Parable of Good Samaritan

We come to a passage this morning that is likely one of the most well known passages in Scripture. It is also one of those passages that is one of the most misinterpreted and most ill used.

It is a simple enough passages. Two exchanges between Jesus and a Religious Lawyer at the time. I believe that the exchange was adversarial between the two. In other words I believe the the intent of the Lawyer in questioning Jesus was not benign. I advance this because of the word “test” in the passage.  The Lawyer “stands up” which was a sign of respect in the culture and asks a question to “test Jesus.”

We see this “testing of Jesus” frequently by his detractors.

The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. (Mt. 16)

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” (Mt. 19)

They said this to test Him, in order to have a basis for accusing Him.  (John 8)

The fact that this is an adversarial setting is important to keep in mind because in such situations Jesus seldom gives a straight answer to questions but instead often answers their questions with questions. What happens here is no different. The Lawyer asks questions and Jesus deflects the questions with questions of His own to drive the conversation Jesus desires.

Well, back to how the text is misused. Time does not allow us to go as fully in depth in dismissing these errant readings as I would like. I want to raise them. Try to dismiss them. Then move on to the correct reading of the Parable.

I.) Mis-reading #1 — The Good Samaritan Parable Was Given In Order to Support Amnesty Legislation for Illegal Immigrants in the West.

I can’t tell you how much material I’ve run across in preparation this week which appeals to the Parable of the Good Samaritan as the template that all Christians must use in order to demand that amnesty for illegal immigrants be put in place.

The Good Samaritan has been made the tool of Social Justice Warriors everywhere and by it we are being taught that in order to inherit eternal life we must disinherit ourselves and our children so that the alien and the stranger can inherit the here and the now. This is an exceptionally un-neighborly thing to do to our Children and our descendants. According to this interpretation the teaching of the Good Samaritan means that we must treat our children and our people as Aliens and Stranger in order to treat Aliens and Stranger like our children and our people.

The failure with this interpretation lies in the attempt to universalize a particular obligation. Jesus is teaching here in a very specific and particular situation.  The Lord Christ was not laying down policy for 21st century Nation States to take up. He was not creating new policy for Magistrates of all time everywhere to pursue. He was speaking to a religious Lawyer in order to crack his smug confidence that he indeed was a good person.

Jesus is giving ethical instruction, I believe, to the end that the Lawyer would see that he is not an ethical person.

The thinking that insists that the parable of the Good Samaritan is about immigration and amnesty policy, if taken literally, would mean the disappearance of borders and nations and peoples. It is a world where we can

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do

Upon giving this Parable, Jesus was not setting National or International Policy. He was not teaching on the Universal brotherhood of all man. He was not negating the reality of ever widening concentric circles whereby we first have to look out for our own who are of the household of faith. Jesus was not negating the prioritizing of them who are of the household of faith in terms of our care and affection.

He is simply teaching that in the course of our daily living, as we walk through life, when we come upon a real live human being in desperate need of care we have a duty and privilege to care for the least of these.

Some will retort that by seeing this passage as individual and personal that I am not loving my neighbor. Some will insist that by not championing that the Government open up the borders that I am not loving my neighbor. But what of my next door neighbor who can’t find work? How loving is it to that neighbor to glut the market with cheap labor so he will never find work? What of the minority communities in this country who’s unemployment rate is 25-30% in some quarters? Is it neighbor love to them to insist on an amnesty which will cement their unemployment? Is it neighbor love to fellow Christians to invite in a global population that is hostile to Biblical Christianity? Is it neighbor love to Christian women to open the borders to those from misogynistic cultures?

Those who want to use the Parable of the Good Samaritan to the end of pursuing the Cultural Marxist agenda of Social Justice have only incompletely thought through the matter. In many instances the misuse of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is just a means to advance a liberal humanist non Christian agenda.

Much more could be said but time wanes.

II.) Mis-reading #2 — The Good Samaritan Parable Was Given In Order That We Might Be Able to Inherit Eternal Life

One of the curios of this passage is that many people don’t bother to spend the time to point out that Jesus is not here pointing out how it is that someone can go about inheriting eternal life.

