Family from a biblical worldview
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” — Genesis 2:24
The God of the Bible clearly created man and woman for a purpose. Marriage and having children is at the center of that purpose. Having a sound Christian perspective on marriage is vitally important today as many in our society are trying to redefine marriage to fit their particular social or political agendas. Marriage is an opportunity for men and women to produce children. Children are a gift from God and with them comes great responsibility: children are to be raised in His “likeness.” (Though many married couples do not have children, they still have an opportunity to disciple others to conform to His “likeness.”)
We have been in a battle for generations regarding the family and many are unaware of the beliefs of Marx and other communist and fascist leaders who want to destroy the family unit and have all loyalty and worship to themselves. Dr. Paul Kengor, a professor at Grove City College, summed up the battle today: “The key here is the rise of the New Left, or the so-called “cultural Marxists.” They switched the fight against the West away from the Marxist class/economic-based revolutionary model to one of culture and sex. Their inability to sell economic Marxism to the world meant that a new means would be needed to bring down the West. Class-based economic warfare would take a back seat to an assault on Western civilization. That was where the rupture had to take place. The educational system, especially the universities, would be the ‘transmission belt’ (Lenin’s word) for this fusion of Marxist and Freudian thought. It would take them a while — they would need to take over the universities to spread their radical ideas on family, marriage, sex, and gender — but they eventually pulled it off.”
We are seeing these results today with the riots led by Antifa and the Black Lives Matter movement. On the “Guiding Principles” page of its website, the Black Lives Matter movement makes the stunning statement that it stands in opposition to the traditional — biblical — “nuclear family.” Under the tab “Black Villages,” it makes the following statement: “We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribe nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.” The National Center for Fatherhood says the statistics prove otherwise. Fatherless families are four times more likely to live in poverty, the children face a “dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse,” and they are twice as likely to commit suicide. “More than 20 million children live in a home without the physical presence of a father. Millions more have dads who are physically present, but emotionally absent,” the NCF states on its website. “If it were classified as a disease, fatherlessness would be an epidemic worthy of attention as a national emergency.” As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. noted, “The group consisting of mother, father and child is the main educational agency of mankind.” King was speaking of the nuclear family.
God’s Word is as sacred as God Himself. This is an absolute that can serve as an anchor for our lives. The truth of God’s Word is an unchangeable reality. Like gravity or the multiplication tables, the truth of God’s Word is an absolute reality whether or not we believe it or accept it. In His Word, God has given us moral absolutes as a means of guiding us into satisfying, happy, productive lives.
We need to remember we are in battle, a war of ideas and moral absolutes that affect us all. Corporations and individuals have, out of ignorance I believe, given BLM and its affiliates over a billion dollars to support their efforts. Also, as incredible as it may seem, we can no longer assume that people in our culture understand what the proper definition of “marriage” and “the family” is. Not only is this a sad commentary on the impact of secular humanists in our society, it also shows how the culture’s memory of the biblical tradition on which it is largely based is fading fast. Joshua 24:15 gives us our example with, “As for ME and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Home is a hallowed and endeared spot.
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Bob’s religion columns appear Saturdays in The Press. Email Bob: bjshill@mac.com
