Families Are the Foundation of Society

The Godly plan of a man and a woman as the founding partners of a family is exemplified in Ephesians 5:21-27 where it says: “Submitting to one another in the fear of God.  Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord…Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy…”  If we look to the beginning of the Bible, we see in Genesis 1:28 where God blesses the marriage of Adam and Eve, saying, “…Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Sadly, this institution of marriage and family is falling out of favor with our culture.  Just between 2007 and 2016, the number of individuals cohabitating instead of tying the knot rose by 29 percent in the United States.  In addition, the number of married Americans has declined by eight percent since 1990.

If we look at the number of children born to married parents in the United States, this, too, has shifted dramatically.  Nowadays, one in four parents is unmarried in the United States.  This is a stark increase from what it was just a half-century ago at less than ten percent.

Clearly, the numbers demonstrate a cultural trend that is shifting away from marriage and family as the bedrock of society.  As families have declined in the United States, so have our moral foundations.  This is not surprising given the Godly wisdom of Proverbs 22:6, which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

How can a family train them when a family is not a family?  Worse yet, it is in the family that children glean their first lessons in civics.  This means that those lessons are also being lost. As Princeton University Professor Jan-Werner Müller noted, people derive their sense of patriotism and identity based on their “historical self,” their shared history. If they have a strong patriotic family to identify with, the children will become more patriotic.

In 1 Timothy 5:8, Paul reminds us that “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” Surely, this refers to more than material things!  It means we have an obligation to provide for the well-being of our loved ones— which includes the creation of a stable familial environment.

As Christians, it is our solemn duty to provide the foundation of moral understanding that creates a better society and community.  We cannot allow the degradation of families to continue.  As we go forth in our lives, if we wish to do what is best for our nation and country, we ought to start by doing right by our families and children.

 

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.

Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army

Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel