The age in which we live prefers the common to the unique. Today conforming to the tastes and ways of the world has become a special craze. Media has enables the modern materialistic culture to be effectively and pervasively invasive. The world is too much with us. And the hedge between our home and the world remains breached at several places. In such a situation, it is all the more important to create and sustain a distinctive and spiritually wholesome family culture.

Peoples in the non-western societies are now in a state of transition. They are sandwiched between the old world and the new. Sentimentally, they subscribe to moral and spiritual values; but in practical terms they are pulled in the opposite direction, even awe-inspired, by the perks and pleasures of the secular-technological culture. An analogous case is that of Indian parents in western societies, who strive in vain to combine the best of both worlds: the values of their parent culture and the material advantages of the adopted culture. Many struggle for a period, but get resigned to the inevitable. Their children adopt the ways of the world around them. The split in India today is between private values and public practices. Parents want their children to thrive in the world and not be handicapped in this rat race either by idealism or by non-conformity. Yet they would want, desperately want, their children in their private life to be orthodox, caring and principled. They want their children to board two buses at the same time: one going to prosperity, and the other going to personal stability. They don't seem to care if these buses are heading in opposite directions.

What spirituality in respect of family involves is a resolution of this living contradiction. The biblical faith is not a world-denying faith. It does not insist that we renounce the fruits of development and discount what is positive in the sphere of culture. What spirituality in practice involves is the acceptance of a godly foundation and the re-ordering of priorities that this entails. We are to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. (Mtt. 6:33). Given this stable and sanctified foundation, we shall know how to factor the facilities and opportunities of the world into our family culture, so that what we accept is conducive to fullness of life.

This was the secret of the uniqueness and fruitfulness in the life of Jesus. Unlike John the Baptist, Jesus did not live a life of renunciation. He was remarkably free in the Spirit. He came to reach out to the world, not to keep the world at a distance. He was as at home with the publicans and sinners as he was with anyone else, with the possible exception of the self-righteous Pharisees and Sadducees. That was because he was sure of his godly foundation. Jesus was so saturated in the love for God, so submissive to the will of God and so committed to the work of God that he was authentically himself wherever he was. He did not have to be in the Temple of Jerusalem to be pious. His sanctity was not a matter where he was or who he was with. It was a matter of his total commitment to God's Kingdom and righteousness. This unambiguous commitment was proof against inconsistency and contradiction. Even more importantly, it was also safe against negativity and capitulation. Jesus did not flee from the world or the worldly, nor did he function in terms of their premises or preferences. He lived in the world and ministered to it according to the culture of the Kingdom of God, and not according to the culture of the kingdoms of the world.

The best that parents can do for their children is to maintain a distinctive family culture wherein children can be nurtured and equipped for life. Sadly, this is an opportunity routinely neglected by parents around the world. The most radical blessing that a person can have is to grow up in a Christian home that reflects the culture of the Kingdom. This truth is also reflected in Jesus' affirmation, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God." It is a pity that parents are over-solicitous about the physical and mental nourishment of their children grossly neglect their spiritual formation.

This is a failure of special seriousness at the present time. That is because we are witnessing virtually a quantum leap in the aptitudes and genius of our people from one generation to the other. The greater the capacity or genius of a person, the higher his need to be guided by values and ideals. The talented taking to crime or anti-social activities is a greater social menace than the mediocre resorting to it. Crime indicates the underdevelopment or degeneration of social imagination. Criminal inclination arise out of the inability to love others like oneself. The social function of spirituality is to help us to discover 'neighbours' in all those we are with. A thief is one who sees others as means to profit the self. Neighbours are not means to an end, but the end itself. They are to be loved for who they are, and not for what we can get out of them. This is a strength of character that every child needs to acquire through family nurture. Parents who default on this count discover sooner or later that their children treat them, not less than others, selfishly and uncaringly.

"Culture" is a total environment and it cannot be reduced a few ingredients. It possible, however, to identify broad trends in culture that we could either avoid or accept. Spirituality too is a culture: the culture of the Kingdom of God. Every culture to reveal its full treasure or power must preserve its integrity and function in the fullness of thereof. Our personal integrity too depends on this. Hence the words of Jesus, "No man serve two masters". The universal temptation in the religious sphere is to compromise the integrity of one's own being in a bid to serve God and Mammon alike so as to derive the benefit of these two contrary cultures. Many of the pathological traits of family today derive from this 'double-mindedness' that seems to have become second nature to us. It is useful, hence, to examine some of the typical symptoms of the cultural neurosis that today afflicts families as well as the possible corrective measures from a biblical perspective.

