Scripture: 2 TIMOTHY 1:3-7
I was interested in the presentations of the International Psychiatric Conference held in Brisbane during February 2010. I have attended proceedings of such a conference previously in Sydney.
At this most recent conference the University of Ottawa psychology professor Catherine Lee said decades of research had repeatedly shown the benefit of quality time spent with children. This Canadian professor explained how research had shown that simple quality time is the key to a happy family and parents who over-schedule their children’s lives are missing out.
Professor Lee said, “I think we’ve got a bit intimidated so that we think that the expensive lessons, or the expensive activities, or the things that we enrol kids in are somehow more valuable. Sometimes they might just want to play Lego with you, or throw a ball around or do something silly and that can be just as important, if not more important, as the lessons and the clubs and the activity. If we don’t have the basics, like enough sleep, if they’re not spending time on those simple meals together, then I think we’re missing something.”
“We know what kids need. Kids need one-on-one with parents and they also need downtime, they need unstructured time and they need to be able to deal with boredom. If you ask kids to think about a happy Christmas, they usually won’t think about what they were given at that Christmas, it will be what they were doing and it’s the time that is the important thing.”
Prof Lee said more research was needed on the changing role of fathers and its impact on family dynamics. “Sometimes when we talk about parenting, we actually mean mothering because we haven’t done enough research with dads,” she said. “And some of the research that has been done has asked mums about dads, which is a filter that is not very helpful.
“This generation are the pioneers who are making this up as they go along. You can’t look at how your dads behaved, that will give you part of the picture. It gives you the soccer and so on, but doesn’t give you the intimate kind of contact that current dads want”, she said. With overlapping roles, modern parents had to learn to accept each other’s style of raising children. When mums think they are giving helpful comments to make dads better dads, dads really don’t see that as helpful”.
“If we want men to back off, that’s probably exactly what we should do. Men are much more likely to be involved if we let them get on with it. Men parent in a slightly different way than mothers do. We’re just starting to understand dads’ role.”
This came home to me through a film of some years ago, Kramer vs. Kramer, which won Oscars in 1979 for best picture, best director, best actor (Dustin Hoffman) and best supporting actress (Meryl Streep). It also showcased one of the typical attitudes of our misguided world. Streep and Hoffman played a wife and husband living in New York City with their young son. Early in the film, the wife announced she’d had enough of their unhappy marriage and was leaving. She promptly took off, forcing the father and son to cope without her and with the pain of her rejection.
Later, however, just when Dad and the boy were coming to terms with Mum’s desertion and getting on with life, she reappeared to say she wanted custody of their son. Her explanation for why she left in the first place? “I had to find myself,” she said, even though her search came at incredibly high cost to her husband and child. Now that she felt good about herself and she wanted to be a mother after all, she expected to walk back in and take possession of the boy.
That kind of self-centred, hurtful thinking, where personal needs take priority over everything else, is all too common in our society today. It’s part of a culture that is destroying homes by the thousands, including many Christian families, where the selfishness may be more subtle but is no less real.
There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a healthy, loving and caring family. It requires time, tears, hard work and sacrifice, putting others first. It also requires the ability to recognise the influence of our misguided world on our own families and the wisdom to guide ourselves and our children safely through it according to biblical principles and values.
We may live in a disintegrating society, but we believe there are principles that families can follow to enable them to stay united. However, if these principles are not followed then we shall see further disruption and decline of family and social life.
1. We live in a disintegrating society
Can there be any doubt that our society is eroding at a frightening pace? The greatest threat to our nation does not come from any force or power outside our borders. The decay is coming from within. The destruction of the family structure is accompanied by an attitude that says the traditional family is to be looked down upon, and even reviled.
Yet given a list of six things giving the greatest satisfaction to Australians, a poll found that 70% nominated “family”. Next were leisure activities (10%), friends (7%), work (5%), religion (5%), and possessions (1%). [“The Age Saulwick Poll” ].
When The United Nations declared 1994 to be the “International Year of the Family” it declared as a universal sentiment: “The family constitutes the basic unit of society and therefore warrants special attention.” This echoes The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.”
In all societies families care for children, educate them, form their character, develop their moral commitment and sense of worth. The nuclear family (mum, dad and kids) is the norm in Western cultures but this way of doing family is historically quite recent. It is a product of the industrial age and the need to be mobile, relocate for work, and the growth of cities. Before the Industrial Revolution most families were self-sufficient economic units, but today very few Western families produce everything they need. It is expensive to have children, so we limit the size of our families.
