We Are Family

Do not rebuke an older man but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity. (1 Timothy 5:1–2)

When the culture loses its bearings on identity and family, the church is meant to be the household where truth and wholeness are seen.

A Destabilized Culture

If some of the things happening in our culture over the last decade and a half leave you feeling a little unstable, a little shaken, you are not alone. If the debates on cable news, the radio, and the internet sometimes confuse and challenge you so that you find yourself shaking your head, you really are not in the minority. Many of us feel that way as we look at the world around us.

About a year ago I watched a debate working its way around online over a bill making its way through Canadian Parliament concerning gender expression and identity. It was between several college professors, one of whom—Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto—has since become something of a celebrity on these hot-topic issues. I watched the whole two-hour debate, and a number of times I just sat there shaking my head. There are some genuinely strange things being discussed in the academic spheres of what is called gender theory or gender studies.

Sixty-Three Genders and "Post-Truth"

I was first confronted by this about ten years ago. Registering a new email account on Google, the gender section offered male, female, and other. I took a snapshot and sent it to a friend asking, "What is other?" Today it is a huge discussion. If you have assumed all your life that there are just two genders, identified by biology as male and female, the research sphere would label you "cisgender" or "cis-normative." Google now identifies sixty-three different genders, and along with them new pronouns—not just he and she, but invented ones like zi and zur.

In that debate, one professor pointed out that Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2016 was post-truth—suggesting that the view that there are only two genders is itself "post-truth." Oxford defines post-truth as "relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief." After fifty to seventy years of what has been called postmodern thought, that is the culture of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe.

My favorite definition of truth, also from Oxford, is "that which accords with reality"—that which aligns with what is substantial and real. But our culture has been influenced toward a relativistic view that shows itself when someone says, "Well, that's your truth." The weight of a truth is determined by consensus rather than by reality, so everyone can have their own truth built on "alternative facts."

This cultural vertigo is what futurist Alvin Toffler described in his 1970 book Future Shock. Sometimes we respond by trying to force culture back to what it once was, but culture is always dynamic, shifting according to the narratives and stories we tell. The narratives have changed dramatically in the last twenty-five years, and if you feel destabilized, that is future shock. The 21st-century version of Dramamine for it is binge-watching Netflix.

The Context: Paul's Charge to Timothy

Why bring this up? Because of these two short verses, 1 Timothy 5:1–2. As I sat with them, I found myself wrestling with what is presented here. I don't want to stray from the context. Paul is writing to Timothy, a young pastor in his early thirties in Ephesus about two thousand years ago.

Looking back, the context is clear. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul says, "If I am delayed, I write to you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." In 4:12 he adds, "Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity." Timothy will lead both younger and older people, so he must be exemplary.

That carries into chapter 5: "Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity." The exhortation is straightforward. As a young leader, Timothy must conduct himself honorably toward everyone—older or younger, male or female—with sincerity, respect, and purity. You don't need an advanced degree to understand it.

And consider this aside: how much better would society be if we all walked this way? There would not be a #MeToo movement if we were endeavoring to live like this. Paul sums it up in 5:21: "I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality." How different our families, communities, and workplaces would be.

What These Verses Infer

So what will we talk about, if not just that plain exhortation? These two verses teach something important not explicitly but by inference. In the very words—men and women, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers—we are shown that family and gender are important to God who inspired this text. Therefore they should be important to us who trust in Him.

When you read the New Testament, there are different metaphors for the followers of Jesus. We are the church—from the Greek ekklesia, "the gathering." We are sheep in a flock with Christ as our chief Shepherd. We are living stones built together into a house for God. And we are a family—God is our Father, He has adopted us as His children. In 1 Timothy 3:15 we are "the house of God, the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

The Pillar of Truth and Its Foundation

What does it mean to be the pillar and ground of the truth? The church is where the truth—not your truth, not a truth, but the truth—is established by God. Many things that accord with reality can be found outside the Bible, through science, psychology, and philosophy. But the Bible brings forth what I would call the antecedent, foundational truth that creates the construct of reality with which all other truths must align. If something does not align with that foundation, it is not true.

The best illustration is Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God." That is the foundational truth on which the pillar is set, and anything that does not align with it is not true. Start with a different foundation—"In the beginning, no God"—and it colors everything you deduce about the world. For the last hundred and fifty years our Western culture has been moving toward that premise, and we wonder why there is so much disagreement, when the very entry point of belief differs.

I recently watched videos of colorblind people putting on special glasses for the first time. Men in their fifties and sixties are brought to tears, seeing color for the first time, asking, "What is that? That's purple? I've never seen that." The lens changes everything. Start with "no God," and you see the world one way; take the lens Scripture gives us, "God is," and you see reality as it really is.

Point One: Gender Is Part of God's Created Order

In the church, individuals are ordered and identified as they are by God. God is the one who determines who we are. Our culture, moving away from God, no longer wants anyone else to determine its identity, and the ultimate rejection becomes, "I will determine who I am; I will not be constrained to this binary, male and female."