(1) Conflict and the spirit of negativity. We are living in an age par excellence of conflict. This spirit infects family as an institution. The damage on account of this is not confined to what is manifest through open conflicts or the eruption of violence in various forms. The greatest danger, and what does maximum harm over a period of time, is the spirit of negativity that conflicts breed. The conflictual outlook and the adversarial spirit it engenders focus perforce on what is evil and negative. Opposing and frustrating each other then becomes the priority in the interpersonal situation. Husbands and wives who are infected by this spirit of negativity often do not understand that they are possessed by the spirit of their times. They are also lamentably unaware of the infection they impart to their children. Negativity breeds negativity. It cripples creative dynamism, and that is just about the worst that can happen to a human being.

Negativity is quite simply a pull in the opposite direction. To see this relational disease for what it is, all we need to do is to recall the image that Jesus used to denote complementary relationships: the yoke. Think of a pair of yoked oxen pulling in opposite directions. It is a very absurd and frustrating spectacle. Yet this is what happens all the time in husband-wife relationships when they are not cemented by the love of Christ. It is in this light that we need to see the implication of St. Paul's insistence that we should not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. (2 Cor. 6:14) A believer has no business to entertain the spirit of negativity. There was not even a shadow of negativity anywhere near Jesus. A believer is not just one who says, "Lord, Lord". It is one who imbibes the spirit of Christ: the spirit of empowering dynamism. Or else, abiding in him would not have resulted in fruitfulness. (Jn. 15: 4-6). It is by its fruits that a tree is known best. A simple test to ascertain if someone is in Christ or not is if that person is positive or negative in his/her orientation.

Not everyone is self-consciously and explicitly negative! Often times negativity masks itself in a variety of specious arguments. Negativity, for instance, revels in seeing several plausible reasons why something should not be done; and is very positive, even persuasive, in arguing it out. Negativity is necessarily admixed with a large degree of self-deception. So one should not be surprised if some seemingly altruistic sentiments are found in the arsenal of negativity. Such a person will convince you, for example, how it is entirely for your sake that he/she opposes your plans and purposes.

Negativity presupposes a world of grievances, anxieties, and the psychology of resistance. While all these may be couched in ideological sentiments and invested with respectability, the fact remains that they are purely destructive in their impact both on the self and on others, especially on those in the family. There are scores of young boys whose mothers happily conclude that their sons are too fragile to play with other children who are, by definition, rough and rude and so are sure to ill-treat their playmates. Such mothers take protectiveness beyond healthy limits and rob their children of all initiative.

Tragically, countless wives and mothers mistake this spirit of negativity for the spirit of sacrifice. They deny themselves everything for no rhyme or reason. They resist, in an air of apparent and exemplary self-renunciation, the suggestions or arrangements made to improve their comfort and welfare. What gives them away is the spirit of grievance that they entertain, either implicitly or explicitly. The spirit of true sacrifice is necessarily radiated by joy; whereas grievance and bitterness are the accompaniments of negativity.

When a home is infected by the spirit of negativity, conflicts become endemic to it irrespective of the issues of involved. Often there may be provocations. But in case there are no provocations, they would be either improvised or invented. Often times, the intensity of the conflict between spouses is far in excess of the issues involved. They get locked into a conflictual relationship wherein they feed on mutual hurts and traumas. This amounts to a total waste of energies and talents and ensures that they live a life of aggravating frustration.

This disease needs to be addressed within the 'ministry of healing' as envisaged by Jesus Christ. In a spiritual sense, the largest and most universal prison in the world is this mental negativity to which people succumb when they are alienated from God. Adam and Eve hiding in the bush, as a mark of their alienation from God, illustrates this human predicament. Negativity is a form of escapism, a self-created hiding place. But it is also part of the logic of negativity that those who are captives in its prison-house see themselves as the victims of others. Nothing short of a total mental transformation will be adequate to 'set the captives free' from this inward dungeon. Spirituality needs to be seen as a total mental shift from what is negative to what is positive, and not as a matter of some rarefied postures and practices. This positivity is not a matter of saying 'yes' to everything. It is, instead, a discipline of saying 'yes' or 'no' in relation to the biblical goal of 'fullness of life'. The wisdom of experience proves that such a positive outlook cannot be sustained consistently unless there is a stable spiritual foundation for it.

