Today, let's talk about the issue of our family. and nope, i'm not going to talk about the importance of family time or how we should honour our parents though they are important as well. I'm going to talk about family upbringing today. How does it affect us in many ways and helped shaped us to be who we are today.

We tend to think that we are who we are. We are who we are because of our genes, our hard work, our desire. The kind of influence our family has on us has been pretty much undermined and i hope to put the spotlight on it today.

When you are a child, 80% of who you are is dependent on your family. Whatever your family do is correct. You basically base your moral benchmark, views about the world and lifestyle on what you see from the family. The other 20% is based on your inherent traits. You'll hardly see a child argue to a gambling dad about the correctness of gambling. Whatever the family does, we embrace as a child. Our parents are who we look up to and whatever they do, we take after them. Our moral bearings and spiritual DNA is built from our family. What we see in a family, it is always right.

Sounds alright? Yes it is alright until we consider the fact that no family is perfect. We're like a sponge, we absorb everything when we're young. Everything from the good to the bad. We should never underestimate the profound impact this family upbringing has on us.

Let me give you a few observations (These are just examples. your situation maybe the same. As you read them, you can ask yourself the same question.)

How our family upbringing can affect our Christian life

If we're from a typical Asian family and our dads are more disciplinary in nature. They don't share as much and show love in a more inexpressive manner. They are normally less personal as well.

Relating this back to our walk with God. When we relate to God our father, we may naturally base this relationship back to what we experience at home. God is more disciplinary and less personal as well. It just does not make sense to us that a fatherly figure can be personal as well.

However, this is not all that bad. With a family upbringing like this, you have a fatherly figure to take after and these dads tend to take more ownership of the family, lead and make major decisions in the family. When we take that and lead in the church, we will not shy away from responsibilities as well.

The trick here is to balance things up.

How does our family upbringing can affect how we view others

There are some families i have come across that is not very sociable by nature. Their extended family is rather small if they are even existent. There is a generally distrust of the people outside of the family. Some common comments are like "Be careful when you go out with friends, don't anyhow lend people money", "Don't talk to people you don't know.", "Be careful of friends who make friends with you for your money." "People out there are not trustworthy" "you can go church but don't give them money" They grow up in an environment and it makes it difficult for them to open to others especially in the church.

My point to you today is that if you want to know why your sheep is acting in a certain way, why they are struggling in a certain area or why they seem "weird", look beyond treating the superficial wound. There may be many reasons like past bad experiences, friends they mix with etc. But i'm saying that one main contributing factor to who people are, especially when they are below 12, is family upbringing, family culture and the model set for them by their parents or elder siblings.

When we hit 12 and beyond to 20+, we slowly start to see and understand that not everything our family does is helpful to us. We start to find our identity to who we really want to be. There is a world beyond our family. When we enter into the church, another set of stuggle comes in as we now have the ideal model and template of how a family (CG) should be like. The impact of our family upbringing will slowly diminish, but it will stay with us for the rest of our lives.


Know how your family upbringing have positively or negatively impacted you and grow from there. My challenge to you today is to pick out the strengths in which your family have grew you to be, and discard the wrong things that your parents may have inadvertently taught you. (E.g. Gambling, smoking, judgmental, complaining, whining, hording everything to ourselves etc.) This applies when you are shepherding others as well.

We are called to be the light of the world. We should know that our families are imperfect. So instead of continuing allowing your family to lead you by the noose in everything, take ownership of your family and lead the spiritual charge there.

Regards,

jie hui