Family Is for Our Humility

Jesus said a prophet is never welcomed in their hometown. “Isn’t he the carpenter’s son?” they asked when he made wild claims about himself. Sure, Nazareth was wrong to doubt Jesus. But for the rest of us, we need people who will laugh when we claim the world revolves around us.

None of us have perfect families. Many of us have family histories filled with trauma and horrific secrets. But even in more healthy, supportive families, I think God intends to use our families to keep us grounded.

I remember visiting home during college and barely recognizing the child I reverted to when I was there. I don’t know what would happen in that two-and-a-half-hour drive, but suddenly my patience would evaporate, and I would throw what can only be described as temper tantrums over the smallest infractions. What compounded my frustration even more was knowing that I was coming home to parents who really cared about me. What was wrong with me?

I’m sure there are a variety of factors that contribute to this phenomenon, and I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this. But the more I reflected on what really irked me on those visits home, the more I realized how much pride was at work.

You see, I had “become someone” away at college—someone that my parents didn’t know, someone that had done things they didn’t witness. To my mom I was still, and would always be, her “little one.” I would never be able to impress my parents because their love for me was never wrapped up in what I could accomplish. But if I’m honest, this is often the love I prefer.

We spend our whole lives being told and telling ourselves that we’re inadequate in a variety of ways. So quite naturally we also spend our whole lives trying to prove that we’re enough. As we meet people in adulthood, we introduce ourselves by our careers, our relational status, and anything else that could signify that they should take an interest in us.

Then we go home, and none of that seems to matter. All the hard work we’ve done fashioning and managing our image before the world goes out the window. We’re just “the little one” again. And yes, I get how messed up this is. Grace has never come easy to me because understanding grace always begins with humility. It admits need and an inability to establish relationship through our own effort.

I don’t think most of us are comfortable with grace. Unconditional love sounds great in theory, but in a fallen world it’s difficult to trust. That’s why so much faulty religion is about earning God’s approval. If God is going to love us, we must give him a reason.

But the gospel of Jesus is that God loves us because of who he is, not because of who we are or what we’ve done. In the book of Matthew before Jesus begins to preach, heal, and drive out demons, he is baptized. And when he comes up from the water a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). Jesus’s ministry flowed out of his Father’s unconditional love; the Father didn’t love him because of the ministry he did. Jesus never forgot this. For the rest of us it’s nearly impossible to remember, especially as we begin to accomplish things others admire.

Paul had quite the resume within his Jewish community, which he recounts in Philippians 3:5–6. “Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” Even his parents would have been impressed! But Paul knew that he could either stand on this resume or he could stand on Christ. And in the next verse he leaves no doubt about his choice: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ” (Phil. 3:7).

We can’t have it both ways. If we measure our worth by our resumes, we will forfeit grace in the process. Or as Jonah proclaimed when God rescued him from the fish: “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love” (Jonah 2:8).  Family can be a gift that reminds us that our resumes are not who we are.

But it’s not just this grace from family that humbles us. It’s also their less-than-flattering stories of us that always seem to get repeated at the most inopportune times. They can recount our embarrassing moments and the times we presented ourselves completely different from the “refined adult” we’ve become. They remember who we were before we were the experts in our field of study or politically enlightened.

I’m not endorsing families intentionally shaming us in front of friends or disrespecting our requests for discretion with regard to sharing family history. But as we learn to present the more “acceptable” versions of ourselves to the world, it’s easy for us to buy our own PR. It’s easy to begin seeing ourselves primarily as our own projection.

We need to be reminded that deep down we’re all still scared little kids that often don’t know what we’re doing. We need to be reminded that one day we will look back on our present self with the same enlightened derision as we do now of our younger years.

When the disciples asked Jesus who was the greatest in the kingdom of God, Jesus called a child over and said, “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:4). One way to cultivate the humility of a child is to remember that we were all once children!

So next time your dad begins sharing that story with your friends that puts a smudge on the image you work so hard to maintain, include just a smidge of gratitude in your passive-aggressive, “Thanks, Dad.”

I realize that I am fortunate (and sometimes annoyed!) to have a family that humbles me in these ways. Some parents tragically reinforce the narrative that we are our resume. Thankfully, the friends and siblings who have known us the longest can still play this humbling role in our lives.

Even for those of us blessed to have loving families, navigating family as an adult can be challenging. In the midst of the challenge, don’t miss out on how God uses family to humble us.