#39 Family

Last week I didn't blog because Tess and I went to a Monday evening showing of The Fate of the Furious, and Monday evenings are when I normally blog. I've been thinking a fair amount about the movie over the past week. The central characters in this series stress the idea of family over and over again. Over the course of a whole slew of adventures, this diverse group has become a family. Only a couple of them are biologically related, and the family changes over time, often expanding to include former enemies. But no matter the challenges, family loyalty binds the group together.

Now I'm not going to sit here and defend the morality of the Fast and Furious franchise. I'm not going to tell all of you dear readers that you must see and enjoy these films. But I think we can learn something from this concept of family. I think that the church should look something like the Fast and Furious gang. The church is a diverse group of people—made of up representatives from every nation, tribe, people, and language, according to Revelation—united in and by Jesus Christ. The Bible often refers to us as brothers and sisters and challenges us to love and care for each other. And like Dominic Toretto and company, we should be willing to accept former enemies as beloved family members. Our church family will change over time, but our bonds of love should always hold us together.

I think we should keep this family image front and center in our discussions of the church. So often we Christians emphasize nuclear families: parents and children. Certainly we have responsibilities to our parents and siblings and children, but if we hold up individual families as an ideal, we run the risk of ostracizing and hurting those of us who are single or divorced, those of us who have lost family members or are estranged from our families, and any others of us whose family life doesn't match our perfect model (which, honestly, is probably all of us). But the church is a new family, the family of God. The church is a family that accepts any and all who believe in Jesus Christ. And I think a lot of people in the world today are looking for a family, for a place to belong. How many times have you heard young people come back from a mission trip or Christian retreat or Bible camp and gush about how they felt like part of a family?

In Luke 21, Jesus says that there will be no marriage after the resurrection. That passage has always confused me, but it started to make more sense to me as I prepared for a Bible study last week. Shortly after that statement, Jesus talks about how we will all be part of God's family. I think that's the point. When the kingdom fully comes, our individual families and marriages won't matter because we'll all belong to God's family. We should celebrate God's family and share its blessings with all who will come. After all, this family lasts forever.

Grace and peace,
BMH