The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family: Parsing Family Structure and Family Values as a means of Grace

The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family 

Parsing Family Structure and Family Values as a means of Grace 

I. Introduction

II. The Family as an Exploration of Christian Beatitude and Christian Power Dynamics

III. Three Biblical Case Studies of Nontraditional Functional Families

A. Case Study 1:  Hagar the single mother and Ruth the Same Sex Dyadic Mother 

(Gen 16, Ruth 1)

B. Case Study 2:  Esau, Jacob and the Black Sheep (Gen 25-33)

C. Case Study 3:  The Sons of Jacob: Polygamy, Divorce and Pawns (Gen 31-33)

IV. Two Counterposed Case Studies for Parent Child Relationships 

A. Counterposed Case Study 1: Eli and Hannah: Parent’s Roles and Family 

environment (1Sam 1-4)

B. Counterposed Case Study 2: Saul and David:  Children and Vocational 

Assertiveness (1 Samuel 9, 16-17)

V. Narrative Appropriation of the Nontraditional Holy Family

VI. Conclusion

Introduction

As a young middle schooler I thought the height of devotion would be to read the Bible from cover to cover.  As anyone who has begun this endeavor underprepared has discovered, the Bible starts early and earnestly with long litanies of names and lineages.  It almost seems like an intent of the Holy Spirit to put those who would engage in such an endeavor for prideful purposes off their game.  It certainly worked for me. 

Now when I am teaching scripture class, I make the point that all of scripture is inspired, meaning that every bit of it has something truthful and important to say about salvation.  My example to bolster this is the seemingly pointless lineages, both front loaded and manifest throughout.  It’s an easy example to use because you can sum up a message in what seems like pointlessness rather easy, “The lineages teach us that we are all one human family.”  From there one can expand and give examples, but it is easy to see how it’s true even from the get go, as opposed to say levitical law, which may take a little more explaining to even get to a starting point.  

The litanies and lineages are a reminder of our interconnectedness as a human family and in that the girth is helpful, because we are a large family.  Yet at the same time the lineages hint at something else, we are a dysfunctional family.  This can be seen through small tidbits concerning certain characters such as Lamech who continued Cain’s lust for blood or Peleg, during whose time the “world was divided”.   The lineages can also help the reader’s understanding of how the nations tribes or houses that are developed by means of the lineage interrelate as families and at the same time how they are to be regarded in the arch-narrative of scripture.  For example Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord, and he beget the kingdom of Babylon.  This brief mention in the lineage hints at violent action and calls to mind the contentious relationship between Israel and all the empires of Mesopotamia, including the blood thirsty Assyrians as well as the Babylonian empire that succeeded them and exiled the hebrews.  The biblical Arch-narrative is filled with war, betrayal, exploitation, dishonesty mutual alienation and rejection to the point of humanity rejecting God our Father in the New Testament.  Scriptures do not spare the dysfunctional side of the human family. 

The purpose of this treatise is to explore the Biblical metanarrative for insight into family dynamics and structure, with the final example analyzing The Holy Family as the superlative non-traditional family structure that is used by God for his supreme good purposes.  In this time when the “traditional family” is framed as under attack, it may be helpful to explore scriptures to see what exactly the inspired word thinks a functional family looks like, and what that appearance teaches us about the nature of the family, and how God uses nontraditionally structured families.  In the first section we began by laying some groundwork concerning the nature of the traditional human family as dysfunctional due to original sin and analyse whether or not any  structure can save humanity from this problem.  We will then explore the Christian take on how families should function.  This will involve proper considerations of theodicy and appropriate understandings of beatitude and Christian power dynamics, or what would be called in the same cultural debate, “family values” as opposed to structure.  

The rest of the treatise will play out these themes using various case studies from sacred scripture.  The first three case studies will be taken for the family of Abraham as the narrative of his progeny unfolds in the book of Genesis.  These stories will clearly demonstrate that structure of a given family unit is irrelevant to God’s saving action.  Our studies will include the examples of a single mom, a black sheep of the family, and a polygamous relationship, which we will relate to a divorce/annulment and remarriage relationship.  The next two sets of case studies will cover how the parent child relationship should work, so that instead of simply a critique of structural arguments, we can explore useful information concerning appropriate family values. Our examples will be taken from 1 Samuel and will be counterposed studies, that is, each example will be two families, one that acts appropriately and one that does not.   

The last case study is The Holy Family.  In this story the family structure is culturally abhorrent, but it is here that humanity develops its greatest gift, the savior.   The same parent child dynamics used in the previous case studies are explored using Mary and Joseph and Jesus for the parent end, and the step brothers of Jesus from the child end.

The purpose of this treatrsie is not to cast derision on the traditional family structure, but to keep the discourse on what constitutes family values for a Christian.  An over focus on structure can distract from a helpful and meaningful discourse.  An over focus on structure can also lead to a family value set that is contrary to Christian living.  It is worth keeping to the good and true focus of values over structure and the following is an attempt to maintain that focus.    

       

The Family as an Exploration of Christian Beatitude and Christian Power Dynamics

The Bible seems a lot less concerned with any definition of the “traditional” family as the cultural conservative would define it.  The idea of a two parent family that has children and is an autonomous unit seems to encompass an ideal for modern Americans and our culture wars line up upon this makeup, and whether or not other variant populations and configurations would be suitable to hold up as a model for family life.  The Bible itself seems less interested in the exact structure of a family regarding its makeup, but rather makes use of a humanity gone astray to demonstrate power dynamics within family units that fall under a great variety of patterns.  The nontraditional family and the dysfunctional family are not the same thing in the Bible.  The Bible itself takes great pains to allow for any given structure because it is not a propaganda piece for the ideal, but an honest portrayal of post lapsarian humanity.  The dysfunctional family is the family that does not allow for the grace of God to act upon the family.  More particularly it is a family where the head breaks his relationship with God.  From this definition, structure is irrelevant.  

A place that our culture seems to garner it’s idea of a “Traditional family” seems to be the creation story.  However, the second creation story starts out with one person, the Man is lonely and God makes him a partner out of his own flesh.  The original family does not procreate until after the fall.  So to say that the ideal family is two parent with children is how it was meant to be does not seem to spring from the original state in paradise.  Rather, both creation stories are getting across a vague and undefined perfect relationship between people and between God.  It is not until things begin to go wrong that we are able to observe some standard ways of understanding both good and bad relationships, and in that we get a picture of the human family that is far from uniform or ideal.  The interesting thing concerning the biblical meta-narrative is that it is the fall that allows for anthro-diversification, and the ability to develop loving relationships of varieties that would have been inconceivable in paradise.  This was touched on in the former work, Same-attractive Dyadinal Solemn Relationships 

Oddly though concerning our topic, same-attractive dyadinal relationships, one may wish to ask, can we return to the original marriage of Adam and Eve?  Why would you need same-oriented communities, dyadic or large group, in Eden? There were only two people in paradise and they were of the opposite sex. The story of the first parents does not allow for any type of relationship but a hetero-marital relationship.  But now humanity is diverse and the types of relationships necessary are equally diverse.  In what way could we even return to a situation like that of paradise now that anthro-diversification is a fact of postlapsarian life?  

Neither does that same story allow for love between siblings or parents and children.  The more one notices the expansive nature of postlapsarian family structures, the more one is able to see the expansive nature of loving relationships allowable by fallen humanity.  

It is also through the struggle of our dysfunctional human family that we come to some sort of reconciliation and life with God.  It would make sense that the human family is dysfunctional and that God works through our dysfunction to bring us to goodness and life.  Christianity believes that goodness comes out of suffering in a postlapsarian world.  The punishments received in this chapter [Gen 3] are a result of the humans eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  For our purposes it is important to remember that this is not the fruit of the tree of knowledge of  “right and wrong” concerning moral decisions.  That was the snake’s assertion, not God’s. A valid interpretation here is that the tree gives them experiential knowledge not cognitive knowledge.  They will now experience not just good, but also the evil, that is pain and suffering.  Once one realizes this, the simple fact that we don’t actually know the difference between right and wrong doesn't seem odd and more importantly the punishments become less punishments and more the natural consequences of their actions.  By eating the fruit they were basically asking to know (experience) good and evil.  They already know the experience of good in the garden, so God grants the request by means of the punishments; the experience of pain and suffering.

The second relevant point is how the punishments end.  In each case the punishment is attached to the purpose of the creature being punished.  For Adam, his job was to care for the garden, and for Eve her job was to provide help and companionship, herself and by making other humans.  The pain of the punishments is inescapable given that these are their jobs, tilling the soil and making children.  However, important also is the fact that each of the punishments ends in a tremendous life giving good, children and bread.  The Bible presents a few answers to the purpose of suffering and this is definitely one of them, through suffering comes goodness and life.  This theme runs from Genesis Chapter 3 through the crucifixion to the glorious end of The Book of Revelations, a book written in part to address the suffering of the churches of Asia Minor.  Humans have an experience of pain and suffering,  but the Christian religion seeks to find meaning and ultimately a good from that suffering.

