Beyond Family Values by Dr. Feddes

PHI230

Day 31-40

Video Transcription

You know that a culture and a church is in trouble when it spends a great when it spends a great deal of time emphasizing family values, when the most successful religious programs are those that focus on the family and when some of the most urgent political programs are those that try to uphold the value of the family. You know that things are in a pretty sorry state so how can you say that? Shouldn't church emphasize the family and shouldn't stop in the public life of a community and nation the family be honored and exalted? Well yes, of course, the church should have healthy families and culture should have solid family structures but the fact that it even needs to be said and that even needs to be emphasized is evidence that things are in a very difficult situation. Family values are not especially lofty they are not especially unusual an extraordinary and virtuous and a righteous and holy. Family values are just good decent paganism and so when we have churches that are desperately scrambling to save some shred of the family and when many pastors among us would be just delighted if our congregations would behave the way Jesus said a Pagan behaves that is by being nice to those who are nice to them by parents being nice to kids and kids being nice to parents and by getting along with the people who are part of your church. That's what decent pagans do. They get along with their buddies and they're nice to their family. And so, we we know that things are in a very difficult and indeed desperate condition when the church itself finds itself falling quite a ways short of what Jesus said good Pagans are like. Jesus said, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even the sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.” “If you greet only your brothers, what're you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that?” Well in our society unfortunately many of the pagans don't, and many of the followers of Jesus are those who claim to be don't, but Jesus said now here's the condition and behavior of nice normal sinners. Well, we can't even be nice normal sinners anymore a great deal of the time. I will say a little more about that in a moment. There's a phrase in in Paul's letter to Timothy where he says people are without natural affection. Where they are without even normal family tie or natural affection. A characteristic of the last days when things are in a an especially delicate state. Now on the one hand Jesus says you're not even a good Pagan if you have family values. On the other hand, Jesus sounds like an outspoken enemy of family values. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and yes, even his own life cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” You can't be Jesus disciple if you don't hate everybody closest to you and hate yourself too. So, those are two sayings of Jesus that if you're nice to your family congratulations you're almost there as a good Pagan and if you don't hate your family, you can't follow me.

Before we even get into trying to grasp what he's saying I think one thing can be said for sure. Jesus is not simply a teacher of good family values there's something a lot different than ordinary, be nice to those who are nice to you, get along with your family, build up your family, what's good for your family, there's something a lot more or different to the life Jesus brings in the life he teaches then just that, but what is going on? Well, regarding hating your own family does he mean that you feel, you know, like you are just disgusted with them, you can't stand them, you want the worst for him, you do everything you can to harm him. Well, not exactly. You have to take what Jesus says in line with other things that he says he often says things with the strongest in the strongest possible way to get your attention and to get you thinking about it, but if we think that it means that he wants us just to mess up our family and be mean to everybody that's close to us obviously that's not what he means. Here's what he said in a conversation of with some religious leaders. He said, “Moses said honor your father and your mother, but you say if a man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is corban.” (That is, given to God) It's a gift to God. Well, I know that you know normally you outta help out an aging father and mother, but hey I had to give it to God. Well, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father and mother thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you've handed down. So, again Jesus is now if you say that you're doing something for God and that's why you're such a cheapskate with your parents then you're nullifying God's command in order to follow your own dreamed up version. And also, in the Bible it says, “If somebody doesn't provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” So, whatever we make of Jesus words that we are to hate our family members one thing it doesn't mean is that you are to have a really negative attitude toward them, that you are to neglect them, not care for them, not help them and so on because according to the word of God that is falling far short and being a lot worse than a Pagan and Jesus is calling us to be better than the pagans, to be better than a nice decent sinner. So, Jesus does want us to care for our families to carry out our duties towards them. There have been some people who spoke of mission and one of their slogans even was if you do God's work then God will look after your family. You didn't really want to see some of those families because that is often been an excuse. Now, there's one element I suppose that it's true if you put God first then God will do many things to take care of your family, but he will do some of it through you. If you put God first, is an important phrase, but for many people that have been involved in ministry or in various things what it really means is if you put your workaholic drive first and your desire to build some sort of Kingdom then God will make sure that things are OK with family. Well, it doesn't quite mean that so, one thing we want to be careful of as we hear these words of Jesus as he gets our attention kind of whacks us over the head with some very striking statements is that we don't want to be worse than the pagans, worse than the unbelievers, where we don't even have natural affection or kindness towards those close to us.

