But Wait, There's More: A Response to "Idolatry of Ministry: An Open Letter"
In a recent open letter to ministry parents (especially missionary parents), my friend Bret Taylor issued a warning against losing sight of your children amid the tasks of ministry. Here is my open response.
Dear Bret,
I want to thank you for writing your open letter to Ministry Parents. I have vivid memories of sitting in my living room talking
about this very thing. You had come at my invitation to speak at the youth camp
of the MK Youth Group I led in Costa Rica. We talked long into the night, and
not without tears. Your letter takes me back to that room.
These two things I took away from the letter: when the
mission becomes more important than the family, it has become an idol; and the
way to gauge if this is happening is “not because you said it – but because
they felt it.”
In this open letter, I’d like to address each of these, both as a friend and as a recipient, being a "ministry parent" myself.
First, the matter of ministry being more important than
family. I had a couple of thoughts on this. First, I wonder if you let those
who neglect family off the hook too lightly. 1 Timothy 5:8 rings in my mind: But
if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his
household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (NASB)
Yes, this passage is about caring for widows. But if this is what the Bible says about caring for your mother or even grandmother (see v. 4), how much stronger is the principle at work in caring for one’s own children?
Even evil people know how to give good gifts to their children, says Jesus (Mt 7:11). What kind of revolt against heaven is it, then, for a Christian man to neglect his own?
Further, Christians are to raise Christian children (Eph 6:4), and that means time, energy, and attention. Parents who neglect the home will answer to God for all of this, and, without repentance, may even disqualify themselves from ministry (1 Tim 3:5).
That said, “putting ministry before family” as is
vague, a bit blurry around the edges, and I'd like to tease it out a bit. There are (at least) two sides to this: the practical
reality of how I spend my time, and the heart reality of what I love.
Practically speaking, ministry – like other many jobs which must be done by
good men – will indeed take fathers out of the home (for fathers usually are
the culprits in these scenarios, aren’t they?). Take those who serve in the
military and go on tour; firefighters who pull a 4-on-3-off; medical
professionals; accountants during tax season; or truck drivers making a long
haul. These also take parents out of the home, often for extended periods of
time, and often more than missionary roles. Would this count as “idolatry”? To
what extent is a missionary or pastor like one of these roles? This is not a
gotcha-question, but one that I have come back to as a parent in ministry roles.
I just don’t think it’s as simple as your letter suggests.
I do, in fact, think that there are things worth taking me
out of the home. There are, even, things for which if I stayed home, I could be
failing to do a duty before God. A duty is a thing I ought to do. God
and conscience compel it.
Like you, I have faced this as a parent. Is taking kids to
camp really worth not tucking my kids into bed for several nights, being
away from them? “The ministry was more important” than being home. Both as it
was a part of the job I held, and because I think that doing this good
for the campers was a cause worthy enough to keep me away from home. And, in
fact, I want my kids to know that there are things worth doing – worth dying
for – that involve denial of self, and sometimes denial of the family, which is
an extension of the self. “Worth dying for, but not worth living for” as Lewis
would say. And here is where the heart reality of love comes in. For we both
know parents can be physically present but still absent. And parents who spend
days away (medical professionals, night shift workers, etc.) can be more
present in their days home than the one who works 9-5, or a stay-at-home mom
who passes the hours on Instagram.
Actually, putting that Lewis quote in context would be good:
“We may have a duty to rescue a drowning man, and perhaps, if we live on a
dangerous coast, to learn life-saving so as to be ready for any drowning man
when he turns up. It may be our duty to lose our own lives in saving him. But
if anyone devoted himself to life-saving in the sense of giving it his total
attention – so that he thought and spoke of nothing else and demanded the
cessation of all other human activities until everyone had learned to swim – he
would be a monomaniac. The rescue of drowning men is, then, a duty worth dying
for, but not worth living for” (C.S. Lewis, “Learning in Wartime”).
The person that concerns me is the monomaniac, whose total
attention is consumed with his duty of ‘ministry’, whose loves are disordered. The
soldier who leaves his family to protect it and the trucker driver who pulls
the long haul only to provide for his family are not the same as the person who
leaves to escape, or to find a deeper sense of purpose. When confronted, he
does not care. That man has believed a lie – that whatever happens outside the home is really more important than what happens inside it. He is a
de facto celibate-with-benefits. He is, in some ways, like the Romanist
priests of the Middle Ages who, in their celibacy, fathered the waifs who mock
and despise him. His toil is building sandcastles below the tideline. For the family
is the smallest organ of society, the incubation of faith and gospel. Anyone
who despises his family cannot love the church, just as anyone who despises his
own culture cannot truly love another. You cannot hate your wife and love your
neighbor, for your wife is more of a neighbor than your neighbor will ever be.
People who proport to such things only love what differentiates, not what
unites. The church is the family of God. Building a sandcastle as the tide
comes in is exciting – but it is futile.
Our loyalties and loves lie first with God, then our spouse,
then our children, then extended family, and then our community, and so on. A
beautiful illustration of this is recorded in Eugene Peterson’s memoirs:
One evening after supper,
Karen—she was five years old at the me to read her a story. I said, "I'm
sorry, Karen, but I have a meeting tonight."
"This is the twenty-seventh
night in a row you have had a meeting."
She had been keeping track,
counting. The meeting I had to go to was with the church elders, the ruling
body of the congregation. In the seven-minute walk to the church on the way to
the meeting I made a decision. If succeeding as a pastor meant failing as a
parent, I was already a failed pastor. I would resign that very night. (Peterson,
The Pastor: A Memoir)
Love conquered the monomaniacal. The loyalties were in the
right place.
But the way to gauge this is not to “ask your children how
they feel.” First, because they are children. They do not yet have a standard against
which to judge. And second, one’s feelings ought not to be our guide, theirs any
more than ours. Rather, ask your spouse – your spouse will have
opinions, guaranteed! And they will be based on more reliable observations. Finally,
interrogate your own heart. Do you love your work more than your family?
If you found that you did, would you care?
Bret, I’ve seen a lot – but I know you’ve seen more. In all
of this, I am reminded of the MK-CART/CORE research that came out in 90s which
found that the – THE – number one factor for a smooth transition from the field
into adulthood was... having a warm relationship with your father. In fact, the
factor was weighted so high that if parents got almost everything else wrong,
and got this right, things would be ok. All that to say, thank you for raising
the issue and fighting for families.
Above all, I remain your friend,
Jonathan.
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