Biblical Doctrine of the Family

The Family and its Centrality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 02

Dictation Name: 02 The Family and its Centrality

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Our second session this evening will be with regard to The Family and its Centrality. Every organization, every institution tends to see itself as central to all things. To a degree, this is good, because it adds impetus to our efforts if we see what we’re doing as all-important, but it can lead to a kind of totalitarian stance. In each area, everyone sees his work, his interest, as most important.

But God has a marvelous plan. If physics were the most important thing in the world, or the state, or the church, we would have to say, “Well, some people have a calling here, and the rest of us don’t,” so that we are left out of the most important sphere of life, but God has so ordained it that every one of us can be a part of the most important sphere of life, the family. Either as husband or wife, or as children. We have a part in God’s basic institution.

One of the things we find when we read the Bible is the very great stress God places upon widows and orphans. He declares they are under his particular care, that any offense against them is supremely an offense against God. The reason for it is because widows and orphans are deprived of one aspect of family life. They are the subject of God’s special concern and care, and any offense against them, God views with wrath, but we live in a world that is anti-family to its core. We are in a world where virtually everything around us works against the family, tried to undercut it, underrate it, and one way or another undermine the loyalty of husband and wife, one to another, and of children to their parents. The state regularly usurps the family powers. In fact, we have had, for more than a generation, a steady growth of legislation which has one basic purpose: to cut the powers of the family, and now, of course, supremely, as a result of the Supreme Court, we have abortion as anti-familistic an act as can be imagined. It is not only anti-family, it is anti-life, and as a result, it indicates that there is a suicidal impetus in the modern world.

Moreover, there is another fact: modern individualism. Individualism is anti-family. Because of our individualistic culture, we are very prone to totalitarianism. The individual becomes a lonely person. We have the term used and a book written about “the lonely crowd.” The lonely crowd is made up of individuals who have lost their roots in the family, and therefore, they are most easily governed by totalitarian regimes. Every totalitarian regime works against the family, furthers anarchistic individualism, especially in the sexual sphere, in order to undermine the community that the family is, to create the isolated individual who cannot stand alone, and therefore, the power state must come in and provide the new family of man, the super state. When you have an individualistic culture, men and women, husbands and wives, and children and parents, each seek to use the other. Instead of community, you have egocentricity.

In the church, this individualism goes hand in hand with pietism, an emphasis on a purely private sphere of devotions and relationship to God, rather than the family and the church expressing the faith, and the individual being a part of a believing community. In pietism, people stress their personal salvation at the expense of their service to God.

When Genesis 1:26-28 says that God created man, the word “man” there refers to humanity. We are told he created them male and female, and to man, to humanity, he assigned a task, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. So that man was created, male and female, so that his life would be within the context of a community, the family, and as such, given his mandate. Then, Adam was given a task, a dominion task. Before the creation of Eve, he felt his isolation therein and his need of a helpmeet in terms of his calling, and when Eve was given to him, he said, “This bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” He felt the community of life in God’s calling. Man was created for communion with God, with his fellow men, and to serve God. He was created for family life. Our Lord said, “He which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.” The family is fundamental to life, and therefore, learning to live in a family is basic to learning to live in the world when we grow up. The patterns we establish in the family are usually our patterns for life, and only the grace of God enables us to overcome an unfortunate or a poor family background.

Thus, learning to live in the family is basic to our ability to live in any sphere, and the rebel within the sphere of the family is usual a rebel in life, a rebel in the world at large, unless the grace of God reaches him. Hence, the bible treats rebellion within the family as a capital offense. It is destructive of life. When children go beyond a certain point in their attitude towards their parents. The Bible maintains there is a correlation between life in the family and life outside.

Moreover, what we are as children in the family tends to govern the kind of family we establish unless God’s grace changes or improves what we have learned in the family.

I have pointed out that, in scripture, the family is the most basic institution, the central institution. Now, we need to recognize something therefore. Precisely because the family is so central in God’s planning, it can also be the area which is most devastating, and can be monstrously evil, because the family can be very destructive if it is an ungodly family.