The ideal of the two-parent family where a man and a woman promise life-long fidelity to each other is under great pressure to survive. These days all kinds of arrangements are called ‘family’: single parents, blended families, unmarried and de facto families. Now gay and lesbian couples want recognition. An Australian politician recently defined ‘family’ as any group of people living together with a common purpose. A squat full of drug-pushers qualify under that definition.
Dr Rolly Croucher, wrote: “There have been two recent revolutions in family life, one in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the other since the 1960s. In the first, the nuclear family broke free of the restraints of village and kin. In today’s revolution, the declining stability in family life and resulting increase in social chaos has been caused by:
- The sexual revolution and the contraceptive pill;
- the ‘Me decade’ in the 1970s;
- women entering the workforce in greater numbers;
- young people staying longer at school;
- easier divorce;
- a higher profile by homosexuals;
- paid maternity and paternity leave;
- parents hesitating to offer any clear value system;
- the right to do your own thing outside of marriage.”
Today there is a great need to re-discover the extended family, which includes older people, single people, disabled people, lonely people. The family of God contains all kinds of people who should be accepted into our extended family. The well known Australian academic and psychiatrist, Dr John Court, said many years ago: “The nuclear family is not the kind of family which will survive beyond 2000, nor indeed would I want to fight for it. It is the extended family which has a long history of stability and the backing of Christian teaching” [“The Family in the Year 2000”, ANZAAS Symposium, University of Adelaide, August 1975 p.2].
The Bible is full of wisdom about family living. We were created to be a family (Genesis 2:24), but sin distorted family relationships (Genesis 3:16). Marriage and family are signs of God’s love for his people. The Mosaic law was family-centred, hence the prohibition of adultery and the command to honour parents. When God came in Jesus Christ, he was born into a family and raised and cared for in that family (Luke 2:51-52). Jesus’ followers, the apostles, affirm a stable family life (Ephesians 5:22-6:4); we are to care for members of our family (1 Timothy 5:8). Earth is the place where God wants us to bear the family likeness of his Son (Romans 8:28f), and heaven will be a grand family reunion, where we shall belong to a spiritual, eternal family rather than a biological family (Matthew 22:30).
2. We can find ways of keeping our families united
United families, extended to include people from different racial, cultural, social, economic, religious and political backgrounds, are the hope for the future. It is through both the physical and spiritual nurturing of our families that we can best combat the difficulties currently experienced throughout the world today. Families are precious for providing the framework of life, the morals, values and learning required for each and every individual as they seek to make a good life for themselves, and in turn, for their families also.
One example of an extended family found in the Bible is that of Timothy’s. During the 17 silent years after he had become a Christian and before he left on his first missionary journey, the Apostle Paul visited throughout Turkey from his hometown of Tarsus. In Derbe, Paul met the family of Timothy. Timothy and his mother and grandmother became Christians.
Timothy came from a mixed marriage. His mother, Eunice, was a Jew and his father was a Greek. That mixed marriage gave Timothy an insight into both cultures. That Greek culture was to help Timothy, especially when he ministered in the Greek cities of Corinth, Nicopolis, Thessalonica and Philippi. His mother’s strong faith, firstly as a Jew and then as a Christian, was something for which Paul was thankful. He said “I remember the sincere faith you have, the kind of faith that your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice also had. I am sure that you have it also.” (2 Timothy 1:5)
From examples of Biblical families who remained united despite all the pressures towards fragmentation due to racial, religious and social differences, see what you can do to keep your family united.
A. ACHIEVE A LOVING RELATIONSHIP TOGETHER
I believe we must work to achieve a loving family relationship. I remember going to a golden wedding celebration of a lovely old Christian couple. They had a cake, which was like two cakes joined together. Under their names they put two words which had helped their marriage stay together: Perseverance and Patience. All families must work to achieve a loving relationship. It grows slowly requiring patience and perseverance.
B. BE TOGETHER
How can you be a family if you are not together? There are many people who try to keep out of each other’s company. One of the most important things any family can do is learn to be together. You cannot hope to stay together if you do not spend time together. We should learn to build time into our marriages and into our family life when we can be together, to talk and to listen to each other. As a family we have a family meal together for everyone’s birthday, and with 21 of us, that makes for regular gatherings. Every week we have some member of the family to dinner. We have to learn to spend time together as a family unit.