The human family being dysfunctional is part and parcel of postlapsarian existence.  With an understanding of this theodicy one can go on to see that in the Bible how families are structured is less important than the power dynamics that exist within them.  It is here that the biblical narrative lays its focus, as it should be, because, “the home is the first school of Christian life and "a school for human enrichment.” Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous - even repeated - forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one's life.” (CCC 1657).  The biblical focus is how to be truly Christian and practice self emptying love.  When St. John Paul II offered criticism of familial developments in his Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, it did not take a structural form concerning traditional or nontraditional makeups.  His criticism revolved more around relationships and autonomy.

signs are not lacking of a disturbing degradation of some fundamental values: a mistaken theoretical and practical concept of the independence of the spouses in relation to each other; serious misconceptions regarding the relationship of authority between parents and children; the concrete difficulties that the family itself experiences in the transmission of values;  

   

For our purposes we are going to discuss now the common relationships that play out over and over again in the Bible, some to the benefit and some to the detriment of a healthy family life.  We will use this theme to explore what power dynamics and beatitude are taught by the family structures in the Bible. After that we will mine the scriptures themselves through a series of several particular stories that each offer their own message to the reader about what is important to do or avoid in family life.  This will culminate at the end of the treatise with an analysis of the Holy Family as a nontraditional family and what the dynamics there have to teach us.

The Second Son Typology

One of the many oft repeated themes in the Bible is the Second Son typology.  In this typology a man has two sons.  The traditional family of the ancient world follows the pronouncement of Laben in Gen 26 concerning his daughters, “It is not the custom in our country to give the younger . . . before the firstborn”.  The oldest son would be the treasured child and all benefits would be bestowed upon him and therefore he would be possessed of all of the advantages.  God’s ways are not humanity’s ways.  In Genesis 25, the reader gets God’s pronouncement of the non-traditional family model he intends to follow throughout salvation history when he speaks to Rebekah, “Two nations are in your womb, two peoples are separating while still within you; But one will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”  In the Bible, when a man has two sons, it is to be expected that the younger will somehow triumph over the older spiritually or morally and become the one whom the reader looks to in the scriptures as “important”.

This pattern begins even before the birth of Jacob and Esau, with Ishmael and Isaac and plays out through the entire scope of the scriptures.  There are manifold lessons to be drawn from the general story not to mention each manifestation of the theme.  We will use some of the particular stories in the subsequent sections to explore various lessons concerning beatitude and Christian power dynamics.  The relevant overarching theme for our entire treatise is that God can get his will done using any unconventional structure.  The second pertinent lesson is that God likes to use the weak and vulnerable to do his will.  Such heroes are better able to show that God is the true power not the human.  Thus it may be more helpful to understand that if the “traditional family” that is under attack it should not be viewed as a familial structure that is under attack by an ever corrupting culture, but an attitude that is attacked by sacred scripture.  To heed the lessons of scripture concerning family dynamics does not lead to a particular structure.  Instead it leads to a beaditudinal reorientation and an appreciation of appropriate power dynamics.  Our culture also favors the strong and powerful, heaping advantage on those we see as already advantageous.  The scriptures, through and through, have another way that God works his will in humanity.    

The entire human family’s stage is set by the first such second son story which goes horribly wrong in a classic postlapsarian inversion.  That would be the Cain and Abel story, where a man has two sons.  Cain is the older, and if the story followed the standard pattern, he would be the favored child who is overtaken by his younger brother Abel.  But in the prediluvian mythologies, the purpose of the stories is to show humanity going awry on a mass scale.  So here the reader encounters a story where the appropriate family structure and lesson, God using the vulnerable to demonstrate his goodness and power, is turned upside down by the assertive rebellion of the older child, like father like son.  Interestingly, because of that what the reader encounters is actually a typical example of the traditional family structure and power dynamic according to the outlook of the traditional human family.  In this story the stronger son takes his advantage and slay’s one fourth of the world's population by committing fratricide. Even here God’s mercy is evident in that Cain is marked for protection against retribution of those stronger than him.  

This story sets the human stage for the great bracket of second son stories in the Bible.  All biblical typologies seem to be bracketed by some early genesis story and that stories fulfillment in Christ.  This particular bracket is the bracket of the Sons of God.  Luke’s genealogy traces Jesus’ family line all the way back to Adam in an attempt to play up our connectedness as a human family and bolster the reach of the messiah beyond Judaism.  Interestingly in this genealogy he also lets it be known that Jesus is not the first son of God, but the second.  The last line of the genealogy is, “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (Lk 3:38).  Here Luke is exploiting typical Pauline theology of Jesus as the New Adam.  In this one line he is able to draw on the entire scope of the second son typology as a matrix of salvation history by which one can understand how Jesus brings humanity back to God.

The first son, Adam, is made from the earth by God and God breathes life into him.  Adam had all the advantages of paradise, perfect companionship with Eve, ease of life in the garden, no suffering, direct communion with his Father.  Jesus is created out of the womb of Mary with all of history of the human family leading up to that point implied.  He is born into the oppressive structures of the Roman empire with colluding sadducees, bickering pharisees, escapist essences and violent zealots.  He begins his ministry in the desert and the land he inhabits is desolate compared to the Garden.  His companions constantly misunderstand him and when he hits his lowest point they all abandon him.  

The lesson of the punishments in Eden is that in a creation where all is created good,  postlapsarian existence brings what was requested, the knowledge of good and evil, but that evil (suffering) will yield good if one follows God.  Thus Paul frames the second son story in 1 Corinthians chapter 15

So, too, it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being,” the last Adam a life-giving spirit.  But the spiritual was not first; rather the natural and then the spiritual.  The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man, from heaven.  As was the earthly one, so also are the earthly, and as is the heavenly one, so also are the heavenly.  Just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one.              

Again, like all typologies, there is a frame between the original Fall and the fulfillment of God’s plan with Christ.  But regarding family dynamics, once again, it is not a matter of structure, but a matter of openness and the proper understanding of power dynamics.  With Adam and Eve, the possibility of humanity being a functional family is closed until the time of Christ.  So what is bracketed by these stories is the narrative of the traditional human family.  With the coming of the messiah, there is once again the possibility of a functioning human family.  The simple fact is, according to the Bible, the traditional human family is dysfunctional.  Only when one adheres to the idea of family as demonstrated in salvation history, that is with the attitude exemplified by Christ can we become a functional family.  It is only with the coming of the Messiah that we now have a choice as humans, follow the ways of the traditional human family or bind oneself to Christ and live according to a functional family relationship model.  Either way, neither of these concepts is dependent on the structure of the family unit, any given structure can facilitate or exacerbate familial relationships.   

What needs to be explored now is the methodology for a functional family according to sacred scripture.  This methodology is “nontraditional”.  That is, it is not the methodology humans usually desire to follow, praising the strong and aligning them with reward and advantage as they “lord their authority” over the weaker.  Instead the methodology is submission to proper Christian power dynamics.  Such dynamics have much to say about how a family interrelates, which is of prime importance because, once again, our concern is not structure, but beatitude.

The basics of Christian power dynamics were laid out in the treatise  The Onesiman Interface,

Christian Power dynamics demand that the greater serve the lesser, and it is off this basic Christian teaching that Paul is offering his advice.  It must be remembered that according to Paul in his letter to the Philippians, Jesus “ though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”  This is a high-christological reframing of Jesus’ admonition to the sons of thunder in Matthew chapter 20, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt.  But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant;”  This same sentiment is reiterated in 1Peter 5:3 and demonstrated by Jesus at The Last Supper in John’s gospel when he washes the disciples’ feet.  

Our purpose here is to take that dynamic applied here to the social evil of the institution of slavery and apply it to the family.  Once again the greater here is seen to serve the lesser and not vice versa.  One can see the entire scope of this mutual subordination in many places in scripture, but a concentrated version would be Colossians chapter 3, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them.  Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, so they may not become discouraged.”   In this brief passage all are mutually serving each other to the benefit of the other. 

As humans our standard desire is to exploit our authority, thus it serves us best to learn the proper family dynamics by a flip of our expectation so as to balance out all relationships toward a proper beatitude.  A common way this task is accomplished in the New Testament is to focus on the importance of children.  Jesus’ classic reorientation takes place in Matthew chapter 18,

At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me. 

As seen in Colossians the job of the parent is to seek the child’s best interest.  With Christian power dynamics, one finds Jesus in the weak and vulnerable.  One way that parents do proper devotion to Christ is to meet him in their children in the same way one would use the onesiman interface, to meet him in the indigent.  In the Christian narrative the most powerful takes the form of the weakest and the clearest example of this is when God himself becomes a child.  This fact of both history and salvation history makes the Christian ponder the meaning, effect, and soteriological impact of children differently.  Thus when one discovers Christ in a child, Christianity allows that to happen beyond a simple intellectual meditation on a nativity scene toward the ability to meet Christ in the most vulnerable members of the one’s family, your children.  It involves narrative appropriation which is a psychological disposition of humans that is best noticed, then mastered such that the postlapsarian human can turn this trait toward anthro-authenticity.

