Redeeming the Family Model and Strengthening Community Amidst a Pandemic of Loneliness and a Culture of Individualism: Part I
Created by Community for Community:
“And so the beautiful truth is that since we were created by a community, we were created for community. If we are made in God’s image and God is a community, then that means we are rejecting our humanness when we live isolated and alone. That’s fundamental to what it means to be human. That is intimacy.” (It's Not What You Think: Why Christianity Is So Much More Than Going to Heaven When You Die, Bethke).
We were created by Community for Community. It's what William Paul Young would refer to as "the Truth of our Being." When it comes right down to it, we, as humans, are innately designed with an inescapable need for community and relationship because we are made in the image of a God who is a Relationship. God is a great dance of relational exchange occurring between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (http://wmpaulyoung.com/god-is-a-dance/). The concept of the Triune God is widely enough adopted that few Christians would argue against it. It's even addressed in The Apostles' Creed.
Independence and Autonomous Individualism:
And so we're seeing loneliness break out in today's culture in ways we've never seen it before. In 2018, Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, went so far as to create a new position within the British Government and appoint a "Minister of Loneliness" to deal with the growing problem. (https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2018/01/19/prime-minister-theresa-may-appoints-minister-loneliness/). According to one source, "54 percent of us (millennials) would say we are chronically lonely and say that we 'always or sometimes feel that no one knows [us] well.'" (To Hell with the Hustle, Bethke, pg. xvi). According to Rhitu Chatterjee's article cited by Bethke, a nationwide online survey of 20,000 adults conducted by the health insurer Cigna supports the idea that loneliness is on the rise, particularly in the younger populous. The survey found that, as the age of participants went down, their loneliness score increased, with Generation Z having a higher loneliness score than Millennials, Baby Boomers, or the Greatest Generation.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/05/01/npr-americans-are-lonely-young-people-bear-heaviest-burden
The Elevation of Work:
Namely marriage, family, and community.
The Contribution of the 8-hour Day and the 40-hour Work Week:
I'm not saying that our culture should do a 180-degree reversion back into the agricultural era. That wouldn't be possible and there are many improvements we would lose (To Hell with the Hustle, Bethke, pg. 42). What I'm suggesting is that we should take a minute and consider what we've lost by moving into a more industrialized and individualistic society. (Five Minute Fatherhood Podcast, Ep. 228). To use the words of one author concerning cultural and ideological changes, "There are always tradeoffs. Concessions. Ramifications. Changes. Have we even thought about these? Are we okay with them?" (To Hell with the Hustle, Bethke, pg. 38).
Since Jesus is part of a divine dance of relationship by his very nature and He makes it clear that we, as His followers, are to become more like Him every day, then why are we not seeing communities and relationships flourish in today's culture? I mean, sure, we're very involved in our sports teams, political parties, and institutional denominations, but our more visceral relationships and communities, such as marriages and families, are suffering. I find it puzzling and somewhat alarming that family, marriage, relationship, and community—values embedded deep within the very Heart of God—have been given a backseat within the lives of many today.
From the rise of the 40-hour work week, to the decline of marriage numbers in recent years (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/third-rail/episodes/episode-7-is-marriage-dead/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married/), to the pandemic of loneliness sweeping the world (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zk652j8icM&t=340s), to the failed experiment of the modern western family (https://familyteams.com/), it is evident that people have come to value and maintain community and relationship less than God originally designed.
Community has been uprooted and replaced by something.
And it's our job to tear up the counterfeit and replant the treasure.
In order to restore communities and relationships to their rightful place, we must first decipher what abased them.
Some have rightly point out that the demands of technology and the rise of Industry, among many other factors, have contributed to the decline of community (To Hell with the Hustle, Bethke, Chapters 1&2). Today, I'm going to add another rock to the pile of ideologies and paradigms that have buried community and family in today's society.
Independence and Autonomous Individualism:
In America, we place a very high value on independence. It permeates our nation's history, songs, culture, and even our National Anthem. And let me be clear. Independence, in its original form—freedom from evil and tyranny—is a glorious thing. But, like nearly everything in creation, Independence has a counterfeit. In today's culture, many have come to view Independence as freedom from everything; not just evil. Rather than free ourselves from evil and bind ourselves to good, culture often pushes for the individual to free himself from all externalities, including relationships, depend on nothing, and drift anchorless into an oblivion of self-sufficiency and personal success (http://homeschoolerponderings.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-third-child-of-independence.html). Culture portrays relationships and any other type of external reliance as an obstacle between the individual and personal success. And so people deprioritize family, marriage, and community in an attempt to "live their best life." Why? Because family, marriage, and community are not primarily about independence or the individual, but about the Collective Group. And anything which focuses primarily on the group or the relationship rather than the individual, flies directly in the face of culture's efforts to elevate independence and autonomy.
Autonomous Individualism Leads to Loneliness:
According to author and speaker, Jonathan Daugherty, the "Autonomous Individualism" our society has pushed for has resulted in exactly what it set out to create: autonomous individuals. He points out that the elevation of the individual creates a culture where personal dreams are pursued and individual desires are achieved, until one day the individual wakes up, rubs the success from his eyes and beholds a devastating reality:
"It's just me."
And so we're seeing loneliness break out in today's culture in ways we've never seen it before. In 2018, Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, went so far as to create a new position within the British Government and appoint a "Minister of Loneliness" to deal with the growing problem. (https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2018/01/19/prime-minister-theresa-may-appoints-minister-loneliness/). According to one source, "54 percent of us (millennials) would say we are chronically lonely and say that we 'always or sometimes feel that no one knows [us] well.'" (To Hell with the Hustle, Bethke, pg. xvi). According to Rhitu Chatterjee's article cited by Bethke, a nationwide online survey of 20,000 adults conducted by the health insurer Cigna supports the idea that loneliness is on the rise, particularly in the younger populous. The survey found that, as the age of participants went down, their loneliness score increased, with Generation Z having a higher loneliness score than Millennials, Baby Boomers, or the Greatest Generation.
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/05/01/npr-americans-are-lonely-young-people-bear-heaviest-burden
The Elevation of Work:
And Autonomous Individualism isn't the only thing contributing to the loneliness problem. Within culture's framework highlighting independence and personal achievement, we now see people working with grueling burnout and experiencing all of the negative family problems that come with that (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237377/millennials-burning.aspx). This burnout is a direct result of the elevation of hard work in today's culture. At first, the elevation of hard work might seem like a good thing. After all, hard work is good. However, today's culture has elevated striving for greatness to such an extent that personal achievement has become the telos (ultimate aim) of life for many people. In reality, the greatest form of purpose and success in life is not outstanding personal accomplishment. True purpose and success is healthy, organic, unbreakable relationship; relationship with both the Creator and the created. Great purpose unfolds from the understanding that neither people, nor your relationship with them are commodities designed solely for the purpose of furthering your personal growth. Personal gain and benefit shouldn’t be the prime driver of connection, just as personal accomplishment shouldn’t be the prime definition of success. And yet, hard work has become so idolized and prioritized in today's society that it dominates our time and leaves no room for what is priceless. People only have so much room in the jar of their life, and work is filling it up, leaving no room for communal entities.
Namely marriage, family, and community.
The Contribution of the 8-hour Day and the 40-hour Work Week:
The 40-hour work week is standard in America (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/where-did-40-hour-workweek-come-n192276). Today, it is considered normal for at least one parent (often both) to be away from the home from 9:00-5:00 working, and the children of the household to be away from the home from 7:00-3:00 working to receive a public academic education. This means that it is considered normal for members of the standard American family to spend the majority of their waking hours apart from one another on every day of the week except for Sunday (Saturday is often free for children but not parents).
Because of this, the home has been diminished into nothing more than a hub where individuals move in and out living entirely separate lives, and the family has been diminished into nothing more than a launching-pad for the individual to succeed in life (https://gracecultureashland.podbean.com/e/redeeming-the-family-model-with-seth-hensley/). In other words, the family is given whatever time and energy is left after individual family members pursue their goals.
Working for long hours away from the home has not been going on forever out of necessity; it's a a system which gained popularity during the Industrial Revolution, when work and productivity became the new rave (https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/). Before the Industrial Revolution, families used to trailblaze across the mid-west with covered wagons and farm the land. That was their occupation, and they did it as a family. During that more agricultural era, there was no distinction between Family life and occupational life. A Father and Mother did not go to separate institutional workplaces during the day in order to provide. Instead, the Family worked together, and the members relied on one another in order to live. In other words, the work which sustained a Family was directly tied to every member of the Family, and they worked together, rather than separate, in order to live. A farm's workers were not employees, paid to come into an institution and labor, but rather children and parents working as a team in order to stay afloat (Five Minute Fatherhood Podcast, Ep. 228).
This couldn't be further from the design of God.
Relationships are not designed to eat the scraps of Individualism.
Community should come first.
Then the Individual.
From Agrarian Values to Industrial Values:
Working for long hours away from the home has not been going on forever out of necessity; it's a a system which gained popularity during the Industrial Revolution, when work and productivity became the new rave (https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/). Before the Industrial Revolution, families used to trailblaze across the mid-west with covered wagons and farm the land. That was their occupation, and they did it as a family. During that more agricultural era, there was no distinction between Family life and occupational life. A Father and Mother did not go to separate institutional workplaces during the day in order to provide. Instead, the Family worked together, and the members relied on one another in order to live. In other words, the work which sustained a Family was directly tied to every member of the Family, and they worked together, rather than separate, in order to live. A farm's workers were not employees, paid to come into an institution and labor, but rather children and parents working as a team in order to stay afloat (Five Minute Fatherhood Podcast, Ep. 228).
Are we content with the amount of time our families, marriages, and communities are getting compared to the amount of time our work is getting?
Sources:
- http://wmpaulyoung.com/god-is-a-dance/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NUGNLgMWmE&t=2s
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/third-rail/episodes/episode-7-is-marriage-dead/why-are-fewer-people-getting-married/
- https://familyteams.com/
- http://homeschoolerponderings.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-third-child-of-independence.html
- https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2018/01/19/prime-minister-theresa-may-appoints-minister-loneliness/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zk652j8icM&t=340s
- https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/05/01/npr-americans-are-lonely-young-people-bear-heaviest-burden
- https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237377/millennials-burning.aspx
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/where-did-40-hour-workweek-come-n192276
- https://www.askspoke.com/blog/hr/40-hour-work-week/
- https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-40-hour-workweek/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzkxfutG5xc
- https://gracecultureashland.podbean.com/e/redeeming-the-family-model-with-seth-hensley/
- Illustrations (Kevin Carden Photography)
Awesome! There was a great quote by Dr. Laura Schlessinger that really made an impression on me in my early 30s. It went something like this "If you spent the same amount of time that you spend with your children focused on them, on your job,would you be considered a good employee"? Great post! I can't wait to read part 2.
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