C. COMMUNICATE TOGETHER
You have to learn to communicate with each other. Communication is a two way process. It means not only speaking at others but it means listening to others. And we have to learn both to speak and to listen.
Mal Meninga, one of Australia’s greatest rugby league coaches, and before that player, was born in the Queensland town of Bundaberg. His father, Norm, was a talented rugby league player whose jobs as a canecutter and later a saw miller were secondary to his success as a captain/coach of country teams. Norm was his son’s coach and also his hero. Looking back, Mal admired his father because Norm was the best footballer he knew. “You’d find Norm and you’d find Mal one step behind,” said his mother Leona.
Things began to go wrong in 1967, when Norm broke most of his ribs in an accident at the sawmill. He had to give up football and became an invalid pensioner. Meninga says his father’s “whole outlook changed. He thought he was useless because he couldn’t do the things he did before. And he took it out on the family a fair bit. He started drinking fairly heavily and got very abusive. It was hard when you came home from school and found your dad trying to strangle your mum.”
When he was 15, his mother enrolled Mal at the police academy in Brisbane. “He didn’t really want to go at that stage, because of what was happening in the family,” she says. It was a turning-point. “If I didn’t go into the force, I’d still be a beach bum on the coast; I’d just be running around in the local league.”
Meninga’s father died in 1982, two weeks before Mal was first selected to play for Australia. Norm had pretended to lose interest in his son’s football career, but Meninga knew this wasn’t true. “One day I was playing at Davies Park, Dad was there, watching me through the fence.” When Mal looked after the match, his father was gone. “I know he was proud of me. He never showed it though. He never told me.”
Family life is impoverished if we do not take the time to communicate with each other about how we feel, about how proud we are of the other person, of how much we love them. I have heard regrets from people at funerals when it was too late to say what we feel.
D. DETERMINE TO STAY TOGETHER
The Kinsey Report is out of date but I can remember way back in the 1950’s that the No. 1 factor in marriages that stay together was the determination of the couple to persist within that marriage. Today too many people give up too easily too soon. Those who have been together for 20 or 30 or 50 years who will tell you it took a lot of perseverance and patience and determination to stick together.
How do you explain that to people? Once a man talking to me about his kids asked: “What is the best thing I can do for my children?” I replied, “Love their mother.” And I meant it. Determination is part of love.
E. ENSURE THAT CHRIST IS HEAD OF YOUR HOUSE
That saying “Christ is the head of this house. The unseen guest at every meal and the silent listener to every conversation” needs to be in the heart of every family. Whenever a family has a basic religious affiliation and commitment at its heart that family stays together and has a centre of hope within it. Statistically, more than anything else, a real faith, whether it be Jewish, Muslim or Christian, provides a basis for a family life together. Jesus and His teachings provide an objective standard against which we can measure our behaviour and values. People who just live together, have children, work, spend, go from one activity to another, subject themselves to every tide of public opinion. Jesus Christ gives us an external standard.
F. FIND WAYS OF SOLVING YOUR PROBLEMS
Find ways of positively coping with your problems. Every family has difficulties. Every family goes through valleys and shadows and storms and desert periods. The way is never smooth. You must learn to find positive ways of coping. I always put faith first because if you have Jesus Christ in your life He then starts helping you to find the positive ways of overcoming your problems.
A recent poll showed that the problems in Australian family life were 91% related to alcohol abuse; 92% involved marital disharmony and argument; 90% involved unemployment and 88% involved financial worry. None of these main causes of family problems should ruin a marriage. Each of them can be handled together. Many organizations have expert staff to help your family cope with each of these problems. No family is sheltered from problems, and I believe that faith in Jesus Christ and following His way is the answer to every one of them.
Most Australians believe that the Christian faith can help you. In the Morgan Gallup Poll, 96% said they believed a religious faith was a positive factor in harmonious family life. Many people have made errors and have started again only because of their faith.
Get your life right with God. Become one of His family and find the resources of faith that help keep your family life united. Our society is rapidly disintegrating because people have no will to find how to hold their marriages and families together. The first step is to place Christ at the centre of your personal life, and then allow His influence to affect your family relationships, and then your marriage.
Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC