7 Norms for the Family

In every time period, the subject of the family is likely to set off intense emotions. In our own day, the family has become an intense political issue. This is all aggravated by the breakdown in family structure and the terrible pain often caused by it.

How can we find our way out of it?

Finding our way out of the messes in which we find our families requires a clear sense of the goals, ideals, or norms that a family should pursue.

In the book of Genesis, we have a picture of the family prior to the rupture of family relationships. This is helpful for our families and for the proper understanding of the book of Genesis. As you read through Genesis 3–50, you find a lot of messed up families and questionable family situations (like multiple wives). How are we to evaluate them? I believe that Genesis 1–2 gives us the answer.

Let me suggest 7 norms for the well-functioning family based on Genesis 1:26–2:25.

1. God is at the center of a well-functioning family. God made the family and blessed it (Gen. 1:26–28). Often families have trouble because they are only looking at one another and not seeing the God who is above them all. They seek from their families things only God can give. This creates frustration and struggle.
2. Children are a blessing. Children today are often viewed negatively, but God gave the command to be fruitful and multiply. He wanted more people on earth. “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him” (Psalm 127:3).
3. Marriage is for mutual companionship, encouragement, and support. Based on the command to be fruitful and multiply, one might wonder if God intended marriage only for raising children. However, Gen. 2:18–22 teaches us that God established marriage because “it was not good for man to be alone.” This teaches us that marriage is for companionship, encouragement, and support, and this pattern in marriage should be replicated in the other relationships within the family.
4. Marriage is designed to be between one man and one woman for one lifetime. A man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife, so the two become one flesh (Gen. 2:24). God could have made several Eves or a group of friends to cure Adam’s loneliness. Instead, he gave him one woman for one lifetime.
5. The spouse takes priority in human relationships. Think of marriage as consisting of 3 generations. Generation 1 is the parents of the husband and wife. Generation 2 is the husband and wife. Generation 3 is the children of the husband and wife. The norm should be that the relationship between the husband and wife has takes priority. A man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife . . . The parents may have been the focus before, but marriage is a commitment to make the spouse a priority.
6. Children are meant to be sent out. The flip side of leaving the father and mother is that the child is meant to establish his or her own place in the world and eventually leave the parents and find their own way. The child is not designed to be the parents’ emotional support or crutch, especially at the expense of the spouse. The child is meant to be sent out.
7. The goal of the family is not the family. The family is not meant to fold in on itself or block everyone else out. The family is designed to be a place of mutual companionship, encouragement, and support, but it provides this atmosphere to teach each one to love the human race better and empower them to do things outside the family that will benefit the entire human family and glorify God. Family harmony has a purpose in serving the broader world, and serving the broader world contributes to family harmony.

Now, I know that most families are far from what is described here. In fact, Adam and Eve and Cain and Able show the divisions that continue to plague our families.

Is there any hope?

In Genesis 3:15, on the heels of Satan’s temptation and Adam and Eve’s succumbing to it, God promises that this won’t last forever. A descendant from the human family will crush the work of Satan, and I believe that this person is Jesus.

A few chapters later in Genesis, after the world had been destroyed by the flood, God renewed the blessing and said, “Be fruitful and multiply.” For anyone who wants to make the family what God wants it to be, you can rest assured that God is behind such effort.

Gordon Wenham, a commentator on the book of Genesis, reflecting on the violence, division, and abuse that occurs in the families there says: “But this is not to say that the message of Genesis is essentially negative about families. Rather, it is a story of grace triumphing despite human sin, of grace triumphing even in families broken by sin.”

And because of Jesus, that can be your story, too.

(Note: this material is based on a sermon I preached on June 10th. You can listen to it here.)