It seems that the church and the family in America mirror each other. We can probably agree that the church and the family should be the places where one finds love. Yet, neither seems to be a very safe place to find love today. Families break apart and church people gossip. Little sense of blessing exists, but people demand to have their needs met. Rare is the family or the church that disciplines its members, yet with discipline comes the safety we crave.
Thinking through these issues reminds me of chicken and egg arguments. Is the dysfunctional family killing the church or does church impotence kill families? If you took my theology class this spring, you know that the answer is (always) both! A circular relationship exists where each intensifies the other’s problems, and that is good news. I say good news because the opposing truth also holds: church and family can solve each other’s problems.
What exactly are the problems to which I refer? Four seem most clear right now, and I will discuss each one on Sundays this month. I call the series: How to Avoid Murdering Your Family. I chose that title because I notice that we have not yet learned to love each other. Where love is not, hate is, and Jesus said that to hate someone is just the same as killing her. I look at our culture and I see the demons of hate making progress and winning battles. I want to name the demons and kill them before they kill more of us.
Before I get to naming demons, I want to list a few foundational ideas. First, my argument rests in the idea that love is the answer to the problems. Second, the greatest example of love is that Jesus Christ gave his life to pay for your and my sins. Third, the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth offers the most complete description of love in the world, and from it I find solutions to our problems. Fourth, when I use the term family I do so in agreement with Jesus and the biblical authors who refer to churches as families. You see it is by divine design that churches and families remain linked.
I will address four problems that involve relationships between love and support, gossip, conformity, and discipline respectively. First, families and churches kill each other when they substitute money for love. Money is very important, but to love someone includes more than just money.
Second, persons who belong to families today seem to feel great freedom to talk badly about each other. Gossip kills the one it attacks. I see gossip increasingly acceptable, and I see it murdering families.
Third, I do not see a lot of blessing flowing from parents to children or from churches to their children. What I see is a lot of attempted cloning. Such attempts are not only foolish, they are lethal. Lord willing, we will act to correct this insidious practice on Father’s Day.
Fourth, discipline is in decline in families and virtually nonexistent in churches. Great sadness results from the failure of families and churches to lovingly discipline their members, for that is the only way we will ever find safety in each other’s presence.
Give More than Money
This week we examine the relationship between support and love. Monday, I took my wife to see Pearl Harbor. I could have given her some money and sent her to the island, but we decided that seeing the movie together would suffice. I thought it was a good sappy chick flick with some cool explosions for the guys. What struck me about the plot was how willing the characters were to die for each other.
Before the fighting started at Pearl Harbor, there was a war in Europe. Our Congress sent the English a lot of money to buy bullets, but money was not enough. The English needed men to fight, so they recruited American pilots to fly British planes in combat against the Germans.
The Bible teaches us that the church fights a war against evil. The church needs tithes to pay for the weapons of our warfare, but money is not enough. We also need attenders and workers. In fact, Jesus never told us to pray specifically for money, but he did tell us to pray for workers.
If we read the statistics, we know that families need more than money today. Families need income to pay for food, shelter, education, Disneyland vacations, cable television, and new computer games, right? Still, they seem to be in disarray despite the highest family income ever in our history. Families need a parent at home when the kids get out of school and another one at home to help with schoolwork in the evening. They need someone to attend all those ballgames and someone to teach respect for God and his word.
We have all these holes in our churches and our families, but we keep trying to fill the holes with dollars. It’s no wonder we break apart so easily, we have too little love. The stress is enormous because we attack the devils with the wrong weapons. We confuse money with love.
We Confuse Money with Love
Listen to me, I am not telling you to quit working and providing for your family. Paul told Tim to tell the church that anyone [who] does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8 NIV). Nor am I telling you to withhold your 10 percent (your tithe) from your church. God gets even more serious on the latter issue than the former--He says that withholding even part of the tithe is stealing from God and anyone who does so is under a curse (Malachi 3:8-10).
But I do not want to focus on the money side of the thing. I want to talk more about the love side. Money alone will not support a family. Love supports a family. The love we want is not the Hollywood variety--that kind is mythical. According to God, real love does exist. Real
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. [Real] love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NIV, emphasis added).
For our question today, verse six speaks loudest. In the face of confusing money with support for our families, we have traded the truth for a lie. Many of us confuse money for love, but the word says that love rejoices in the truth.
Jesus said that God’s word is the truth (John 17:17), so that I can easily understand that when the church teaches the Bible, we are teaching the truth. So I am not making a stretch when I propose to you that real love rejoices in God’s word and settles for nothing less. How can I rejoice if I do not even know the truth? Without knowing the truth I am liable to accept a lie and that’s where this thing began is it not?
Do you see why it makes sense for us to study the Bible together? If the leader of your household does not study God’s word with a spiritually gifted teacher, how in the world can he or she expect to have a family that rejoices?
Paul instructed the Corinthian church to agree on the biblical basics as he taught them. It follows of course, that they all knew what he taught.
I am not at all confident that all of us who think of ourselves as part of this church family know the content of our Lord’s teachings. I am less confident that you take responsibility to support your family with much other than a paycheck. Why would I say such a hard thing? Because I see very little rejoicing in the truth--there’s not enough love in the room!
Love means involvement. Attending one-fourth of your kid’s ballgames is not enough, nor should we feel loving when the average church attender drags in late one Sunday out of four. You would throw a shoe if your daughter’s fifth grade teacher taught math one hour a week, yet I hear that many of our parents allow their children to receive only half that in biblical instruction. Love means that when you say you will support a class for new believers, spiritual gifts, or students in mid-high or high school, you show up.
If you and I want our families and our church to be able to stand against our enemies, we better do what it takes. It takes love and it takes truth. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6 NIV).
Parents, unless you are experts at applying biblical truth to your family situations, you need to receive instruction. Instruction comes from your Pastor and your Home Team leader every week. Your church and your family cannot defeat the enemy while you remain apathetic about loving each other. Let’s learn to love each other.
Heavenly Father, help us to remember that support is about more than money. We want to remain faithful to You with financial support of our families and our church. Help us become faithful in love and support of one another. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