It is in this light that the importance that the Bible ascribes to spouse-selection needs to be seen. But even after maximum caution is exercised in this respect, one may still find oneself 'unequally yoked' in conjugal relationship. This is as widespread a reality in the so-called 'love marriages' as it is in the case of 'arranged marriages'. What is one to do in such an instance? Negativity, in a practical sense, is the opposite of reciprocity or mutuality. The impact of sin on human relationships is that it degrades mutuality into negativity. Negativity is the incapacity for reciprocity. Reciprocity is the corner stone of fellowship and companionship. It is what enables a partner to be a proper help as Eve was envisaged to be in respect of Adam. The Cross is a symbol of the agony created by the degeneration of reciprocity into negativity, "He came to his own; his own received him not." Negativity is embryonic rejection, the extended refusal to accept, to receive. It is relational rebelliousness.

When either of the spouses is infected by this spirit, the other has to carry the Cross of enduring it to the end. It is this spiritual discipline that is implicit in the analogy that Paul draws, for example, between husbands and Jesus Christ. The life and mission of Jesus is understood best as engaging and mastering the spirit of negativity that had invaded the sanctuary of God-man relationships. Ironically, when one of the parties in a relationship falls short of mutuality, other has to carry the burden of it 'unilaterally'. This is the logic that underlies the un-ending compassion and supervening Grace of God. God's love never fails, because He is absolutely committed to the mutuality of His relationship with us. It is this absolute commitment that generates the power to transform us by setting us free from the prison of negativity in our responses to God.

As unimaginable agony of Jesus Christ indicates, encountering and mastering the spirit of human negativity is the ultimate spiritual battle that we can wage. It is this spirit of negativity that the Bible identifies as satanic. Satan is the 'adversary'. He is the ultimate embodiment of negativity. His mission is to resist the loving will of God and to pervert his glorious plans. His condemnation is that he cannot help being so. Tragically, that is almost the case with those who are possessed by the spirit of negativity. It is necessary to be realistic about this, if we are to minister to such people. Entertaining naïve and romantic notions in this area will only induce premature desperation and helplessness. One has to 'minister to' one's spouse, as Christ ministers to the Church. No limits are fixed for it. Jesus has been struggling with, and for, the Church over the last two millennia, sweating blood in the mission to deliver her from the grip of spiritual negativity. The image of Jesus standing and knocking at the gate of the Laodicean Church is a tell-tale image of the plight not so much of Jesus as of the Church.

Seen in this light, the spiritual and practical profundity of the spouses submitting to each other (Eph. 5: 21) becomes all the more striking. Domination and the spirit of rebelliousness that it unfailing provokes are counter to the ideal of mutuality in marital relationships. They point to the spirit of negativity at work in this foundational relationship. Mutual submission, in such a context, is the most powerful experience of mutual acceptance that effects a break-through from the misery of being locked into a relationship of negativity. What Paul urges the spouses to do may be described as "pro-active submission" which is the only healing strategy that works in such contexts.

Unfortunately, 'submission' has only negative connotations in the worldly context. That is only to be expected. It is, ironically, a pointer to the negativity that has infected the mindset of the world. In such an environment of associations, 'submission' is seen as a negative step compelled by the non-availability of any other option. Meekness, in the sight of the world, is weakness. In the biblical vision, however, it is the other way round. Meekness is proactive. It is basic to the strategy of redemption, regeneration and wholeness. It pulsates with spiritual energies and purposes. That is why in the biblical vision the ultimate authority and power belong to the "Lamb that was slain", the paradigmatic embodiment of meekness. The assertion in the beatitudes that "the meek shall inherit the earth" makes sense in this light, and can do so only in this light.

Christian parenthood involves the spiritual duty to sustain a domestic culture based on the redemptive power of proactive meekness that fortifies the home against the spirit of negativity and chronic conflict that could, otherwise, cripple the generations to come.