Moreover, because the family is so important, it is the area where we can experience the greatest joy and the greatest love, but also the greatest pain and the greatest hurt. No one can hurt us more than a husband or a wife, or children, or parents. Because of its centrality in God’s order, it is also the area of the greatest blessing and the greatest hurt. The kind of hurt that lives with us for a long time, and the kind of blessing that lives with us continuously. The reason for this is that the family, and life within a family, touches the wellsprings of human life, and therefore, the toll on us when things go wrong within the family is very great. We do not need to apologize for it. We are in the most vulnerable sphere of life in the family, the place where we can be the most deeply hurt, as well as most deeply blessed and joyful.

This is why so much of our talk today about human sexuality is very evil. Because it is in the abstract. Sexuality reflects man’s religion, either good or evil. Hebrews 13:4 says, “Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” Thus, to try to discuss sexuality in the abstract, as all modern discussions are, is very false. Sexuality within a godly relationship is an expression of love, but in ungodly relationships, sex expresses aggression, power, and ungodly dominion.

A few years ago, one sociologist wrote a book about sex in which he had concluded, and rightfully so, because he was dealing with people like himself, non-Christians, that he found no love in sexuality, only aggression, and the conclusions, as he made them, were very pessimistic. He said that, historically, men associated sexuality with love, and he found it to be more closely associated with hatred. What did he mean?

Well, a few illustrations will suffice. One man, a reprobate, seduces a young woman, a virgin, and then after having courted her and done everything to make her believe that she was the be-all and end-all of his life, dropped her, brutally, and laughed at her horror, and his comment was, “And she thought she was so good.” It was an act of aggression, of hatred.

Another one of many illustrations, a group of office clerks watching an attractive, high-spirited girl in the office go by, and they commented, the reproducible part of their comment, “She needs taken down a peg or two.” The whole point being to use sex to humiliate.

Then, an episode at a university just a few years ago where a popular novelist, very much the macho male, was the speaker, and some of the feminists decided that they were going to gush all over him and get him to bed so they could humiliate him and make fun of his sexual performance, declare him to be incompetent.

Many more illustrations such as this have been given and can be given to demonstrate the fact that so much of sexuality is aggression. It is a desire to degrade the other party, that sex is more commonly used as an instrument of aggression and hatred by the ungodly, than an expression of any kind of healthy feelings. Among the ungodly, everything is used as an opportunity for an expression of power, of hostility, and a desire to manipulate and use other people.

In family life, all the channels that are to be used for love as God ordained them to be can, among the ungodly and are routinely used, to express hostility. Children are mistreated by mothers and fathers as a way of hurting their spouse. I have seen instances where a child is brutally treated by one or the other mate in a marriage simply because the child looks like the other person, and it’s a way of hurting the spouse. The results are devastating, and children who look to their parents for love are devastated when they are abused, and the same is true of a man and wife. We are most easily hurt, we are most vulnerable, in the family, but it is also the area where we best realize ourselves and experience the greatest joy, because it is central in God’s order.

How important the family is in scripture appears from the stress on genealogy. Now, we are sometimes told we have all the genealogies in the Bible because of the Messianic line, to be able to trace the ancestry of our Lord, or of David, and so on. There is no doubt that there is truth to that, but why then the emphasis on the genealogy of Esau? Hardly the Messianic line, and on the genealogy of others not of the Messianic line. When the Bible stressed genealogy, it stresses the fact that, in God’s sight, the history of the family is all important, that the family transmits more historically than does the state, or any other institution, and because the family transmits so much, the history of the family is important. We have nothing to be apologetic about if you are interested in your family tree. God indicates that this is a very healthy interest. The Bible stresses genealogy.

By contrast, the modern world stresses rootlessness, and it has been said that very few people in the modern world, whether in Europe or in the United States, could tell you the names of their great grandparents, and many of them don’t know their grandparents’ names, and their relationship to their parents is often casual, very often because the parents don’t want to be bothered once they’re grown and gone.

