Families the Foundation of our Future
Today, the very word defining family comes down to us from Scotland. Clan is the the word recognized around the world to describe family or kinship groups, having been associated with cultures and races as disparate as Africans, Chinese, Eskimos, Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, Middle Easterners, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and Russians. Of course originally a Gaelic word meaning “children” clan saw its first English language usage almost six centuries ago describing the distinctive character of the Gaelic social groups in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
So the word clan itself is Gaelic, adopted by the English to explain the culture’s kindred groups, whose individuals – the children – collectively define a family. The concept of clan is ancient and central to the Gaelic culture. It is also Biblical, the family being the most important social group in God’s creation. The Bible is filled with teaching and reverence for the formation, maintenance, support and success of the Family. The core of Christian belief is the Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit living in common as one. The Bible calls humans God’s children, and welcomes them as His sons and daughters, brothers and sisters to each other. (2 Corinthians 6:18) The Bible sanctifies and instructs men and women to marry becoming one flesh. (Genesis 2:24) The Bible instructs the married in fidelity and permanence, that what God has joined let no man separate. (Matthew 19:4) The Bible instructs married couples to have many children, a heritage and blessing of God. (Psalms 127:3) The Bible instructs parents to raise children properly to respect their mother and father, and instructs the children the same. (Exodus 20:12; Proverbs 2:6) The Bible teaches parents to raise children to love and respect God, living Godly lives. (Genesis 18:19) The Bible teaches that work is dignified, and honors God (Col 3:23) and that Peter was a fisherman, Paul a tentmaker and Jesus a carpenter. The Bible teaches to provide for relatives and especially household members. (1 Timothy 5:8) The Bible teaches to care especially for the poor and the needy, the widows, orphans, sick and infirm. The Bible teaches that God will protect, provide for and bless the children of the family of God. There is responsibility for family members, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” (2 Thessalonians. 3:10) The Bible teaches that good men leave inheritance even to his children’s children. (Proverbs 13:22)
According to the Bible, part of God’s plan is His desire for His human children to experience Godly blessings on earth through the life-long experience of marriage and raising children within a family. It should be no surprise that the Gospel naturally joined with ancient Gaelic traditions of family, of honoring ancestors and inspiring descendants, or that the Gaelic Clans would be our historical model for applied Christian living, with its lessons, longevity and achievements for families.
Our worldview observes that believers created the United States of America, where uniquely, our Christian faith joined with our Constitutional Democratic Republic and Free Market Capitalism to usher in the greatest rise in the human condition in history, what we call our culture, our Way of Life, the Earthly Trinity and the Light and Envy of the World.
As religion is a foundational pillar of our culture, the family is where the vital faith is first introduced to the children of Godly parents. The successful practice of both democracy and capitalism are dependent upon men and women of private virtue acting in the spirit of public virtue. Religion is the necessary ingredient in forming the private virtue that sustains the public virtue that harnesses men’s passions for Christianity, Capitalism and our Constitutional Republic to fully flourish.
History shows us plainly the benefits of applied Christian living through the family, and equally the tragedies of godless moral relativism practiced otherwise in the world. It is in the family that the sanctity of life, the value of children are celebrated and personal and social responsibilities are habituated. Within the family, children receive parenting that loves them, teaches them, disciplines them and sets examples for them, especially with respect to a person’s rights and responsibilities. It is in the family that many of the issues of the wider culture are first encountered, and the lessons vital to successful personal, family and community life are learned. God teaches that His children are free and equal, and given free-will to exercise their rational minds. These God-given rights come with God-given responsibilities; to love, honor and respect; to think rationally, speak truthfully, work diligently, serve faithfully and give joyfully. These pillars of Godly personhood, are delivered in God’s families by Godly parents to their children. The teaching by the parents of Godly truths to the children also sets the important example of evangelism, the spread of the Gospel from one to another, even to everyone in every corner of the earth.
The family is the incubator of morality, and morality is the foundation of freedom. In the family we learn about individual rights in tension with individual responsibilities, and the freedom of one in tension with the rights of another. In the family we learn that there are individuals that are independent and those that are dependent, in youth, age or infirmity. The success of the family, and the individuals within, depends upon the independence of nature of the many, so that the dependent few may be cared for and survive. In both Biblical and Gaelic formulations of the family, the strong protected and provided for the weak – the young, old, widows, orphans and weak. The successful balance between independent and dependent is a state-of-nature and an historical lesson for families, communities and nations: when the strength of the independents is no longer able to protect the weakness of the dependents, failure results. This is the natural order of things, whether family, community, church, government or nation. For this reason independence of nature is a Godly prerogative for success on Earth at every stage of human association; does it go without saying that in a given population, the greater the number of independents, the fewer the number of dependents, and thus the greater health and vitality of the population?
This required independence must be guided by morality, by the religion that is taught by parents to children in the family that breeds private virtue. Private virtue is a necessity for the person, and for each person in relationship with others. This is first learned in the family, by instruction and by example. The Godly family is made up of model members and is a model community. The Bible teaches the benefits of earthly blessings and heavenly salvation and combines in our culture with the Gaelic Clan traditions of honoring ancestors and inspiring descendants.
So we see the Biblical and Gaelic examples that the Family is morality. The Family is protection and safety, provision, prosperity and progress. The Family is role models. The God honoring family prays and enjoys God’s protection, provision and prosperity into posterity. The God honoring family delivers the role models for the individual and the group; it showcases the classic Internal and External paradigm. Man must advance his internal morality toward more-perfect God honoring virtue through his thoughts, words and deeds; and he must effect advance of his external morality, his relations with the world, through his thoughts, word and deeds. The Gaelic Christian men and women improved themselves and their families, the Gaelic Christian family improved themselves and their community – Internal & External.
A principal example of this Gaelic Christian Internal/External paradigm at work relates to what became known as the seminal political theory the consent of the governed. Long practiced among the clans, as early as 603AD we find Abbot Dinoot of the gaelic Christian family Bangor Abbey informing the Roman Catholic Gregory that his traditions could not surrender to Roman form without the “consent of his people.” Scotsman John Duns Scotus first formally articulated this concept in 1290. In his Ordinato he explained individual rights existing for children in a family subject to the sovereignty of the head of the family, but if an issue exceeded in scope or importance the family jurisdiction, then matters were settled by a representative elected and ruling by the consent of the governed. Robert Munro calls this contribution of ancient Scottish family traditions nothing less than the “foundation of individual liberty and dignity in Western Civilization.”
Our Western Christian Civilization, born, incubated and delivered by families, is the ecosystem responsible for creating and necessary for preserving all that we have. As sublimely distilled in America the pillars of this Earthly Trinity are Christianity, our Constitutional Democratic Republic and Free Market Capitalism. Each of these is under assault in America and around the world. Without courageous champions each of these can disappear in a generation. Families nurture and guide the current and bring the future generations into the world. Strong, stable, confident and committed families are the proven historical model and the foundation our future.
Scotus
The Scottish Invention of America, Democracy and Human Rights, Alexander Klieforth and Robert Munro 2004
Photo: Family Picnic in the Hills, The National Galleries of Scotland