Narrative appropriation is one of the fundamental ways we as creatures find our meaning, individually and collectively, that is we garner meaning by stories and narratives.  We seek them out, test them against our familiar stories, dissect them and in the end either accept and embrace them or eschew and reject them.  Ultimately we appropriate the characters and stories into our personality (or culture on the collective level).  Usually, all of this is done outside the conscious realm, we garner morals and motives from the stories we subconsciously invest in absent our own consent.  The narratives don’t have to be complex, simply bought into to be effective.  Once they are bought into, then they have a real effect on how the person or culture thinks acts views itself, sets its morals.  This need not be systematic, only keeping with the story.  This is why when looking at a culture from the outside common stories in that culture often seem strange, choppy and not grounded in anything important.  But to the culture itself, which has run a narrative over and over in multifaceted ways, the story makes perfect sense.

For our purposes we are going to use narratives that discuss children, siblings, parents, etc. and the ability to take those stories onto ourselves and become demonstrations of them toward proper relationship.  This skill would allow for the fostering of a functional family against a traditional human family.  A functional family is one that operates with beatitude and where the greater serve the lessor according to Christian power dynamics.  A functional family is open to God’s will and is more easily a tool for God’s purposes even though it may be “nontraditional” in terms of structure.

 The extolling of children by Jesus as a model of salvation is not anti-intellectual, but an extolling of a sense of dependency on the all powerful God.  As we employ operative Christian power dynamics, the question becomes what can we learn from children.  As we expand that, how can we learn from all the members of our family that society may not deem worthy of a traditional family structure?  If our calculation is correct, the attitude of “deeming unworthy” is manifestly not be-attitude, and thus the idea of the “traditional family” according to societal structures becomes an agent for the dysfunctional nature of the traditional human family.       

What Christian power dynamics allows a family to do is function in a family centered way as opposed to a family that functions in an over authoritarian way from the top down, or a family that allows its children to run wild with no discipline.  In a family centered model the pauline ecclesiology of many parts one body takes precedence of the secular idea of every man is king of his castle.  If that image is to be kept in a Christian family the image must be colored by the Judeo-Christian idea of the King as the shepherd, and Christ’s augmentation that the Good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.  This is affirmed in Christ’s demonstration of Christian power dynamics concerning this imagery.  He is the shepherd who guides and protects us as well as the lamb of God, who dies for us and feeds us in the Eucharist.  His multifaceted role allows all people in a family to meet him in each other as an act of devotion.  But because humans are disposed toward abuse of power, we must constantly keep in  mindful practice of the humbling narrative as opposed to the exalted.

The bolstering of a family centered view by Christian power dynamics also helps St. John Paul II in his criticism of modern ideas of autonomy and their undermining of proper family relationships in his work Familiaris Consortio.  This is readily seen when Jesus Blesses the Children.  Luke’s Gospel has a very short account of this event. Like the other synoptic gospels Luke uses it as the matrix of his sayings on children and perfection, “Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” (Lk 18:15-17) But both Matthew and Mark develop the story beyond this by moving the event beyond humble children to placing those children into a the context of the family.  In each case the scene opens with a question about divorce where Jesus reiterates that the ideal is people in communion who are not alienated, but in binding loving relationships.  The sacred authors exploit Jesus’ connection of the sacramental nature of marriage as grounded in the prelapsarian garden to buttress an assertion of the value of children.  Christianity calls us to be other focused.  In this passage, the other focus first takes on the oneness of the sacrament of marriage, reiterated by the phrase “one flesh”.  Then the oneness of the family unit is extolled by the requirement of the elders, who would presumably be the teachers, to somehow look to the younger to learn lessons concerning the most valuable questions, questions concerning the nature of salvation.  

Because of the nature of Christian power dynamics, the greater, according to the measure of this word, must constantly look for guidance from the lessor, according to the measure of this world, and vice versa.  One even sees this exemplified in the second story of creation.  God seeks to set the best possible conditions for the human, but when he observes that the human is lonely, and sets out to fix the problem inclusively,

So the Lord God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name.  The man gave names to all the tame animals, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be a helper suited to the man.

So the Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  The Lord God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. When he brought her to the man, the man said:

“This one, at last, is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

This one shall be called ‘woman,’

for out of man this one has been taken.”

It is notable that after an attempt to set the perfect conditions, God, the parent in this story, then takes time to get Adam’s opinion on his partner, presenting him with animal after animal until God conceives of taking the material from Adam himself.  This is the power dynamic of the greater serving the lessor, taking the time to both intuite needs based on superior experience, plus the time to listen to the one served in order to learn.

Christian power dynamics focus each person “toward the other”  which naturally leads to a family centred philosophy of child rearing, because each person is forced to consider all others and how each action and decision affects the whole.

For all of these relational consideration to be taken into account one does not need a particular structure.  It is how one employs the relationships in humble and subservient ways that instills proper beatitude such that family life can be the training ground for recognizing and cooperating with the saving grace of God.  To that end in the next section we will revisit a series of complex family structures as presented in the Old Testament and mine them in order to glean moral and social lessons.  Thematically they will display the tried and true method of God using what appears to be a weak or dysfunctional reality, in this case a family instead of a hero, to get his will done.  The weak disfunction reminds us that God does not need the powerful or well off to do his will, and his power is better demonstrated by utilizing the apparent dysfunctional.  But that “dysfunction” is only in terms of the world's metric, not God’s.  

In this section we have laid the groundwork for how the traditional family structure is not by itself helpful for Christian life.   We explored the Christian take on how families should function.  This involved proper considerations of theodicy and appropriate understandings of beatitude and Christian power dynamics.  In the next section we will cover three case studies that will demonstrate how God’s grace can come in the form of any family structure.  The structures we will cover will be the single mother, the black sheep, and the polygamous divorce and remarriage.  Subsequent section will cover parent child relationships using two sets of counterposed stories from 1 Samuel.  After that we will take an indepth look at  one more particularly relevant case study of a nontraditional family, but in structure and in the role it plays in salvation history, The Holy Family, which is the superlative example of the nontraditional functional family. 

  

            

Three Biblical Case Studies in One of Nontraditional Functional Families

Case Study 1:  Hagar the Single Mother and Ruth the Same-sex Dyadinal Mother

 (Gen 16, Ruth 1)

We begin our case studies at the beginning, with Abraham.  At this point in the biblical metanarrative, humanity has gone awry, and all things seem to be going wrong.  God started over with Noah, but he followed the pattern of Adam and fell from grace in his own garden.  As humanity spread across the face of the earth, God’s new plan is not to wipe out humanity, but to pick a man and his family and begin to heal the situation from the inside by means of this family.  Similar to Noah, the most righteous man in his time (which isn’t saying much), the family of Abraham is by no means perfect.  But as we have oft repeated, God prefers the obviously flawed as a means to demonstrate his power.  

Abrahams and his subsequent generations will be nontraditional in structure, but they will be functional in that the family will ultimately accomplish the task God set out for them in salvation history, the bringing of the messiah.

The first functional nontraditional family structure we are going to explore will be that of the structure of mistress and mistresses’ child or better, the single mother.  As the reader will know from Genesis 16, Sarah, being impatient with God’s promise to bring children, instructs Abraham to take her maidservant Hagar the Egyptian and make a child for her to raise.  One lesson here is to treat one’s wife with respect and not to objectify her.  The fact that Hagar is Egyptian brings the reader back to Abraham's selling of his wife in Egypt for prophet and God’s subsequent rescue of her, where Abraham left with his wife and all that belonged to him, presumably including Hagar.  Given this history, Sarah’s brutal treatment of her servant most likely harkens back to trauma she incurred, leading her to objectify in the same way she was objectified, as well and a bitterness toward all things Egyptian. 

In the story of Isaac and Ishmael the reader has the possibility of coming to terms with the fact that even after mistakes made according to God’s plan, there is still hope.  Here is a  situation where we have a mistress and an illegitimate child.  They are actually cast out by the married couple in order to maintain their own “traditional family structure” and in keeping with the classic second son typology narrative.  God endorses this casting out, and that in itself seems to bolster those who would extol “traditional family” as a structural assertion.  God in this story does seem to have a plan that involves the basic structure.  

At the same time it may serve to notice how Hagar is treated by God when she twice encounters him in the desert.  In each case she speaks to God.  Such a honor is usually reserved for patriarchs and prophets.  Neither Genesis Joseph’s, son of Jacob, nor Matthew’s Joseph, son of Jacob has the honor of having God speak to them face to face.  They only received vague dreams.  Here you have the contrast between the wealthy Hebrew patriarch and the foreign slave concubine who is now a single mother.  Since she is a single mother she runs the family, and God treats her as a patriarch.  He deals with her directly, he makes covenant with her in the same way that he does with Abraham, in fact to the same end, numerous descendents, “. . .  I will make your descendants so numerous,” added the Lord’s angel, “that they will be too many to count.”  . . . To the Lord who spoke to her she gave a name, saying, “You are God who sees me”; she meant, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after he saw me?”

