The Family Chapter 1

The Family
      - Jack Balswick and Judith Balswick

And so we begin...

This first post is going to be about something that really stuck out to me in the first chapter of this book. It didn't take too long for me to get into this chapter before I stumbled across something that really got me thinking. This beginning chapter is setting the stage for the rest of the book and explaining how the authors understand a family system to be modeled after the trinity communion. If this is true, then their view about the relationship between family members being a covenant instead of a contract is spot on. Let's start with the major difference between the two. A covenant is something that someone doesn't enter into lightly. A covenant is an agreement/promise that isn't to be broken. A contract is an agreement which continues to exist until the specified time is up or a member of the contract fails to live up to his or her end of the deal, in which case the other individual(s) can terminate the contract. On page 22, I read,

      "Because relationships are dynamic and ever changing, if a relationship does not spiral to deeper levels of commitment, grace, empowering, and intimacy, it will stagnate and fixate on contract rather than covenant, law rather than grace, possessive power rather than empowering, and distance rather than intimacy."

When I read this, I was completely blown away. Now this concept might not be earth-shattering for many, but this was something that I needed to read and hear in this way at this very moment. This simple sentence speak a GREAT truth that we all need to be reminded of every now and again. How many times have you found yourself in a relationship with someone with whom you are very close with, but for some reason you are finding yourself getting short with him or her and getting extremely frustrated with the other person? Have you ever taken a moment to check yourself? If our relationships here on earth are to be modeled after God's relationships because we are made in His image (imago dei), then we aren't doing something right. In fact, if you find yourself in the description I just detailed, you might want to evaluate yourself and see what you are expecting out of that particular relationship. Are you taking a contract stance/viewpoint instead of a covenant? Are you looking for the other person for follow a list of rules and expectations that you have for them (law) instead of being him/herself and allowing you to exercise grace if he/she does something that offends you? Are you looking to control the person instead of help them become more than what they currently are (empowering)? Each of these things pushes you further and further away from the other person. I found myself in this situation not too long ago, and I'm still trying to correct my mental processes and recover from it. I guess my point is this. God loves us with a covenant love. He won't stop loving us. Even though we do things that He doesn't like and that hurt Him, He still loves us and offers us grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. God also calls us to conform to the example and be more like his son Jesus as we grow in our faith. If we are growing more Christ-like, then our desires and human make-up are changing. Our contract love and expectations are and should be changed into covenant ones. It's the way were intended to be.