Ann Benton explains why a Christian sub-culture at home is vital
When my sisters and I were children, one of the storybooks we had in our comparatively small collection at home was a clothbound book, published in 1946 with attractive coloured pictures. It was The Children of Happy House by Enid Blyton.
This is the story of a family who moved to a new house in the country, and is a charming evocation of a secure family life where nothing more alarming happens than the breaking of glass in the next-door neighbour’s cucumber frame. Written at a time when Britain was just emerging from the uncertainty, loss and fear of invasion of WWII, it was no doubt a sweet diversion, expressing hopes for a better life for the nation’s children. I recall it now with some nostalgia.
Such twee fodder would doubtless go into the bin of any self-respecting, 21st-century publisher of children’s books. They like – in the name of reality – dysfunction, attitude, and flawed, vulnerable characters. They may have a point; I am not defending The Children of Happy House as great literature. But the Bible has its own ‘happy house’, a freeze-frame of a delightful and fruitful family life. It is found in Psalm 128:
Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots round your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion! May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life! May you see your children’s children! Peace be upon Israel!
Psalm 128 does not major on dysfunction, attitude and weakness – although there is plenty of that in the Bible. It presents a happy house indeed: a house of security, order, peace, prosperity and beauty. It depicts a harmonious family seated around a table, perhaps from three generations of God-fearing people. The end of the psalm shows that the blessing spreads outwards to God’s people and to the wider community – like widening circles in a lake when a stone is thrown.
Is the Bible unreal to give us this picture? Is it the Christian equivalent of an idealistic picture on the Corn Flakes packet? Of course not! This psalm, one of the psalms of ascent or journeying psalms, is a call to obedience and faith – at home. It is both aspirational and inspirational. It is showing us what could and should happen in the believer’s home. And the necessary condition is fear of the Lord. Healthy family life starts with worshipping the Lord.
To fear the Lord – that is, to recognise in your very soul the presence, awesome power and matchless grace of the transcendent, personal, triune God – means that you will love Him and want to walk in His ways. And when you live like that, you will create around you a subculture of family life, a subculture which is Christian and distinctively so. This is the soil in which to grow healthy, rounded human beings.
One of Edith Schaeffer’s many definitions of the family is ‘an ecologically balanced environment for the growth of human beings’. This is the way it is intended to be. God did not first make children and let them grow up in the garden untended, as it were. He made the grown-ups first and then he gave them babies.
Psalm 128 pictures a whole family subculture in one frame. Without this foundation, even the best techniques and top tips will be insufficient and probably fruitless in creating a happy house.
This is a critical point in our current secular, atheistic age. Parents, grandparents and churches – who have a heartfelt and right desire to see the next generation won for Christ – need to recognise the atmosphere of the age. Its values, priorities, ambitions and glories are ever present in the air we breathe and have invaded our homes. I shall term this the prevailing culture. Its impact on us all is far greater than we realise. It is subtle; it is generally invisible; it is frequently very attractive; and it is immensely powerful.
Every family, consciously or unconsciously, creates its own subculture. Very often, and quite naturally, it draws from the prevailing culture in doing so. Even the names you chose for your children reflect the age you live in. My husband and I thought we were being terrifically original (and proudly biblical) when we chose the name Matthew for our firstborn. We knew no other children of that name. It was only later we discovered that it was one of the most common names of his generation. How did that happen? Answer: it must have been in the ether.
We are so much more influenced by the prevailing winds of fashion and culture than we care to admit – from the colour we paint a baby’s bedroom, to the books we read and the music we listen to; from the things we talk about over dinner to the way we spend our money and our time. Our prevailing culture is a package and it carries its own message. Much may be harmless, but plenty is not.
Schools, in a competitive marketplace, recognise the importance of ethos. Just visit a few of their websites and you will notice the emphasis that is placed on ethos in selling a school. One prestigious school in my neighbourhood markets itself thus:
‘You will always be curious. You will always value others. You will always believe in being yourself. You will always have a life less ordinary. You will always be a community within the community. You will always want to make a difference …’
Now will there be explicit lessons on those subjects? Probably not. But those messages will intentionally be there in the warp and woof of school life. Schools have their own subculture. Traditions will be in place; mottos will be repeated; attitudes will be discouraged; habits will be formed.
However, having been a teacher, I am all too aware that the impact school has on a child is minimal compared to that of home. Home wins. So here is the question: what will your child always be as a result of growing up in your home? Always ambitious? Always feeling a failure? Always arrogant? Always able to take correction? Always materialistic? Always generous? You get the point.
Naturally the ethos of most families is undergirded by love. That is taken as a given in Psalm 128. It is undisputed that the unconditional love that parents give their children, especially in their earliest years, is a critical factor for healthy development. This too is imaging the God who made us.
But human love can be blind, as we know. Love can overlook what it should see. Love can be distracted and not realise the soil, the ethos, that is being unconsciously engendered.
Psalm 128 would not agree with the Beatles that ‘all you need is love’. It argues that all you need is parents who fear the Lord and walk in obedience to him.
Family subculture, ethos, soil – for good or ill – has a telling and lasting effect. If the family subculture is sound, parents will muddle through the stresses and strains of potty-training, sibling rivalries and teenage angst, with or without a how-to guide, and still come out smiling.
Psalm 128 is a foundational aspiration for all believing parents, calling them to continually fear the Lord and walk in His ways. Such a stance and direction will be, as they say, a ‘game changer’. And not only will the children in those families thrive, but the blessing will spread outwards to church and nation.
