Fixed It For You
In Which I take apart Pieter Valk's meltdown about "Nuclear Family Month"
I am so sorry about not sending out the livestream in a timely manner (it should be in your spam inbox now). I am discombobulated because I got home late from spending a lovely meandering day with my two youngest girls and our tiny, make-shift homeschool co-op first at Cornell’s Ornithology Walking Trails and then climbing up the Gorge.
While I was doing that, lots of lovely people were sending me fodder so that I wouldn’t have to scroll at all (praise the Lord). One item that appeared, as though by magic, is this nicely ratio-ed post by Pieter Valk about the fact that the governor of Tennessee declared June to be “Nuclear Family Month.” You can give it a watch, here, and he also provided his own transcript which I will forthwith read:
“Nuclear Family Month” is political, not biblical
My home state of Tennessee has declared June “Nuclear Family Month” as a way of pushing back on Gay Pride Month.
Indiana just followed suit. Who knows how many other states will do the same.
Here's the problem: they're saying the quiet part out loud, and they don't even realize it.
People advocating for this and thinking it's a Christian slam dunk on LGBT+ rights don't seem to know their bible: the nuclear family isn't a biblical idea.
It’s a modern, western, secular, individualist idea that Christians in America failed to resist over the past century.
Check out the consistent research by biblical scholars like Joseph Hellerman in his book "When the Church was a Family".
Christian family is the body of Christ bound by the blood of Jesus.
If you want to push back on sexual immorality with God's design for sex and gender, fine. But don't use a secular idea that's antithetical to God's family.
It's a self-own. And it betrays what this might really be about.
It’s not about sexual discipleship, family, God, purity, or sanctification. It’s about doubling down on a secular idea that most effectively excludes LGBT+ people and single people and poor people in multifamily/multigenerational homes.
What is real biblical family? When Jesus used that word, what did He mean?
For 1st century ancient near east people, “family” was a wider circle of 10-15 people who included siblings, parents, friends, spouses, and kids.
Interestingly, commitment to one’s siblings was greater than that to a spouse.
But regardless, it wasn’t nuclear family.
So if you want to push back on sexual immorality with biblical wisdom, be my guest. But people claiming that the nuclear family is Christian are either biblically illiterate or their real goal is just to be homophobic.
I don’t know which is worse.
As for me and my house, I'm going to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ this month
and seek the Lord.
Maybe we'll declare it “Body of Christ Month” for our church family :)
Comment/DM “JESUSFAMILY” for how to build family today like Jesus did (and where “nuclear family” really came from
In the spirit of charity, as before, I will now proceed to fix this theological and civic mess for you:
“Nuclear Family Month” declared by a political personage—the governor of a state—is of course a political act of someone within the government according to what he believes will be best for the citizens within his boarders. Said governor is not trying, I would imagine, to be “biblical.” However, being, clearly, a sensible person in this regard (I don’t know anything about the governor of Tennessee and if he is a wise person or merely an opportunist) he is arranging the governance of his state according to principals derived from Holy Scripture, which is something everyone should do.
For the governor of a state to do anything to “push back” on the month formerly known as “Gay Pride” is a blessing for which all of us should be grateful, especially Christians and Anglicans, which are arguably roughly the same thing (that’s just a little joke, of course Anglicans are Christians, though not all Christians are Anglicans, tragically).