Beginning in the 1960’s, this rootlessness was stepped up and accentuated to the “nth” degree. For awhile, we had a new school of art every year, the emphasis being, one year, on pop art and another year on op art, and so on. The idea being that there should be no roots in art, and a new school should come forth with totally rootless ideas. The sexual revolution began to stress the same thing. One of the most interesting comments to come out of the sexual revolution was the statement that, in the various mass sexual encounters, when people played musical chairs sexually, the one thing not tolerated by anyone as they went from partner to partner, was to say, “I like you.” That made it personal. It had to be de-personalized. It had to be rootless. It has to be purely sexual, and no more. The drug culture cultivates oblivion, the destruction not only of the past, but of the present. Rock and Roll, avant-garde films, and more have all sought the annihilation of the past. We live in an anti-family culture, and the goal is responsibility, free sex, a mindless irresponsible act. On the other hand, the family and the life within the family requires total responsibility, thoughtfulness. It is a world of consequences, and hence, there is a war waged against it.

One of the most interesting things about the family of our time is that, very often, the rebels against family life pay it the highest compliment. They see it as the greatest threat, and therefore, something to wage war on.

Because it is the central realm of responsibility under God, the area of the greatest consequence, they rebel against the family and do everything to undermine it, whereas, on the other hand, churchmen are not really aware of the importance of the family and the wealth and the power they have. The family is the key to the future. We shall discuss that at a later date, but the family is the determiner of life and of the future. The modern world says the state should be, and therefore, the family should be destroyed or undermined. Since modern man, humanistic and anti-God, sees the family as so-great a threat and as the central target of its hostility, isn’t it time that churchmen woke up to its importance and its centrality in God’s plan? Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Would you think the modern practice of legalizing the custom of anyone choosing any family name that it gives to them part of the assault on genuine families?

[Rushdoony] A very good question if you did not hear it. We have, today, the legal permission to change our name, at will. We can go to court and decide that tomorrow our name is Fitzpatrick, or any name we choose. Is this not an assault on the family? It is, I believe. I’ve never thought of it, but it is, I’m sure, one way of undermining the integrity of the family. You can take a great name and adopt it, and make it have a different connotation. I know that I personally was very resentful when a popular singer took the name of Humperdinck. I found it an affront. Humperdinck was not one of the great musicians, but he was a good musician, a very fine composer, and his Hansel and Gretel opera, a delight. Why should some character cash in on Humperdinck’s name? Why should anyone cash in on the name of someone else, and that’s what people do when they change their names. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] The thing that really bothers me, a lot of situations dealing with disabled people and senior citizens, there’s cases where the state encourages people to live together rather then getting married, because if they get married, their income is cut back, and there’s been cases where people have actually divorced out of love just so the spouse could receive the medical attention that they deserved, and if they stayed married, they would not get the medical treatment that they needed, and it’s all because of the state.

[Rushdoony] Yes. There are many such regulations which militate against marriage, because we do have an anti-familistic culture. Of course, one of the most obvious of facts is that since the White House Conference on the Family under Carter, they have been defining the family legally as any group of people living together, a group of lesbians, or homosexuals, or the like, and the idea of the family as we have it in the Bible is just one form of family life among many. Yes?

[Audience] I’ve heard that our public schools are anti-family to a large degree. Is this so, and if so, why?

[Rushdoony] Are public schools? Yes, of course, they are. For one thing, the family is separated from the educational process. For another, the teaching militates against family allegiances, and children very quickly learn to be disrespectful of their parents. There is a difference in the attitude in children who go to a Christian school and those who go to a humanistic, state school. Moreover, in some many ways, they work against the family, such as withholding information. One girl, it came out in the press recently, had had four abortions, all taken care of by the counselor at school, and her parents knew nothing of it. Yes?

[Audience] Is the marriage bond ended with the death of one spouse?

[Rushdoony] We’re going to deal with that at a later date, so we won’t go ahead on the questions. Yes?

