One Big Happy Biblical Family

I came across an interesting story today as I was perusing my usual news sources. You may have heard of Dan Cathy, president of the Chick-fil-A fast food chain and funder of Christian organizations with anti-gay policies. There was something of a brouhaha in the media over the summer as the result of an interview with the Baptist Press in which he talked about the Christian underpinnings of his company's management style and made statements like, "We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit." Gay rights activists took that as a signal to call for a boycott of Chick-fil-A restaurants and stage a "national same-sex kiss day at Chick-fil-A". 

I didn't really pay much attention to the whole thing, not in the least because Chick-fil-A restaurants are few and far between here in New England, so whatever nonsense their president may be up to doesn't register so strongly with me. I probably wouldn't patronize their restaurants if I did come across one, partly because I am now aware of, and disagree with, the anti-gay stance of their management, but also because I just don't care much for fast food restaurants and generally only eat in them on rare occasions when I find myself someplace like an airport or a highway rest stop and don't have anything else to choose from if I need to eat. 

But I was reminded of the whole thing today when I came across this story about Dan Cathy giving his first interview since the controversy erupted. He evaded questions about the topic per se, but did reiterate that, "Families are very important to our country… and they're very important to those of us who are concerned about being able to hang on to our heritage. We support biblical families, and they've always been a part of that."

So what exactly is this "biblical family" that Dan is always on about? I can hardly claim to be a bible scholar, but I have read it, and I can't think of any passages that explicitly lay out a blueprint for what a family is supposed to look like. I guess that leaves us to look for examples of families in the bible and live as they did. The only families I can think of off the top of my head that are discussed at any length are in the book of Genesis—Adam and Eve, Noah and his sons and, of course, the patriarchs.

Among the patriarchs is Jacob. Remember Jacob? He's the guy who had six sons with his wife Leah, two more sons with his other wife (and Leah's sister) Rachel, and another two sons each with Zilpah and Bilhah, the "handmaids" of Leah and Rachel. One big happy family! Jacob and his mates and their progeny aren't exactly obscure, minor figures in the Old Testament—they're pretty central to the whole narrative, with their saga taking up a couple dozen chapters of Genesis. From this I guess I can deduce that the Jacobean model is at least one acceptable version of a "biblical family"; it's all right there in black and white, without any kind of warnings or "don't try this at home" disclaimers. On the contrary, the descendants of Jacob's twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel, so clearly the Big Man in the Sky was cool with the whole arrangement.

Family Outings of the Patriarch

So am I now to conclude that Dan Cathy thinks it's OK for me to have two wives plus two semi-wives? Somehow I don't think that's what Dan had in mind, but it is right there in Genesis. It just goes to show that before you go waving the bible around as the operations manual for how we should all live, you should probably read what's in it.