Family idolatry

Idolatry can arise unexpectedly from the strangest areas of our lives. And as Christians, we sometimes realize that we have placed something that we love above God. We tend to react immediately to eliminate this newly realized idolatry by viewing that thing as an evil. This is an overreaction in most cases. Many of the things that we find we are idolizing are actually good things given to us by God for our pleasure. We just have a habit of taking good things from God and placing them in higher regard than the God who created them.

Romans 1:25 speaks of those who "exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator." We must fight hard to not place good things given to us by God for our enjoyment in the place of the God who made them. But we also must not diminish those things once we have realized that they have been placed in a position of an idol. We simply need to return to a biblical and God-honoring view of these things.

Luke 14:26  If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

I have recently read some articles from the Patriarchy crowd that seem to hold the family in a position of an idol. They especially place the father of the family in a position that seems to usurp God's own position. As we are told in Luke 14:26 (the verse in the callout box to the right), our love for our families should, by comparison to our love for God, seem as if it is actually hatred. Luke 14:26 is not telling us to hate our families, but rather to love God infinitely more than we love our families.

May we all be careful to hold all of the good things God has given us in the proper place, remembering always that God is the giver of all good gifts (James 1:17) and, therefore, should be held in infinitely higher regard.