GOP Gospel: Family Values II
Mar. 6th, 2021 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tealinDay 15 of my Lent project. For background, please read this.
A reading from the Gospel according to the GOP:
Luke 12:51-53
"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
The Biblical Family Values fetish amongst Republicans is bemusing, because the Bible is chock-a-block with broken and dysfunctional families. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single mom/dad/2.5kids/detached-house-and-a-dog type family in the whole thing; even Jesus loses his (human) father sometime between childhood and the start of his ministry. One might even be tempted to call God a homewrecker, but I think it's more of a chicken-and-egg question: people who grow up in an unhappy family are more likely to develop the dissociation ability that inclines them towards a spiritual path in the first place.
Réné Girard has a lot to say about this passage, and I really wish I'd got to that part of his thinking back in 2019 so I could link it up, but alas! You will just have to listen to the CBC programme.
I have heard the line about strong family values being the foundation of a strong nation so many times, but the only truth it points to is that the speaker knows absolutely nothing about Imperial Britain.
A reading from the Gospel according to the GOP:
I have come to bring peace to the earth, that all may be united in following me, and enjoy the fellowship and unity of the Family of God. For just as the nuclear family is intended by God to be an indivisible unit of love and fellowship, so it models the greater Christian family which, united in love of the Father, enjoys the peace that the Father intends. Should one break away and, through his obstinacy, create a stumbling block to divide the family, he is counter to the will of the Father and thereby a tool of Satan! For indeed it is through the love of the family that we know the love of God, and strong nuclear families are the building blocks of a strong nation.
Luke 12:51-53
"Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
The Biblical Family Values fetish amongst Republicans is bemusing, because the Bible is chock-a-block with broken and dysfunctional families. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single mom/dad/2.5kids/detached-house-and-a-dog type family in the whole thing; even Jesus loses his (human) father sometime between childhood and the start of his ministry. One might even be tempted to call God a homewrecker, but I think it's more of a chicken-and-egg question: people who grow up in an unhappy family are more likely to develop the dissociation ability that inclines them towards a spiritual path in the first place.
Réné Girard has a lot to say about this passage, and I really wish I'd got to that part of his thinking back in 2019 so I could link it up, but alas! You will just have to listen to the CBC programme.
I have heard the line about strong family values being the foundation of a strong nation so many times, but the only truth it points to is that the speaker knows absolutely nothing about Imperial Britain.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-06 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-07 07:53 am (UTC)Yeah, my seven years in Utah is written pretty deeply on my brain. There are definitely some positive aspects of Mormon society, but I can't get over how awful it would be to be in an abusive family and not only not be able to escape them in this life, but be locked in with them for time and all eternity. (Which, by the way, also directly contradicts something Jesus said ... but I'm here to poke holes in the Christian Right, not Mormonism.)