The Household: A Missing Branch of the Government

(This concludes Chapter 1 of The Ruling Household. Previous section)

The Land of Confusion

The subtext of the existence of the Bible as the Divine Word of God is the claim that we are revelation-dependent creatures.

We should not expect to be able to apprehend all truth without Scripture.

There is no one smart enough to puzzle out many of the things the Bible reveals and even if such an individual were to exist he or she would not be able to convince others that what they believe is anything more than a single person’s subjective take on the truth.

But the Word of God brings hope that not only can we have access to revealed truth but that we can gain enough consensus around these specific truths that a unique community can emerge to demonstrate the light of the truth through the surprising fruitfulness of their lives.

Like Jesus says about his disciples, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me…” (John 17:23 ESV)

Without this demonstration of fruitfulness, we should expect to see an endless fragmenting as diverse philosophies battle out their own ideas without any hope that we can ever arrive at a true understanding of reality.

This fragmenting is on display with the countless alternative lifestyles each person is encouraged to experiment with in order to locate one that uniquely fits them.

What is rarely acknowledged is the terrible cost of sending every individual into the land of confusion without the light of divine revelation.

By the time every individual has experimented with their own values, their own identities, their own sexual orientation, their own gender identification, their own meaning, and their own religion, how are they expected to ever arrive at anything resembling solid ground on which to build their life? By the time they stop searching and start building a life, their identity is often so fragile that the smallest pushback is interpreted as a hateful denial of their right to exist. In response, our society is beginning to pass laws forcing everyone to affirm the choice these individuals made to protect their new fragile identities in order to protect them from falling back into the land of confusion.

Contrast that with being told, “This is who you are, this is where you are on the path, this is what you are to do, and this why you’ve been giving this purpose.”

Who you are is either male or female.

Where you are is inside a God-centered story.

What you are to do is to get married, become fruitful, multiply, fill, and subdue. (We’ll discuss the unique contributions of the celibate life in future chapters.)

Why you must do this is because God created humanity to rule over his creation and the entity he wants to do the ruling is a multigenerational household.

What we are failing today to recognize is how critical ruling households are to creating a stable society.

Because the ruling household is the smallest branch of government.

The Household and the Government

“The greatest fortress of human liberty, proof against all earthly powers, is the family. In its private space, it can defy the will of authority and the might of wealth. It is the most effective means of passing lore, culture, manners, and traditions down”  -Peter Hitchens

In the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures) God’s idea of good government is a nation of semi-sovereign households ruled by God through judges, priests, and prophets.

But when his people rebelled and insisted on having a king like all the other nations Israel became a nation of ruling households ruled by a national ruling household.

The ruling household was a basic part of governance in virtually every complex civilization until modern times.

During the time of Christ, Roman, Greek, and Jewish law all gave enormous responsibilities to the household and held the head of that household personally responsible for illegal actions taken by those under his jurisdiction. 

Because he bore this level of accountability he was given near absolute power over the members of his house.

This continued in a variety of forms but began to fragment in modern times and was basically abolished following the writing of the U.S. Constitution.

If you read the U.S. Constitution you’ll notice an enormous omission.

There is not a single reference to family.

No rights are given to the family.

No responsibilities are given to the family.

The family need not even exist for this new form of government to fully function.

From a governmental perspective, we are not a nation of households. Instead, we are a nation of individuals.

This ensured the end of the household. It was just a matter of time. All rights and responsibilities that historically belonged to the household were given to the individual or the state.

And while I’m a big fan of the idea of constitutional democracy, the founding of these democracies on the individual without even a passing reference to the rights and responsibilities of the family was an error from which our nation will likely never recover.

It is no coincidence that as this form of government has proliferated we have seen the growing confusion and steady erosion of a culture founded on strong families.

This is a source of confusion for every member of the family.

A few examples that spring to mind largely caused by this design include:

• At the request of either spouse, the government has the right to step in and dissolve a family without cause through no-fault divorce and take jurisdiction over their children. 

• The government absolves a father from any responsibility for the crimes committed by his children even in the most extreme cases of neglect and abuse. 

• The basic right of a child to be raised by both biological parents is always sublimated to the individual rights of the parents.

The silver lining in this catastrophe is that it’s a free country and as a free country, we can work to create a micro-governance structure within our houses and train our children to honor this structure while being aware that external forces will constantly be at work eroding basic family rights and responsibilities.

Restoring Household Rule

Christians must step back from all of this and ask, “Is this how God designed society to function?” 

If not, we must be able to clearly articulate the difference.

Because what we see is that the church, too often, is simply lagging a few decades behind culture in the same destructive trends.

We’re being carried down the same river and we must find solid ground.

That solid ground is Scripture and the Bible makes clear that the basic ruling unit in society is not the individual but the household.

How do we restore this God-ordained order?

We restore it by using our freedom and choosing to create fruitful, multiplying, filling, subduing, and ruling households.

The steps for doing that are what the rest of this book is about.

We must “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2 ESV)

So it’s time to do a deep dive into the Bible’s blueprint for the household.

It begins in poetic form in Genesis 1 and then begins to take shape through meta-characters that represent the various aspects of household building.

Our journey starts with Adam and Eve, works through the patriarchs in Genesis the dynastic households throughout the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures, and culminates with the redeemed family vision of Jesus, how the apostles instructed households and our future hope in the restored Household of God.

So we now turn the page to Genesis chapter 2 and encounter the depiction of the God-designed marriage.

[To read Chapter 2 Click Here]