What the Lord Christ is doing here is showing the folly of the premise of the Lawyer. You want to inherit eternal life? Fine … go to the law and fulfill all that it requires you will inherit eternal life?

What does it mean to fulfill the law to love God and neighbor? Well, let me tell you a story. Now, you go on loving God and neighbor in just this way and you will indeed inherit eternal life.

The “Go and do likewise” we find at the end of the passage was NOT good news.  The impact of the “go and do likewise” at the end of the passage would have been punctuated by the sound of wind being sucked through the collective audience’s teeth as they doubtless asked themselves “who then can be saved.”

The impact of this teaching, I am convinced, is to bring the man to the end of himself. The necessity of loving God with all my heart, soul and mind and my neighbor as myself as a prerequisite for inheriting Eternal life is not good news for humans this side of heaven. We are a people who are incessantly self centered. In even the most thoroughly converted of us we tend to look to our own interest and not the interests of others. We have problems loving our own kith and kin unselfishly never mind the complete stranger … or worse yet time worn enemies.  What Jesus tells this man he must do to inherit eternal life is not possible for those of us who know ourselves.

Love God and neighbor? Is that all? Well why didn’t you tell me that sooner Jesus? No problem. Is that the way we would really have God’s people think about this passage? As ministers do we want our people leaving service thinking that they can indeed do something to inherit eternal life?

So, why does Jesus play along with the Lawyer here? Why not just say … “Only legal heirs inherit eternal life, there is no doing unto Eternal life?”

Likely the answer to that is that Jesus desired the Lawyer to come to that conclusion by lifting the requirement bar for doing that would bring inheritance so high that the Lawyer would conclude, “Who then can be saved.”

Jesus speaks this way from time to time. When he says that “ye must be perfect even as your heavenly father is perfect,” He raises the behavior standard so high for inheritance of heaven that it is seen as impossible.  When Jesus gives the behavioral standard for a rich man to get into heaven He is met with the exclamation … “who then can be saved.” When Jesus speaks this way the intent is to both esteem the Law AND to bring people to an end of themselves in terms of thinking of themselves in terms of doing the law in order to inherit eternal life.

So, this parable is not here so that people can love God and neighbor so well that they can inherit eternal life. The passage is not here to stoke confidence in the self which is exactly what the Lawyer is seeking to accomplish. We know this because the text tells us of the Lawyer,

29 But he, desiring to justify himself  …

Benson in his commentary offers,

(He asks this), to show he had done this, and was blameless, even with respect to the duties which are least liable to be counterfeited … ”

The Lawyer wanted it to be clearly seen that he indeed had fulfilled the law in terms of loving God and neighbor and had earned his inheritance of Eternal life. Jesus tells the parable, I’m convinced, in order to dissuade this Lawyer and everybody else of this conviction.

So, the Good Samaritan Parable Was not Given In Order That We Might Be Able to convince ourselves that we are the excellent doers, who, because of our doing, will inherit eternal life.

So, what is the proper reading of the parable of the Good Samaritan? If these are improper readings what is the proper reading of this text.

III.) The Proper Reading of This Text Examined

A.) A proper reading of the parable reminds us that the function of the law is both a street light to show us our sin and a guide to life.

Jesus goes to the Law, thus demonstrating He is not antinomian.

But the Law has more than one purpose. As I have said earlier the purpose here is to cut out the legs from underneath this self righteous lawyer’s misinterpretation and smugness.

However, this does not mean that the law does not have the purpose as a guide to life. It should be our intent to be a people who help others in need as we have opportunity and means.

And so a proper reading of this text esteems the law, as rightly interpreted.

B.) A proper reading of the parable casts us upon Christ.

Our tendency in reading the Scriptures is always to make the Scripture about ourselves. This text is no different. Often we leave the text examining ourselves to see if we have been Good Samaritans in our lives. And there is nothing automatically wrong with that. Scripture calls for self examination.

However before we make the passage subjective as about us we should pause to ask if the passage is about someone else being a good Samaritan.