What does Jesus mean? Well, when he says that you need to hate those around you and even your own life one thing, he's saying is that nobody matters more than the commander, nobody matters more than the general. If you want to join the military you must hate father, mother, wife, children, and even your own life. Right? At one level you must. If your commander says you're going there, and you say but I want to go home and be with my momma. He'll say, “What you join the army I'm not your Mama you're going where I sent you.” “Oh, I want to go home and cuddle with my sweetie.” “Now you got a mission this week and you're going where you're commanded to go, and your momma my weep, and your sweetheart might weep, but you're going. And you're doing what hurts them and you're choosing some other commander and some other cause above people whom you ordinarily are very attached to and love very much. When the army says be all that you can be, you know in the old commercials, or you get these glamorous things the military, the fact is in order to join the military you gotta hate your family at one level. That doesn't mean that it's evil to join the military. It does mean that once you make a certain kind of commitment then you're going to go where you're sent, when your scent and you're going to follow those orders if it means your family is heartbroken at you being halfway around the world, if it means that you could be shot and killed and lose your own life and they might lose you. And that is what Jesus is saying, if you want follow me, I am the general and you may have other people in your life whom you love very much but when I give an order that comes before everything and everybody else, no matter how close they are to you, and don't think I came to bring peace on earth I came not to bring peace but a sword. I am here to invade and take back my territory and as I do that it's going to bring division within families where some are going to be against me, and some are going to be for me that means some are going to be against each other. it's going to bring the division, it's going to be in difficulty it's going to bring hardship, but I'm here on a campaign and you cannot follow me and join my campaign unless you realize and are willing to pay the cost that it might mean, that sometimes you are going to have to go against the tug of your heart and the natural affections that you have in order to follow me and obey my orders. Yes, if your son will not walk the way of Christ then you must follow the way of Christ even if it means of alienates your very own son from you. If your parents are mad when you convert to following the Lord Jesus Christ, then at one level you must hate your parents in order to follow Christ. That doesn't mean as we just saw earlier that you feel this disgust and despising and wishing the worst for your parents and always having bad attitude. It means that when push comes to shove follow Jesus and nobody else. Nobody matters more than the general and nothing matters more than the banquet.

Again, one of the great temptations of traditional family values in domestic life is that it is so comfy and, in some cases, so enjoyable. If you have a good love life with your wife, if you enjoy being with your kids, if the paycheck is decent at home, life is stable and pretty happy, you just wish it could go on forever just the way it. Who needs that banquet? I'm already feasting very well thank you I just married a wife, no can do for the banquet, the five oxen are pulling very nicely providing well for the family, we've got a nice family farm we've always dreamed in place in the country, yeah we've got it and so with one accord they began to make excuse and they are so happy with what they got, but they don't want and they don't even realize what they’re missing out on. There are more than one version of worldliness we sometimes say worldliness is when you're watching TV shows or movies or listening to music that you shouldn't and yeah that's a form of worldliness when you're just accepting all kinds of garbage that the world pumps in, but another form of worldliness says Jesus is this, “They were marrying and giving in marriage right until the flood came and took them all away.” It doesn't say they were listening to bad, I mean, there was violence in the earth there was a lot of bad stuff going on before the flood, but Jesus said they were married and given unto marriage, kind of going on with business as usual. And that that can be a very great danger, one way to be worldly is to be degenerate and a lousy person who's worse than what Jesus says is the nice the nice decent pagan, but another way to be worldly is just to be content with a nice comfortable animal life. I grew up on a farm you know what cows like their calves and calves like their mothers. When that baby is born the cow will lick it, the calf will nurse and those two are great buds. You don’t have to be a Christian to love your kids, a cow can do that. Now that may sound very crass, but it's true. I mean it is part of just the physical animal way that God has made us this bodily almost natural affection that exists among creatures that got us form, but let's be honest you do not have extraordinary supernatural kinds of love flowing through you when you have managed to love the way a cow does.

Nothing matters more than the banquet. The Bible speaks to people whose God is their belly whose mind is on earthly things. Our citizenship is in heaven and so there is a difference between those who live for the coming feast and for the Kingdom of God and those who if only they could have life the way they wish, if they could marry the right person, have the right kind of kids, have a pretty good income and a fairly stable life, now they’d have it all we call that having it all. No, it's not. Having it all is having God and the Kingdom of God and so when Jesus speaks of hating family life one thing it means is that nobody is more important than the general when the orders go out you follow um. Nothing, when you're invited to his eternal banquet then you run for it and you want it and you don't say oh, I'm just happy with the way things are.

Another thing that it means is that we love and show mercy the way God does. How do you go beyond family values? Buy in like God because you've discovered what God is like towards you love your enemies, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, if you love those who love you what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them and if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to even sinners do that... but love your enemies do good to them then your reward will be great, that you will be sons of the most high, because he's kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful as your father is merciful.” This is where we're carried far far beyond family values one. of the most terrible expressions of family values in the 20th century was Nazism, “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer” One people, one family, and those weren't part of that family (*guttural sound*) that's what happens when you idolize family and clan to the extreme. It's called racism or just hatred of those who are different in an attempt to wipe them out. On the flip side is Jesus direction to love enemies because you understand what God is like. What is God like? Well, every morning the sun comes up and do its warming lifegiving rays only land on the good people and those who kept their nose clean yesterday? No, he makes his sunrise on the evil and the good. He sends rain like the beautiful rains we had yesterday and last night did they only land on the lawns of the good people and nourish the places where the nice folks live. No, that rain fell on a lot of different kinds of places and a lot of different kinds of people. Your creator is generous, and he pours out all kinds of good stuff on people who've been behaving fairly well lately and on many who haven't. If you just see how God runs creation you see how generous he is and if you go beyond that and you see how God behaves towards us in Jesus Christ and in spreading it around his salvation, then you see even more. We see our Lord Jesus Christ and sinners are drawn to him because they find that he loves them and that it changes their life. The notorious sinners and the prostitutes are flocking to him, and the good folks don't really want that much to do with them because they don't want to hang around with those bad people that he hangs around with, but Jesus is showing what God is like because he is God and he's doing what God does in loving the sinners and in loving the lost, and the last, and the least. Can he when we know him and when he lives in us will make us are the people who love like he does and who have the kind of love and mercy that our father in heaven does. “Be merciful just as your father is merciful,” this is the key. It's not hearing just the words and saying yeah you know there's the nice decent pagans over there then there's the really bad, bad, bad degenerates over there and we don't want to be a really bad, bad degenerates who are rude and crude and nasty to our family and we don't want to just be like good decent pagans. We want to rise to a level where we are the spiritual superstars. Where we go above and beyond everybody else. Now there's one sense, and yeah, we are called to go above and beyond everybody else, but not because we heard somebody just say now give it a good umph and try little harder and you can sail beyond what the normal pagans do. No, Jesus says this is what your father is like kid then his life is in you, and he is changing you. If you're my disciple you have experienced my love and I've loved you when you weren't so great, to put it mildly, and so to have love and mercy like gods we need to be what God is like.

Now, sometimes this is very practical, and it must be said this is not very new. At the time Jesus was teaching there were teachers and scribes of officials of the law who said that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy. And Jesus says, “Well I say to you love your enemies and pray for those persecute you.” Now, was Jesus coming along with a brand-new thing that had never before been taught? No, he said now I'm going to clarify you, I'm going to clarify if you show you what it means all along. You think that the law said you should love your neighbor because it said love your neighbor as yourself and then hate your enemy well you ought to read the law little more closely it says love your enemy. Look at Exodus 23 “If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” Now again love does not mean in the cockles of my heart I feel great warmth for this person they're just such a Peach of a guy and I really enjoy this company and there, if you love your enemy it does not mean you pretend that he's not your enemy, that that he doesn't, you recognize he doesn't like you any he maybe you recognize I don't really enjoy his company that terribly much, but when I see his donkey over there I don't say “ Serves him right I hope that sucker...” You know wanders off another 100 miles he never finds that thing again. You see him carrying the burden he is trying to umph and trying to help his old donkey back up again and I hope that donkey dies right on the spot, or I hope he gets a hernia trying to help him back up again.” Well, no, the way that you love your enemies is you do what you would do for him even if they were your friends, you just show them kindness, you give them help, you pray for them, you seek the best for them even if they don't like you and maybe you know even if you don't like them. Yeah, you don't have to enjoy everybody's company all the time some people aren't much fun to be with. Maybe just because you're not very compatible or your rub each other the wrong way that maybe, be that as it may, when the donkey's got a problem you help with that donkey. You show love by your actions and not just by working to try to get a little more positive emotion towards the other person, at any rate, Jesus says you love your enemies and he's not telling us something brand new that God had never told anybody before. You love your enemies because what is God done? Well God is on that for you.

Now, again going back to the theme of being nice decent sinners or good respectable pagans. Really at one level it's just sensible self-interest, isn't it? Why should you honor your father and your mother? So that you don't mess up your life and so that you don't wreck everything. If you enter adulthood with a whole pile of baggage on your shoulders where you can't stand your dad and you and your angry about this or you're ticked off at your mom, it will poison you. It'll cause strains and difficulties maybe for the rest of your life. If you want things to go well with you and to live long in the land the lord your God is giving you seek honor mom and dad. And you husbands, should you love your wife because you know it's just some grand heroic achievement where you're just doing something fantastic and amazing? Well husbands should love their wives as their own body. He loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it but each of you love his wife as himself. You blockhead, you know if you're mean to your wife, you just hurt yourself. What kind of knucklehead are you? You know, you're not rising to the great peaks of virtue and nobility by being kind to your wife. If your wife is happy you're gonna be happier OK! That's all its saying, the two shall be one flesh if something bad happens to your spouse it ain't gonna be fun for you. Okay, that was simple. That's what the Bible saying now the Bible also this very passion says it goes a lot way beyond that because husband you should lay down your lives as Christ lay down your life for your wife is Christ in the church but hey there's this bare minimum where if you're kind your wife just loving yourself and marriage isn't it is meant to show far more than just self well but even at the level of self. Well, it's just common sense. If you wanna be happier, be nice to your kids they'll probably nicer to you in return. If you want to be happier, be nice to your spouse, she’ll probably nicer back. Makes a lot of sense. If you want to live in a society that's without family values that's basically suicidal stupidity. Without natural affection what's going on in an age when there's so much division between generations and so much animosity even between family members? Well, it means that we live in a very individualistic, individualistic is the big, long nice sounding word for being a selfish pig, but we live in an individualistic self-centered generation where we're blind to the fact that a great deal of our just basic day-to-day happiness depends on strong stable relationships. And traditional values provide the network in the setting for just a richer and more secure life and for those stable relationships. And hey it's a way of getting your genes and your ideas and your culture to live on after you. If you're just a nice self-centered kind of Darwinist person and you want something of you to survive in this world one way to do it is through traditional family values. Your genes survive, some of your ideas survive, some of the culture that you were part of survives, and yeah that's kind of nice. And if you're such a blockhead that you have no value at all on on your own identity and on your own culture well that's the way of cultural suicide, that's the way a good deal of the West's going, but it's not very bright. Extreme individualism just follows immediate impulse. It ruins your relationships that you need for a comfortable happy life. Sometimes, if you studied philosophy at all, you maybe heard of a guy named Epicurus.

Epicurus is sometimes associated with just living for pleasure and doing whatever you feel like because Epicurus was an atheist and Epicurus wanted to maximize pleasure in life but even Epicurus wasn't stupid enough to be an epicurean. Epicurus said, you know, if you want the maximum pleasure the minimum pain in life then you gotta be moderate, you gotta get along with the people, you gotta observe some kinds of values, and that's how you live. So, he was smart enough to realize that you don't just do whatever you feel like in the moment because it brings way too much long-term pain. So, that just, the kind of individualism that is so rampant in our own culture isn't just sinful, it's kinda stupid, it’s kinda sick and suicidal. And having said all those unflattering things the fact is God loves people who are stupid and sick and suicidal, and that very often it is the very champions of family values who have the hardest time hearing the voice of Jesus because their ears are stuffed with their own righteousness and their hearts are stuffed with all the goodies, they've managed to accumulate by semi decent Pagan living accompanied by god's sunshine and rain.

Does God love only those who love him? Does he help only those who deserve it? Does he give only to those who can repay him? You know the answer to that. “God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” and “he shows his love for us not just in creation but then also his behavior in Christ that while we were still sinners Christ died for us while we were still his enemies,” and so in one sense the gospel is a far more demanding message than the message of nice paganism and good decent sinnerism, but on the other hand it's also a way better message of salvation for those who have sunk very far because it means that no matter how good you've been in your nice decent paganism you're not nearly good enough to measure up to the standards of God. You can be considered by the world a fairly nice, good person and you can be a totally self-centered pig who is doing it all just because it works out nicely for you. The bad news is that you can be practicing family values and be widely admired right on the highway to hell. The good news is you can be one big stinker and your life could be disaster and you could be wrecking the lives of nearly everybody around you and you are not a lost cause if you run in to Jesus Christ, because that’s just the way he is. What he touches doesn't corrupt him instead what he touches he changes, and he forgives, and he transforms, and he acquaints you with the father in heaven who is merciful to those who need mercy, who is gracious to those who need grace and so when you taste that God graced based love then you begin to share that kind of grace-based love with others.

