I read a story of C. S. Lewis where he once heard of parents who were teaching their children to call them and their adult friends by their first names. Lewis said he understood what they were trying to do. They wanted to show their children "we are all fellow citizens of the human race, equal partners in the race of life." But Lewis said it was a perverse thing.The strength of the family isn't that each person is counted equal. Persons aren't equal. That's precisely the meaning of being a person. We're each unique and not equal. The strength of the family is in its ability to affirm the uniqueness of each person. Families don't foster equality. They foster a community of persons, each of whom is unlike the others but invaluably belongs to the rest.
Lewis likens this radical democratization to prisoners in jail cells. Each one of them becomes equal to all of the others: everybody calls everyone by their first name. No titles of personal relationship or respect are given.
Lewis' warning helps us to guard against the secular drift of our culture which has an anthropology of individual and masses, but not communities of persons created after the Trinitarian image.
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