Negativity is the heritage that the Fall has handed down to us. Satan's goal in seducing Eve was to make the human species negative and rebellious towards God. Negativity to God is the seminal negativity. It makes us negative towards everything else in life. The mission of Christ was to set people free from the dungeon of this negativity (Lk. 4:18) and to lead them to fullness of life. The life and work of Jesus was not only wholly free from negativity but also vibrant with a positive and dynamic spirit. The Holy Spirit is the quintessence of the positive. That is why, according to Jesus, the Spirit is the Enabler. Satan, in contrast, is the Dis-abler. He is the Spirit of ultimate negativity. His prodigious energies are directed towards the opposition and frustration, if possible, of the good intentions of God. To acknowledge Jesus as the head of our homes is to commitment ourselves to fostering a positive domestic culture. The training and motivation to do what is good as well as reject what is evil should be deemed basic ingredients of Christian family culture.

(2) The idolatry of materialism. Materialism is the seminal expression of human negativity. The fact that the culture that has arisen from this outlook is a canvas of prodigious activity does not prove the contrary. That is why the account of the tower of Babel is situated at the beginning of the Bible. That 'heaven-kissing tower' is a landmark, the most grandiose enterprise, of human negativity. In itself it may seem a sublime eruption of creativity in the domain of culture. But seen in the light of the people's attitude to God, it emerges in quite a different light indeed. Read sensitively, the text reveals the fact that the people of Babel envisaged the tower to be a substitute for their God-centredness. Till then, God was the point of cohesion for them as a people. Their motive in creating the tower was to engineer a secular and materialistic alternative to this God-centredness. That being the case, the tower was essentially a monument of negativity; and it stands to logic that it disintegrated into confusion and dispersal. If this aspect of the episode is overlooked, the account of the Babel tower would carry weird overtones relating to the nature of God. God is anti-progress. Nor is he hostile to human creativity and allergic to the sphere of culture. The point, on the contrary, is that God does not patronize negativity. That is because He is the perfection of the principle of creativity. It is this that creates the horizon of culture possible at all. But this sphere is not safe against the spirit of negativity, given the reality of sin and the consequent alienation of mankind from God. Since the Fall, the domain of matter has been infiltrated by the satanic spirit of negativity. The apparent matter-spirit duality itself is a product of this aberration. Biblically, matter is not evil in itself. It cannot be; for it is God's creation. But in the context of human stewardship, the domain of matter can be animated either by the Holy Spirit -the Spirit of positivity- or by Satan, the spirit of irreducible negativity. Materialism is a reflection not on the intrinsic nature or scope of matter. It is, on the contrary, an outworking of the mindset, or the overarching vision that shapes our attitude to the domain of matter. It is in its attitude to God that the negativity that operates at the fountainhead of materialism reveals its true colours.

But negativity does not always parade or advertise itself as negativity. Instead, it is keen to put on the garb of positivity. However, its true colours can be recognized if seen in the light of primary goals. As is to be expected, the negative mindset will fiercely contest every assumption in this respect that goes against its own inclinations. For example, the materialistic outlook will argue against the basic spiritual assumption that God-centredness is a pre-condition for human fulfillment. It will advance the counter-assumption that the life of a man consists in the abundance of one's possessions. So a correct diagnosis of the spiritual malady afflicting a home is possible only when there is clarity on what is the basic purpose of family life as well as the nature and significance of family as an institution. The biblical article of faith in this context is that family is a God-created institution and that a sense of spiritual mission underlies its scope and purpose. Materialism is inherently and irresistibly negative to this biblical presupposition. To be negative to God is to be positive to everything other than God! That is why Paul argues that friendliness to world is enmity to God, and vice versa.

That negativity expresses itself as excessive positivity towards the worth of material possessions. In respect of family, this does not always take place as a matter of consciously asserted or proclaimed philosophy of life. It simply operates as the working assumption. The result is that in practice the absolute is trivialized and the trivial is absolutized. People neglect their eternity in chasing the transitory trophies of this world. This is the fatal logic of idolatry; and it is inimical to human dignity and fulfillment. For this reason, human stature has been dwindling within the materialistic culture. The culture of liberal individualism, for example, does not produce outstanding individuals. The poverty of the human person stares us in the face.

Materialism marginalizes the human. It makes relationships subservient to material possessions, and corrupts family into a domain of camouflaged loneliness. It substitutes ownership for fellowship and reduces a human being to the body, leaving the soul famished. It stifles the spirit of compassion, and impoverishes the domestic culture. It fills the home with anxiety, grievance and frustration even if they are not acknowledged and addressed in honesty. Materialism is the most universal form of idolatry today, and needs to be seen as such. A family driven by its spirit cannot but waste its spiritual heritage. The biblical idea of stewardship as applied to family urges us to be vigilant against the idolatry of materialism without becoming negative or negligent about the material and physical aspects of life.

The negativity inherent in Materialism expresses itself as insensitivity towards God and human beings alike. Irrational and excessive attachment to material wealth undermines our relationships on both planes. It makes us forget God and see our fellow human beings either as threats or as stumbling blocks. This undermines the wholeness of family culture, as was the case with the household of Zacchaeus, the reason why his home needed salvation. Generosity, the freedom to give to the point of self-denial, is the antidote to the negativity inherent in materialism. Such generosity is at the root of human greatness. In contrast, the more we acquire overlooking our need to love and to be loved by God and our fellow human beings, the more dwarfed we get. The more we have, the poorer we get.

Spiritually mastering materialism, therefore, should be deemed an important thrust in the formation of family culture. Special and even self-conscious emphasis should be laid on this spiritual challenge today, given the global pervasiveness of materialism and its invasiveness sharpened by the media and communication technologies. The traditional ambivalence in our disposition towards God and Mammon seems to be now resolving itself in favour of the latter. This calls for a definitive commitment, the like of which Joshua made: "As for me and my family, we shall serve the Lord". (Jos. 24:15).

(3) The aberrations of individualism. Individualism is to materialism what the Holy Spirit is to community building. Consumerism is to materialism what the appetite is to the body, or ritual is to religion. Not surprisingly, therefore, individualism -with its characteristic insistence on the maximization of individual freedom at all costs- has a deleterious effect on the vitality and cohesion of family as an institution. Individualism is, ideologically, the alternative to communitarianism. In the Bible, the Spirit is the builder of community. The immediate effect of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of the Pentecost was the formation of a caring and egalitarian community. (Acts 2: ). The individualistic mindset that tends to focus on personal advantages, unmindful of its adverse consequences for the community, is necessarily disruptive. Historically, the atomized society has emerged in the wake of the rise of individualism, no matter what other blessings it has ushered in. Most likely, it was on account of its tendency to fragment and disable groups that Jesus insisted on the renunciation of the individualistic spirit as the eligibility requirement for discipleship. (Mtt. 16: 24). The material order is not distinguished for its capacity for cohesion. Holding everything together, the impulse to unity, is the work of the Spirit, and not of matter. Cohesion is the secret of life and fruitfulness. Whatever cohesion there is in the material order is on account of the ministration of the Spirit, whose presence and operations we tend to stereotype, despite the warning against doing so by Jesus Christ. (Jn. 3: 8).

Family is the embryonic community. It stands on the foundation of the human capacity and need to care and to share, without which we are not complete or normal as individuals. Ironically, individualism does not make for the formation of authentic individuals. The biblical worldview that sees human beings as created in the Image of God is committed to the promotion of human greatness. The Bible rejects individualism for its incompatibility with this goal. Individualism is misguided not in its purpose but in its strategies and approaches. Because it is so, its strategies defeat its purpose. Community is the strategy God has ordained for the empowerment and fulfillment of every individual; just the creation of plants and trees was God's strategy for producing fruits and flowers. This foundational truth is not invalidated by the fact that in the fallen state there is a tension between the individual and his community at all levels of its institutionalization, whether it be the family, the Church, society or the State.

It is significant that individualism tends to predispose individuals towards hedonistic tendencies. Hedonism denotes self-indulgence to the point of insensitivity to the wellbeing of the given human environment. This is illustrated by a case reported from the UK a few years ago in which a couple locked up their nine year daughter in a room and went away to the Continent in order to have a good time. The child survived on toilet paper. We fool ourselves if we assume that hedonistic individualism does not undermine the caring aspects of family culture, and it does not lead to bankruptcy in relationships. This, in turn, has a variety of consequences; and it is necessary to take cognizance of some of them.

