The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home — Russell Moore
A terrific and important book which focuses on God’s purposes for the family while also providing specific, biblically-supported direction
Russell Moore’s newest book (which releases September 15th but is available on Kindle now) is nothing short of life-changing. His 2015 book, Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, changed the way I thought about culture, politics, and God’s kingdom while also becoming my favorite book of 2016. Now his newest release has changed the way I think about my family and given me even more to dwell on and change in my life for, well, the next few decades.
Family is spiritual warfare.
This is where Dr. Moore’s analysis of the family begins, and this theme continues throughout the book. We as Christians tend to give a half-scoff to spiritual warfare sometimes because of the ideas it evokes in our minds, but Jesus is clear that our war is not against flesh and blood. Our war, led by Jesus himself, of course, is against spiritual forces. And the family, as a symbol of the Jesus’ gospel, is an important front of that war. Notice that I did not say it is the important front, and neither does Moore. It is simply one that cannot be ignored.
The family is a symbol of the gospel because a husband’s love for his wife is supposed to show God’s love for the church. Likewise, a father’s love and discipline (notice the root word disciple; this is not synonymous with punishment) for his children is supposed to elicit the image of our heavenly Father’s relationship with us. I am using the roles of husband and father because those are the roles that speak most closely to me, but you get the picture. God did not create the family by accident. He created man from the dust of the ground, then created woman from man’s rib and told them to be fruitful and multiply. He established the family for a reason, and that reason is to bring Him glory.
When reading The Storm-Tossed Family, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of tremendous responsibility. This sounds bad, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t bad because at almost the exact same time came a feeling of purpose and direction that is simply thrilling. Reading and listening to Dr. Moore is like that sometimes. When I first heard him talk about how everyone’s relationship with God is affected in some way by his or her relationship to an earthly father, I first psychoanalyzed how that might be true in my own life before quickly realizing the inevitable: I am currently shaping my children’s relationships with God in very real ways. My screw-ups could affect their view of God, yes, but I also have the opportunity to provide a tangible picture of what their Heavenly Father is like. If that’s not responsibility, I don’t know what is. When balancing the emotions of terror and purpose of God’s view for the family, I’m reminded of Shane & Shane’s song “Your Love”:
Your love fills me up and when it’s done puts me together.
It’s not that I haven’t heard most of these theological and personal statements about the family before, but being immersed in this teaching on the family and its importance to eternity… God uses that prolonged focus to do some deep excavation. And God did that on me. He did it through encouragement and he did it through unearthing my fears about my family. My fears are the same as Dr. Moore’s as he shares them early in the book:
I’ll be scared of a different sort of skeleton, my own, of what will happen after all my life of perpetual motion is over. Will my wife know that I loved her? Will my children see something in the way that I fathered them to point them to the Father God who always loves, who never leaves, who comes with both authority and mercy, both truth and grace? My son will be afraid the skeleton on the porch will eat him. I’m afraid that the skeleton in my future casket won’t measure up to the image I project right now, even on this very page. And that my family will know it.
With that description I trembled, but I also found purpose. In reading Moore’s book, you will do the same. You will tremble at how you have messed up and how you will mess up, but you will find joy in the God who covered your mistakes with His blood and now sets you on the path to bring Him glory. There is no greater purpose than that.
The Storm-Tossed Family is about marriage, children, your own mother and father, all of it. It is about finding your part in God’s story (trademark Jared Wellman) through your family and using that as one way to bring war to the gates of Hell. I could not recommend it more forcefully.
I received this book as an eARC courtesy of B&H Books and NetGalley, but my opinions are my own.
