Over the past few years, I’ve heard and read a troubling little concept. It runs along the lines of “we’ve got to be careful we are not idolising family.” One time I have heard this is in response to parents who spend significant amounts of money on Christian education. What intrigues me about this is that these warnings to avoid idolising family are becoming more and more common in a period of history when family seems to be less and less important even in Christian circles. It seems to me that we are as a whole less likely to idolise family than previous generations. So what’s going on?
First of all, let’s think about idolatry. What is it? Well, of course, one way of thinking about it is placing something before God. God alone is to be at the centre of our lives. He rules, and we worship him alone. Thus far so good. Nobody I know is encouraging fathers or mothers to hold their families as more important than God.
Another way to think about idolatry is disordered desires. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo wrote on this subject. He said, “Now he is a man of just and holy life who forms an unprejudiced estimate of things, and keeps his affections also under strict control, so that he neither loves what he ought not to love, nor fails to love what he ought to love, nor loves that more which ought to be loved less, nor loves that equally which ought to be loved either less or more, nor loves that less or more which ought to be loved equally.” (On Christian Doctrine, I.27-28)
So what does this mean for the family? Yes, we can be involved in the sin of idolatry if we love family more than it ought to be loved. One example of this would be if we are not willing to give up our family for the sake of Christ. This is a very real issue for say a Muslim convert.
But I would suggest that in the Western world, we are more likely to be guilty of a disordered desire in the other direction. We are more likely to love our family less than we should. Is spending thousands of dollars a year to give your children a Christian education idolising your children? Of course not. It’s simple obedience to the king. In fact, I suspect that most reasons for not obeying God’s requirement to train our children ‘Christianly’ is rooted in some other idolatry. We have actually loved something more than family when we should have loved it less.
So the next time you hear someone talking about idolising family, ask yourself, “Why are we so prone to identifying as an idol the thing which is least likely in our cultural milieu to be one? Perhaps we do it to excuse ourselves from doing the hard work of what we ought to be doing. In this case, prioritising our families as highly as God calls us to.