

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Phil Wyman

2006-12-15

Woo – those guys in the video were sure uncomfortable with the questions. Nice challenging blog. Interesting how family values are a limited scope of political items. So what is your answer to becoming more wholistic in our approach to “family” issues?

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Pam

2006-12-16

Thank you for this. Linking to this article.

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Becca

2006-12-18

Cheers Matt. Your musings remind me of words in ‘Searching for God Knows What’ by Don Miller when he discusses morality. He writes, “I realise there are people reading this who will automatically dismiss me as a theological liberal, but I do not believe a person can take two issues from Scripture, those being abortion and gay marriage, and adhere to them as sins, then neglect much of the rest and call himself a fundamentalist or even a conservative. The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbour and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, becayse he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest”.

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