Friday Open Thread
From Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
The attitude of rising mass movements toward the family is of considerable interest. Almost all of our contemporary movements showed in their early stages a hostile attitude toward the family, and did all they could to discredit and disrupt it. They did it by undermining the authority of the parents; by facilitating divorce; by talking over the responsibility for feeding, educating and entertaining the children; and by encouraging illegitimacy. Crowded housing, exile, concentration camps and terror also helped to weaken and break up the family.
But lest we feel that this is unique to socialism, Hoffer adds:
Still, not one of our contemporary movements was so outspoken in its antagonism toward the family as was early Christianity. Jesus minced no words: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.” When He was told that His mother and brothers were outside desiring to speak with Him He said: “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother, and my brethren!” When one of His disciples asked leave to go and bury his father, Jesus said to him: “Follow me; and let the dead burty their dead.” He seemed to sense the ugly family conflicts His movement was bound to provoke by its proselytizing and by the fanatical hatred of its antagonists. “And the brother shall deliver upon the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise upon against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.” It is strange but true that he who preaches brotherly love preaches against love of mother, father, brother, sister, wife and children.
