The Cross and the Storm-Tossed Family

Arena for me to learn to die to self and to learn to pour myself for other weekly radio show and cast from family designed to better inform listeners about the issues of the day and encourage you to be voices of persuasion for family values in your communities and now your host and see family Pres. John Rustin like you for joining us for family policy matters. Today we are excited to have a special guest with those who was the author of Christianity today's 2019. Book of the year.

Dr. Wilson. Dr. Moore is president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist convention is a frequent cultural commentator and the Wall Street Journal has referred to him as quote, vigorous, cheerful, and fiercely articulate. He is an ordained Southern Baptist minister, a theologian by background. A native Mississippian husband and a father of five boys.

His newest book, the storm tossed family how the cross reshapes the home looks at the powerful force that family is in our culture both for good and for ill. In some cases, this book covers a gamut of topics from marriage and parenting to spiritual warfare to trauma generational sin and healing as well as aging.

Dr. Moore offers a practical, realistic perspective for nurturing and maintaining a healthy biblical family life that reflects the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the storm tossed family is actually Dr. Moore second book to be awarded book of the year by Christianity today and were excited to be speaking with Dr. more about this new book today on family policy matters. Dr. Moore welcomed up the radio show. It's great to have you as a guest.

Great to be waiting extremities. While our pleasure, no Dr. Moore in the introduction of your book, you say that family can be, and I quote the source of life-giving blessings, but also of excruciating terror often all at the same time as we begin our discussion today. Talk a little bit about how family shapes us and makes us into who we are, well, I think that anybody who doesn't feel about the blessing and the terror in family justice going on at the moment because the longer that you exist. Whether you're dealing with parents or with children or with spouse or in whatever sort of family relationship.

Ultimately, we come to see how little control we actually have over 80 sort of relationship rings with it a great deal of vulnerability, which means that even the best of families brings with it the possibility of real hurt and it is one of the situations where actually the more that you are blessed with love them more vulnerable to hurt you become, and in many ways and so that the blessing and the risks tend to go together. So what is it about family life that has such a profound impact on our relationship to the church and more importantly on our relationship with God. Well, if we think about the way that the New Testament speaks about the church speaks about it as a family as a household and I think sometimes we in our contemporary Western mindset tend to think of that.

It is simply just mere metaphor met at a very superficial sort of level but what the Scripture teaches is is is much deeper than that. We we really have been brought into a genuine family through the Spirit and we relate to God as father and so the Scripture tells us that all of these different family sorts of relationships that we may have as child to parents as parents, children as husband wife liked all of this works relationships all point beyond themselves to something else. To the nature of God to the reality of the gospel to to all of those think that's why they matter so much as they're not just products of accidental evolution there of their assigned post to the most important things in the universe so they're going to be places that are going to be contested, so would you say that there is pretty much a direct link between the way that we view the family in the way that we view our relationship with God especially when we consider those is, as the Scripture says those who believe in Jesus Christ are actually referred to as the children of God. Yes and no. I would say yes, in the sense that we we tend to learn patterns about how to relate to father, for instance, that that then Ken can point us toward God and say when people are parents they see the sort of protective and an affectionate love that they have for the children and they get a just a little sense of what the fatherly nature of God is is about to say yes and no because I would want to say no in the sense that sometimes people will think that if they had a bad relationship with. Maybe they had an absent father or a bad father. Or maybe even horrifically abusive father that that means that they they can't understand the fatherhood of God. And that's that's just not the case because the people who know that are then able to to differentiate between how God is father in a completely different way than what they have experienced in terms of earthly fathers that translates out into into even just the way that one lives and in one's own family. I've known people who have come out of really dysfunctional family backgrounds who are really worried because I have good role models and so I'm afraid of going in and wrecking my future children's lives by repeating the errors of my parents, but the people who would say that are the very ones who don't repeat those errors because they are aware of the danger is when you just sort of pick up an understanding of what's normal from a family background and you don't see where it leads those the people who are really in jeopardy and what they need is a different model of fathering from the fatherhood of God and a different model of spiritual fathering and mothering and being brothers and sisters one another with the church listening to you can sign up to receive and to listen to the show online. Namely, 19, one of the primary challenges that you see that most families face in today's culture in as we talk about that. Are there some kind of unexpected but common challenges that you've identified that might not be so obvious to her listeners. Well, I think the main issue that we have is this sense of idealizing family in a way that makes family an extension of one's self. You can see that in parents sometimes see see themselves in terms of their children's academic accomplishment or their their athletic accomplishment or their player on their vocational accomplishment will whatever that is. And they're ultimately disappointed because no child can bear the burden of meeting all of those expectations and conversely some people see spouse either. A real spouse or a future spouse or imaginary spouse as being sort of the soulmate that meets all of my needs and that person is going to be disappointed to and then just start looking for for a different person to fill that void. That's not what families be created for and families in the arena for me to learn to die to self and to learn to pour myself out for others. This is a very very different way of seeing family from the way the world around us.so what would you say to those of us who feel we just don't measure as parents, spouses, and siblings or even friends on the use you've addressed this a little bit already. But I'm curious to dig into that little bit more what I would say you don't measure up. That's right. And, and the sooner that we all see that the better off we will be. I had a friend who said to me several years ago you said you know I knew that parenting would be humbling but I didn't know that it would be humiliating actually waves talking about because I hadn't been able to put it in those words but that I know the feeling. But then the more I thought about the more I realized really ultimately every sort of family relationship is humiliating in the sense that it it brings us to this sense of of realizing that whatever our perfect image of ourselves and our competency in all that is it. It has a severe limit when it comes to our lives within our families and so that the people who are actually able to thrive as families are the people who recognize that you say I don't measure up. And so I'm going to abandon this this idealized understanding of my family is meeting all of my needs an ongoing note to learn how to actually love this family that's in front of me right now, not the imaginary family felt about this family right right here. You learn how to forgive one another. You learn how to repent, you learn how to ask for help when you need help and that's that's a real that's a real challenge for for many of us.

