You remember Red Rover, don’t you?
It was a game we used to play during recess. We broke off into two teams, and each team lined up on opposite ends of the playground, facing the other team. You held hands with the kids on either side of you, and then your team decided who it would “invite” from the other side.
Red rover, red rover, send Jenny right over!
Fast as she could, Jenny came running with the sole purpose of breaking through your team’s chain of hands. If your team’s bonds were strong enough to resist Jenny’s assault, she was forced to join your side. But if she broke through, she returned to her team victorious, and she got to take your two teammates (the ones whose unity she severed) with her. The point of the game was to build up your team and pillage the enemy to the point of surrender and/or total annihilation.
There were three essential strategies for winning the game:
- First, minimize your weak spots by putting stronger kids on both sides of your weaker kids.
- Second, don’t call the strongest kids over (they’ll demolish you) or the weakest kids over (you want them to stay on the other side so you can demolish them); you want to call the middle-of-the-road kid over. The kid who can only climb halfway up the rope at P.E. is the one you want to call over.
- Third, exploit your enemy’s vulnerabilities. When they call your name, it’s no time to be macho or prove a point by breaking through the strongest kids. You find the kid who looks like she could pee her pants at any moment, and you run straight for her.
Red Rover revealed the best and the worst of our humanity. On the one hand, there was teamwork, solidarity, and support. On the other, if things went south, there was a lot of bickering, blaming, and shame.
That sounds a bit like how some of our families work, doesn’t it? When things are good, they can be really good. But mix in a divorce or some money problems – or just some good old fashioned resentment and contempt – and your “team” can become Lord of the Flies almost overnight. Staying connected as a family has never been harder; demands at work and school, extracurriculars, and financial and social pressures give families the same feeling your Red Rover team used to have when the biggest kid from the other side came lumbering full-speed to break your chain.
In his book Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that where the Christian family gets it wrong is in our assumption that we are supposed to be holding on to each other. In a family of believers, he wrote:
“Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves…[and] because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence from me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ brought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. This is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ.”
When Bonhoeffer wrote about the Christian family, he meant the Church, but the same principle also applies to any nuclear family. The idea is simple: think of your family life as a game of Red Rover. Most families try to cling to each other, but our finite, human strength is bound to fail and we risk being torn apart. Perhaps a better way of thinking about it would be for Jesus to stand between each family member, connecting us to one another. His strength will never fail to keep us united.
The Treasure of Togetherness
I confess: I live most of my life on autopilot. I know where I’m supposed to be, and when. I know how I should be spending my time at work. I know what my kids need from me. I know every Friday afternoon from 1-4 is set aside for a day-date with my wife. Most weeks, I’m cruising.
But then there are those moments you never forget: the emergencies that rouse you to turn off cruise control and be alert. The time my wife nearly died while delivering our daughter. Or the time our daughter, then three years old and excited to show me her brand new sundress, saw me standing on the other side of the street and came running, just as a Buick sped by. I still shudder to think how its fender came within a few inches of my baby girl’s head, just like I still have nightmares about the sound that my son’s head made when, at just two years of age, he fell and split his forehead on a sharp corner of his bedside table. Even scarier than the audible “thud” was the fact that, for the first time in his life, my son was completely still as he laid face-down, with blood pooling beneath his forehead.
For days after each of those moments, I deactivated autopilot. I bought my wife flowers. I held my daughter a little closer. I got on my knees and played on the floor with my son more. I was less tense and more relaxed, less frustrated and more joyful, less disappointed and more satisfied with my family. I prayed more, but I didn’t ask God for much. I prayed just to say, “Thank you.”
Why does it take a traumatic experience to open our eyes to how richly God has blessed us? Why are those of us who have the most to be thankful for the ones who take the gifts of family and friends for granted?
Once again, Bonhoeffer offered profound insight in Life Together:
“Christianity means community…The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer…It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”
This may be a good time to remember that Bonhoeffer spent two years (1943-1945) in Nazi prisons, isolated and alone. He was hanged on April 9, 1945, just three weeks before Hitler took his own life. His last words to his friend George Bell were, “This is the end, for me the beginning of life.”
Bonhoeffer isn’t the only Christian hero who believed strongly in the treasure of togetherness. The Apostle Paul was also imprisoned several times, and when he knew the end was near, all he wanted was to be with his Church family:
“Timothy, my dear son…I thank God…as night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.” (2 Tim. 1:2-4)
Even Jesus, when he was afraid, reluctant, and “sad to the point of death,” asked his brothers to stay close and keep watch with him while he pleaded with God. (see Matthew 26:38)
One of the psalmists wrote, “How good it is for brothers and sisters to dwell together in community!” (Ps. 133:1) I wish I could say that every time my kids nag – uh, I mean need – their daddy, or every time a church member calls urgently requesting my presence, I echo Psalm 133. But, when I’m on cruise control, I confess I take my family for granted. I float from one day to the next, without being truly mindful of and grateful for the treasure of our togetherness.
The Poison of the Ordinary
Max Lucado described this phenomenon as the poison of the ordinary:
“One of [Satan’s] slyest agents – the agent of familiarity. His mission is clear and total: ‘Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted.’ He won’t steal your salvation; he’ll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. You’ll grow accustomed to prayer and thereby not pray. Worship will become commonplace and study optional. With the passing of time he’ll infiltrate your heart with boredom and cover the cross with dust so you’ll be safely out of reach of change…”
…nor will he steal your home from you; he’ll do something far worse. He’ll paint it with a familiar coat of drabness. He’ll replace romance with routine. He’ll scatter the dust of yesterday over the wedding pictures in the hallway until they become a memory of another couple in another time. He won’t take your children, he’ll just make you too busy to notice them. His whispers to procrastinate are seductive. There is always next summer to coach the team…next week to teach Johnny how to pray. He’ll make you forget that the faces around your table will soon be at tables of their own. Hence, books will go unread, games will go unplayed, hearts will go unnurtured, and opportunities will go ignored. All because the poison of the ordinary has deadened your senses to the magic of the moment.”
Whether we’re talking about your Christian family at church, or your own parents, siblings, spouse, kids, and grandkids, the painful point rings true. If we let it, the ho-hum of the everyday will numb us to the extraordinary gift God gave us when He surrounded us with family.
Holding on to Jesus
None of us wants to be this way. I never dreamed one day I’d become the kind of person – much less the kind of husband and father – who requires a crisis to open my eyes to my family’s sacred worth. It just happens, even when we’re trying our best to do right by our families. My sense is that it happens because we’re approaching family life like we used to approach Red Rover. Our strategy is cutthroat: minimize our vulnerabilities, find a way to get ahead, and win. We rely on our own strength to get us through. We think that success and self-sufficiency are synonymous.
That might work for a while, but we know it’s not sustainable. For believers, the only way to stay connected as a family is if each of us holds on to Jesus with both hands. When it comes to raising kids who stay faithful to Jesus through their college years and beyond, maybe it’s not up to us to force faith upon them or micromanage their religious involvement. Maybe it’s not even up to us to hold their hands at all. Maybe all we need to do is show them how to cling to Jesus. And maybe the only way to do that is to make sure our kids at home – and our kids at church – see us holding on with both hands to the only Person strong enough to never let us go.
Stop holding on to your family.
Hold on to Jesus, and teach them to do the same.
