Currently in the United States, the ideal family unit is generally consists of two parents who have 2.5 children. What most Americans have failed to realize is that this understanding of what a family is has only existed post-industrialization (word choice?) in the United States. Prior to Industrialization, families were much larger and included grandfathers, grandmothers, aunts, and uncles. Much for the reason is because a majority of families had to farm land, which takes a lot of people to do well, or each work jobs to survive. For instance, my grandfather grew up on a farm in Minnesota and had 16 brothers and sisters. His parents had so many children because they each helped in caring for the farm in order to pay the bills and live off their own land. When the depression hit, my great-grandfather, after losing everything, killed himself. My grandfather’s family was broken up and sent all over the greater Minnesota area to family and friends who could take them in and care for them. Before he was a teen, my grandfather was sent off to live with his uncle and aunt, who worked another farm in the area. After the passing of his father, my grandfather’s understanding of family was changed for the rest of his life; he no longer saw his family as those who were his parents or blood siblings. While it was hidden under a tough exterior, underneath existed a man who believed family was more than one’s blood relatives.
This weekend a movie based on the true story of current Baltimore Ravens player Michael Oher called The Blind Side arrived in theaters around the world, which also raised questions about the contemporary definition of family. Set in Memphis, Tennessee around 2003, the movie is about a black boy from a poor urban area who is taken away from his mother at the age of seven by child-protective services. The boy bounces in and out of foster homes and homes of people who welcome him in, until he is invited to stay with a white family. At the beginning of the movie, Michael enters a predominantly white private Christian school in Memphis on a sports scholarship, after the father of a friend he is staying with convinces the school to enroll him. Michael soon hears this helpful man and his wife fighting about the strain of having him in the house, and he finds himself back on the street, with no where to go and temperatures nearing freezing.
At this pivotal moment Michael’s story changes. After seeing him walking in the rain, Leigh Anne Tuohy, a woman who has two children at Michael’s school, invites him to come stay the night at her house. Over time, Leigh Anne and her family invite Michael to join their family as their son, as they beginning to fall in love with a boy they never expected to. By the end of the movie Michael has moved from being a boy who they care for, to being a son and brother who the family loves as their own.
As the movie comes to an end, Leigh Anne, played by Sandra Bullock, speaks about a boy she read about in the paper who was a great athlete who was killed on his twenty-first birthday. Leigh Anne raises the question, what if someone would have cared for this boy, as the Tuohy’s had cared for Michael; would his life have looked different?
While there are issues within the character Leigh Anne’s question, such as, should only those who are “good athletes” or those who show promise be helped out of their situation, I think the question is getting at something important. If we reform her question to ask, What if others had cared for this boy, a normal boy who had encountered unfortunate life circumstances? Maybe even taken in by a family as their own child? How would this boy’s life have been different?
That is the question I believe needs to be directed right at the church. Jesus states, “whoever cares for the least of these, cares for me” in Matthew 25. Jesus even states in a world where children are seen as the lowest ranking members of the cast system, “let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the Kingdom belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14). Jesus calls his people, his Church, to care for those who society and culture has made outcasts, the lowest of the low. Is the church missing its call to care for those in need? It is so easy to drive into urban areas, care for those in need for a day, two days, or even a week, but what about caring for those in need daily? What about rescuing a boy or girl who is living in poverty and turmoil daily?
What about redefining what we believe a “Christian family” is? After all, Jesus redefines family as those who “do the will of his father are his brothers and sisters” (Matthew 12:50). Peter even calls the church the “family of God” (1 Peter 4:17). As the Church invites those who are in need in and askes them to become a part of the family of God, the Church redefines what it means to be family.
In the movie, while the coach is convincing the board of the school to admit Michael, he appeals to them by stating, “What does this banner say? It says Christian!” Many Christians are willing to tattoo, wear shirts, or put stickers on our cars like banners that tell the world they are followers of Jesus. But how many of us are willing to let our lives, including how we spend our money, how we care for those in need, and how we define family, be banners that tell the world we are followers of Jesus? My feeling as I look at the church is that a lot more people are okay with purchasing a Christian bumper sticker or t-shirt, before even thinking about changing how they would define family, in order to care for those who Jesus states, “when you care for the least of these, you care for me.”
It is the church’s call to care for, show compassion toward, and take in those who are need. It might not look exactly as it did for the Tuohy family, but I think when we start to redefine our understanding of what family is, like the Tuohy family did, we will see those in our community and around the world differently.
More Resources for the film The Blind Side at: http://www.youthworker.com/youth-ministry-resources-ideas/youth-culture-news/11617089/
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