I include myself in that when you get to something was going on a family situation where you said I don't know what to do about this. A lot of us are very reluctant to say that to someone I just don't know how to handle the situation and went once we get beyond that. That's when were really able to to move toward thriving's family is family, your new book has a lot of deeply spiritual reflections in one of those I know that it is that so often that we as Christians have a tendency to focus on the glory of the resurrection. And, of course, with good reason. Sometimes we may also have a tendency to gloss over or ignore the struggles and the pain that Jesus endured on the cross. So what are some of the important lessons that we can learn from the cross that can help us to live better in family well. I think again when we think about the language of Jesus gives her take up your cross and follow me. We tend to sort of turn that into a really familiar metaphor that we don't really contemplate what Jesus means is that we are going to walk the path that he walked before us where we're going to go through that and one significant arena for that is that is our lives in terms of families maybe think about what's happening on the cross. The cross is itself a family crisis because when Jesus is is crying out my God my God why have you forsaken me what those are lyrics from a song from Psalm 22 that is talking about what it means to learn to trust God as a as a little child is reason piece reflecting upon the way that it is humanity. He has come from childhood until now. And what does he do while being crucified, he hands his mother's care over to his his spiritual brother John and and commissions John to take care of her. So he's caring for his family. Even at the darkest moment only of his life, but the darkest moment of human history so I know your book you say there is no such thing as a single Christian as we conclude our conversation.

I know there may be quite a few listeners out there who are single or unmarried. They may be struggling without a little bit personally talk about that statement that you make in your book that there is no such thing as a single Christian well in our culture right now there's there's the idea that if you're not coupled then you your alone and there are many Christians who are alone, but it shouldn't be the case because when we come to Christ we come in to bustling family and so we ought to relate to one another as families and so that that applies not only to the way that married people ought to relate to their single brothers and sisters in Christ, but also in terms of sometimes are Christians who are not married you don't have children think that somehow the mothering and fathering passages of Scripture don't apply to them, but they do because while not everybody's going to have children biologically or through adoption. Everybody has a mothering or for fathering vocation to carry out within the life of the church and cultivating the next generation so we we need to see that and I think to honor that form the church so just about time for the show this week before we go. I do want to give you an opportunity to let our listeners know where they can get a copy of your excellent new book, the storm tossed family how the class reshapes the home. Well they can get it wherever they where they typically buy books in their neighborhood bookstore or Amazon or wherever they they liked about excellent and again the name of that book is the storm tossed family health class reshapes the homes by Dr. Russell and Dr. more.

I want to thank you so much for being with us on family policy matters today and for just the great insights that you provide in this well.

Thanks so much. Thanks for having you have been listening to family policy radio selling Comcast from family to listen to the show online for more resources that will help you be a voice of persuasion in your community. Go to our website and see family. A large E and less on Instagram and Twitter