Examined closely the parable of the good Samaritan is not teaching us about what our immigration policy should be. After all, this parable was not given in order for the Magistrate to set policy but it was given that men might see Christ and their own individual duty. The parable is not teaching us that we can earn eternal life. After all, if loving God and neighbor perfectly is the standard who can earn eternal life? The parable is only about us after it is about Christ. Christ is the good Samaritan who found us as beaten by the fall and stripped of any hope. The Priest and the Levite, representatives of the Law, passed by, unable and unwilling to do us any good. It is Lord Christ, who was, just as the Samaritan was, one who was not received by the institutional religious community and it is the Lord Christ, just as the Good Samaritan, who stops and binds up our wounds and gives us the medicinal oil and wine of the Gospel … who has compassion upon us as completely unable to help ourselves … who took it upon Himself to do all the doing that we as beaten sinners could not do.

You see, we are not so much the Good Samaritans of the account here. We are the unidentified chap robbed, beat up, and left for dead. The Good Samaritan is Christ who has bound up our wounds and treated us with the oblation of Himself.

Here is the picture of inheriting eternal life. We were left for dead and someone came along and did all the doing.

If we have any hope to be Good Samaritans ourselves it is only in light of the reality that Christ was first our own Good Samaritan. He had pity on us as beaten and stripped sinners and provided our healing and paid all our costs.

The parable thus shows that Eternal life is not a matter of us fulfilling all the law and so being worthy of life as inheritance. The parable demonstrates the Gospel of Christ as doing what we can’t do for ourselves.

________________________

Conclusion

1.) Many people want to use this parable to show that Jesus was sharply attacking communal or racial prejudices. I don’t see that in the text. The chap beaten up was unidentifiable. The Priest and the Levite do not pass by because they know the victim is Gentile or Samaritan or Jew. There is no communal or racial prejudice connected with their passing by.  They pass by in keeping with their teaching from the book of Ecclesiasticus,

12 When you do a good deed, make sure you know who is benefiting from it; then what you do will not be wasted.[a] 2 You will be repaid for any kindness you show to a devout person. If he doesn’t repay you, the Most High will. 3 No good ever comes to a person who gives comfort to the wicked; it is not a righteous act.[b] 4 Give to religious people, but don’t help sinners. 5 Do good to humble people, but don’t give anything to those who are not devout. Don’t give them food, or they will use your kindness against you. Every good thing you do for such people will bring you twice as much trouble in return. 6 The Most High himself hates sinners, and he will punish them. 7 Give to good people, but do not help sinners.

They pass by because of concerns about becoming ceremonially unclean.

If Jesus is sharply attacking anything He is sharply attacking what He constantly attacks in Scripture and that is the damnable hypocrisy of the Religious leadership.

Jesus introduces the Samaritan in order to demonstrate that those thought to be religiously and racially vile are more righteous than the supposed religious good guys.

The Samaritan likewise knows nothing about the victim. The point isn’t that he is rising above his racial prejudices. The point is that the hated Samaritan enemy is more of a lawkeeper than the righteous.

2.) We live in an age, as one writer has put it, of pornographic compassion. We bleed over the sensationalism made by the news media of the suffering in Rawanda, or Afghanistan, or Syria, all the while we turn a blind eye to the needs that Jesus has brought to our own feet found among our family and neighbors. We rush past the stripped and beaten of our own circle of influence so that we can feel good about ourselves by how big a check we cut for the stripped and beaten 4000 miles away.

In the words of Thomas Fleming,

“We have been plagued … by the cynical sentimentalism that raises trillions of dollars to help strangers while poisoning us against the needs of family, neighbors, and friends.”

R2K Evening Wear — The Sequel

Dr. Hart, over at Oldlife blog, continues to try and rescue himself from his latest comment recorded here yesterday.

Dr. D. G. Hart says:
January 13, 2017 at 3:05 pm

“Robert, the question wasn’t whether Nero should light up his gardens with Christians. It was whether Nero executed Christians.

That is what God ordained the magistrate to do, right? Just because a believer has a special relationship with God doesn’t let the believer disobey the magistrate’s laws. Christianity is not a license for civil disobedience.

That’s why the debates about resisting a tyrant were so intricate. The best the Reformers could come up with was the doctrine of a lesser magistrate. A citizen could not disobey. But a magistrate might be able to.