So our first point: gender is a part of God's created order and design. Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." Genesis 5:1–2 repeats it: "In the day that God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female." This is not only Old Testament.

In Matthew 19, the Pharisees test Jesus with a hot-topic question of His day—divorce. One school of thought, Hillel, permitted divorce for many reasons; another, Shammai, only for adultery. They ask, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?" Jesus answers by going all the way back: "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female... and the two shall become one flesh? Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."

Imagine the secular Pharisees of our day—the thought leaders of secular society—approaching Jesus: "Is it lawful for a man to identify himself however he wants, choosing any one of sixty-three genders?" He could hardly say anything other than, "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female?" Crazy as it sounds, that very statement became a human rights violation in Canada with Bill C-16, passed last year. Something similar is coming to America sooner than we think.

Why the Shift Happened

How did we shift so quickly? Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:1: "Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons... forbidding to marry... those who believe and know the truth." People will depart from the truth—God told us this would happen, so we should not be surprised.

Why does it happen? Because of the fallenness of humanity. Romans 1:20 says God's invisible attributes are clearly seen, so that humanity is without excuse. Verse 21 continues, "Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools." Are we not seeing exactly that? It stems from rejecting the foundational principle: in the beginning, God.

Point Two: Families Exist Because of This Design

The family unit exists because of this created design. We live in a world where it means something to have fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and Paul highlights those very terms. Where does this come from? In the beginning God created male and female, blessed them, and commanded, "Be fruitful and multiply." And what comes from that? Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers—seven and a half billion of them on the planet.

Even the New York Times recognized this. In an April 2012 op-ed, former Secretary of Education William Bennett wrote, "The family is the nucleus of civilization and the basic social unit of society." Aristotle wrote that the family is "nature's established association for the supply of man's everyday wants." Bennett concluded, "For a civilization to succeed, the family must succeed." This binary construct—either/or, male and female—is as God created and ordained it. But start with "no God," and almost any weird thing becomes possible.

Point Three: Gender and Family Were Broken by the Fall

Yet the world we examine is not as God created it. Why is the world so confused in the 21st century? Because gender and family were broken in the fall, and no one can honestly deny that brokenness. In that same op-ed, Bennett noted that more than half of all births to American women under thirty occur outside of marriage, and the out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States has passed 40 percent—up from under a quarter in 1960, and 70 percent among African American women. We left God's design of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, and we wonder how it is working. The evidence is the brokenness of society.

Point Four: Jesus Repairs Broken Identities and Families

We see brokenness all around us, and the gospel tells the story of how Jesus redeems, restores, and repairs it. Many of you came out of brokenness and have experienced the power of Jesus to repair it. Our destabilized culture needs to see in us, the church, how that brokenness is restored.

It should not surprise us that society cannot fix this brokenness. Psychologists, psychiatrists, anthropologists, and sociologists all identify the problem. Ask the person who does not believe "in the beginning God," who believes we simply happened through billions of years, how to address the brokenness, and the answer is: embrace it, tolerate it, celebrate it. But the brokenness only grows more fractured. Jesus has a better answer through the gospel—that is why it is called good news.

Paul warns in 1 Timothy 6:3–5 that anyone who teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words "is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth." That describes 21st-century Western culture. And in 6:20 he charges, "O Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge." Google "how many genders are there"—sixty-three—and you have what is falsely called knowledge.

Point Five: The Church as Expression of Clarity and Wholeness

The church is to be the right expression of gender clarity and familial wholeness. People in our community need to see in the church a clear understanding of reality regarding gender and identity, and they need to see familial wholeness they are not finding in the world. They should be able to see in us that we treat people—older or younger, male or female—with sincerity, honor, respect, and purity. It is not always expressed, but by God's grace it must be.

We should not be surprised that families have been disrupted by the tragedy of sin, nor that the fall has caused confusion around God's created order in the area of gender. It may shock us, but it should not surprise us. And in Paul's final word to Timothy—"Grace be with you"—we find our calling. We need compassion toward people caught in brokenness. As in Matthew 9, when Jesus saw the multitudes He was moved with compassion, for they were like scattered, weary sheep. May God give us the grace and compassion to see the people in our neighborhoods and workplaces who are in brokenness, and to be moved with compassion for them, because they need the Good Shepherd to bring them into His flock and adopt them into His family, where they can experience His restoring power.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for becoming our Father. We read in the Scriptures, "Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God." It is amazing love. Jesus, we thank You that You demonstrated Your love toward us, that while we were still sinners You died for us. In just a month we will celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection by which You made it possible for us to be forgiven, redeemed, restored, and repaired. God, work in us, Your church, so that we would experience this wholeness as the family of God and express it in how we conduct ourselves with those older and younger, male and female, without prejudice and without partiality, that this world would see it and desire it. Work in us, Your church, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.