(a) Decline in parental authority. Individualism prioritizes the unfettered freedom of the individual and it is inevitable that this erodes the gravity of all traditional embodiments of authority, including parents. Without this in-built sense of direction, family becomes like a rudderless ship, adrift on the sea. This has serious practical consequences almost the whole of which are detrimental to the long-term well-being of the children. Ironically, children who resent parental guidance as 'interference' with their life succumb all too tamely to the pulls of peer-pressure. They resent discipline and mistake license for freedom. Freedom to be wholesome must be continually engaged to purpose. Purposeless freedom degenerates into license. Discipline is the bridge between freedom and purpose. Logically, freedom divorced from discipline must contradict and annul itself. Family is meant to be a sphere of creative and purposeful freedom. It must be the school for training people in the art of exercising freedom purposively and wholesomely. Every home that takes itself seriously must maintain a culture wherein parental authority is respected and individual freedom exercised with discipline and responsibility.

(b) Decline of the caring culture. The foremost casualties of hedonistic individualism are the capacity to care and the compassion that underlies it. The caring orientation functions on the equilibrium between the interests of the individual and of the group. The group most immediate to every individual is the family. The inability to care for others is pathological; for it results from the loss of that human equilibrium, due to exclusive self-absorption. In traditional societies like ours, mothers have carried virtually the entire burden of caring for the members of their families. In a spiritual sense, they have been the fountain-springs of the caring culture that has nourished life over the centuries. The fact that this has been taken for granted, and the crucial importance of women's role in the wellbeing of family overlooked, has tended to make women sceptical of the fairness of family as an institution. This scepticism now threatens to spill over on to the desirability of endorsing the caring culture as integral to the ethos of family. This is a great danger. The way forward is not for women to relinquish their role as care-givers, but to assume the additional role as trainers who nurture the rest of the family, including husbands, in the art of caring. Whatever might be the twists and turns in the culture of the world, the value of caring must remain indisputable. There is no spiritual tradition in the world that does not insist on the duty to care. As for Jesus, he was emphatic that "the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve." (Mk. 10: 45).

(c) Erosion of relational skills. Materialism and individualism tend to undermine the human capacity for responsible relationships. Materialism inhibits relationships by making the human subservient to material possessions. Individualism does so by promoting the myth of individual self-sufficiency. In contrast, the spiritual vision sees the human situation in terms of inter-dependence, the model of which has been provided by Jesus himself through his invitation, "Abide in me, and I in you." It is on this principle of inter-dependence that the idea of personal responsibility rests. Personal growth necessarily involves the enlargement of the one's circle of responsibility. Growth, in other words, involves a process of social integration which must begin at home. As psychologists insist, the neglect or disruption of this integrative process leads to serious flaws in character-formation. This is seen to be at work in the formation of what is known as "addictive personality", which renders individuals vulnerable to various addictive habits that include alcohol and drug-abuse. An individual is seriously crippled if his capacity to enter into and sustain wholesome relationships is not properly developed. And parents who fail to incorporate relational nuances in the family culture they develop do a serious disservice to their children. It is proven fact that individualism has resulted in the erosion of relational skills in human beings. It has created a culture of organized lovelessness to which family too has fallen a prey. At the same time, the healing of this cultural pandemic can happen only through a spiritual regeneration of family culture.

(d) Focus on pleasure. Hedonistic individualism, in the context of consumerist materialism, prioritizes the consumption of pleasure. Pleasure works at variance with purpose, except when the purpose is the consumption of pleasure. It strengthens the stranglehold of self-centredness on the individual, which proves subversive to the practice of righteousness in relationships. Pleasure is to the materialistic culture, what joy is to its spiritual counterpart. Pleasure is solipsistic, individual-centred. Joy is a shared experience. The role of others in the context of pleasure is mostly instrumental: they are the means for procuring pleasure. Joy is born out of the communion of the self and the other. It is a product of relational equilibrium, which is the substance of righteousness, of doing unto others what we would that they should do unto us. Thanks to the myths of the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the individual, pleasure takes the place of joy as the as the goal of the individual. The disruptiveness this holds out to the stability of family cannot be exaggerated. Pleasure is disruptive, while joy is integrative. The spiritual regeneration of family must involve a shift from pleasure-seeking to the creation and sharing of joy in the family context. Joy is the fruit of love; whereas pleasure is the offspring of self-love. But the desirability of shifting from pleasure to joy will not be either obvious or acceptable to a person as long as he subscribes to the tenets of individualism.