This is a story that is ripe for narrative appropriation by single mothers.  Like Egyptians and Ishmaelites, they would stand outside of Israelite society in the same ways, but the promise of God once again teaches us that we are all a human family and God has a plan for all of us.  It is Ishmaelites that save Joseph from the well, leading Israel to a new humbling and witnessing of God; power in Egypt.  In a society that is obsessed with appropriate structure, the role of Ishmael may easily be overlooked.  Just because a child is born outside of the normal structure, does not make that child or that non-traditional family outside of God’s use. 

A more shocking example is the generation of the Ammonites and the Moabites from the intercourse between Lot and his daughters.  Here is a family structure that seems beyond hope, a horde of inscestuous bastards.  Yet Ruth, grandmother of David, greatest king of Israel is a moabite.  Her fealty to a family structure that is primarily same-sex dyadinal, where the man, Boaz, seems only useful for his procreative abilities and his property is certainly an odd inverse of the traditional structure.  Yet God is able to use the good hearts of all the heros involved here to bring about a great goodness for Israel and for the world.  The openness of Hagar to return to her master, and the fidelity of Ruth to Naomi are beatitudinal orientations that speak to a nontraditional functional family.  

Those people in same-sexed vowed family structures, or single mothers who have no one to rely on can appropriate these stories to find worth and meaning in life.  They can use them to understand themselves as meaningful and useful to God, not just because they feel they should be, but because sacred scripture shows us that relationships informed by beatitude trumps conventional structure.  If someone were to object that such and such a structure springs from sin or presents the near occasion of sin, it must be remembered that neither springing from nor near occasion of is actually committing sin.  Add to that what was already pointed out, the entire human family is in a dysfunctional situation when left to its own devices such that no traditional structure itself will make family useful, and one is less apt to cast stones.    

               

Case Study 2:  Esau, Jacob and the Black Sheep (Gen 25-33)

For our second case study we will look into a second son typology that will exemplify the black sheep family structure.  Here is an all too familiar structure of alienation that is most likely universal.  All families have black sheep, people who have performed some misdeed or offered a grievous insult and now are incommunicado.  In this story Isaac has twin sons.  An unhealthy family relationships of favorites is set up from the beginning, where Rebekah loves Jacob and Isaac loves Esau, because each target child seems to exemplify the temperamental hopes of each adoring parent.  In healthy family relationships our differences, for example temperamental, help us balance each other out, such that no one is extreme to the point of excess.  In this case there is strong burly Esau, who seems not too bright and young frail Jacob who is cunning and manipulative.  Isaac, as a patriarch is definitely quiet, and Rebeckah is certainly a woman of action.  

Jacob swindells Esau out of his birth right, then at the behest and with the help of his mother, swindles his father out of his blessing.  This power reorientation is suited to God’s plan, the second son comes out ahead as the standard typology goes, but it causes great stress on the family unit.  It exemplifies the “traditional family” as we have defined it here, a family shot through with the effect of original sin that is based on structure more than loving relationships.  By the end of the trickery, Jacob is on the run and clearly alienated from his family.  

While staying with his uncle he meets his future brides, the sisters Rachel and Leah.  Here once again, you have a second daughter/wife story where the younger comes out on top.  In this case she comes out on top by means of being the favored wife of Jacob, but God is not pleased with the damage such favoritism has done, so he grants Leah what wives of that time desire, sons, while closing Rachel’s womb.  When Rachel finally does have children they are the favored sons of Jacob, and such favoritism plays out as thematic for the rest of the book of Genesis.  In the next case study we will apply the ancient problem of polygamy to a modern updated problem of divorce and remarriage, especially concerning the impact on children.  

Suffice to say, that here the entire family structure is falling apart because of things that are meant to keep a family united.  Economy and leadership are uniting factors when they serve the loving relationships of the family.  When there is mutual respect, when the greater serve the lessor, both leadership and economic resources are beautiful gifts.  But in this case we have the structures of the “traditional family” wreaking havoc on the the functionality of the family.  Contractually Jacob has acquired the power and the money, but he is not possessed of proper beatitude yet, thus he is not able to run a functional family.  Instead his entire situation leads to his own alienation because instead of pursuing family functionality according to God’s plan, Jacob is seeking to manipulate the structures that are supposed to serve, and thus he becomes subject to them in unhealthy ways.    

Typical of the biblical theodicy described above, it is through all this suffering that everyone is brought around to beatitude, just as, in the garden, it is through labor that one receives bread and children's [life].  After Jacob has engaged in a complex game of one up manship with his uncle Laban in a relationship based on greed, he winds up alienated even further and left all alone to ponder his lot, where he then wrestles with God.  It is on that time of absolute alienation, the result of his sin, that he comes to the truth that his life has been a struggle, and he reorients himself.  When he meets his brother Esau, he bows in humility and seeks to repair both the economic damage and restore the proper power dynamic. 

One of the more interesting parts of the story is that for Esau’s part all he seemed to need was this basic respect.  This is evident by his reaction to the bribes in Genesis 33:9, “Esau replied, ‘I have plenty; my brother, you should keep what is yours.”  In Jeremiah chapter 49 there is a hint that the reputation of Edom (Esau’s Tribe) was possession of great wisdom.  This line allows for that understanding, and the ability to reread the story where he gives his inheritance up for soup.  Esau things only of his basic needs, if they are met, there is no other worry.  After his lessons concerning sin, alienation, and suffering Jacob is able to point out that this attitude is of divinity.  He says to Esau,  “If you will do me the favor, accept this gift from me, since to see your face is for me like seeing the face of God”  Esau does not allow concern for proper structure to destroy him, he is not concerned with greedy acquisition of wealth.  He approaches life like a child, “are my basic needs being met right now?  Then I am content.”  

What we learn from this for our purposes is that the structure of alienation could be the result of an over emphasis of the power of traditional family structure.  Here the lesson is first that we should not want after such power.  We should employ Christian power dynamics where the greater serve the lesser.  This applies both to the family members, but also to the structure itself, which is a greater category than the individual, yet it must serve the family and not become an object of pointless authority.  

The second lesson is that God uses this nontraditional structure as a catalyst for beatitude.  That is, God uses the weak to demonstrate his power.  This works for individual heros as well as family structures.  So one should not judge the structure as evidence that something that needs to be fixed at all costs.  For example, to seek to destroy this familial structure by an overbearing authoritarian institution of the patriarchal family structure once again makes the human serve the structure and not the other way around.  The family unit is supposed to be a place to learn the art of beatitude. If there is a learning process, then the existence of this structure lets us know that the process is underway and we should have an appropriate response to that.

The response is lesson three of the story.  One must apply appropriate theodicy and see that the suffering caused by the blacksheep structure does not necessarily invoke the fifth commandment.  There is some reconciliation that needs to take place, and there are probably many lessons concerning beatitude to go around.  If one finds oneself in a family structure as a black sheep, or with one, one can exercise the skill of narrative appropriation.  The task is not to cast blame, but to self reflect first, then extend grace and mercy.  The suffering itself is what brought Jacob to self reflection, so sometimes what is needed is time and distance with patience.  The perfect example of how this works if the parable of the prodigal son, where this strategy is employed by the father toward both of his sons.

Case Study 3:  The Sons of Jacob: Polygamy, Divorce and Pawns  (Gen 31-33)

                                              

There aren’t easy examples in the Bible of people who get divorced and remarried in the same way that such activity takes place in American culture.  Divorce did exist, as is evidenced by the Pharisees questioning Jesus on this topic, but how that played out is not a topic of concern in the scripture.  Our culture has a complex way of dealing with divorce, but many of the same issues can be seen in another typology similar to the second son typology, and that is the second wife. This story is closely and intricately related to the second son story, but for our purposes we are going to apply a cultural update to talk about family structure.  

The Bible is not kind toward multiple wives.  Often you hear a flippant proponent of “free love” claim something like, “all those people in the Bible had lots of wives!”  Yet if you pay attention to any of those stories it never goes well for those men.  There is always a lot of politics, lots of jealousy and children always suffer as a result.  The multiple partners of the patriarchs and the kings could easily translate to a certain situation of divorce and remarriage in our culture.  In American culture, once you have children, a divorce can no longer legally be conceived of as a clean break.  The evidence of this is child support and complex schedules of parent sharing.  This is now backed by a culture of dedication to children on a certain level after the divorce and an anti-”deadbeat dad” mentality.  That children are considered is a good thing, but it skirts Jesus’ response to the question of divorce and the linking of it to children.  The response of the patriarchs seems to be skip the divorce and simply “remarry” or take a concubine.  This sustained relationship leads to all the same types of problems one encounter’s today in divorces and remarriages that involve children.

Our case study will be Rachel and Leah.  Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah as part of a ruse laid out by Laban.  He then married Rachel, his preferred choice, afterwards, but true to patriarchal form, he maintained multiple wives.  In this story, it begins as attention seeking aimed at Jacob by the two wives by means of procreative ability.  But the situation quickly devolves into simple competition between the two wives and the treatment of Jacob’s reproductive capacity, as well as their maidservants’, as a means by which they can compete.

