In the previous post of this series, I offered a brief overview of the idea of home [1] found in the Bible. How do these views of home inform our views? At the basic level, we can say that the notion of home and having a home within a biblical understanding is good. God creates, gives, and brings people home. How the national and communal concept of land relates to the nuclear concept of private home ownership is a bit trickier. (The last post was rather long; I’ll try to keep them shorter by splitting up the topics into smaller pieces. Of course, many of these issues run together, so any division will be somewhat arbitrary.)

As we saw earlier, the home in biblical understandings is a place of safety and recreation. In our contemporary American setting, we continue in that tradition. We seek to make our homes safe from intrusions, physical and otherwise. In the home, we have the ability to control not only who but what comes into our lives (i.e., we can control the media we consume). We spend much of our time at home sleeping, which is a good thing. Sleep, other forms of rest, and other leisure activities afford us the ability to engage the God-ordained cycle of work and rest. [2] Our homes still act as places of hospitality, though our definition of hospitality is rather thin and is synonymous with entertaining guests. The biblical vision of hospitality is richer than merely entertaining, but at the least we can say that we haven’t given up on hospitality altogether. I believe where we see differences between a Christian vision of home and our dominant culture’s view of home is a matter of degree.

In biblical times, it was the norm for the home to also be the economic center of peoples’ lives. In the past few centuries, work has generally taken place outside the home. I believe this is merely a cultural shift and is not a move away from God’s intention for humanity. Let us think and act critically about the shift and try to interpret it through a theological lens. More and more, households have at least two members leaving the home for remunerated work and with the innovations of transportation, this work is taking place further away from home than in previous eras. Our homes’ locations may have little relation to the locations of our workplaces, our church buildings, our children’s schools, etc. Commuting has emerged as a given in our society and people increasingly tolerate longer commutes in order to find affordable housing, or housing that fits their desires. We already spend the majority of our waking time outside the home doing work (which as a concept is God-ordained), and our commuting only increases that time away. Carey and I find ourselves in a similar situation as our new home will be centrally located, but not connected to our congregation or workplaces. Our home will act as a physical hub and our commutes will be good for Southern California standards—we never have to get on a freeway. Still, I don’t think this situation is ideal. Since we find our homes so far physically removed from the other important places of our lives, the temptation to emotionally isolate ourselves in our homes becomes all the greater.

These factors naturally lead the home away from being a communal place and into becoming a place of isolated refuge. Because so many people commute several miles to work, school, shopping, and church, we run the danger of losing the physical sense of neighbor. Instead of opening our homes to others, we face the temptation to always meet at another central location. Commuting is not the only issue exacerbating this problem, however. Consider how the size of houses have grown in recent decades; the focus is on the private space inside rather than on the shared space outside. [3] If there is space outside, think how homes built in the last several decades emphasize the backyard over the front yard. The front porch—at one point, a locale of social interaction—seems to be an architectural element going the way of the dodo. We enter our homes to escape the world, including our neighbors, rather than welcoming our neighbors into a place where with them, we can safely engage the world in which we live. (Consumerism undoubtedly is also a culprit in this larger house trend, and I will address the topic in another post.) The rooms inside our homes can become places of isolation themselves. The time we spend watching the television, playing video games, or on the internet (cough, cough) continues to grow [4] to the detriment of time spent with others living in our homes. Many homes have more than one television or computer. My father told me once that if he could do it over again, he would have not allowed my brother and I to have televisions in our rooms as we grew up. We ate as a family around the table, but once we finished our meals, my brother and I retreated to our rooms, closed our doors, and watched television, played video games, surfed the internet, or maybe studied. I fear that my experience is not unique.

I do not want to come down too hard on seeing our homes as a refuge. As Christians, we worship the God of the Sabbath, the God of refuge, the God who calls us to rest and recreation. It is wonderful that our homes have become places of recreation, but let us not mistake recreation for absolute retreat. Refuge and incarnation are not mutually exclusive.

Questions for Discussion:

How do factors outside our homes (e.g., jobs, commuting, school) affect how we view home? How does our view of what the home is and what it is for compare to a biblical view of home? Does our view of home encourage or discourage us to engage our family, roommates, and neighbors in the characteristics of home Holt and Banks describe (spiritual encounter, community, ministry, and expectation)? Given the choices we have made regarding work, church membership, leisure activities, etc., what are ways we can make our homes places of spiritual encounter, community, ministry, and expectation for those who live inside and outside our homes?

Notes:

[1] Astute reader James asked in his comment on the previous post whether there is a difference between a home and a house. For these posts I will use the term home to mean a physical dwelling space that is fairly well-grounded (i.e., to differentiate a house or apartment from a nomad’s yurt). People can own or rent homes. I will define houses as stand-alone structures as opposed to condominiums or town homes. I will generally use two different phrases: “having a home” means that one has regular and a generally unique access to a structure (whether owned or rented) where they have shelter and where they sleep, eat, etc. “Owning a home” means that a person owns the structure and/or property of the home either entirely or with others. I hope that clears up some basic definitions.

[2] Some argue that we were created to work and therefore rest energizes us for work. Others argue that we were initially created for rest and work makes us appreciate the rest. I would argue that God created us for both work and rest. They feed each other in a wonderful rhythm.

[3] In the March 2007 issue of Sojourners, Julie Polter cites statistics from the National Association of Homebuilders in her story “Attack of the Monster Houses” (free registration required): “The size of the average new single-family home in the United States hit an all-time high of 2,434 square feet in 2005. That’s more than double the 1950 average of around 1,100 square feet…. Twenty-three percent of new houses built in 2005 were 3,000 square feet or more.” Serendipitously, I received this issue just as I was working on this series of posts. I’ll likely refer to it as I go.

[4] According to the US Census Bureau’s projections, on average, each American will consume 3,518 hours of media this year. That is up from 3,333 hours in 2000. See: Census Bureau Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2007, Section 24, Information and Communications. Table 1110. Media Usage and Consumer Spending: 2000-2009. (link opens PDF).