When "Family" Becomes Bondage

Several weeks ago while driving through town I saw a bumper sticker which said something like "My Family is Everything To Me." I had a complex and multi-layered negative reaction to this simple statement. I have complex and multi-layered negative reactions to all sorts of things, but this one I've been thinking about just a bit, so I think it is time to unwrap it a bit.

What first sprang to mind was the "hard saying" from Jesus that "whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Mt. 10:37). Now, was a day when I would have been inclined to understand this verse to have come from the heart of a heartless, sledgehammer God who simple demanded servile subjection from His adherents, humanity be damned, and who cares about tender feelings towards family. I wouldn't have actually described God as proposing these sentiments because, well, it wouldn't make Him seem very nice. But when you look at the literal words, what else can you do with it if you take the Word of God seriously, right?

This certainly is a radical word from Jesus, but fortunately we have the wisdom of the Church Fathers who have followed the Lord radically and therefore understand His heart and can instruct us. In my experience, it is John Michael Talbot who has gleaned these things and passed them down to me in recent teachings. And the instruction is this: When Jesus calls us to surrender our lives to Him, He is asking that everything we hold dear be placed under His Lordship. This includes the relationships which make us human. When Jesus becomes our Lord in these areas, He gives His order to all things, including our relationships. It is a process of transformation. When He is Lord, we are free, in this example, to enter into our relationships of family without them controlling us or being themselves our master and lord.

So, the bumper sticker. Family indeed cannot "be everything to me" without it also holding me in bondage. If family is everything to me, then it is my Lord, my Master, and not Jesus. Therefore, I will have no freedom.

But it sounds very moral, doesn't it? Isn't "family values" at the core of what decent people are made of?

I think there is a danger of many these days confusing conservative social values with the message of Christianity. If Christians don't differentiate we will soon wake up to having lost both!

Why did Jesus insist that we cannot love our family members more than Him and still follow Him? What does He have against family?

He has nothing against family, per se, but He has every concern for our true need, which is to realize the One who gives us our life, our self, our meaning, our existence, our purpose. We are made for the Infinite, and only He satisfies us. It is dangerously easy for one to look at a loved one, a person God Himself has place into one's life, and to declare "You are why I exist!" You, my newborn baby, you my wife, my husband, you my very dear mother.... my life revolves around you! In doing this we run the risk of forgetting God and ultimately replacing Him and idolizing a creature. We run the risk of forgetting that the vocation to marriage is about bringing one's spouse, children and the friends that surround us to heaven! Jesus does not come to break apart family relationships, He comes to preserve them. They can only be preserved if grace remains to keep the relationship with the Blessed Trinity preeminent for each one. When by our mutual prayer and evangelization my heart and your heart draw near to the cross of Christ, then our hearts also draw near to each other. This is how families stay united.

If I make an idol of my family, I am actually destroying it. And instead of my sacrament of marriage being an oasis of grace, a unit of mission into the world for Jesus Christ and His Church, I am actually sending out a message of despair to the world. I am really saying: Settle for something finite, and pretend it actually is enough to fulfill your soul! And if your family is actually a crushing source of pain, well, you must simply really be a loser! (How's that for a great bumper sticker?!)

In this light, does it not seem that "My Family is Everything to Me" is a downright anti-Christian statement?