Pro-Family and Anti-Family

It’s not just religious conservatives who portray themselves as being for family values. It seems to be a calling card for all sorts of belief systems. But when David Plotz blogged the bible (and inspired my own efforts), he made a very insightful observation: aspects of religion can be considerably anti-family. At least from the point of view of pro-family rhetoric. [My] examples:

• Deuteronomy requires you to report your own family to the authorities if they suggest worshiping gods other than YHWH and to be their executioner.
• In the Binding of Isaac (as discussed before), YHWH requires Abraham to put religion above his family.
• YHWH gets Hoshea to marry a prostitute just to prove a point thereby turning his whole family life upside down. Ezekiel is not allowed to mourn for his wife to prove another theological point.
• Families are struck down for one member’s transgression all the time. For instance David’s affair with Bathsheba is punished by the death of his child (amongst several punishments).
• In the New Testament Jesus left his family and expected his disciples to leave their families behind too and prioritise him.
• Same for Buddha: when he saw the Four Signs, he left his wife and kids behind in a palace and went off to search for Enlightenment. Enlightenment for himself, of course.
• On this note, Buddhist countries often took [ie. stole] each family’s firstborn to become a monk.

These are all impositions on the family that wouldn’t have been there before, ones that people would otherwise resist. But religion is largely about running a society smoothly and perpetuating itself. Both of these require the subordination of you and your family to some greater ideal. So it’s inevitable that religion will end up going against family autonomy. Of course any system that contributes to running a society is similar. For instance:

• The state (which usually also requires you to report a family member if you think they’re about to commit a crime)
• Conventional morality (which would require you to do the same)
• The world of work (which usually requires you to leave your family for a very large chunk of your day even though this may be done to provide for them)

Any complex system or social contract will require commitment to ideals over and above the family. From the above examples it’s not necessarily a bad thing: if family was always top priority we’d still be living in the trees, trapped in a Hobbesean war of all against all. Which just shows the family-values rhetoric for what it is: cheap, false, nasty politics.