Blog
“Is Family Withdrawal a Biblical Practice?”
Categories: Meditations
Over the past several years, I’ve become aware of a practice among brethren that I’ll call, for lack of a better term, family withdrawal. Here’s how it goes: a child of Christian parents falls away, usually in some dramatic fashion. In response, their family, particularly their parents, “withdraws” from them. They won’t eat with them. The erring Christian is no longer welcome at family gatherings. Sometimes, they won’t even talk to them.
This is certainly a severe sanction. As a young man, I would have been devastated if my parents had chosen to shun me like that. However, I do not believe that it is Biblically required, and I am not at all certain that it is even wise.
First, it’s worth noting that all of the passages in the New Testament that concern generic withdrawal, Matthew 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, and 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, are addressed to churches. These are texts about how communities of believers are to censure unruly members.
There is no corresponding command given to individuals (I believe that 1 Timothy 6:5b in the KJV is a later addition and does not belong in the text). Just as it is error to presume that anything an individual can do, the church can do, it’s equally erroneous to presume that all individual Christians are granted the powers of the church, and church discipline needs to be left in the hands of the church.
Even in cases where the church does withdraw from an individual, that decision will have different effects on the Christian family members of that individual than it will on anyone else. For instance, the woman of God whose husband is withdrawn from is still responsible for honoring 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, which calls her to the most intimate relationship of all. Indeed, if we read the text strictly, 1 Peter 3:1-6 appears to be addressed specifically to women with out-of-duty husbands. She is to attempt to win him back not by showing disapproval, but by showing love.
It’s appropriate to view other family relationships through a similar lens. Most Christian fathers understand Ephesians 6:4 to be primarily about young children, but secondarily to be about adult children. Certainly, my father continued to instruct me as long as he lived! Is family withdrawal more likely to be recognized as discipline and instruction, or as a provocation to anger?
We need also to consider 2 Thessalonians 3:15. Whatever actions we take as the result of a withdrawal, they need to communicate brotherly love and admonition rather than enmity. This is a particularly powerful instruction in a family context. Natural affection (the absence of which Paul condemns in Romans 1:31) calls families to associate with one another. If I stopped inviting my siblings to my house for the holidays, all who heard of it, even in the world, would assume that we had become enemies.
Of course, in the final analysis, all of us can associate with whomever we please and shun whomever we please. If someone believes that cutting off social interaction is the wisest way to deal with a child who isn’t faithful to the Lord, they can do that. However, that’s far from the only godly way to proceed, and I suspect that it is rarely the best.
Certainly, things cannot continue as they were between any Christian and a family member who turns their back on God, but there’s a lot of distance between that and cutting off most/all contact. In my experience, parents are most successful when they negotiate a middle way between those two extremes. Continued interaction combined with godly admonition seems to be the combination most likely to win an erring child back. Ostracism, on the other hand, rarely convinces anyone.
