[Russell Moore saw Avengers 2 and apparently thinks Hawkeye having a traditional family meant the filmmakers all secretly want that.]

It’s interesting to me that Hawkeye’s “traditional” family life is seen as countercultural, in the best sense of that word. For the past two or three generations, the heroes in popular culture were often trying to escape the stifling “conformity” of the nuclear family. In this movie, though, conformity seems to be girlfriends and boyfriends and, implicitly, sex and romance, but not marriage and family. A family of husband and wife with children, that is more surprising than artificially intelligent robots, suspended animation, or Gamma-radiated monsters.

Perhaps this is a signal of a bit of longing for something different. As I’ve said many times before, the Sexual Revolution can’t keep its promises. The breakdown of families doesn’t bring the liberation some think. Those of us who believe in the old ways need to nourish these habits and practices, not only in obedience to God and not only for our own flourishing, but for the sake of generations to come. Families, designed according to the pattern held together in Christ, will seem odd and strange and freakish, but sometimes odd and strange and freakish is exactly what people are looking for.