[Audience] Our culture undercuts the family, the parents, as the best teachers of the children. What can Christians do to strengthen their teaching abilities and participating in the education{?}

[Rushdoony] Well, of course, the homeschool movement is growing by leaps and bounds now, as well as the Christian school movement, and I think the evidence is very clear that mothers make the best teachers. Certainly, on standard testing, the homeschool comes out in front. The Christian school runs a good two years ahead, and very often more, but on the average, two years ahead of the state schools, and the homeschool does even better. So, the simple fact is nobody is more concerned about a child than the mother. It’s natural that she should do the best job of teaching. No one knows how many homeschools there are now. When I was in Washington D.C. not too many months ago, and I’ll be there again next week, I heard a couple of lawyers discussing the homeschool movement and trying to guess how many children were in homeschools. They guessed between three and ten million. Nobody knows how many. I know that in this state, Hoenig, two years ago when he took office, started to move against them and he backtracked immediately and said he didn’t do it, an associate did, because he found there were at least 100,000 homeschools. Well, 100,000 would mean probably a quarter of a million children, just in California, and the movement has grown dramatically since two years ago. Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering what is the rationale behind lesbian women wanting to have children, and have a family? I mean, why are they doing this?

[Rushdoony] Perversity, to a large extent, and desire to demonstrate that the biblical model for a family is not valid. Yes?

[Audience] I was going to ask what can we do, and one of the things perhaps is homeschools. What are some other things that come to your mind as to what we can do in this war against our families?

[Rushdoony] Yes, we’ll be getting to that later, so I’d rather not go into it now, but of course, homeschools are one aspect, and certainly to strengthen the family and its relationships, to take care of your own, for the family to take care of the parents, and to be working together with your relatives, Christian relatives, to try to minister to one another’s needs. Those are two very obvious means. The family is the best insurance agency there is, by the way, and with all the money that is spent on education by state and federal agencies, the family still puts out more, which is an interesting fact. Yes?

[Audience] Why are Christians, both in the Armenian churches and the so-called Reformed churches, both seem to be reluctant to get marries and if they do give into that, they seem reluctant to have {?}

[Rushdoony] What was that now? I didn’t get that.

[Audience] I said why do Christians, both in the Armenian churches and in the Reformed churches, or so-called Reformed churches, seem to be so reluctant to get married, and if they do get married, why do they seem to be so reluctant to have children?

[Rushdoony] Well, marriage is responsibility. Our world today does not encourage responsibility, but irresponsibility, and people in those churches at least know that marriage is a responsibility, and a lot of them shy away from it deliberately, and shy away from having children, because children are a responsibility.

[Audience] I’ve heard some people blame it on the premillennial viewpoint. Does that have anything to do with it?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know, but I know it is irresponsibility. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] We know that parents are still held responsible, but do you know of any area of authority that they still retain?

[Rushdoony] Authority has been very much undermined by legislation and by our culture. On the other hand, I believe there is a major revival of authority within the family. We are seeing a polarization in our culture. A very remarkable book, published in the late fifties and which should be reprinted, and I hope if we have the funds in a few years we can do it, was titled, simply, The Family and Civilization. It was by Professor Carl C. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, and a Jesuit priest, Father Lucius Cervantes, a very remarkable book, and at that time, they predicted, and I think rightly so, that we were on the brink of the greatest revival and development of family life in all of history, that we would see very shortly the beginnings of a tremendous resurgence of family strength. Now, the Christian School Movement has been one aspect of that, but another has been the fact that the churches, Catholic and Protestant, have been beset by so many troubles, have become so weak, and so often the clergy is anything but someone to look up to for any spiritual leadership and guidance.

So, what’s happened? Christians in all the churches have had to develop their own strengths. They’ve had to grow when they’ve had none of these traditional supports, and so they’ve developed a remarkable strength. On top of that, the very fact that all around the family this anarchy exists, and is threatening the family, has led people to wake up to things that they once paid no attention to, what goes on in the world of their children. As a result, they exercise more authority, not that it isn’t resisted, but they are exercising more authority in the right ways than was exercised a generation or two ago. At that time, a generation or two ago, there was a lot of authority on the part of parents, that was exercised over trifles, and I can recall when I was a child, that parents were very strict, but it was mostly about trifles. Now, parents are strict and are laying down the law about essentials. So, I think there is a resurgence of authority, too, very much with us. Well, if there are no more questions, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that each of us have been commissioned to serve thee in thine appointed sphere, the family, that here we have responsibilities that are basic to live, basic to thy kingdom, and basic to the future of our world. Bless us as we meet our responsibilities and give us joy therein. Make us strong in thy service, faithful to thy law, and joyful because we are thine. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape