Short Prayers 9: Family

Now, Esau hated Jacob. Genesis 27:41a

στοργή (storgḗ) meaning love or affection refers to family love. It’s instinctual. Really?

“The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man” was the leading Liberal Protestant slogan a century ago. We today may wish to jettison patriarchy, yet substituting “Mother” to name God keeps the extended family metaphor alive in the churches.

The Epistles of John are addressed to Christians as “children.” Sociobiologists blame religion for violence because religions teach family love and altruism toward members of the in-group and teach hatred toward those outside the group.

All this is predicated on the presence of love within the family. Really?

Now, Esau hated Jacob.

“Mom, I just don’t like my brother,” Judy said tearfully; “and it really bothers me. If he were not part of the family, I’d never choose him as a friend or want to invite him over for dinner. I guess I love him out of duty. I would never let him down. But do I have to like him too?”

It’s hard for a grown woman to cry and for a moment have to check reality again with her mother. The reality is that what binds the members of a family together may be a form to which our feelings fail to conform. (Art: Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau by Peter Paul Rubens)

There is a good deal of family talk in our churches. Just the mention of the word ‘family’ is supposed to elicit warm feelings and ascent. We re told by our preachers that the family was instituted by God, that it is an order of creation. Terms such as ‘brotherly love’, ‘family care’, ‘mother’, and ‘sisterhood’ serve as ideal for human concern.

And this is being said all the while our society is being stricken by a plague of family squabbles, divorces, single-parent households, and abused children. Heirs are fighting over inheritance. Wives are being battered. Previously married women are being dumped on the economic market and expected to support themselves, often without any professional training other than motherhood. Children of separating parents are being caught in an emotional whirlwind, devastating their self-confidence and causing poor performance in school. Everywhere there is the debris of broken family relationships.

And all the while our moral leaders continue to tout the virtues of family love. This is like offering a lecture on water safety to passengers fleeing the sinking Titanic.

I thank God that Judy still loves her brother out of family duty. Despite what she feels, dutiful love is still genuine love. And it’s far better than the alternatives.

SHORT PRAYER

Our God in heaven, empower us to love each person within our family, and those outside as well. Amen.

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Ted Peters is a Lutheran pastor and emeritus seminary professor. He is author of Short Prayers and The Cosmic Self. His one volume systematic theology is now in its 3^rd edition, God—The World’s Future (Fortress 2015). He has undertaken a thorough examination of the sin-and-grace dialectic in two works, Sin: Radical Evil in Soul and Society (Eerdmans 1994) and Sin Boldly! (Fortress 2015). Watch for his forthcoming, The Voice of Public Christian Theology (ATF 2022). See his website: TedsTimelyTake.com.