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Take Back Your Family: From the Tyrants of Burnout, Busyness, Individualism, and the Nuclear Ideal

by Jefferson Bethke · 2021

New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bethke delivers a powerful critique of the Western notion of the nuclear family and calls us to a sweeping new paradigm that brings not only longed-for stability but also radical… more

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Quotes from the Book

Notice how not even once were we told to just bow down and worship God via song for our entire lives. Yet our churches are nearly addicted to making this the high point of spiritual formation and worship. And let me be clear, this is important and true. But, at least in Genesis, it's not primary. Or another way to put it is, yes, we are called to sing to God but that singing happens through our vocation, not our mouths. Worship at the beginning of the Bible primarily was centered around the job God gave us. Our job was to make, cultivate, create, build, steward, and tame. That is the original mission, the original mandate.
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If your kids are consumers, which most of us raise our kids to be, because our culture raises us to be, then [passing inherited wealth] is a bad idea. We consume and eat and fill ourselves with every technological, sexual, cultural, societal, and emotional pleasure possible. That is the goal of life. And if that's our way of life, then yes, it's a horrible idea to give someone an asset, simply for them to consume and destroy it... In business, passing assets is seen in the opposite way. This is how you build really strong companies. Some of the strongest companies in the world have collected and built and expanded resources every generation. So why is it seen as a bad idea in families? Here's why: business still center themselves around mission, whereas modern families are built around consumption. When mission is the focus, then building to pass something on is the goal. And a great idea.... If you believe we are primarily meant to consume things, then resources become a burden - as they will only stuff that person with more and more. If you believe we are meant to produce things and steward things, then more resources should mean more mission and multiplication of what you're already doing.
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A network of committed covenantal relationships and a team that commits to one another and is interconnected through a web of long-standing relationships. It’s layered and complex and older and spans generations.
am strong. I am not scared. Black is beautiful. Jesus loves me. God loves me. I am a leader. I can have a great day today.
The family was sacrificed for the "mission" without realizing that the mission, once you are married and have kids, I'd argue, is never solitary. God doesn't give individual missions to teams.... In any team, the members have different assignments. But all of it is under the umbrella.

About Jefferson Bethke

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About the book

New York Times bestselling author Jefferson Bethke delivers a powerful critique of the Western notion of the nuclear family and calls us to a sweeping new paradigm that brings not only longed-for stability but also radical blessings to the world.

The West's multi-century experiment with the nuclear family has failed. Its toxic hyper-individualism has left us with an unprecedented number of broken homes and rampant confusion over what a family is supposed to be. Jefferson Bethke delivers the solution we've been a plan for taking back our families from the modern myth that has derailed us and a vision for returning to the life-giving, biblical model of multi-generational teams.

In Take Back Your Family, Bethke uncovers the historic events that led to our obsession with the nuclear family, then exposes the devastating effects of our current "me culture." Now, writing from the visceral per

Book details

First published
2021
Goodreads rating
4.33 (3k ratings)

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