Family Worship or Worship Family? Part I

November 1, 2001
Michael Evans
  

“The worth and excellence of a soul is determined by the object of its love” wrote twenty-seven year old Henry Scougal in 1677 in his book The Life of God in the Soul of Man.

Scougal died of tubercolosis before his twenty-eighth birthday but was remembered as one whose “whole soul seemed to be swallowed up in the contemplation of Jesus Christ.”

What “object” does your soul love more than anything else this day?  Tough question.  Tougher answer. There are myriad “objects” that vie for our heart’s primary affection.

God, money, possessions, past memories, future dreams, church, career, spouse, good appearances… the list is endless.

But I believe the strongest temptation of all for the unique breed of people that would be found reading an article like this, is the temptation to love our children not too much, but, excessively in a defective sort of way.

Stop! If you have a husband and he has not yet read this article please give him first shot.  After all, Patros Logos is directed to fathers.  This subject is just too sensitive for moms to read in isolation.  I’m dead serious.

John Calvin once wrote, “The human heart is an idol factory.”  How right he was!

Non-Christians set up idols of all kinds, flippantly disobeying the First and Second Commandments, “You shall have no other gods before Me” and “You shall not make for yourself and idol…” (Exodus 20:3-4).

But let’s not stop there.  What about even mature Christian disciples?  Is it possible that we also can find ourselves sucked up unwittingly into idolatry as in the eye of a hurricane? 

The appearance is good.  It’s calm and peaceful here.  So long as we stay in the “eye” things will go well…or so we imagine. 

Oh, there may be times when something inside cringes, and we have a glimmer of guilt over possibly loving a child excessively.  But warnings are easy to ignore.  How many of us get uptight when the green light suddenly turns yellow?

After all, we rationalize, “How is it possible to love my children excessively?”  I submit to you that it is not only possible, it is also a dangerous temptation which lurks at the very doorstep of many of our homes.

The beauty and joy of Christian home-education is that pretty much all of life is based out of the home.  The home is the center hub and the Scriptures and our Savior are the engine that drives it all. 

Nearly every family I know who has chosen the path of home-education has made significant sacrifices in order to be able to do so. 

The longer you do this thing called home-schooling the less and less it looks or feels like a sacrifice. 

The benefits and joys have a way of covering those things up beautifully. 

However, no matter how much we speak of the joys and benefits of home-schooling we must also face up to the very real temptation of loving our children more than God.

Idolatry occurs whenever we give anything the worship and service that belongs to God alone.  It is, in effect, worshiping the creation rather than the Creator, something clearly prohibited by Scripture (Rom. 1:25).

The most poignant illustration of the danger of “excessively” loving our children that I have ever seen comes from C.S. Lewis’s profound little book called The GreatDivorce.  I commend it to you.

The premise of the book is that the narrator boards a bus on a drizzly English afternoon and embarks on an amazing fantasy voyage from Hell to Heaven.

Along the way he meets supernatural beings and comes to realize truths which were heretofore unknown.

Without question the most painful bus stop occurs between a mother’s ghost (from hell) and a bright Spirit who had apparently been her brother.  The woman wants to see her beloved son Michael who was now in Heaven.

Despite her frantic passion to see her son he will not be “perceived” by her until she learns to want something more than Michael.

She goes on to explain to the ghost how intensely she loves her son and how Mother-love is the “highest and holiest feeling in human nature.”

The “Spirit” explains to her that “no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves.  They are holy when God’s hand is on the rein.”

Michael had died 10 years previously and she had kept his room exactly as he had left it…never even beginning to move on with her life.

Losing patience with the ghost who is gently trying to teach her truth she bursts out, “Give me my boy.  Do you hear?  I don’t care about all your rules and regulations.  I don’t believe in a God who keeps mother and son apart.”

“I believe in a God of love.  No one has a right to come between me and my son.  Not even God.  Tell Him that to His face.  I want my boy, and I mean to have him.  He is mine, do you understand?  Mine, mine, mine forever and ever.”

This poor woman would rather have her son with her in hell and “love” him her way than to be with him in Heaven under God’s terms.

As this gut-wrenching scene ends in the book the Spirit and his Teacher talk about their encounter with this woman.

“Is there any hope for her Sir?” “Aye, there’s some.  What she calls her love for her son has turned into a poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing.  But there’s still a wee spark of something that’s not just her self in it.  That might be blown into a flame.”

As the chapter closes the Teacher tells the “Spirit” that this poor woman’s love for her son was not an excess of love, but defect. 

He says, “She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty.”

Aside from the obvious theological oddities regarding a bus ride from hell to heaven, I believe Lewis pierces to the core of many of our hearts.

When I saw this book performed as a play in St. Paul 10 years ago by a Christian performing arts team, this scene nearly tore my guts out. 

Why? Because Karla was pregnant with our first child at the time and already I was beginning to understand the depth of love between parents and their children.

Why?  Because I am all too aware of what a narrow line there is between the kind of love for a child which honors God and the kind of love which possesses and idolizes.

And also because I have children of my own, whom I love deeply.   I would gladly lay down my life for my children.  I would gladly give my life in the necessary defense of my wife and children.

This is not an extraordinary or excessive kind of love.   This is the ordinary kind of love a Christian man ought to have for his wife and children. 

Would I gladly give my life for the cause of Christ?  Would I rather face death than renounce the One who died on the cross as a substitute for my sins?

I think I know the answer to these questions as well, but I have to admit that I can honestly answer the first set more quickly than the second. 

This very fact says to me that I must be careful not to love my children with a “defective” love which masquerades as supremely self-sacrificial love. 

The human heart is an idol factory, and it never shuts down fully in this life.  So beware, my brothers, of this dangerous temptation of “loving” your wife or children excessively (defectively).

Jesus said, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matthew 10:37-39).

May the Lord Himself give us fathers (and mothers) the courage to answer honestly these tough questions and to preserve genuine Christ-like love in our homes.