A man told his doctor that he couldn’t do all the things around the house that he used to do. When the examination was complete, he said, “Now, doctor, I can take it. Tell me in plain English what is wrong with me.” “Well, in plain English,” the doctor replied, “you’re just lazy.” “Okay,” said the man. “Now give me the medical term so I can tell my wife.”
I must admit, it’s not easy to find a joke about family life that is both funny and won’t upset half of the audience— assuming there is an equal split between men and women. Most of the jokes I’ve encountered rely on stereotypes that belittle either the wife or the husband, often in a callous or rude manner. The widespread prevalence of such jokes leads me to wonder: why is this the case? As an unmarried man, I can’t draw from personal experience to find an answer. From a psychological perspective, jokes can serve as a coping mechanism for stress and adversity, but that’s only one of many functions that humour serves in social life and individual development. To be honest, every time I have to talk about family matters, such as at the feast of the Holy Family, I feel out of my depth and somewhat inadequate due to my lack of personal experience in this area of life. Of course, personal experience doesn’t guarantee having a successful marriage or family, as so many examples illustrate all too clearly. But the lack of such experience can easily lead us, solitary members of the Catholic clergy, to produce ideas and models of family life that are highly impractical and unrealistic. Just because in the Bible we can find a number of descriptions of a “perfect family”, it doesn’t mean they are directly applicable to families in modern-day Scotland. Have I just said something highly controversial for a priest?
One of the main challenges and dangers of reading holy scriptures is treating them as direct, rigid prescriptions for life. Literally speaking, these texts represent a snapshot of the dominant culture of a specific region (the Middle East) at a particular time in human history, roughly 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. The language used in these scriptures reflects the culture from which it originates, but neither language nor culture is static; they evolve over time. For example, the further back you go in the English language, the more difficult it is to understand older texts, to the point where only individual words may be recognisable. Try to read Shakespeare in its original form!
Reading old and ancient texts requires piercing through the cultural context to uncover their timeless meanings. This principle also applies to the Bible, which is a collection of writings deeply rooted in the culture of its time. Otherwise, instead of spiritual freedom and uplift, scripture-based religion can easily become an instrument of oppression, as modern-day Afghanistan illustrates in the starkest and saddest way. Afghan women’s deprivation of rights is justified by Islamic religious observance, which in fact has no basis in the Quran. The Taliban’s actions are based on their own rigid, fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law and are widely condemned as a distortion of true Islamic principles. There are many Muslim-dominant countries where individual freedoms and rights are underwritten by Islamic religious principles.
The final part of today’s second reading from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians could be easily interpreted as patriarchal and misogynistic, almost Taliban-style: “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” In fact, this text is so disturbing that it’s an optional part of today’s reading. However, it represents the societal order of the first-century Eastern Mediterranean, and as such, it can be effectively dismissed in its literal sense. The timeless message is contained in the first part, a much longer part of the reading, where St Paul presented the principles on which human interactions, including domestic, ought to be based: “Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” You must work out how to apply these principles to your marriage and your family in your own circumstances. St Paul made it even more concise and easy to remember in his letter to the Romans: “Love does not hurt others. So loving is the same as obeying all the law.” (13:10)