Here is a “nontraditional family” structure that is utilized to build up the house of Israel.  But it spirals out into a convoluted series of interlooping second son stories that boggles the mind.  There is the second son who becomes the patriarch, Judah as opposed to Ruben because Ruben sees his father's concubine as simple a sexual object, such as she is treated by all the other parents, and he is demoted. There is the first son of the second wife, Joseph, who is employed as a spy against his brothers and favored with a fancy coat.  Once his brothers’ rancor places him out of the picture he is replaced as the favored one by his younger brother Benjamin, second son to the second wife.

The thematic complexity of the Sons of Jacob screams constant humility.  After the exile of his son, Jacob continues to favor the son of Rachel, his favored wife.  The complexity itself reminds us that once again it is not a matter of structure.  The standard narrative structure is; older son should be favored, God exalts the younger weaker son to show his power, all are humble before God who is powerful and begin to treat each other with proper beatitude and respect.  As Genesis develops you have a system where the focus on structure still leading to a favoritism of some kind, in this case the favoritism of the oldest son of the favored wife. It is not until the very end of the narrative that Jacob seems to learn his lesson with the blessing of Joseph’s son’s in Genesis chapter 48,

  

When Joseph saw that his father had laid his right hand on Ephraim’s head, this seemed wrong to him; so he took hold of his father’s hand, to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s, saying, “That is not right, father; the other one is the firstborn; lay your right hand on his head!” But his father refused. “I know it, son,” he said, “I know. That one too shall become a people, and he too shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall surpass him, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.”

   

Jacob finally learns that, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Mt 23:12)

These complex relationship play out in modern divorce culture.  Once a person has children, the partnership of any marriage does not end if one is to maintain a relationship with those children.  Thus there are a large number of family structures in America where there are interwoven marital relationships and half siblings all of whom vie for attention.  Children are pitted against parents and each other.  You can see this exact phenomenon play out in the Jacob story as well.  After he sent a series of clever bribes to sent his brother Esau, Jacob prepares to meet his brother and rectify his situation.

Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and with him four hundred men. So he divided his children among Leah, Rachel, and the two maidservants, putting the maidservants and their children first, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last. He himself went on ahead of them, bowing to the ground seven times, until he reached his brother.

In this scene Jacob arranges his children, wives and concubine in order of importance, such that when the slaughter begins the least favored would die first and the more cherished could escape.  It is notable that in this story the poor family dynamics help illustrate Jacob’s personal humility, in that he places himself first.  Yet at the same time, as the Joseph story starts to play out, reflecting on this particular story helps the reader understand a piece of the animosity felt by the older brothers.  

  Whether or not the structure of multiple children by multiple partners should exist, it does.  One cannot cling to the childless structure of Eden in postlapsarian existence as the only solution.  As previously observed, it is not a family at all, but indicative of human relationships in general.  If traditional structure is over emphasised, divorce culture would say, if you leave a spouse, cut off the old and start again with the new.  No one wants that.  So what are we to do in a society that is already shot through with a divorce and remarriage family structure?  

We cannot deride damage already done.  God does not do this.  Jacob is married multiple times due to his and Laban’s trickery, greed and deceit.  God doesn't kill off his old or the new wife out of a sense of nuptial or familial justice in order to maintain “proper structure”.  He uses the structure at hand in order to bring all people to a sense of mutual respect and mutual service.  One sees the resolution of all of these relationship dynamics in Joseph's testing of his brothers in Egypt.  In the first test the he commands his brother’s to leave one brother in an attempt to see if they are still in the habit of selling out siblings for their own advantage.  The second test is for his father, will Jacob send back the favored son Benjamin, or will he cling to him to the detriment of all others, like he clung to Joseph to the psychological detriment of his brothers.  The third test, once Benjamin is sent is set up in the dining hall, where Joseph heeps favor upon Benjamin on order to incite jealousy, then he sets he sets Benjamin up for theft and gives the brothers every conceivable opportunity to leave him behind in good conscience.  But Judah by this time understands that a true leader must be strong and serve the lessor, and offers himself in Benjamin’s place.   

Through this nontraditional family structure there are many lessons that are learned.  Joseph learns humility after all his trials, he also learns that his leadership skills are useless to the divine plan unless they are used as an act of humble service. Once he realizes this lesson, he is exalted.  The brothers learn to respect their father after seeing the anguish they cause him.  They also learn to control jealousy amongst each other.  Jacob learns that his favoritism causes the near destruction of his family and by the end he learns that it causes the exile of his original favored son.  A simple focus on family structure will not afford all these lessons.  Nor will it illuminate how bad relationships can be exacerbated by that structure.  A top down patriarchal nuclear family is as much prone to ill will as any other structure.  The focus of family values must be less on structure and more on beatitude.

Thus if American culture has worked out a less than ideal family structure involving divorce and remarriage with lingering ties between former spouses concerning children, all the same lessons apply.  Here again is an opportunity to narratively appropriate and seek lessons from the stories as they exist in scripture.  We as Christians cannot simply litigiously enforce “traditional family structure” and condemn any structure otherwise.  The story of Jacob's sons shows us how these hyper complex parenting situations are no excuse for abandonment or favoritism, even though that may be the desire or habit.  God himself uses this structure to bring life to Israel and humility to the members of the family.  Anyone in this situation regarding divorce as opposed to polygamy should be able to appropriate their role from this story and apply the relevant moral lesson.  Apart from that, the completely moral structure of annulment and remarriage after children are born in the original contract offers all of the same problems.

We have not much commented on the family structure that has been the cause of this renewed interest in the “traditional family structure”, that is, nuclear families headed by a same sex union.  There is not an easy biblical narrative to discuss how parent children dynamics for such a relationship would work out.  But, the validity of such a structure was discussed in the treatise Same-attractive Dyadinal Solemn Relationships.  In short, the church already endorses chaste same-sex vowed relationships that raise children in the form of consecrated congregations and orders.  If that vowed relationship dwindled to two, would it be any different than a vowed relationship of many?  Christians must work with what society gives.  Our aim is proper beatitude regardless of the structures offered.  That would include a proper respect for the purpose of sexual activity as the church teaches, but at the same time, we have already discussed that the family is a learning environment for everyone.  As the treatise indicates, people will make mistakes.  These mistakes will yield various structures that abide in society.  We cannot start with perfection in the middle of the process.  It is better to learn from the existent structures, as scripture seeks to teach us, then rigidly adhere to a structure that you assume offers “correctness” in and of itself and thus deem yourself free from need to reform and free to hurl accusation and condemnation.

In the next section we will move on from structure and discuss parenting skills particularly with regard to proper beatitude.  How does the greater go about serving the lessor in a family unit?  In order to do this we will take our examples for 1 Samuel and offer a worst case versus a best case.  After that in the final section we will explore the Holy Family as the perfect example of a nontraditional family that is functional and serves God’s purpose.

Two Counterposed Case Studies of Parent Child Relationships

Counterposed Case Study 1: Eli and Hannah: Parent’s Roles and Family environment (1Sam 1-4)

It is now our task to briefly explore some narratives that will give us impetus, through narrative appropriation, to seek to serve our children as opposed to lord our authority over them.  In this first counterposed case study our two families will teach us something about discipline and environment.  The story will be the coming of age of Samuel, the great prophet and last judge of Israel.  His family will be counterposed with the House of Eli.

Our story opens with the classic favored wife who is barren.  Hannah prays to God to grant her children, in the temple of the Lord at Shiloh.  Ministering there is a high priest named Eli.  He has two sons, but in this case it is not a matter of the younger surpassing the old.  Both sons are corrupt.  This is the story of one priesthood overtaking another.  

Eli’s Son’s steal temple offerings and commit sexually inappropriate acts in the temple.  This shows great disrespect for God, which filters down to disrespect for their parents.  Eli is known for his keen intuition regarding his hearing despite his poor sight.  He understands that it is the Lord that calls Samuel in the temple and knows what to do.  He also hears of his son’s wickedness, and chastises them, but his sons disregard their father.  By the time of this chastisement their activity had been going on some time, “When Eli was very old, he kept hearing how his sons were treating all Israel, and that they were behaving promiscuously”  His hesitancy does not set the proper environment for his sons to grow into morally upright priests.

This is counterposed to Hannah, who vowed, “O Lord of hosts, if you look with pity on the hardship of your servant, if you remember me and do not forget me, if you give your handmaid a male child, I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life. When the child is born she is very public about her intentions and the as soon as he is weaned Hannah immediately turns him over to service in the Temple.  Hannah does not simply abandon him there, she yearly visits him and brings him useful gifts, “Meanwhile the boy Samuel, wearing a linen ephod, was serving in the presence of the Lord.  His mother used to make a little garment for him, which she would bring him each time she went up with her husband to offer the customary sacrifice.”  Here the word “meanwhile” is indicative of the fact that this story is bracketed by the wicked deeds of Eli’s sons Hophni and Phineas on one end and his late in coming futile rebuke on the other.  

This juxtaposition sends a clear message.  They need the ability to self explore and find themselves in a safe boundaries yet nurturing environment.  One may harken again to the second creation story and the interplay between God’s creation of the Garden, and God’s crafting of the companions for Adam’s judgment. As a parent it is important to set up a culture and environment that facilitates your children’s moral and spiritual development.  You as a parent must intervene early to set the groundwork for their growth.  In the next section we will explore how similar themes play out in the Gospel of Luke, who borrows much of his infancy narrative from the samuel story,  of the relationship between Mary and Jesus.  For now we will consider two counterposed stories that demonstrate progenic self assertion and lack thereof.

