It’s imperative to see that when it comes to family and relationships, we’re already living in the aftermath of a grand and total collapse.
All the relational closeness, tight-knit bonds, support and shared purpose and identity that many previous generations of our families took for granted are like so many Roman ruins to a medieval peasant.
It’s only once we see that we are indeed living amongst these relational ruins that the idea of a strong family culture even makes sense. Lulled by the dulcet tones of all our favorite distractions, we can be convinced that this is the same as it ever was. And that any interpersonal problems we might experience are not really within our power anyway, that’s for Congress to fix through a law or tax credit or something.
And, if there was no destruction of relationships, there is no need to rebuild. If everything is the latest and greatest, why try to fix it?
Catching the vision of your own family’s culture is catching the vision of your family’s escape from the post-apocalyptic wasteland of modern relationships into a green, fertile valley of functional families and communities.
Strangers In Our Home
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, the bulletin board at my church had this little story posted called “The Stranger”. While insightful, it was also the kind of thing that people would forward each other in endless chains when email was new. And indeed, its origin seems to be from an early web journal. I stumbled across it recently online again and am reprinting it here for your enlightenment:
“A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later. As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God. Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures, mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening. He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars. The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up - while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places - and go to her room read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave. My dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house - not from us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted. My dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home - not even for cooking. But the stranger felt he needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (too much too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents. Yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave. More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name? We always called him TV.”
The message isn’t about screens, it’s about strangers.
This little bulletin board story crystalized an idea in my young mind: that families often welcome strange, unnatural, sabotaging objects into their home. These things, of which screens are just one example, act as invaders, conquerors of family life and relationships. Preachers of foreign faiths given the most prominent pulpits in the house. While they may occasionally, almost accidently reinforce our family’s identity and culture, they’ll undermine it tenfold.
Strangers who we allow to wander unvetted into all the contexts of our family life will end up consuming our children’s inheritance.
Avoiding Bubble Boys and Girls
We often allow these strangers in because we don’t want to raise our children “in a bubble”. And many well-meaning parents will advocate for early childhood access to the internet or smartphones because “they need to know how to use it” or “it’s the way kids do things these days” or that public school is necessary and homeschooling detrimental because “how else will the kids learn how to socialize?”.
But rather than a bubble to keep them safe, children need a strong family culture to keep them strong; not unlike how an egg shell serves a baby chick. The chick is surrounded by a hard, thick shell that first serves as a protection but later serves as a proving ground.
To prove itself strong enough to survive, it must exit the shell on its own. Any attempt by a mother or a human caretaker to help break the shell early will only result in harm to the chick. It might not develop the muscle or lung capacity it needs, it might be exposed to harmful bacteria too early, it might not separate from the placenta properly and on and on. You don’t want to push chicks out into the world before they’ve gained the basic strength needed to withstand the elements.
A strong family culture acts in much the same way: a proving ground and the process by which a family member knows it can survive. Without the thick, coherent shell of familial norms, a child might not be hardy enough, or develop the spiritual or mental capacity to survive amidst the storm-tossed seas of life. I hear often that Christian children should be sent out as examples to the world. But what good is it to send them out too early right into the hungry and salivating jaws of wolf-like strangers, against whom they couldn’t possibly hope to contend?
Adolescence is not separation or rebellion from the adult world, it’s a maturation into it.
Every child seems to arrive on this earth with a personality all their own. All of my own children are quite distinct from each other. But no matter what, they need direction and meaning from their mother and I. When protected from the worst of the distraction and chaos of the modern world, they have the opportunity to enter the adult world with confidence and the best chance of thriving.
A strong family culture is knowing what the goal of your family is. Knowing what legacy and traits your children will inherit. Strangers will wander into your home and insist that children will only discover who they are by having every imaginable choice made available to them. The exact opposite is true, to navigate today’s choice-saturated world, they need “the egg shell” of a family culture.
Discovering Your Family’s Culture
Catching the vision of family culture is about seeing possibility beyond what’s offered to us in the form of the post-apocalyptic family life.
But this is certainly overwhelming. Where to even begin with all this family culture stuff?
To help us catch the vision of what our family culture could be, I have four questions.
Question #1: What is Your Family’s Discipline?
Discipline comes from a latin word for pupil. A discipline is a field of study, a disciple, someone who dedicates their life to something. The answers to this could be oriented toward something your family struggles with or it could be oriented toward a strength, a pillar you want to continually renew your commitment to.
The answers represent your family’s striving actions. They require courage. What is your family trying to achieve? What is your focus? What is the goal of your family’s time together? Remember we live amongst ruins, our ancestors didn’t have to think about this stuff, but if we’re going to re-build we do have to think about it.
Question #2: What is Your Family Creating?
Creation is the act of bringing something into existence, making order out of chaos. The answers to this question could center around the art your family makes, the traditions and rituals your family prioritizes, stories your family tells and the revelations your family records, and even the food your family makes. Creations take on a spiritual component, they require us to sacrifice something of our minds or hands in order for it to take on a meaning and vitality.
Sometimes, creations require refinement and experimentation. Don’t be afraid to get a little weird.
The answers represent your family’s inheritance; the things that your children can carry with them with reverence and glad hearts into the next generation. In this way, they are your family’s identity. It doesn’t have to be extravagant or costly. It doesn’t even have to be objectively good to other people. But it must be genuine.
Question #3: What Work Is Your Family Doing?
I don’t want to wax too poetic about the importance of work here. Suffice it to say that work gives purpose to our lives. The retire and die phenomenon is real. Work begets first competency, then mastery. Work of all kinds teaches us duty and how to help others. What work is your family doing?
The answers to this question represent your family’s stewardship and responsibilities; the things your family is caring and watching over. For small children this can be as simple as their chores, elevated to the shared work of maintaining a household of which they are a vital part. For older children this can include finances, grooming, learning skills, or many other kinds of work.
Identifying the work your family does together helps to build a shared identity. Like a good football team, you don’t need the quarterback to play hero ball to score. Instead you need each player to execute on their individual work and assignment to create the masterpiece of a scoring play.
Question #4: How Does Your Family Relate?
This is how your family communicates, solves problems or expresses emotion. This may at times be the most aspirational, rather than descriptive, element of your family culture. There’s how your family actually relates and then there’s how you’d like them to relate.
Nevertheless, there is a profound value in identifying and reaching for that relational goal. Because the answers to this question represent your family’s strength and its ability to endure. A family that can communicate, understand, feel understood; parents who can teach, lead and persuade and children who can learn, mimic and see beyond themselves are strong.
Vision Caught
Answering these four questions brings a clear vision to our mind, and we know at least in what direction we should start going. “This is what our family is! This is how we’ll live!” I hope you take the time to sincerely and completely answer them. It’s not a bad idea to revisit these questions from time to time.
You’re unlikely to perfectly live out every aspect of your family culture. Your efforts and successes will likely wax and wane in each area. But a family culture treated seriously is one that has the ability to get your family from the baby chick stage, to fully-independent adult.
In our time, with strangers all about, it’s worth it to formally state, repeat and speak about your family’s vision in all the contexts of your family life.
Our family has something we recite daily and we imaginatively call it our “family vision statement”.
After we’ve caught the vision of what our culture could be, the next challenging step is to bring it into being.
Which is exactly what I’ll cover next time.
This is a great post. I especially like the four questions you pose and I took the trouble to write down the answers in my journal. Thanks for an interesting challenge.