If a law is unjust or if we must obey God rather than men, then we suffer the consequences of disobedience. That’s what the apostles did. They didn’t form political action committees to overturn Roman laws.”

Bret responds,

1.) Dr. Hart’s comments are not informed as to what “the best the Reformers could come up with.” Here is one of the greatest Reformers,

“In ‘The Appellation’ John Knox denounced the orthodox doctrine of (that required) Christian obedience (to wicked rulers) as sinful. He declared blind compliance to a wicked command to be sin. God has not required obedience to rules when they decree impiety. To say that God does is no less blasphemy than to make God the author of sin. Moreover, if the nobles and people comply with their sovereign in manifest wickedness, they will be punished along with him.

In “The Appellation” Knox also laid the foundation for the theme of his “Letter to the Commonality,” which declared “None provoking the people to idolatry ought to be exempted from the punishment of death.” The personal status of such an individual was of no consequence, be they monarch or commoner. Moreover, the punishment of idolatry and blasphemy does not pertain to only kings and rulers. Rather, it relates to all persons according to their Christian vocation and the opportunity afforded to them by God to administer vengeance. CITING DEUTERONOMY 13, KNOX ISSUED THE CALL FOR REVOLUTION — HE DIRECTED MOSES’ COMMANDMENT TO SLAY IDOLATERS TO ALL PEOPLE, NOT JUST THE NOBLES.

Yet Knox never called for indiscriminate slaughter. He distinguished between the treatment to be accorded idolaters, who had never known ‘true religion,’ and those who had known it but has forsaken it.”

Kyle & Johnson
John Knox; An Introduction to his Life and Work — pg. 104

2.) When Dr. Hart offers that “this is what God ordained the magistrates to do right?,” one is left saying, “no, God has not ordained the magistrates to execute those who obey God’s law.” Romans 13, contrary to Dr. Hart, clearly teaches

3 For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; 4 for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.

We see here that God has ordained rulers to praise those who do good. Good is not defined by any standard except God’s Word. So, when a Magistrate executes Christians for doing good, as informed by the standard of God’s Word, then those Magistrates are doing the very opposite of what God has ordained the Magistrates to do. Dr. Hart is in grave error here.

3.) Biblical Christianity at times is indeed a license for civil disobedience. The Hebrew wives knew that fact. Daniel and his friends knew that. Ehud, the left-handed Hebrew Ninja knew that. John Knox knew that.

4.) Finally, on the point of forming political action committees to overturn bad laws, once again, Dr. Hart is just in error. Dr. Hart needs to realize that the very fact that they were disobeying the law was itself the formation of a political action committee to overturn Roman laws. The disobedience is itself political action by committee.

Is Dr. Hart saying that it is un-Christian and / or not Biblical to form political action committees to overturn bad law?

 

The Latest In R2K Evening Wear

https://oldlife.org/2017/01/04/is-donald-trump-mainstreaming-apostasy/#comment-151497

“Nero did not violate God’s law if he executed Christians who obeyed God rather than man. If Paul continued to preach after the emperor said he may not, then Nero was doing what God ordained government to [sic] do. Christians don’t get a pass from civil law just because they follow a higher law. John Brown is no Christian hero.”

Dr. Darryl G. Hart
Comment timestamped — January 12, 2017 at 10:52 am
OPC Elder
R2K Heterodox Maven
Doing his best John Knox impersonation

1.) Dr. Hart is now in the position of holding that Nebuchadnezzar did okay when he threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace. After all, he was just doing what God ordained government is supposed to do.

2.) In Exodus 1 the Hebrew Midwives who disobeyed Dr. Hart’s God ordained Government in Egypt are rewarded for their following a higher law. Now, If Dr. Hart were serious about his statement, and if he were consistent, Dr. Hart would have to say that those Hebrew Midwives were disobedient to God’s ordained order. How will Dr. Hart explain that “God rewarded them with houses” because they did obey a higher law?

3.) When St. Peter says “whether it is better for us to obey God or man, you decide,” thus implicitly appealing to the higher law that Hart so detests, Hart answers, “Christians must obey man over God.” Even the Pharisees knew better than to answer the matter in that way.

