Turning Children against Parents and Chosen Families

A Note to Readers

Note to readers, this post discusses LGBTQ issues, including a first-hand report of emotional harm. For those facing personal feelings of rejection, unworthiness, and trauma may choose not to read today’s post. This newsletter, at large, affirms siblings in the LGBTQ community and speaks against toxic theology, restrictive legislation, and hateful rhetoric.

Introduction

The concept of a chosen family may feel like a modern notion. Especially involving the LGBTQ community; the Times reports:

In the L.G.B.T.Q. community, it’s not uncommon to find a substitute family, colloquially known as a chosen family, as Ms. Lasater did. The term refers to “nonbiological kinship bonds that many people choose because they need to have mutual support and love,” said Trevor Gates-Crandall, a social worker in Colorado who has researched chosen families. The relationships these groups provide are critical bonds, defined by their intensity, he said.

Who is Ms. Laster? We learn in the article, “When she was 19, her mother found love letters she had saved from a girlfriend in Tennessee. ‘I would literally rather see you laying dead in a casket than to know this about you,’ Ms. Lasater remembers her mother saying.”

In today’s post, I seek to affirm the idea of chosen families and suggest a Biblical precedent.

It would be anachronistic to apply modern notions of the LGBTQ community to the first century context. The rare mention of anything resembling Biblical commentary on gay relationships are few and far between, and not a single mention of “men laying with men” approximates the concept of gay relationships as we understand them today, but that hasn’t stopped the Christian community writ large—or traditions within Christianity, from deploying these rare mentions to assault the LGBTQ community.

Let’s first be clear: There is zero condemnation of the LGBTQ community in the Bible. It isn’t there, neither in the Old nor the New Testament. Here is Dan McClellan on the topic (video length: 4:45):

And yet, those with the lived experience will report untold harms levied against them—both in personal attacks and the national assault on LGBTQ persons, as the tragic and timely reporting from June 2022 linked above is an example. We have reason for continued alarm at the draconian legislation targeting trans youth.

Today’s post is not about homosexuality and the Bible, but it is a discussion of something introduced earlier: First, the notion of a chosen family; second, its Biblical precedent. Might those who have needed to seek a chosen family find themselves affirmed in these words.

Choosing Families, A Biblical Account

Professor Levine points to Mark 3:34 to support the idea that Jesus affirmed a chosen family. This reading is also supported in the JANT.

And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Attributed to Jesus was the notorious report that he did not feel acceptance in his hometown, among his biological family. The text would appear to support the notion that it is Jesus’s chosen family that offers love, community, and loving-kindness.

Professor Levine points to a tradition of shocking edicts that children would be turned against parents. It assumes too much to read chosen families into each expression, but it should be noted that the Hebrew tradition includes this shocking language in very ancient material, and this material appears preserved from its ancient sources into among the latest gospels. I’ve included these below, from oldest source document to newest.

Micah 7:6; 800-500 BCE

for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household.

Malachi 4:6; 450 BCE

He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse

Here we see the reversal of the prophecy.

Now, imagine centuries have passed from the prophets in 500 BCE to the Greek scriptures of the first century. This would be similar to us connecting a heritage to the 16th century CE. Within the gospel tradition, at least within the tradition of core Jesus sayings, we see the prophecy repeated.

The Gospel of Thomas 16; 60 CE

Jesus said, “Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house: there’ll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone.”

Matthew 10:35; 80-90 CE

For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law

Luke 1:7; 90-110 CE

With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous

The Lucan account follows the Malachi reading of turning toward, rather than away.

Conclusion

What do you glean from this nearly 1,000 year tradition of family units being separated from each other and other times turned toward them. How does this change your moral and historical imagining of Jesus as one who is accepted better among a chosen family of wives, without husbands and poor fishers and farmers who spoke against concentrated wealth and power? Tell us in the comments!