Culture Changers by Tina Webb

Author:Tina Webb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carpenter's Son Publishing
Published: 2020-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Repairing the Family

Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.14

JANE HOWARD

Connection breeds life. This statement is more than just a biological truth—it’s one we can feel. We actually need to be connected to each other in healthy ways so we can prosper.

Connection, or lack thereof, becomes a part of a family’s culture. That culture is also based on the attitudes, traditions, and worldview of the parents and guardians, plus emotional dispositions, inherited behaviors, racial background, and environment; all those things can affect the culture of a family. When a family fails to provide the connection that God intended, members look to fulfill those needs in other relationships. Friendship can offer a connection that is often more satisfying than one’s own family relationships. As some say, “You can’t pick your family,” meaning that we often wish we could!

However, despite how rewarding friendships can be, God’s intent is for the family to be our first healthy connection. Ironically, even though family dysfunction can permeate generations, a blood connection brings a profound sense of identity, where physical characteristics, talents, and history are the highlights. Nevertheless, any unmet emotional connection from our family of origin is a soul wound that needs to be healed.

Family systems are the building block of communities. Without family identity, we become a collection of individuals whose connectivity is based only on our humanity—a connection far too remote and expansive to appeal to our need for closeness, accessibility, and the ability to relate to shared experiences and daily living. We are wired to be known intimately. Every mother knows their child better than that child knows themselves during the developmental years. During adolescence, we become more aware of our innate emotional and physical longing for intimacy. Our sense of worth develops in an intimate setting. A family—even adopted family, offers a sense of home and a shared environment, even if it is a stressful one.

With the obvious importance of the family in mind, we can consider the divine purpose of the family—it’s “function,” according to sociologists. The functions of a family are primarily “reproduction; socialization; care, protection, and emotional support; assignment of status; and regulation of sexual behavior through social norms.”15

Nowadays—with the intensifying conversation about societal paradigm shifts, racial divisiveness, economic class systems, divorce, and even gender politics—many people think about the family structure through a paradigm called the conflict perspective. This perspective views the family structure as a force that promotes male dominance and economic inequalities (due to inherited social status).16 Conflict theorists don’t see the divine purpose in the family structure—they believe it is simply a social construct.

So as Culture Changers, we need to analyze our view of the significance of the family. What does the family mean? Why does it exist? What is its divine purpose? However, we can answer these questions correctly only from a place of emotional health—not emotional brokenness. Open wounds will skew our viewpoint. To one degree or another, all of us have experienced hurt within our homes.

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