4.) One of the doctrines of the church that was recovered in the reformation was the doctrine of the lesser magistrate with its insistence on resistance to tyranny in the name of a higher law than civil law. Both civil and church authority need to be resisted if they become tyrannical. The best proof of this is the protection offered Luther as well as the battle at Magdeburg right after Luther’s death. See, Christopher Goodman’s, “How Superior Powers Ought To Be Obeyed By Their Subjects And Wherein They May Lawfully By God’s Word Be Disobeyed And Resisted.”

5.) Dr. Hart is correct in offering that John Brown is no Christian hero but the reason that John Brown is no Christian hero is that John Brown was not following a higher law but was following anti-Christ Jacobin law. Surely Dr. Hart is not suggesting that the disobedience of John Brown was of the same nature and same character as the disobedience of the Hebrew midwives before Pharoah, the disobedience of the Hebrew children before Nebuchadnezzar, or the disobedience of Christ before Pilate?

Or … maybe he is?

6.) Now, to be sure, Christians who disobey man’s law must be prepared to suffer the consequences such as prison, loss of social standing, or even death. These are all possibilities. However, to intimate that authority figures get some sort of pass, simply because they carry some kind of illegitimate authority is just ludicrous wrapped in ridiculous as stuffed inside preposterous.

But this is the kind of heterodoxy where R2K inanity takes one.

 

 

 

 

Advent 2016 — Micah 4 …. The Eschaton & The Family

“And He will judge between many peoples
And render decisions for mighty, distant nations.
And each of them will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree
With no one to make them afraid.”
Micah 4:3-4

Introduction

Part of what we have been doing in this Avent series is trying to emphasize that what was to Micah “the latter days,” were fulfilled in what we refer to as the 1st Advent of Christ. Micah’s future latter days have been fulfilled and in being fulfilled are promissory of going from fulfillment unto fulfillment.

Because Christian time is thought of as a progressing line moving from promise to fulfillment when dealing with prophecy,  it is possible for these promises to be fulfilled. In the words of theologian Oscar Cullman,

“a divine plan can move forward to complete execution; the goal which beckons at the end of the line can give to the entire process which is taking place all along the line the impulse to strive further; finally the decisive midpoint, the Christ-deed, can be the firm hold that serves as the guidepost for all the process that lies behind and for all that lies ahead.”

Oscar Cullman
Christ & Time — pg. 53 – 54
Christ and Time; The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History – pg. 53- 54

So Christ and the Kingdom was the goal for Micah but it is a goal that once arrived at was capable of continuing to be arrived at.

Balloon Illustration
Painting Illustration

Once Christ came with His Kingdom all past history was given meaning as the past is now interpreted in light of the completed work of Christ, and all the future found it’s North Star by which all meaning could be interpreted. In the incarnation and Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, Pentecost, and His AD 70 Judgment coming Christ Himself immanentized an eschaton that still retained its future quality.

This is seen even in something as simple as our Calendars. BC and AD. All time finds meaning as it is oriented to the Christ event. The wicked Academicians understand this which is why they seek to scrub BC and AD from usage in favor of BCE and CE.

We have sought to make the point in this series that for Christians, the Redemptive sequence of events initiated by the birth of Christ marks the future age of glory as planting itself in a present wicked age that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom. As such, for every Christian since the 1st advent the present crackles with the meaning that the future invests it with. For every Christian has the Holy Spirit who is the anticipation of the end as occupying the present. We know this because Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. What is the Holy Spirit a deposit of? Why naturally He is the presence of God as well as the deposit of that future age of glory. That we are living in that future age of glory now is seen in the fact that Scripture teaches that every Christian has been translated from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of God’s dear son (Colossians 1). Scripture teaches that we have been already resurrected with Christ (Colossians 2).  Scripture teaches that God has already raised us up with Christ, and seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6-7).  The book of Hebrews teaches that every Christian is now tasting of the powers of the age to come in their existential present. We are living in the eschatological latter days in our current existence because with Christ’s work the latter days have arrived.

Ill. — Christians are like Tolkien’s elves who occupy two worlds at the same time.

As being citizens in the age to come we are God’s agents of change as inveighing against this present evil age wherever we find it. We are those whom God uses to turn the wilderness of this present wicked age into the garden of the Lord so that it blooms with age to come beauty.

