Living in families isn’t easy. One adolescent who had recently been in all
kinds of trouble received a post card from his parents who were vacationing in
Being a family is tough, and trying to be a righteous family is in many ways even tougher. Righteousness is a high standard, and families who aspire to be righteous know quite a lot about failure, but it has always been so for God’s people.
Look at the biblical record, a record filled with family
failures. Adam and Eve have trouble
raising Cain. Noah ends up cursing his grandson
And then there is King David, the “man after God’s own heart.” What a soap opera! His marriage to Michal goes bad. He commits adultery with Bathsheba. His son Amnon rapes his daughter Tamar. His other son, Absalom, murders Amnon and then leads a rebellion against his father. What a mess!
The Scriptures do not portray an unrealistic picture of family life. Don’t kid yourself! God’s people are not, and have never been, exempt from the sinful patterns of behaviors so often bred by the intimacy of family life.
But what about the benefits of righteousness? Isn’t it a contradiction to say on one hand that righteous families are an attractive alternative, and then, on the other, to say that righteous families struggle with the same destructive sins that all families wrestle with?
No, it is not. There is no contradiction here. Righteousness is a blessing to the family. The psalmist is correct when he assures us, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked” (Psalm 1:1). The blessings of righteousness are not for families whose lives have never been broken by sin, but rather for those families who have learned the lessons of brokenness.
I remember a young boy at a family Christmas gathering a long time ago being showered with many gifts. His favorite was a bright new red truck. It had all the fancy bells and whistles on it. His father told him, “Son, be careful. Let me show you how to play with this truck so you won’t break it.” But in his eager and reckless enjoyment, the son forgot his father’s instructions and soon the bright red truck was broken. The boy knew he was in trouble, but he also knew that only his father could fix the truck. So he sheepishly brought the broken toy to his father. When his father asked what had happened, the little boy looked up and said, “It got broke.”
Our families are like that. The gift of family is one of the Father’s most precious gifts to us, and with his gift he has given instructions.
From heaven he says, “Children, be careful. Let me show you how to use this. Don’t break it.” But in our recklessness our families do “get broke.” Broken promises. Broken dreams. Broken hearts.
Webster has many definitions for the word “broken.” Something is said to be broken if it is fractured in two or more pieces. Something is also broken if it is cracked without breaking apart, incomplete, disorganized, violated, or simply in poor condition. And somewhere in that list is an accurate description of all of our families.
Many of us are uncomfortable thinking of our families as broken. We have reserved that label for homes that are “fractured in two or more pieces.” Really, though, are our homes any less broken when the relationships inside them are cracked but not yet apart, violated by broken promises, or simply in poor condition? How can we escape the truth? Our homes, our families are indeed broken! And like the little boy at Christmas, we must decide what to do with our broken toys. There are options.
Some people pretend that nothing is broken, that everything is fine. Sometimes we are so afraid to face our problems, we deny them instead. It is a very difficult thing to say to a family member, “I’m sorry,” when we’ve done something wrong. So we usually don’t. Damaged relationships go neglected, unreconciled, and eventually grow cold and distant.
Or perhaps we may admit things are broken, but we put the blame on others. I once visited with a divorced mother who was really struggling with her teenage daughter. Every time her daughter came home from occasional visits with her father, the girl seemed especially distant and hostile. The mother was very upset.
“I’m not the one who had the affair! I was the one who tried to keep the family together, but my daughter takes his side. It’s not fair!”
The mother had a point. From all I could tell, the ex-husband was a real bum. I dared, however, to suggest something to this bitter, upset woman sitting across from me.
“Have you ever asked your daughter’s forgiveness for your divorce?”
The mother came unglued.
“What! Are you kidding?! It wasn’t my fault. He should be asking for forgiveness, not me!” I told her I understood that he carried much of the blame, maybe even the lion’s share. But I wondered aloud if she had not contributed some to the poor relationship. She admitted as much, and said she probably never should have married him in the first place. Everyone had advised her against it, but she had been a rebellious teenager. I told her that her daughter didn’t deserve this.