(e) Coping with differences. Greater impatience with differences and the corresponding preference for sameness characterize the individualistic outlook. This has serious consequences for relationships and for family as an institution. The training to cope with differences is, hence, an emphasis that needs to be incorporated into a spiritually healthy family culture. The spiritual significance of this principle is seldom adequately recognized. On account of narrow religious conditioning that attaches exaggerated importance to sameness, people's tolerance levels tend to decline. In public life this leads to increasing intolerance and the reduction of the space for the different and the diverse. Diversity then breeds insecurity. This is so very obvious in the Indian context today. Religious and cultural plurality that has been till recently hailed as our proud heritage is today seen as a weakness and patriotic liability in some quarters. The project to homogenize culture and religion parades itself as revivalism and national resurgence. The inability to live with what does not conform to one's own likes and dislikes turns into a blanket of oppression in various walks of life. In respect of the training to cope with differences, the joint-family is arguably superior to the nuclear family, no matter what other advantages the latter may have. Parents need to make conscious efforts to expose their children to diversity in persons, situations and experiences, if their children are to grow up in a balanced way and become mature and healthy human beings. In terms of their milieu of growth children in nuclear families, especially in the urban context, are less resourceful than their counterparts in joint families and rural contexts. This has life-long implications that parents tend to overlook. In the context of inter-personal relationships, the inability to cope with differences plays a major role in aggravating problems that are usually classified under 'personal incompatibility'. Those who do not have the spiritual grace to relate to the unlike make a virtue of taking everyone else on their own terms, mistaking this flaw in personality formation either as strength of will or as smartness. The harmony of the different, indeed of the contrary, is a greater source of enrichment than the coming together of similar. Birds of the same feather flock together; but nothing of worth is ever known to have emerged from it.

(f) Focus on fellowship and togetherness. Several factors work together today to diffuse the togetherness that should characterize family life. The rise of the urban culture and individualism, the need for both parents to work in order to maintain a reasonable standard of life and, above all, the absorption with TV together threaten to turn a home into a practical arrangement for meeting some basic physical needs, but very little else. The life of the individual today has come under increased exposure to the world and centrifugal pulls. In such a situation, it is all the more necessary to strengthen the family culture emphasizing the richness of togetherness and the joy of caring and sharing. Relationships can grow and deepen, and emotional needs addressed, only through togetherness. Where this is compromised for the sake of alternate advantages or exigencies, children suffer from emotional and relational deficit leading to a variety of long-term handicaps and possible aberrations. It is now fairly well-known, for example, that the under-development of a person's emotional equipment could predispose him to criminality, homosexuality and lesbianism. Our sense of fellow-feeling, which is the fountain spring of compassion, needs to be nourished through fellowship and togetherness.

(4) Home and creativity. Most people associate family life only with routine. They tend to take their homes for granted, and remain blind to the larger scope and significance thereof. Out of this arises the logic, for example, of the need to look outside of one's home for special opportunities, either to develop one's skills or to give expression to one's creativity. Parents, for example, are known to pressurize teachers in order to secure for their children opportunities at school for developing their talents. They do precious little, however, to encourage creativity or skill-formation at home. Ironically, most people think of creativity in stereotypical ways. To them creativity means taste for activities like music, painting, theatre etc. The essence of creativity is the ability to transform whatever a person handles. Because we are created in the Image of the Creator, creativity should be deemed as integral to our approach to everything in life, including our routine work. When creativity is excluded from routine, boredom results. Every human being has a basic need to be creative. And it does not stand to reason that this truth can be overlooked in family life, which is the bedrock of the life of a person.

In conclusion, family must be seen as a place of all-round growth. Jesus grew up, fortunately, in such a home. Even as he grew physically, he also attained personal stature, intellectual maturity, social grace and, above all, spiritual depth. This can happen only if a wholesome and spiritually sound family culture is maintained at home. This is no easy task, especially at the present time. It calls for an effective and enlightened partnership between the spouses. Parents can do nothing better for their children than serving as 'proper helps' to each other in making their homes places of wholesome growth for their children.