My Submission to the July Addition of the Brookwood Builder

First Lady Hillary Clinton once famously titled one of her books, It Takes a Village. The title was attributed to an African proverb: "It takes a village to raise a child." Senator Bob Dole famously replied responded: "... it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child."

I certainly believe that it takes a family to raise a child. I also believe that it takes God to raise a child. And, most importantly, I believe that it takes Jesus to raise a child.

What can we say about raising children and being a family in the present world? The social, economic, political, and cultural movements of 20th and 21st century America have led to the present situation in which the stability, the definition, and the recognition of family is doubtful and open to serious questions.

Is a family made up of only two parents or also one parent? What is a parent? Is a parent biological or legal? Is a family made up of a child and parents or a child and grandparents? Does a family consist of a child and guardian(s)? If so, what constitutes a guardian? What if a parent or a guardian is gay? What constitutes a marriage? Is it spiritual, legal, or both? Does a marriage still exist if one of these factors is absent? These are questions that have sent governments and social groups to scrambling for answers, public policy solutions, and some form of stability.

Let’s face it: what we traditionally thought a family should look like hasn’t looked like that or been like that for a long time. Certainly, the reality of what it means to be a family has shifted since I was born.

I am a part of the Generation X (born in the 60s and 70s), and mine is the first generation who were children during the mass fragmentation of the American home; a fragmentation that has continued into the Millennial Generation (born in the 80s and 90s). Of my generation it was said that our family lives became so unstable and so prone to disappointment that we lost all faith in family and began to invest all of our trust and personal relationships in friends and non-familiar relationships. Now this is being said of the Millennial Generation.

Yet, despite the undeniable societal sea changes, the individual problems are not new. The Bible mentions single mothers: Tamar was a single mother (Genesis 38), as was Hagar (Genesis 21:10-21), and others (2 Samuel 14; 1 Kings 17; Luke 7:12). The Bible mentions aging couples raising children: Sarah and Abraham raised Isaac (Genesis 21-22), and Elizabeth and Zacharias raised John the Baptist (Luke 1:57-80). In fact, the Bible mentions families that read like the tabloid headlines (Genesis 9:22; 19:36; 38:9; 2 Samuel 13:11-15; Hosea 1:2). In truth, the existence of these problems isn’t new, only the scope and our awareness of them. What we’re seeing in the present world is an aggregate of individual situations. Yet, it seems to me that the very fact that God included these situations in the Scriptures means that it should be of interest to us.

Read these accounts. These are real people with in real circumstances and real problems that needed to be overcome. And God was there. God was with them. He took care of them. God was always there, and he still is. He came as the child of a pregnant and unwed mother. (1) He came as Jesus who is called Immanuel, which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). And he is “with us always to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

The Kingdom of God has come in the in the person and work of Jesus. It is a work of which we as followers of Jesus are called to enact with every aspect of our individual persons. We stand in the present world poised between the Resurrection of Jesus (which is the beginning of God’s plan to heal an unstable, hurting, fragmented, and fluctuating world) and the final consummation when God will make everything over and new. And we are charged with the responsibility and the power of the Holy Spirit here and now to be people through whom signs of that final consummation, of that healing, that forgiveness, that reconciliation, come to birth within the present world.

Remember Jesus’ commission to us: “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21). We are to be Christ to the world just like Christ is God to the world. We are to be there for others just like God in Christ is there for us. We are to be there for unwed mothers, the divorced, the widowed, the families of the deployed, and the aging guardians of young children.

I stated that the great family problem we’re seeing in the present world is an aggregate of individual situations and this is true. And the greater problem can only be solved by addressing each individual situation one by one. We are called to help build the City of God brick by brick, person by person.

Yes, it takes a family to raise a child. Yes, it takes God to raise a child. Yes, it takes Jesus to raise a child. And, therefore, as his body and his workers, it takes a church to help raise a child and help maintain a family. In fact, we are to be a family for Generation X, the Millennial Generation, and all others (Matthew 12:49; Luke 3:38; Acts 3:26; Ephesians 3:15). So let’s go out and be the stability and trustworthiness of God in Christ.




(1)Did you ever note how many “non-traditional” family situations are referenced in the two Birth Narratives of Jesus in Matthew and Luke? Take particular notice of those alluded to in the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, David, Uriah’s wife, Solomon, and Mary.