S
omewhere down the line Christians began to believe there is a typical family in church. We imagine a happily married couple with some, but not too many, kids. Nobody has to deal with divorce and its aftermath. Nobody’s single and old enough that people ask why, or worse, try to guess. Nobody’s in the closet. Nobody’s struggling with anxiety or depression. Everyone believes the same things.
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I’m not saying those families don’t exist. I’m saying they’re far from typical. Still, it’s hard to be different when everyone expects you to be the same. So when we look around the congregation and everyone else looks normal, we pretend. The irony is that since we pretend to be normal,
everyone else pretends, too. It creates an image of the typical church family that flies in the face of what many of our families actually look like behind closed doors. Never mind all the Bible stories about families that don’t fit this “typical” mold. Ignore Cain and Abel. Ignore Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Esau.
Ignore Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. That awful little lie of the typical church family leaves us in the uncomfortable position of finding it easier to talk about our family’s sins in the world, where of course everyone’s family is messed up, rather than in the church—the one place God built to forgive sinners and comfort those suffering its wages. The world has no shortage of sympathy for your family issues. They can relate. Commiserate. Share their own stories. Make memes. They can understand what you’re going through and make you feel like it isn’t your fault. It’s hard to be different when everyone expects you to be the same, and in the world we don’t feel so different. But even though it’s more
