What Do We Need Family For?
We are heading deeper into a time when our society is questioning the need for the traditional family structure. Questions are being asked like: “Do we really need family? Does it really fit this modern culture? Does the traditional family do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by various nontraditional family paradigms?”
When leaders don’t know why we need family, they tend to weaken their resolve to fight for it. When parents don’t know why we need family, they can unknowingly stop training the next generation to perpetuate family values.
To understand the need for family you must start by searching for the purpose of family. Where do you go for purpose?
For some reason, I tend to burn through (no pun intended) outdoor gas grills. I have purchased and put together so many grills that I can almost assemble them blind folded. As I was about to complete the assembly of our newest grill this summer, I found that I had an extra part. It didn’t seem important and I’d never seen anything like it before, so I decided to do what I always do with extra parts, throw it out. My wife Rosemary, who knows nothing about putting together grills, suggested I might want to look at the manual before I discarded the part. As it turned out she was right. The part was a safety device that the maker of the grill had invented to save me from blowing myself up. Once again saved by the maker’s manual.
Obviously the same wisdom is in effect here. When I don’t understand purpose I should go to the One who created it all. It was God who placed the family unit at the center of society.
The plan for family begins back in the book of beginnings. First God announces that it’s not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18) a fact every woman will applaud. It’s not the best for any of us to be alone, so next God invented marriage, a union of one man and one woman (Genesis 2: 24-25). This invention of the coming together of a man and a woman so as to work at functioning as one person, was the process of how to accomplish the purpose of family.
The look at God’s purpose for family begins in the statement “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Families are called to replicate themselves and direct the next generation to reach their individual purposes. You reach your purpose by getting to know the One who made you. God even tells us that this in His statement of why He selected Abraham. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD… (Genesis 18:19, NIV).
The number one assignment for parents is to train the child in a way that will allow them to reach their full potential. That means training them and helping them develop their gifts. But more than anything else that means guiding them to develop their own relationship with the One who knows the plans He has for them (Jeremiah 29:11). All the academics and extra curricular activities on the planet won’t help them become better adults if they don’t find the plan God has for them.
The primary purpose of family is to raise a generation that loves and trusts God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). It shouldn’t surprise us that our culture is trying to remove any reminder of God from our public squares. It shouldn’t shock us that our public schools are having a hard time getting permission to talk about God. Nor should it catch us off guard that there are those questioning God’s paradigm for the family. But the purpose of family, to be fruitful by teaching the next generation to love and trust God, should not get diluted.
It’s one thing for the culture to misunderstand the purpose of family, but it’s an absolute tragedy if the parents, the ones entrusted with the purpose of family, drop the ball. The tragedy will be evident in the lives and marriages of the next generation. They will just be humans doing, rather than have the privilege and fun of becoming human beings, reaching beyond their own abilities, doing what their creator made them to do.
As a family, are you raising a human doing or a human being? A child who will grow up and get to do what he or she was made to do. A child being everything God intended for him to be. That’s the awesome purpose privilege and plan for the family. Family planning at its best!