What Is A Family?

Many years ago I read Edith Schaeffer’s, “What Is A Family?” It had a profound effect. I had always had a strong view of family, but this enlarged my vision. Edith viewed family life as the crucial environment that encompassed everything from creativity, to security, to spiritual teaching of Truth, economics, education, memories, our most significant human relationships, and all the interplay of ages and changes through the years. It is the foundational place through which life is processed.

Now, years later, I look back at my own experience of the richness of family life. My heart is full at the depth and beauty of it all. I wouldn’t trade a moment of it and I don’t regret investing as deeply as I possibly could in the life of our family. I truly love the interplay of each personality. I’ve loved watching little ones born and the discovery of who each unique person is, which continues with the addition of grandchildren. When difficulties have arisen, as they do for everyone, my husband and I have always felt, and tried to make sure our family always felt, that we’re in this together no matter what. No one will ever need to worry they will be abandoned…because we’re a family.

I see so much good and fruit over the years. I also see mistakes. But mostly I see that following God’s Word is the key to all because it never fails to deliver on its promises. This is because the God who spoke them is the promise keeper. Any regrets I can feel now were a failure to follow God’s Word. Any successes were from staying on His path of wisdom. And God’s marvelous grace covers all.

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Today, families are struggling. Satan has been attacking this creation of God viciously. As people increasingly move away from God and His Word, the chaos and destruction Satan causes becomes more and more evident. It is only by returning to The Way, The Truth, and The Life, that we will return to the blessing of God in our families. If people take seriously the mandate of Scripture to be the family God calls them to be, it will be a strong antidote to the destructive spirit of the age that wants to undermine families at every turn and replace this foundation with the state. This has been growing to now encompass everything from education to healthcare. There has been a push that things formerly belonging to the domain of family, are now subject to the increasingly pervasive overreach of ‘the state”. Some are voicing that the state has the best interests of children in their view more than parents do. Parents are to be by-passed or eliminated as decision makers if it conflicts with what the state determines is best. Religious conviction is suspect as a motivator for moral, educational, and even medical decisions. Now “experts” of the state take precedence in all.

Perhaps we became too complacent in the United States and assumed the institutions we trusted as parents to properly educate and develop our children were in keeping with the values and convictions we held dear. So many parents have discovered too late that the values inculcated in our schools was antithetical to their own. And worse, the children have been taught to have a disdain for what their parents hold dear.

I believe a call is in order to return the authority of raising children back to parents…to those who truly love their children and have their best interests in mind. A cold, disinterested State cannot compete with the love of a family. We cannot give up on this most basic of truths. Parents need to give serious thought to all issues and especially to those who they are giving access to their children. Communist states have discovered in the past that although they would love to control the minds of children and raise children in state run schools, it is really an impossible scenario. Children need love, loving discipline, individual concern for their wellbeing, and devotion. These are things encompassed in what a family is to be and in our most basic needs as humans.