family worship = gov't in action

I’ve been thinking lately about family worship and about government. Not together, but as separate topics. Then I remembered hearing or reading somewhere this propostion: that God’s primary unit of government on earth is the family. If that’s true--and I believe it is--then what God says about the family's role should give us some help in what we think about government's.

And what do we think about government's role? Some smart guys a long time ago thought this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I have to say first I’m embarrassed and ashamed (both as a citizen and an English teacher) that for my whole life I’ve read this wrong. I had always read it to mean in order to form a more perfect union, we the people do these things: we establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense, promote general welfare, and secure blessings. And on top of that, we write this Constitution.

Not only does that not make sense (how can you do those things apart from the C?), it’s not at all what the grammar makes it say. What it really says is this: We the People do ordain and establish this Constitution in order to...

• form a more perfect union
• establish Justice,
• insure domestic Tranquility,
• provide for the common defense,
• promote the general welfare,
• and secure the Blessings of Liberty

So we the people don’t do the benefits. We the people do the Constitution in order to promote the benefits.

So what’s that got to with family worship? Everything.

As God’s primary governmental unit on earth, the family (I should qualify that: the family with Christ at its center, the worshiping family) effects the same benefits that our Constitution is supposed to. Let's look at each. I’ll save the first for last--you’ll see why.

1. The worshiping family establishes justice. It acknowledges that God is the first and only source of Law and that God is both merciful and just.

2. The worshiping family insures domestic tranquility. When Mom and Dad’s eyes are on Christ first and most, the family does not fall apart. It grows in grace like a tree planted by water.

3. The worshiping family provides for the common defense. Christ teaches us to lay our lives down for each other. Could there be a more effective call to the common defense than Christ’s call to take up our cross, die to ourselves, and follow him?

4. The worshiping family promotes the general welfare. To treasure Christ above all things is to obey Him, which means we love our neighbors as ourselves, we hold loosely to things of this world, which is passing away. To obey Christ is to “work as unto the Lord” with “honest weights and measures.”

5. The worshiping family secures the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity. When we worship Christ, we worship the actual source of liberty. Christ destroys chains, and Christ promises his blessings to those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.

6. Finally, if the nation were made up of worshiping families, and we were receiving all the benefits of 1 - 5, how would we not form a more perfect union?

Our Constitution, as good a document as it is, is no match for the government of the Christ-centered family. So parents, gather your family around God's word and get to the work of governing.