Families and God’s grace

A while back I got a call out of the blue from a Swiss bank. For a moment I began imagining they were ringing to inform me of a secret cache of gold they had discovered in my name.

It turned out they had something of rather less monetary significance to give me, but something arguably even more valuable.

It was a simple request – to champion the family. I smiled, and proudly told them about the work I was doing inspiring churches to find families for children in the UK care system.

‘But what about the millions of children in orphanages?’ they said. ‘They need families too.’

There was a pause. The man from the Swiss Bank then gently explained to me that while churches were indeed welcoming children into families in the UK, they were simultaneously removing children from families elsewhere – by funding orphanages. Most children in orphanages were not actually orphans, they had living parents, he claimed.

I was shocked. I supported an orphanage. My church supported an orphanage. Was that so wrong?

I began to do some digging. Most orphanages were being used as a solution to poverty not bereavement. Most children had family members who could care for them. All the research pointed to the overwhelmingly terrible outcomes for children who did not grow up in the stability of a family.

It was no wonder that the multi-millionaire philanthropists who used the Swiss Banks were investing in family support mechanisms that meant children didn’t need to go into orphanages in the first place. Their only problem was that Christians were continuing to prop up the out-dated system, supporting orphanages overseas when they would never sanction orphanages in their own country.

It got me thinking. Christians have had to change their minds before. Christians once supported the slave trade. Christians once supported the forced removal of indigenous children from their families in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Christians once removed babies from unwed mothers in Ireland.

If well-meaning Christians did the wrong thing for families with the right motives in the past, then we need to check our assumptions now too.

Recently in politics there has been an assumption made that Christians believe in the moral superiority of the nuclear family [see picture from a 1970s children’s reading book]. Some have explicitly stated that nuclear families are the only basis of a safe and successful society. While it is true that traditionally we have often promoted the family model that we see in Little House on the Prairie, or The Simpsons: a mother and a father, married, and two or three children, this so-called ‘normative’ model is virtually nowhere to be seen in the Bible.

Abraham’s family, Isaac’s family, Jacob’s family, Naomi’s family, even Adam and Eve’s family are all complex, broken and blended. Even the Kings and prophets did not model to us a nuclear family: think of David’s wives and children or Hosea’s marriage. Their family experience contains murder, infertility, adultery, polygamy, slavery, inter-racial conflict, inter-generational conflict, breakdown and unfaithfulness. In the New Testament even Jesus’ family is far from orthodox with a virgin pregnancy and plans for a quiet divorce. And what about Elizabeth’s childlessness into old age, or John’s two mothers – his power-hungry natural mother and his adoption of Jesus’ mother, or Paul’s singleness?

It is one of the beautiful things about the Bible that even in cultures that were more sensitive to social stigma, the Scriptures don’t gloss over the complexities and challenges of family life. It is often through the very brokenness running through our families that the beauty of our identity as children of God’s family shines brightest.

I believe therefore that when Christians speak up for families we must do so with the utmost humility and no hint of judgment. This is the heart of the gospel of God’s grace, illustrated throughout the Bible and throughout history by broken families that God has welcomed into his household and used for his mission in the world.

It is this gospel of grace that motivates me and tens of thousands of others to deviate from the stereotypical ‘normal family’, in favour of welcoming adopted and fostered children into our lives, or welcoming refugees and vulnerable adults into our homes. It is this gospel of grace that inspires me to advocate for families of all shapes and sizes.

I would like to respectfully challenge the focus on nuclear families and push back on the notion that they constitute the only basis for a truly safe and successful society – I believe that being part of God’s family, whatever your own family looks like, is the only basis for a truly safe and successful society.

Or am I wrong? You don’t have to be a Swiss Bank to challenge my assumptions, change my mind or champion families where you are.