Now, hey it's hospitality Sunday, I hope you invited somebody over, but we could go beyond Pagan hospitality. If you did have somebody over was kind of a bud anyway or somebody from our church well congrats, you know we're we're doing good family of faith taken hospitality today. “When you give a luncheon or dinner, don't invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you, do you, they may invite you back.” Oh man would that be bad, “then you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you'll be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you'll be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Now, once again it just makes sense to have a certain level of hospitality. If you go out for business lunch with somebody that you're hoping to get an account with or someone you've already got an account with and you're just going to kind of enjoy their company and keep the account going, do you say afterward I have done a great and noble deed today. No, you just did something to fatten your bank account. You go out for supper with your wife do you say boy I really am quite a husband I did something heroic tonight I took her out for steak, and I had a T-bone myself too. Well, that it's nice that you had a good time together I'm glad you liked the T-bone, but this was not one of the supreme achievements in human virtue. Your wife can repay you; your business associates can repay you; you have somebody over today from our church they might even have you back and serve you something better than you serve them. It’s a possibility. If you really want a good chance to be a person like Jesus and maybe get a few extra rewards when you get to heaven look for somebody who can't pay you back, look for somebody who is very needy who has very difficult time, have them over. I sometimes am encouraged and inspired by my parents' example. My parents sometimes give have loans to people I, I laugh as I say the word loans because some of the folks, they give loans to, they know as they give the loan that that money is gone, it is vamoose, they will never see one red cent of it again, but they call it a loan because the person of evidently feels a little better about it. Well, Jesus said that you give to those that you really can't expect much in return from because, because they can pay you back. No because they need help. You love people just because you have a love of God in you and because they need it. That's how God loves. Does God love that one sheep out of the hundred more than he loves the 99? Well, on one sense and only one sense yes because they need his help so much more. It's not their virtue that calls forth his love is they're need that calls forth his love and because God is the great God of grace his love chases whoever needs it the most. And our love too should be chasing those who need it not just those who are comfortable and who are going to pay it back to us. So, here's values religion if you ask what's in it for me it makes sense to love those who love you, to follow traditional values, to be involved in a religion that helps to maintain these things, go to a church that builds up families and strengthens family values. And if the family that prays together stays together well then by all means pray, have family devotions, do it together and you'll more likely have a healthy family. And in business, if honesty is the best policy well then be honest and embrace a religion that teaches honesty and that may even give you a little bit more of a reputation for being honest, you know, if people know that you go to church that might help you in some circles. So, values religion can pay now make your family better, it can make your business life better, it could help your bank account and it is not the religion of Jesus Christ. The religion of Jesus Christ is more and different than that. It does not destroy that I mean all this is true this is all true it's just not enough. What's in it for me is never the best, never the best question to ask when you're trying to find out what God is like and what truth is. You have to ask the question of Jesus, how are you different? How are you different from Pagans? One way to answer that is just self-denial. You deny yourself in relationship to God when it comes to God you don't come into God's presence and offer yourself as the reason why he should approve and accept you. You don't say God look at me, look at my behavior, look at my good heart, look at what I've made of myself, I've tried hard and I'm sure that you're impressed. No, if, if you want to come to God at all by the path Jesus commands you say Lord, I consider everything that I am and have achieved as rubbish in terms of its value in earning your approval. I come to you with empty hands and a corrupt heart, and I ask you to give me a new heart and to fill my emptiness with your fullness. Jesus is blessed with those who are poor in spirit, blessed are those who born, blessed are those who are meek, who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They're the ones who are blessed and why? Because they're denying their own righteousness, they’re denying that their own spirits are the way they ought to be, and they are saying God I just throw myself on you as the God of grace who takes me the way I am and welcomes me. And you deny yourself relating to others, instead of just looking out for your own self-interest you look out for the interests of others, and you do what will help them and in denying yourself the irony is that all of a sudden you find your true self. You become who you were meant to be who God designed you to be and you find that you are the child of a great father of love and that you are an ambassador and a channel of his great love to others and then you begin to love freely the way your father loves, and he loves who? He loves evil people, like me, he loves helpless people, and so I look around for evil people to love and helpless people to help, and then there is at least a little of my father's resemblance in me, then there is at least a little small step or two I'm walking on the path behind my savior.

Lord teach us to be people of grace. Help us Lord, above all, simply to know you and the kind of God you are, and kind of lover and gracious and wonderful being that you are, and to be embraced and satisfied in that grace and love and mercy and to overflow with it as we relate to others. Lord, help us to crucify the old self, the fallen self, and to come alive through Jesus Christ to a new way of being. A way of being Lord that goes beyond just the traditional behavior, and that values all those things and sees the wonder of family and the wisdom of good stable relationships but also Lord that seeks to be like you in pouring grace and more grace and more grace into the lives of others.

Help us Lord to live in that grace where our families lord falls far short even of decent Paganism, forgive us and restore us and renew us and lift us up, and Lord where we have become complacent, and self-satisfied in being nice decent Pagans, lift us again into the renewed awareness of your amazing grace and love and make us ambassadors of that grace and love.

I pray in Jesus name, Amen.