Counterposed Case Study 2:  Saul and David: Children and Vocational Assertiveness 

(1 Samuel 9, 16-17)

  As was noted, Adam names the animals in the garden as part of a communication process about his needs.  Now we will to counterpose two stories that give us a view of a child’s duty toward parents .  To point this out we are going to counterpose Saul’s kingship with David’s kingship.  Both Saul and David have “secret anointings”.  That is to say, they were anointed by a prophet before they were proclaimed king of Israel publicly.  These secret anointings allow their families to know they are king, and allows the reader to know that things are not always as they appear.  The counterposition will be that each of them asserts their understanding of their destinies differently.    

Saul’s private anointing is quickly followed by his public proclamation, but not before Saul neglects to tell his family about his anointing.  At this proclamation Samuel proclaims,  “Do you see the man whom the Lord has chosen? There is no one like him among all the people!’ Then all the people shouted out, ‘Long live the king!”   One begins to see the thematic second son story here, yet this time it is a second King.  Saul has every advantage of an eldest trusted son, but the setup narrative for his coronation foreshadows doom.  On the approach to his secret anointing he meets women going out to draw water, and does not end up married, another classic biblical type scene.  When he is publicly proclaimed king he is not immediately found among the people, but is later found among the baggage.  Lastly after his coronation, he returns home and begins working his fields, action suitable for a judge in Israel, but not a King.  The entire narrative sets the reader up for the fact that his kingship will end in disaster.  He seems incapable of communicating his vocation or destiny, his needs as king or any such thing to his parents or the people.  

David’s story is that he is the seventh son of Jesse's, that is he is the “complete” last son.  He obviously is not favored as Saul was.  When the prophetic banquets is given for Saul, a reserved portion is immediately set aside for him.  David is not even brought to the banquet until after Samuel’s investigation of all of Jesse’s other sons.  Samuel is well disposed toward the eldest son, But God must steer him toward the appropriate choice.  Again, the theme that things are not always as the seem,, thus the need for communication. 

When the choice is made and David is anointed there is no clear action taken concerning his anointing.  Samuel goes home, Saul is still the objective King of Israel, David goes back to his sheep.  Again, the valuable narrative lesson throughout the story is, do not judge by appearances.  Information concerning the state of affairs is given by God, and it is up to the recipient to offer that information at the appropriate time.    Thus for our purposes, it is beneficial to point out David’s struggle as a child who must make his destiny known.

He is not sent to war with his brothers, even though this would be an obviously kingly thing to have happen.  When he is sent he brings supplies to his brothers and upon hearing the insults of Goliath, he makes a case first to his brothers, then to anyone who would hear and lastly to Saul himself that he should fight.  This leads to a pivotal point in his call to be king, the slaying of Goliath.  This is counterposed to Saul, who at a pivotal point in his career, his proclamation as king, is also found among the baggage at his coronation, but not because anyone placed him there, simply because he seems inattentive to the gravity of the situation. 

A valuable lesson to remember here is that your children are not your own.  They are not going to be what you expect.  It is hard to glean this from the story, because David exceeds expectations and in our culture, who does not want that for their child?  But the reverse is also true, children are not our chance to make up for all of our perceived self failing, or a chance to re-do of our own life.  Our children are individuals who have a call by God unique to themselves.  This means that we must foster their gifts and talents to the best of our ability, yet also allow others to do so, which is hard for a parent because we feel no one loves our children as much as we do.  We must then listen to their needs and react to them, much like God who allowed Adam to name the animals.  

After the defeat of Goliath, David spends quite a long time serving in Saul’s court.  Saul sees that he has the favor of the Lord, but does not want to yield his position.  Every attempt Saul make to destroy David brings David more victory and greater acclaim.  At all times David must prove himself while at the same he time respecting the structures at hand, his family and the kingship.  But one may wonder how much those structures are serving Israel.  Once again, by juxtaposing these two stories with the previous case study, one can see that  how a child's spiritual and vocational success has less to do with whether the structure is “traditional” or not, and everything to do with the relationship of the family members themselves.  How well do the parents set up an environment for their children to flourish?  How well do children know themselves and express their needs regarding this?  How well does a parent react to this and set appropriate limits and allow for appropriate freedom?  These basic themes harken back to Genesis Chapter two where God plants The Garden and sets an environment for the human, and then listens to him regarding what he needs, then sets minimal limits and maximal room for exploration.

Hannah, unlike Mary as we shall see, trusts the temple system to raise her child well.  David Trusts that God has Saul in place for a reason.  Each of these structures affords a lot of struggle and the struggle itself brings out the strengths of the just people who are immersed on them.  These two structures are the traditional structures, but the same would be true of the struggles of nontraditional structures.  Our Christian theodicy backs up such struggle, but not in any exclusive way, not only struggle within the system or only struggle against the system, but the struggle appropriate to the person as deemed by God.

The structures that we create for family and society are very helpful, and we should seek the best structure available.  This goes for the “traditional family” as well as any attempted utopian governance or culture.  But as soon as such structure begin to replace the intimate relationships of parent and child or master and pupil, problems arise.  These structures are meant to foster those relationships, not supplant them.  The progression from a corrupt succession of judges with Gideon and Samuel to a corrupt progression of kings from David to Absalom and Adonijah to pretty much the entire lineage after Solomon turns away from God toward his wives and their gods teaches us that a structure in and of itself is valueless.  It only has the value of the people who fill it and the beatitude they possess when they affect the structure's relationships.  Also, we must live and move in the society as it is not as we feel it should be.  David knows his destiny, but he kills Goliath, not Saul.  He is patient with regards to God’s plan, as we must be.  People make mistakes and situations are not always ideal, but in our personal and familial relationships we must possess proper humility and beatitude.  Also, we must cultivate beatitude for society first, then work on the structure as a support to that. 

With all this in mind we will proceed in our last section to analyse one of the most structurally nontraditional families presented in the Bible, the Holy Family.  We began with an exploration of how the human family is itself dysfunctional.  This was followed up with an analysis of Christian power dynamics and theodicy concerning struggle and goodness.  After that we looked into three case studies from Genesis that demonstrated that the traditional structure of the nuclear family itself is not the carrier of grace, but the relationships that people make within the structure.  In this past section we covered two sets of counterposed case studies that helped us understand how parents must set an environment for children and how children must self explore within the limits of that environment and express their needs to their parents.  All of these stories give the reader a framework to narratively appropriate the character they may need to draw upon and image that character in their life.  In the coming section we will apply all this to the Holy Family and seek these same skills.         

Narrative Appropriation of the Nontraditional Holy Family

Up to this point we have explored what the concupiscent problems of the traditional human family, and the inadequacy of trying to solve this problem simply by means of a traditional family structure.  We covered three case studies, wherein grace is offered through nontraditional structures, though that grace and beatitude follows a standard Christian theodicy of struggle toward The Good.  These stories allowed for narrative appropriation of single mothers, black sheep situations and situations of divorce or annulment and remarriage when children are involved.  Next we covered two sets of stories that gave us a general methodology for the proper relationship to establish between parents and offspring as laid out in the second story of creation.  In this relationship parents set the environment with appropriate limits in order that children can self explore their vocation and grow into who they are meant to be according to God’s plan.  Children for their part must make their needs known to their parents.  In this last section we are going to explore one of the most nontraditional family structures in the Bible and see what lessons are in the narrative as it is presented in scripture and supplementary traditions.

Matthew's Gospel begins with the lineage of Jesus as he traces it back to Abraham.  There are two basic lessons here.  The objective reason for the lineage is a mathematical calculation concerning Jesus as the messiah, as the sacred author relates in chapter one verse 17, “Thus the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations.”  But for our purposes there are a few interesting variances that subtly appear in his lineages that hint at a tradition of nontraditional structure so to speak between verse three to six and again in the last verse of the lineage.  The oddities have been italicized for emphasis,  

Judah became the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar.  Perez became the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab. Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, Nahshon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab. Boaz became the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed became the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David the king. David became the father of Solomon, whose mother had been the wife of Uriah. . . . Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.

The Lineage follows a standard patriarchal pattern except for these mothers that are thrown in.  Each mother thrown in has something scandalous about the story.  Matthew seems to be both arguing for a generational calculation and heading off arguments concerning the nontraditional manner in which Jesus’ family operates.  His goal here seems to be to remind the reader that God does not need our convention in terms of family structure.     

Tamar was the wife of Judah’s various sons according to levirate marriage customs because they each in turn died before she conceived, because of certain immoral actions.  Judah, wishing to preserve his next son’s life, typically blamed the woman and put her in he father's house as a widow hoping to wait her out.  However, when he went to sheer sheep, she took the opportunity to seek what was owed her (a child), dressed as a harlot and conceived by his immoral action.  When Judah found her with child he once again typically blamed the woman, but when evidence was produced that the child was his, he repented and the twins were presumably raised in his house.  