“Maybe it would be good to simply ask your daughter to forgive you for whatever part you have played in her pain and sorrow,” I suggested.
Later that evening, the woman came back to see me.
“I left your office angry with you. But after I thought about it, I decided you were right. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I sat down and apologized to my daughter for all the mistakes I’ve made in my life that led to this divorce and the pain she was now feeling.”
Then the tears began to well up in her eyes.
“You won’t believe what happened next. My daughter hugged me and told me she forgave me. We talked for hours. It was the first time we’d talked like that in a long time.”
I am paraphrasing the Scriptures when I tell you, the Apostle John says, “If we say nothing is broken, we deceive ourselves” (1 John 1:8).
Sometimes we try to fix our families all by ourselves. We know something is wrong, and we try hard to make everything okay on our own. It is a tempting solution, but we soon learn that it is much easier to break things than to repair them. The basic problem is that we are not qualified to be spiritual repairmen, and often our solutions are worse than the original problems.
Whenever the plumbing in our house needs fixing, my wife gets worried. She’s afraid I’ll try to fix it myself. I did try once.
First, I replaced the pipe only to discover it was the wrong pipe. Then I replaced the right pipe but in the process knocked a hole in it. Then I called a friend to help, and together we were able to completely flood the kitchen floor.
Finally, after four frustrating hours of my own solutions, I called a plumber who came in and fixed everything in twenty minutes.
There was once a man who came to Jesus trying to fix himself. He asked the Lord, “Good teacher, what must I do to be saved,” but what he meant was, “What can I do to fix myself?”
Jesus answered the question with an intriguing comment, “Why do you call me good? There is none good but the Father.”
Then Jesus very bluntly said, “You know the instructions. Just follow them.”
The man replied, “Well, as a matter of fact, I have. I just wanted to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything.”
Jesus replied, “Well, if you really want to be perfectly fixed, just as you were created to be, you’ll need to love others just like God does. Sell all you have and give it to the poor and follow me.”
The young man went away sad, knowing he could never be that good. Jesus’ disciples were not unaware of the implications of Jesus’ command, and they asked their teacher, “Who then can be fixed?”
Here is Jesus’ answer to all who would rely on their own efforts to repair their lives: “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
If I may again paraphrase the Scriptures, “If instructions
could have been given by which we could fix ourselves, they would have been
given. No, the purpose of God’s instructions is to show us we need to be
repaired and to lead us to the divine Repairman of our lives” (Galatians
Perhaps most tragic of all of the responses to brokenness are the people whose response is simply to throw all the broken toys away. This is an option that has become all too common in our world. One person has said that we live in a “throw-away culture.” We throw away unwanted relationships, unwanted children, unwanted lives. This is so tragic because as terribly broken as our lives can be, the truth is that there is no gift given by the Father that is beyond his repair. For God so loved the world that he gave us one very special gift so that all our other gifts would never have to be thrown away. That gift is his Son, hanging on a cross where he would be broken so that you and I could be fixed. As the prophet says, “He was crushed for our iniquities, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
Being a righteous family does not mean we won’t fail and make mistakes. We will! And when we do, the precious gifts our father has given to bless our lives will break. Sometimes they will shatter into a thousand pieces.
When that happens, it is important that we have learned the lesson of brokenness. It is a lesson that can be learned only by those who know they are broken and are tired of denying it, who have tried to fix themselves and now know they cannot, who are tempted to gather up the broken pieces and throw them all away, but would rather not.
Here is the lesson of brokenness: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). Life is not about how we can fix our brokenness, but how our brokenness can fix us.
When our lives are littered with the shattered shards of dreams and promises once bright with hope, when relationships which once wrapped warm around us like beautiful quilts now lie at our feet, tattered and frayed, when our little red truck with all its bells and whistles crashes, we must carefully gather up all the pieces, bring them to our Father, and say, not, “It got broke,” but, “Here father. I’m sorry. I broke it!”
Now, here is the good news. We know what our father will say. We know.
“I know you broke it. I knew you would when I gave it to you. But I can fix it. I can fix everything, if you really want me to.” Or as Jesus once said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to bind up the broken” (Isaiah 61:1).