All of this makes us a future-oriented people but it is a future orientation which is rooted and grounded in the past because the future orientation is dependent upon how the Christ event brought the future into the then present and so into our present.

It is true that we are moving towards the future eschatological age but this is only true because in the Christ event the future eschatological age located and locates itself in the present.

So, for the Christian time is Linear, as it moves towards the 2nd Advent but it moves towards that 2nd Advent as all of life is interpreted through the 1st Advent.

All of this is why St. Paul could say, “We are more than conquerors.” We might say it this way … “Victory is inevitable.”

Alright … all that by way of review. It is an important concept and if I could I would get it into you by translating it to a recipe and then whipping up a batch and providing it as a dish @ one of our fellowship meals.

Given this understanding, we have seen how with the coming of the Messiah these prophetic words of Micah 4 came to pass.

I.) Christ was and is the Mountain Kingdom that has lifted himself above all other Kingdoms

II.) With the Arrival of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom, we have seen people streaming into the House of the God of Jacob

III.) With the Arrival of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom we have seen the rise of Law as informed by God’s law. People have asked for God’s ways and have been taught God’s path.

IV.) With the Arrival of Christ and His Kingdom we have seen the rise of peace (swords beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks) where the Gospel has flourished.

V.) Today we want to look at how with the Advent of Christ the family is restored.

We may have to do this in two bites.

First, we want to see where we find the family in this passage,

We note that every time we see the word peoples and nations spoken of we recognize that language is merely communicating the idea of extended family.

Etymologically speaking — Hebrew — goyim  / Greek ethnos

Particular people groups related by blood and covenant.

nation (n.) Look up nation at Dictionary.comc. 1300, from Old French nacion “birth, rank; descendants, relatives; country, homeland” (12c.) and directly from Latin nationem (nominative natio) “birth, origin; breed, stock, kind, species; race of people, tribe,” literally “that which has been born,” from natus, past participle of nasci “be born” (Old Latin gnasci; see genus). Political sense has gradually predominated, but earliest English examples inclined toward the racial meaning “large group of people with common ancestry.” Older sense preserved in application to North American Indian peoples (1640s).

Building on that Edmund Burke defined a people as being

constituted by the living who recognize, respect, and identify with their dead in the things and imprints of places that they left behind. The living love their dead by training their young into the social affections that keep their dead alive to them…

This idea of families as being a group with a common ancestry and the work of the Messiah in relation to them also comes through in the vs. we are looking at today.

And each of them (the nations) will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree

Micah, sees in the Latter days that nations (extended families) will exist and each have their own property uniquely theirs. We will have more to say about property in the future but we want to stay concentrated today on the importance of family.

Everything in our culture is designed to destroy the stable family. First, we  have the whole New World Order agenda devoted to taking us out of our families and giving us in exchange the universal “family of man.” We have the demasculinizing of man; and the rise of Feminism, which is nothing but the de-feminization of women; we see, the attempt to create revolution among children demanding their rights (UN Children’s rights). We have The multi-tens of billions of dollars pornography industry and the reality of how it is ripping families apart. We have the FEDS inheritance laws that have been written so as to weaken the family and instead strengthen the government as the FEDS become in essence the first born son who receives the double inheritance.  We have social legislation that subsidizes behavior that is destructive to strong family life.  We have the purposeful creation of a culture that has stripped the family of its role as an economic unit. We now have the redefinition of marriage and with the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of family comes in its wake. Our Churches too often reinforce this attack on the family by how they age segregate members of the family once you walk in the door.

“On no single institution has the modern political state rested with more destructive weight than on the family.”

Robert Nisbet
Twilight of Authority — pg. 238

And of course, the reason for this attack is that the family unit — in both its nuclear and extended clan expression — is the foundational social order unit in a Christian civilization. The foundational social order unit is not as so many suggest the individual. It is not that the individual is unimportant in Biblical Christianity. Indeed only in Biblical Christianity does the individual find importance. However, it is the case that the primary social unit that God has ordained is the family. The whole idea of covenant screams this truth.