The next two mothers are gentiles.  Rahab was the Canaanite who helped Joshua’s spies escape the city of Jericho.  She ran a brothel there, but she recognized the power of God and craftily chose sides in the coming war. Ruth was the Moabite who was faithful to Naomi and helped her gain posterity.  She found God in her fidelity to her mother in law. Solomon's mother is Bathsheba.  She “had been the wife of Uriah” the Hittite who was a valiant warrior in David’s Army.  The story of David’s seduction and the passive murder of Uriah is well known as is the son that was ultimately begotten by the two of them, Solomon. 

Solomon is included with several people in the list that follow the classic second son typology.  In fact, he is one of two of the people that are born of the nontraditional mothers presented here that follow such a typology.  With regards to Judah and Tamar the Genesis says,

 

When the time of her delivery came, there were twins in her womb. While she was giving birth, one put out his hand; and the midwife took and tied a crimson thread on his hand, noting, “This one came out first.”  But as he withdrew his hand, his brother came out; and she said, “What a breach you have made for yourself!” So he was called Perez.  Afterward his brother, who had the crimson thread on his hand, came out; he was called Zerah.  

Solomon was the second son of Bathsheba, her first having died because of David’s sin.  He was also twice second in line for the Kingship, first by means of the rebellious Absalom, a great example of a father allowing to much license, and then the presumptuous Adonijah.  Again it is this typology reminds us that it can be through the struggle of oppression and marginalization that one finds success.

Jesus follows the second son typology in multifaceted ways.  We already noted that he is the second son of God, Adam being the first.  Luke’s narrative crafts him as a second cousin and prophet compared to John the Baptist, who in John’s Gospel knowingly utilizes this connection and narrative. He talks of Jesus as “the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” and then there is the uncomfortable, for Roman Catholics, exchange concerning Jesus in Matthew chapter 13, “Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?  Are not his sisters all with us? Where did this man get all this?”   These questions lead us to the task at hand, the scandal of the nontraditional structure of Jesus’ family. 

The structure of Jesus family is by no means a typical nuclear family.  The passage concerning Jesus’ brothers and sisters begs a Catholic response vis a vi the perpetual virginity of Mary.  One typical answer is that the word “brothers” is better translated as “kin” and that these people are cousins.  But another answer for this conundrum comes from traditional Catholic piety largely based off of the Proto-Gospel of James.  In this late noncanonical work, the author recounts a narrative that spans the conception of Mary by Joachim and Anna through an infancy narrative of Jesus that is largely based on Matthew and Luke’s accounts.  

In this tale Mary is closeted in the temple from the age of two.  But as the threat of menstruation draws near at the age of twelve she must be married off for her protection and out of concern for the ritual purity of the Temple.  The Joseph is portrayed as an elderly man who was chosen by divine signs to protect her and keep her chastity.  The general feeling of Catholics is that the “brothers” of Jesus are Joseph's sons from a previous marriage or marriages.  

All this looks spiritually beautiful in terms of piety until one analyses the family structure at hand.  Once one looks at how this family is organized it is hard to make an argument that God needs the traditional nuclear family to be the only way, or even the best way, that the world works.  In this structure you have at least a second marriage situation with children from a previous marriage.  You have an older man who is marrying a very much younger woman.  Along with that the very much younger woman is with child, by someone who is not the person she is marrying.  They are also conceivably familial outcastes in that close relations serve important roles in the temple, yet they have a hard time finding lodging in Bethlehem.  

This family presents a structure that any cultural conservative could easily point to and say, “see, there is the problem with society.”  The pious may respond that in this case it’s okay, because we know it’s God’s plan.  But this treatise would point out that they certainly did not know that at the time, or even thereafter, hence the need for Matthew to include the mothers in the lineage.  This treatise would also desperately urge the traditional family advocate not to assume that they would have seen God’s work at the time in this “unusual exception to the rule”.  We do not seem to be easily open to how God uses nontraditional family structures all the way through the Bible.  We seem closed to it as a possibility now. How would we ever have recognized it in Jesus’ family?  A line from Luke 16 comes to mind, “If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” 

 Our task is to try to find meaning in the narrative of the Holy Family as a nontraditional family in order to seek skills for any given functional nontraditional family, no matter what the structure, and be able to narratively appropriate.  We will dwell here on the power dynamics that we discussed previously, as well as how the modern family can act as a domestic church, an institution in its own right as opposed to the institutional structures of the church or the traditional structure of the family.    

In the narrative of the Holy Family all the Christian power dynamics that according to the world are so convoluted take perfect center stage.  The greatest, the parents, serve the least, the child, providing him with a safe, stable and ordered life and developing him into the best person he could be according to God’s plan, not the world’s, and doing so in a way personal to him.  What all this yields is the greatest human being ever, Jesus, who is God, the greatest reality, come to serve the least, sinful humanity.  

So in the highest analogy across the span of salvation history, The Triune God, Father and Son bound by the Spirit, gives birth to nurtures and coddles Humanity as a body until it is fully developed, that full development is the Eschaton, Humanity as the Body of Christ.  On a hyper-concentrated microcosmic scale the way God chooses to show us this is a classic divine flip flop of unexpectedness.  Divinity becomes the child, Jesus, and the parents are the humans Mary and Joseph who must raise this child in an environment such that he can fulfill his mission.  They must supply him with knowledge and empowerment such that he can recognise his mission and perform it when the time is right, not sooner, not later.  How Joseph and particularly Mary do this is not based in any traditional family structure, but the exact relationships we discuss as primary to family structure.    

  One can find an example of how the parents limit and protect Jesus and intentionally set his environment in Luke’s Gospel.   Luke’s  preamble story of how Mary sets limits upon Jesus is both effective and adorable.  When Jesus is born in Luke’s Gospel Mary takes the child and wraps him in swaddling clothes.  The typical Christmas Mass homily may point out that “these are the trappings of poverty so Jesus was poor like the shepherds and that’s important.”  And it is important, but I think much more is going on here than just, “Jesus was poor”.  As a parent I can tell you there is a very important functional reason for swaddling a newborn, and it’s not about poverty.  When babies come out of the womb they have transitioned from a small enclosed world where they cannot even extend their arms to an earth, a universe, which is so vastly large compared to themselves.  When a newborn stretches their arms out they seem to feel this vastness in an acute and terrifying way, specifically because that ability was not there before.  The terror they feel at the vastness of the universe is particularly annoying to a new parent when the baby is sleeping and it moves and stretches, then seems to physically  “catch itself” amidst this vastness and the resulting terror wakes the child screaming.  Any sleep deprived parent knows that the way to solve this particular problem is to recreate the womb by means of swaddling and ease the newborn into a physical sense of the wide world.  My secret trick was to duct tape the linen together so they would stay tight.  Swaddling is a physical protection for fear of the wide world, a nurturing by the parent.  

One can interpret this story as a need by Mary to shut baby Jesus up.  Crying babies are annoying and his noise is unwarranted as of yet.  There is a correct time to whine about our smallness in the universe, that time is not now, now is time for sleep.  The story is a story of development much like the story of the Finding in the Temple we will explore next.  In each of these stories it is not the right time for Jesus to be vocal.  Later he would spend much time preaching and teaching in the temple as well as screaming about the greatness of God and our smallness by comparison.

In the story of the Finding in the Temple, the boy Jesus, who seems to have been just bar mitzvahed, goes into the yeshiva school in the temple.  The picture that is often painted is Mary and Joseph finding him and he is “the all knowing boy Jesus” impressing the scribes and pharisees with his all knowingness.  But that’s not what the Gospel actually says.  Lk 2:46-47 states, “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.”  It seems that he was actually a really really good and profound student who asks profound questions, grasps the answers and answers questions asked with a unique depth.  To develop a christological sense of Jesus needing to learn his religion and spirituality gives a parent a great sense of investment into their children.  One may protest, “Jesus was divine, he didn’t need to learn his religion!.  He knew everything!”  Maybe . . .

It is impossible to know the inner psycho-spiritual dynamics of Jesus Christ.  Christologically we can only know what the gospels indicate to us.  In the gospels Jesus does seem to have specific knowledge pertinent to the situation from time to time, but he definitely seems ignorant at other times.  When the centurion begs a healing from Jesus and then has faith the he can heal him on the spot Jesus is surprised.  To be surprised he must have been ignorant of facts.  If that disturbs piety, remember, Jesus is one like us in all things but sin.  So to know if a situation or state is possible for Jesus there are two questions to be asked:  1) is this situation or state common to humanity throughout its history?  2) is this situation or state sinful?  If the answers are 1) yes 2) no, then mostly likely Jesus experienced that situation or state, though not necessarily, everyone is a unique individual after all.  Let’s apply our test.  Ignorance, is it common to humanity? Yes. Is ignorance sinful?  For example is it sinful to not know the temperature of the surface of the sun or is it sinful not to know the thoughts of you sister as she sits next to you?  Absolutely not.  What about having to learn?  Specifically, what about having to learn your purpose, develop and grow your faith, deepen your relationship with God, 1) is having to learn and develop common to humans? Yes.  Is it a sin to have to learn? Absolutely not.  So in any given christology there must be room for the possibility that these things were true of Jesus, he is after all like us in all things but sin.

