Family Month: The New Pride Month
For the reasons sketched here, it makes sense to celebrate June as Family Month.
The last 10 years or so have witnessed numerous momentous changes in American culture. One of the biggest was this: the normalization and celebration of “Pride Month.”
After years of feeling like strangers in our own land, things have shifted. Numerous corporations and organizations that used to shout their praise of Pride Month to the skies have gone quiet regarding it. They are not using a Pride logo online. They are not bankrolling Pride events. Instead of promoting radical gender ideology and pagan sexuality, they seem to have returned to what they are ostensibly in business to do: selling computers, hairdryers, and lawnmowers. What a wild idea for a company!
We believers can give thanks to God for this cultural shift. Yet we need not stop there. In June, instead of recognizing Pride Month, we can celebrate “Family Month.” Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) has indeed introduced a resolution to declare the month of June as Family Month. We can do so because God loves the family. God made the family the foundational building block of society, forming it before any other institution (Genesis 2). It is not the government that gives stability to a nation; it is the family that forms the social concrete of a thriving country.
Despite many attacks, the family is alive. God’s design is not defeated. For the reasons sketched here, it makes sense to celebrate June as Family Month.
Honoring God in the Simple Things
We need not do so in an obnoxious way. We can do so in a deeply grateful way. The little things matter in this regard: playing catch. Going on walks. Putting away phones for extended dinner conversation. Reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” together at night. Serving the church together. Going on a fun family trip and eating ice cream. Most of life’s greatest joys, we recall, are found in life’s quietest moments.
Of course, Family Month ought not to create barriers between married Christians and single Christians. The church is, in ultimate terms, the true family of God. We are one “household” in Christ (Ephesians 2:11-22). The natural family points us to the greater family, the family of God from every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group.
Family Month can be a great time to pray over how to strengthen families in America. One of every three children in America is born out of wedlock. Broken families have proliferated. Fathers are struggling. Even Christians who honor God’s design of the family may have experienced not abiding joy in their home environment, but chaos and pain. Much as we thank God for his gifts, we also soberly recognize that not every home was or is a happy one.
Because of this, we need to do all we can to rebuild and strengthen the natural family. There are no easy fixes here, but Christians ought to be a bold and loving voice in this country for the reviving of the American home. So many of the battles we fight in the public square are won or lost in the life of the family, after all.
Pride Will Not Last (but Thankfulness Will)
Whatever comes of our efforts, we can continue to champion a better way than the way of Pride. In the end, this is the choice before us: either pride (in ourselves) or thankfulness (to God). We must choose well here, for pride has a shelf life. It is very powerful for a time, but it will not last. It will be wiped from the face of the earth when the Son of God puts the world to rights (Revelation 20).
Gratitude — for all of God’s wonderful gifts, including the family — will last forever, however. For all eternity to come, we will praise God for his kindness to sinners like us. We will do so, many of us, with members of our own family, for the family has proven so influential for many of us in Christian discipleship. But even more than our natural ties, we will praise the slain Lamb with our broader family, the people of God, in the new heavens and new earth.
These truths are worth defending and proclaiming even if they are unpopular with some. Yet we do not stop there. We celebrate the family. No matter what our society chooses to label June, now or in the coming days, we can say to one another, a grateful smile on our face:
Happy Family Month.
Owen Strachan is Senior Fellow for FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview.
