Who is my family?  This astounding question deeply preoccupied me the first several years before and after I married my wife, Mary, and had my first child–and still does, to this day.  Stemming from Jesus’ words, in Mark 3:31-35, where Jesus rhetorically and pointedly asks, “Who is my mother and my brothers?”

This passage of Scripture always resonated as an emotionally intangible concept. Although I could intellectually understand it, it has always been an extreme challenge to put God first above my children, whose life I put above my own.

The notion clearly exuded the idea that my family was not necessarily my mother, my father, my brother, my children, not necessarily those related by blood—but by the blood of Christ, the blood of Jesus Himself.  Jesus answers His own question: “Those who do the will of God.  These are my mother and my brothers”.

As a husband and a parent, years have passed and I look at my wife, Mary, and think, yes—beyond anything else she is my family.  I think of my son, Israel, and think, yes, he is beyond any shadow of a doubt, my family.  I look at my son, Alasdair, and yes, he is my son, my family.  If not my children, then who?  Who is closer to me than my wife, my kids that I love so much? Since then I have had 2 daughters also, completing our family of 6, including my wife and I.

Years ago, while thinking in the abstract, it was much easier to accept those “who do the will of God” as my true family.  When I was coming of age, becoming an independent adult who was obtaining spiritual, emotional, and financial freedom from my parents, this Biblical concept was much easier to fathom and grasp.

Who is my family?  My wife and children?  My parents?  My friends?  My “brothers in the Lord”? Was Jesus being literal? What was he really trying to accomplish by such a radical statement?

The religious answer and the answer that I was taught many times at “church” and by mainstream pastors is clear. But is it sufficient? The challenge that many pastors face is that there is a common, accepted answer to many of the Bible’s formidable questions. Once these questions have been answered to some satisfiable degree, further research and insight into such topics become largely unnecessary. An acceptable answer is passed on through the church “grapevine”, leadership conferences, cell groups, and so on, and the deeper answer is no longer negotiated among the Body of Living Believers who make up the True Church.

We must love God first—above all, including our family.  And we must consider those who truly follow God, our spiritual family, our “brothers and sisters in the Lord”.  Those inside the circle of God’s redemptive blood, shed through our Savior Jesus Christ.

But does this answer satisfy me as a human being?  Emotionally?  Practically and in a real-life, day to day sense? It certainly satisfies me intellectually and perhaps even spiritually. But does it speak to my heart? or even my soul?

It satisfies my being, but not always my heart.  I suppose there are moments in my life and seasons … when I understand.  And times when I don’t.

Is the mainstream interpretation we have been taught sufficient and truly what God meant?  Somehow I do not think it is.

More insight on this topic would resonate deep within all of us who struggle with the question of putting God before family; if we thought deeply about this question, and even if we arrive, in the end, at the conclusion of loving God first–before our children and families–we must have struggled to come to such a choice as this, unless we are being dishonest and superficial in our dealings with God and our selves.

From the Mouth of Babes

Recently, my son, who at age of five is extraordinarily spiritual, was consumed with the question also: “I love you and God the same”, he would tell me. Then, on another night, he might proclaim, “I love God, and then I love you”. Yet again, on another night, he might add, “I love you more than God!”–expressing how truly deep his love for me truly is.

On the first occassion, my son had expressed his desire to love both God, His Heavenly Father and me, his earthly father the same, because it seemed fair and right to his mind. On the second night, he had expressed his spiritual and intellectual understanding by stating that his love for God takes precedence over all earthly things. And on the third night, my son had expressed his heart and soul.

Perhaps we are all a bit like this–expressing different parts of our being, and struggling daily, to put God first when sometimes our hearts and minds can only grasp the immediate love that is before us in the world that God has created.

I have only recently come to terms with this profound question of loyalty between family and God. In my heart, I love my children absolutely; there is no greater love–and that kind of absolute love is a Godly love that comes only from God. When I love my children with a Godly passion, the question of who I love more no longer exists emotionally; for when I love my children, I am loving God–for He made them and everything I love about them comes from Him.

So maybe we have not accurately framed the question; maybe there is no question at all. When we love our children with that utter sense of abandon and fidelity, we are, after all, loving God.

I am not here to answer this question in the definitive form but merely to report on a new Christian persuasion that may slowly be making its way into mainstream Christianity.

Brahman, “The Ultimate Reality”,  Bhagavan, “God”, Ishvara, “Cosmic Controller and Lord”, and Paramatma, “Super Soul”, are the most commonly used names of God in Hinduism.

Shangdi, a Supreme Being worshiped in ancient China, is the name used for God today among many Chinese Christians. Protestant missionaries adopted the word Shen to refer to God.

Ek Onkar is the name of God in Sikhism, meaning One Creator.

With the breakdown of the “church walls” into a postmodern, anti-establishment, and non-organizational Body of Believers whose likes we have not seen since the reformation of Martin Luther, boundaries and dogma have become fuzzy and uncertain.

Without the ever-so-wise counsel of Christian leaders, who is there to stand tall on a raised pulpit and tell Sunday Christians what to believe and how to interpret what they read?

The hard reality for many Christians is that their leaders have veered from a potent relationship with the God they serve and are teaching comfortable Pharisaical tenets, while passing around collection plates as often as they can.

It’s easy to be “Christian”; there are a set of “truths” to abide by, we do our Godly-duty by attending services and every now and then we tell a friend who doesn’t want to hear it about Jesus. Ahh, feels good. And it is comfortable.

In the Book of John, Jesus said that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” and that no one comes to the Father but through Him. Could that be interpreted to mean that people from other religions who maintain faith in God and relationship with Him will still get to Heaven, even if they do not know it is Jesus they ultimately worship? Are there others who worship God in “spirit and in truth”?

In the postmodern age of plurality, it is difficult for an empathetic Christian to deny others the path to God and salvation. Especially in a day and age where Christian and “non-believer” have become increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another.

Followers of Christ today watch the same shows, mostly speak the same way, have the same divorce rates, and are as immersed in their culture and daily struggles as anyone else. This creates an equal footing with unbelievers around them.

Without a manifest difference in the Body of Christ, a sort of empathy and horizontal relationship is created between believer and non-believer; and it becomes difficult to determine for certain if God is the Lord of Plurality or the exclusive God whose name you must know to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Most Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; and there is no doubt that He has been crucified and resurrected from the dead. True Believers cultivate a genuine relationship through prayer and daily experience with their Creator. But there is a pervading feeling among an increasing numbers of Christians today that the Muslim, Hindu, or Jew praying to God in a far away land where Christ is not pervasive in the culture and where Jesus may not be freely preached, will still be saved by the grace of God. After all, Christians reason, God is fair, and not only fair, but full of grace, and not only graceful, but Perfectly Loving, and wishing that none should perish.

Is it possible that the Muslim’s prayers prayed in Iran are acceptable to God? That the West African practicing the Yoruba religion in a remote part of the world has a real relationship with the God we know as Jesus? Is a marriage of “spirit” and “truth” formed between God and man regardless of name?

What about the nontheistic Buddhist who has attempted to absolve all desire from his soul? As Christians, we know this is not possible; and that only Christ Himself was able to accomplish such a feat (by desiring only His Father’s will and not His own). As humans we are unable because our innate sinful makeup will ultimately point us back to ourselves and away from God.

Of course, we all know that according to the teachings of the Bible, no one is sinless, and therefore, no one can enter into heaven without the intercession of Christ and His sacrifice on the cross. That is the pervasive theology; but could there be room for a pluralistic interpretation of salvation among sincere believers of all faiths who seek God with all their heart, mind, and soul?

The truthful answer–regardless of how your church friends and your own religiosity will react, is this: a massive reformation is needed in the church today, much as it was needed in Martin Luther’s time when he nailed his proclamation to the church walls.

We must, as Christians, throw off the shackles of all forms of slavery to non-truths that binds us to our self and all forms of familairity and marriage with false religion (in the form of our present day Christianity) and strive as the Body of Christ to find out the truth regarding this and many other matters facing our understanding of faith today.

Without some consensus among the True Body of Believers independent of past religious thought and worldly church leaders, we risk remaining in a dark age of sorts regarding our understanding of the One who has set us free.

“I say, then, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man whatever has the right of making one syllable binding on a Christian man, unless it be done with his own consent. Whatever is done otherwise is done in the spirit of tyranny…I cry aloud on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I proclaim with confidence that no kind of law can with any justice be imposed on Christians, except so far as they themselves will; for we are free from all.” (Martin Luther).