What a great weight and a great opportunity for any parent to know that their child may have similar potentials and that it may be their job to foster and develop those skills.  If as a parent one may be inclined to think that it is “the Church’s” job to religiously educate a child, I would first direct the to Oscar Romero’s quote, “The Church is all of you.”  Then I would remind the reader of your role as a familial domestic church.  Lastly I would remind the reader that the institutional church may not be best equipped to translate the faith to your child.  The institutional church speaks broad truth to humanity it is your job to translate that truth to your domestic church.  Once again let’s look at Luke Chapter 2.  When Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the temple Yeshiva school they seem horrified.  They take him out of that place immediately.  It’s not that Jesus never has anything to do with the temple again, he seemed to enjoy hanging out there later in life, but  apparently the feeling of his parents was that he wasn’t ready for all that yet, that his family was the better place for him to develop spiritually.  “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart.  And Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.”  And all of this is taking place in a nontraditional structure. 

Some might find the development here christologically disturbing, but for our purposes it certainly invests the family with a sense of great power and opportunity to effect the good.  The institutional church, at that time the temple, comes off as ineffective in this story and the domestic church appears primary.   An  illustration of how effective Jesus’ home life was at his education can be garnered if one lines up the Magnificat in Luke Chapter 1 and the Beatitudes in Luke Chapter 6, there is a direct line.  The sacred author's intent, given everything just discussed, could be to let you know exactly where Jesus learned his religious knowledge and deep spirituality, that would be from his mother, not the scribes and pharisees of the temple complex.  In fact by the time he forayed into that world for the first time as a young adult, his domestic church had done such a good job that his knowledge and insight was already impressive, though deemed by his family still inadequate for that environment.  It may be for this reason that even from the its earliest existence the church has venerated Mary and why, to digress, those Christians who ignore her role in salvation history do so to their own deficit.  

The setting of the environment by discipline is balanced by the establishment of a nurturing environment.  That is, an environment that allows a child to explore who they are and to discover himself and God’s plan for them. 

At the wedding feast of canaan in John chapter 2, Jesus seems hesitant to perform the miracle.  In fact he is adamant that it is not time to get started just yet.  He says to Mary, “my hour has not come.”   But Mary takes the opportunity to show her son his own ability by forcing him to use his own skill.  She seems to have more faith in him than he has in himself, how typically parental.  She wisely does not tell him exactly what to do, but trusts his judgment and simply sets the conditions for him to act.  This scene is the culmination that all parents wish for.  It is the end result of a life of nurturing, which starts as taking care of a child's every need, to recognising their strengths and helping build them, to finally instilling that child with the confidence to act on their own and then letting go.

A nurturing attitude allows for children to explore their spirituality and make mistakes and restart.  Children should be able to express interests without resulting obsessions by parents, but with support that edifies their interests once it has become evident that it is an enduring interest.  Nurturing does not mean that a parent cannot introduce their own interests in the hopes that the child shares those interests, but it does mean that if it is evident that the child does not share them, it’s time to drop it.  Parents have plans for their children, and so does God.  It is nice when the two line up, but a Christian parent cannot assume it.  

The balance between a nurturing environment and a disciplined one is the balance between allowing a child to explore and keeping a child in check.  Discipline is of course related to the child's moral development as well as their physical safety, but presently we are much more concerned with the existential purpose of one’s life, their vocation.  In order to develop into one’s vocation properly one cannot simply do willy nilly whatever one wants, even if it is related to the ultimate goal, as Jesus found out in the Temple.  A parent helps a child know what they are ready for, but if they are not a parent’s job is to prohibit.   A parent must first enforce, then as the child develops and matures, reinforce commitment to a task.

The last aspect of this family to be observed are those (theologically) pesky brothers of Jesus.  Again, according to a certain piety and in accordance with the second son typology, these are older brothers who have been in always supplanted by the younger.  Their existence as such points at the nontraditional nature of The Holy Family and the complicated way that we as humans organize ourselves.  They are step brothers, a convention we more readily associate with our modern divorce culture.  It may be tempting to point to their obscurity as evidence of either scandal or a condemnation of our nontraditional structures.  But, not all of them disappear into obscurity.  At the end here we are going to listen to the voices of Jesus’ step brothers as they recap our major point for us.

The two brothers that have writings attributed to them are James and Jude.  Paul’s letters are often mined for the treasury of revelation there.  For Catholics The Letter of James is a Favorite, but less notable work.  The letter of Jude is usually left to scripture scholars for vague insight into the history of the early church and not much more.  But these letters have much to tell us about some of the major topics we have discussed.

James’ letter uses our basic theodicy as its introduction,

Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it.  But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind.  For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways. 

The brother in lowly circumstances should take pride in his high standing, and the rich one in his lowliness, for he will pass away “like the flower of the field.” For the sun comes up with its scorching heat and dries up the grass, its flower droops, and the beauty of its appearance vanishes. So will the rich person fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

    

Upon reading this introduction, how can anyone then turn to the tumultuous family of any structure and assert that the structure itself is a problem.  The tumult could be according to God’s plan, and in either case, the structure is subservient to the beatitude and relationship and how the members relate. James’ letter is famous for his praxis methodology.  What you do is primary to theory.  Faith without works is dead.  Paul famously holds Abraham up as the example of someone justified by faith, and James uses a counter gentile example of action over theory resonant of Hagar, “was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?”  Here again is our nontraditional structure working out as opposed to the traditional.  

James’ letter seems very much about how to be humble, patient, and active. All the things a child needs to be able to do in order to have the proper beatitude and openness to what their parents are trying to teach them. These are also the things one needs in order to appropriately self explore within the guidance offered by parents.

To that end we have the Letter of Jude. His letter mostly revolves around steadfastness.  “Beloved, although I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I now feel a need to write to encourage you to contend for the faith that was once for all handed down to the holy ones.”  For our purposes this is excellent advice.  What was handed down, by the scope of revelation, by Christ, and by the apostles was not a family structure.  It was a beatitude and a power dynamic that any given structure should adopt.  It was also an invitation to join Jesus’ family, whose structure is nontraditional and very expansive.  Jesus “was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.’  He said to them in reply, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”  Jesus is speaking here of who his mother and brothers actually are, this is their character as Christians.  Thus a possible useful interpretation may be, “they are outside’ ‘Oh, you should look to them, they’re good people . . .”.   This interpretation allows for narrative appropriation of the scripture and facilitates the more standard interpretation of the text.  From that interpretation one draws the lesson that Jesus’ family is not traditional because the traditional human family is the family that is dysfunctional and exclusive in its attitude, and his family is all inclusive.  You need only bind yourself to him, and you belong.  Such all inclusivity leaves almost no room for a rigidly set structure.

Jude’s last piece of advice is pertinent to the fact that structures may be more helpful than others,

Build yourselves up in your most holy faith; pray in the holy Spirit.  Keep yourselves in the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.  On those who waver, have mercy; save others by snatching them out of the fire; on others have mercy with fear, abhorring even the outer garment stained by the flesh.         

      

This quote once again reminds us the our relationship in the spirit is primary and that mercy has a twofold function.  It is mercy not family structure that leads people to the correct path and away from damnation.  Also our use of it is the measure by which we are measured, thus we should use it in fear for our own soul.  To be over harshly focused on a particular structure does absolutely no good.   

Conclusion

We have covered a lot of ground in this treatise.  We began by exploring some basic ideas.  We analysed the traditional human family and found it to be dysfunctional, in that humanity is corrupted by original sin.  No family structure can save humanity from this problem.  We explored one methodology that God uses to bring us to his good grace and that was struggle and suffering and gave an example of the Second Son typology.  We then abstractly laid out the alternative to seeking the perfect family structure, which is seeking the perfect beatitude and power dynamic, that is the perfect family relationship.

The rest of the treatise played out these themes using various case studies from sacred scripture.  The first three case studies demonstrated that structure is irrelevant to God’s saving action.  Our studies included a single mom, a black sheep of the family and a polygamous relationship, which we related to a divorce/annulment and remarriage relationship.  The next two sets of case studies covered how the parent child relationship should work.  Each story is played off a theme set in the second creation story, that the parent, God, sets conditions and limits for the child (Adam) and then lets the child self explore, communicate and express needs in order to grow into who he needs to be.  

The last case study is The Holy.  In this story the family structure is culturally abhorrent, but it is here that humanity develops its greatest gift, the savior.   The same parent child dynamics are explored using Mary and Joseph and Jesus for the parent end, and the step brothers of Jesus from the child end.

In the end, as culture wars rage around the definition of traditional family structures needing preference there are certain things we must remember.  Structures can offer advantage, some more than others, but they cannot be relied on to do the job for us.  Even the best family structured can be turned to the destruction of its member thanks to original sin.  It is the attitude of the individuals and the power dynamics of their relationships that are of primary importance.  God’s plan actually seems to much more often employ the unusual structure following the pattern of our theodicy.  Thus even though we may strive for the ideal, we should not judge each other based on family structure, and we certainly should not judge God based on how he uses them.