With the family as being God’s primary social unit, naturally, then God’s enemy as our enemy desires to destroy the family. Again, it is the family that God primarily deals with. When God calls Noah God saves Noah with His family. When God calls Abraham one of the promises is that “in you, all the families (nations) of the earth will be blessed.” It is promised that the forerunner of the Messiah will, in anticipation of the Messianic age,   “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers;”  Even in the new Jerusalem in the book of Revelation we see the presence, not of a conglomeration of people, nor of just mass atomized people, but the new Jerusalem is occupied by the families of men (nations).

All this is underscored in the NT. The NT is family-centric and rife with instructions for family including instructions for husbands in providing for their family and kin, instructions on how families are to take care of widows, instructions for raising children, instructions to children on honoring parents, instructions on how husbands are to treat wives and how wives are to treat husbands.

Micah tells us though that in those latter days that came with Christ the family would be again prioritized so that

And each of them (the nations) will sit under his
Vine and under his Fig Tree

Robert Nisbet speaks of the importance of family,

“Every great age, and every great people … is characterized at bottom by the strength of the kinship principle. We can, he argued, use the family as an almost infallible touchstone of the material and cultural prosperity of a people. When it is strong, closely linked with private property, treated as the essential context of education in society, and its sanctity recognized by law and custom, the probability is extremely high that we shall find the rest of the social order characterized by that subtle but puissant (having great power or influence) fusion of stability and individual mobility which is the hallmark of great ages.”

Twilight of Authority — pg. 232

We can agree with Nisbet when just a few paragraphs later he observes,

“Family yet remains the greatest single element of a creative culture.”
Robert Nisbet — pg. 233

But of course, hell being hell, it opposes the family and the modern God-state being the agency that Mephistopheles possesses is a bureaucratic state and with the ever growing expansion of bureaucracy comes the expansion of egalitarianism if only because the bureaucrat is a great lover of a uniform standardized everything. The modern god-state with its egalitarianism is death to the family because families are by definition not the same. They are not equal. The hierarchy families introduce is also anti-egalitarian.

As such the family must be eliminated. You see uniformity is to the bureaucrat what catnip is to your household kitty. The bureaucrat dreams of an assembly line social order where all citizens are easily replaceable cogs. Less paperwork that way. Biblical Family gets in the way of all that.

“It is impossible to be certain in such matters, but the historic roots of the greater ages have lain in diverse, varied, relatively small areas rather than in the atmosphere that goes with bigness, impersonality, and standardization.”

Robert Nisbet
Twilight of Authority — pg. 243

But Micah sees that in the latter days there will be these families and of course Christian civilization in the West has been organized around the family unit.  Indeed, wherever Christianity has flourished there you find the flourishing of the Biblical family and thus we can know that this promise of Micah was fulfilled in an inaugural sense. Conversely, wherever you find Christianity in decline there you find family life shattered and so broken individuals and there you also find the certainty that Christ will again bring the power of the eschaton to the healing of family lives again.

Bavinck offers on this score,

The human cannot create; the foundations of society have been laid by God himself once and for all; but on those foundations, he can build further and restore what needs restoration. One must never despair about the reformation of human and family and society; even if the modern human despaired about this, the Christian must not give in to this despondency, because true godliness holds promise for both the present life and the life to come. (1908ch, 185; 1912ch, 193; for the last sentence, cf. 1 Tim. 4:8)

So, the Redemption event of Christ has happened. The future has taken up residence in the present because of that past event, and as such, we look forward to the time when families will once again be biblically patriarchal. Victory on this score is inevitable.

And the reason that it is inevitable, despite temporary setbacks, is that Christ, has come and on the Cross, He defeated all principalities and powers that would resist His intent to cover the globe with Christ-honoring families. In His Cross work Christ paid for the sins that make for the ruination of families and in the outpouring of the Spirit upon those who have been owned by Christ the Spirit works to continuously tame the selfishness and lust which so often are the reasons why family life is ugly.

In the Cross all things are reconciled to God and one of those “all things” is the family. In Christ, our tumbleweed social order that is characterized by the lack of family health will be renewed so that we are once again a Christian people with Christian roots.

The Cross is the center. Micah speaks of these latter days but these latter days could not have arrived apart from Christ’s defeat of Satan in the Cross.