Following Jesus and Navigating Family Resistance

“If your brother, your mother’s son, or your son or daughter, or the wife you cherish, or your friend who is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ (whom neither you nor your fathers have known, of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near you or far from you, from one end of the earth to the other end), you shall not yield to him or listen to him; and your eye shall not pity him, nor shall you spare or conceal him.  But you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. So you shall stone him to death because he has sought to seduce you from the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and will never again do such a wicked thing among you.” Deut. 13:6-11

At the Lord’s direction some years ago, and out of a sense of need to be more Christ centered and Christ focused, I try to meditate in a chapter in a gospel every morning. When I finish going through the four gospels, I start over in Matthew chapter one.

Over time, some things have begun to stand out to me. For instance, Jesus Christ while on earth in practice and in His teaching sought out devoted disciples, not just believers or half hearted followers. He expected people to follow Him at all costs and without any hindrances or rivals for their affection. And He often spoke to the barriers that keep people from following Him fully. The two most oft mentioned by Him is that of family pressures or expectations and the love of money. In this post I want to speak to the barrier re: family members.

Every person who would seek to follow Jesus comes from some sort of family and extended family. Every family or extended family has its own culture – its own set of values and expectations for family members. These are often generations in the making. We often are not aware of these values and expectations or codes of behavior until one of them is challenged by something outside the said family culture. When that happens those who are most given to enforcing and preserving the family culture typically kick in with varying degrees of passion and zeal in trying to correct and control the one who is challenging the said family culture.

Jesus knew the impact (often negative) that living in such a family culture has on individuals whom He is calling to enter in and operate in His family or His kingdom culture. So He often chose to deal with this barrier head on.

I believe the earliest example of this is found in Matthew chapter 8. Often as crowds formed around Jesus some of the more extroverted or naïve or spiritually blind folk would speak out regarding their noble intentions. Let’s listen in, “Another of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.”  This man didn’t understand how fickle the human heart is. Nor did he understand the foundational principle or truth that whatever a man puts first in his life will govern his life. Nor did he understand that when a man begins to follow Jesus a new family culture created by Jesus Himself must take precedence over any aspect of human family culture no matter how important that aspect might seem to be to us and to those around us.

Now some of you are probably wondering about that last phrase, “…allow the dead to bury their own dead.”  One of the things I’ve been tracing for quite some time as I read through the Bible and will eventually write on is how God deals with the deaths of folk in Scripture. I find it interesting that Jesus never attended a funeral. In fact there is no record of a funeral or memorial in Scripture similar to how we tend to do memorials and funerals in the U.S. While we have no Biblical record of a memorial or funeral (similar to ones in the U.S.) I'm sure some were held in Jesus's day. And like today, it is very possible that the said family culture set the tone, not His kingdom culture.

Clearly Jesus didn't mean physically dead people should be left to bury the dead. He must have meant people who were spiritually dead and unresponsive to God, and thus very much into memorializing and venerating the dead.

Jesus knew that once a person dies, he is no longer in his body. How he lived his life is far more important than how he is memorialized after he dies. The last thing a person who dies and who then has to give an account to His Maker is concerned about is how he is memorialized or venerated back on earth. He knows by then it is all vanity and emptiness.

All of that to say, to Jesus it is people who are still alive that we should be concerned about. Not the dead. Our God never in Scripture commanded us to memorialize the dead. He is much more concerned about the living. The dead have no more chances. Their eternal destiny is fixed. We – the living – still have chances and opportunities to repent and prepare for our appointment with death.

The next passage where Jesus discusses this barrier to truly being His disciples is in Matthew 10. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAGUTHER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; AND A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. 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. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 10:34-39 

This passage is reflective to some degree of the one at the top of our article from Deuteronomy 13. And we can all be thankful that Jesus isn't asking us to kill/stone family members who try to entice us to engage in idolatry.

There is a thought pattern out there in Christendom that Jesus wants us to preserve and protect family and extended family relationships at all costs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. To the contrary Jesus wants us to preserve and protect our relationship with Him, and no family relationship should ever encroach upon that.

So when Jesus says He came to “…Set a man against His father,…” etc., does He want division in our families? Does He not care about unity and harmony  in our families?  Jesus deeply cares about unity and harmony in our families. But He knows true unity and true harmony will never happen unless each person in the said family puts Jesus first in every aspect of life. As Dallas Willard stated in his book "Renovation of the Heart" - "Ultimately, every human circle is doomed to dissolution if it is not caught up in the life of the only genuinely self-sufficient circle of sufficiency, that of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For that circle is the only one that is truly and totally self-sufficient. And all the broken circles must ultimately find their healing there, if anywhere." (p. 180)

Only layed down disciples of Jesus are able to truly love their family members and be who they need to be to them. And Jesus knows that because in most families and extended families many are not layed down or sold out or truly devoted disciples of Jesus, those who aspire to this will be castigated and persecuted to one degree or another. And one big reason for this is Jesus’s kingdom culture flies in the face of most every family culture. Conflict and resistance and resentment is inevitable. The two are like oil and water.

Jesus is not against our loving our parents or our children. But He is very much against any devotion or allegiance to them that encroaches or negatively affects our devotion and allegiance to Him. He is worthy of our utmost devotion and absolute obedience. And because He loves us and wants what is best for us, He doesn’t minimize or gloss over the inevitability of family conflict as we choose to follow Him wherever He leads us. We who shepherd His sheep should follow His lead in this.

Well I believe we will stop here for today. I will revisit this topic soon Lord willing and we will look at a couple of more passages at least and I’ll share some suggestions on how to handle the inevitable conflicts with family culture and expectations as we learn to operate more and more in His family and kingdom culture.

God bless each of you and give you the courage necessary to follow Him no matter what resistance comes your way. You will never regret putting Him first.