The Storm-Tossed Family
How the Cross Reshapes the Home
(B&H, 2018)
WHO: Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
HE SAYS: “The only safe harbor for a storm-tossed family is a nail-scarred home.”
THE BIG IDEA: Whatever type of family you have or came from, family is difficult because family is an echo of the gospel.
THE PROGRESSION:
This book examines the family unit in light of what Christ did on the cross. Through 14 chapters the author discusses different aspects of family—from marriage to divorce to parenting to aging. He proposes that families have so much power over us because family is an echo of the gospel.
“Your family will lead you where you never expected to go. But this is no reason for fear. The path before you is the way of the cross.”
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A CONVERSATION WITH RUSSELL MOORE
How would you define family in light of the cross?
The church is a household economy, where all of us use our gifts for the sake of the mission. The fact that every person has a gift for the upbuilding of the rest of us is one more way of God signaling to us that we belong. We are wanted. We are loved. We are family. That means no Christian lives alone, and no Christian dies alone. There’s no such thing as a “single” Christian.
What inspired you to write on the topic of family?
We are shaped and formed by family in all sorts of routine and unexceptional ways that we may never even notice or remember. However, we must see the family clearly, and we must see beyond it. The only safe harbor for a storm-tossed family is a nail-scarred home.
Why did you use the phrase “Storm-Tossed Family”? What does that entail?
Bound up in a storm is both a blessing and a curse. And in both the blessing of rain and the peril of the storm, we lose all of our illusions of control. Family is like that too: the source of life-giving blessing but also of excruciating terror, often all at the same time.
How does the cross tie into that metaphor?
These families of ours can be filled with joy, but will always make us vulnerable to pain. And the joy and the pain are pointing us to the same place: the cross.
