So Your Family Isn't Perfect?

So Your Family Isn't Perfect?

Publication: The Lookout

Date: November 25, 2007

Column: First Look

Category: Family; Presidents; Failure; Tragedy; Imperfect

There has only been one perfect family, and it didn't stay that way very long. Adam and Eve were tailor-made for each other, and the Tailor who made them was God himself. They had a perfect Father, a perfect home, and no rivals for their spouse's affection. Yet when sin entered the picture, they ended up playing the blame game; and when their children came along, the first man ever born (Cain) killed the second man born (Abel).

Flawed Families

Down through biblical history, one family after another revealed its flaws. We honor Noah for building the ark, but we don't quite know what to do with that messy incident where he lay drunk and naked inside his tent. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob earned distinction as great patriarchs, but dishonesty, rivalry, and favoritism tainted their family stories.

Moses had a spat with his wife Zipporah over the circumcision of their son, and his brother Aaron, destined to become the high priest, let him down big-time by fashioning an idol shaped like a golden calf. Samson possessed incredible strength, but his poor judgment with women ruined his life.

Eli the priest served the Lord, but his sons were selfish and immoral. King David suffered the death of his infant son born to Bathsheba, and his son Absalom led a civil rebellion that ended in tragedy. Even the wise man Solomon, who wrote so eloquently about family life and parenthood in Proverbs, married multiple wives who turned his heart from the Lord.

First Families

American history is filled with family tragedy as well.

We know George Washington as the father of our country, but his own father died when George was 11 years old, and according to one of his biographers, his mother "lived long enough to see him elected president but never extolled or even acknowledged his public triumphs."

In a duel, Andrew Jackson killed a man he believed had slandered his wife Rachel.

Abraham Lincoln was a young boy when his mother Nancy died. He and his wife Mary had four sons: Eddie, who died before his fourth birthday; Willie, who died in the White House at age 11; and Tad, who died at age 18, six years after Lincoln was assassinated. Of their four sons only the firstborn, Robert, lived into adulthood.

When Eleanor Roosevelt was eight years old her mother died of diphtheria, and her father died from complications of alcoholism two years later. She married her distant cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt (making her the only first lady who didn't change her name upon marriage). She bore six children, but one of her sons, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., died in infancy. In the White House Eleanor tended to her husband's needs after he was stricken with polio.

Jacqueline Kennedy was at her husband's side when he was gunned down in Dallas in 1963.

During Jimmy Carter's term in office, his brother Billy was often in the news, portrayed as a beer-guzzling buffoon who embarrassed the president with his outlandish behavior.

Ronald Reagan's first marriage ended in divorce. Bill Clinton's marital infidelity nearly ended his presidency in impeachment. By his own admission, George W. Bush had to overcome his youthful penchant for alcohol.

Faithful Families

It's amazing how many of these leaders found a measure of success in public life despite experiencing failure and grief in their homes. Whatever pain and pressure we face in our own families, we need to trust God to fulfill his purpose. He has worked with imperfect people ever since Adam and Eve.