Vol.
XLII
Stay Home?
by Tom
McLemore
Moses said, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the
LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you
today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at
home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as
an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and
on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Paul
wrote, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother'—this is the
first commandment with a promise: 'so that it may be well with you and you may
live long on the earth.' And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them
up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1-4). I wish to offer a few observations about what
God desires to occur in the home that arise from my reflecting upon these
passages and the modern scene.
Is there an impression on the part of
parents and children that life consists in the number of activities each
member, parents and children alike, can participate in
outside of the home? Are parents
shortchanging their children if they do not see that they participate in every
single available activity? Is the family designed to be merely a management,
financing, and transportation hub for the individual pursuits of the members of
the family? Is the primary objective for
the members of the family constantly to be leaving the home to engage in
personal activities, or is the primary objective for them to be often at
home doing what the family is designed to do, namely loving, showing
affection, nurturing, teaching, training (spiritual as well as in other areas), modeling and
reinforcing the training, mentoring, and developing relationships? Are all the good things that may be gained
from activities outside the home as valuable to the well being of the family
members as those things which might be gained from activities that God intended
for the family members to do at home?
Have parents too often let the children lead the family? How often is
the family enslaved to the individual pursuits of the children? Parents are often reduced to serving as
frantic chauffeurs who hand out money!
Have parents allowed their personal goals and striving for money and
luxury items dictate the course of the upbringing of their children, leaving
the day care and the school to be the shapers of children's souls that God
intended parents to be? Let parents take
leadership back from the children! Let
parents prayerfully consider what their children ought to be and determine to
provide a home environment that will foster that, rather than letting the
children say what they want to do and then having parents to acquiesce
to support them in whatever it might be.
Let fathers take responsibility for the spiritual well-being of the home (Ephesians 6:4)!
Every Christian father and mother ought to see that their family is
faithful to assemble with the church.
However, is it enough that none of the activities outside the home take
precedence over scheduled meetings of the church? Even if that is true, can involvement in so
many activities outside the home be of greater benefit than more time spent at
home doing the things God intended to be done at home? Is active involvement in the church a
substitute for, or compensation for, inadequacies in the home environment? Parents lamenting the fact that their adult
children are no longer active in the church, often say, “We always took them to
church when they were little. We never
missed.” How often has anyone asked, “Yes,
but what was your home like, and how often were you all at home
trying to accomplish what God intended family members to do at home?”
I am not suggesting that families merely
stay at home more. If all the members of
the family stay home more, yet each is absorbed every waking moment in
television, DVDs, video games, computers, cell phone conversations, music
(especially if each is doing so separately), none of which is evil per se,
what God intended to be done in the home can hardly be accomplished.
Choices must be made according to proper
priorities. Paul was addressing such
decision-making in 1 Timothy 4:7-9: “Have nothing to do with profane myths and
old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of
some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the
present life and the life to come. The
saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance.”
Take some time to examine the
activities of those in your home. Are
the family members attempting to squeeze all of this outside activity into
their lives? Has home become like the
pit of the raceway? Does everybody stop
in to get service or to change this or that, and off they go again? It only makes sense that the family must stay
at home more in order to accomplish more of what God has ordained to be
accomplished in the home! Instead of trying to be involved in every single
thing possible, let families be more selective.
Where to begin? We could start with the outside activities
themselves to see what we can possibly do without. However, would it not be better to consider
what God designed the home to accomplish and what inside activities are
required to fulfill that design (see the passages at the beginning of this
article), and then to consider what room there is for individual outside
activities? Can we shift from letting
the world set the agenda for the members of the family to the approach of
letting God and his word set the agenda?
The world says, “If you are going to find fulfillment, you must engage in
this or that, have this and that, be such and such, wear and use these and
those.” God says, “If you are going to
find true fulfillment, you must accomplish the tasks which I have said are to
be accomplished in the home.”
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