Teach it to your children…

Family and marriage are institutions designed by God–they are not man-made.  Perhaps then, we shouldn’t be surprised that the family is becoming an enemy. Who would have ever believed there would come a time when society would be hostile to what has always been considered the basic unit of its existence?  It is why I think feminism has had the most damaging impact on our culture…because at the core, it seeks to separate family…with destruction as a result.

We have slid down a slippery slope and arrived at the belief that the basic unit of society is the INDIVIDUAL.  (Think about it for a minute…look at all the ways families are divided and the expectations that is should be so…even within the church.)  And when that is believed, the individual is very quickly lost in the state.

“Dr. Carle C. Zimmerman, Harvard University spent his life studying the history of the family.  He has pointed out the family’s significance:  that whenever the atomistic (separate, unrelated members) family develops, in which the authority of the father is no longer paramount, then there is a very quick disintegration of society, the total state takes over, and there is a radical collapse of civilization…..

With the development of the atomistic family–which is really no family at all–the home is simply a place to room and board while the state takes over the role as father–to take care of the family in its every need, providing for the children and the parents; the family no longer cares for itself; civilization collapses. ” -R.J. Rushdoony

(By the way, this paradigm does not exclude the rare single men and women not called to marriage;  all still belong to a family and have a major importance in that role.)

Listen to  Zimmerman’s conclusions:

He believed…

“..that a fundamental purpose of civilization is the empowerment and enabling of the family — and is absolutely key to the health of any civilization. … Nobody undertakes to have a large family because it’s fun, or, in advanced societies, because it’s economically beneficial. They do it because they believe that’s what people do. In other words, they believe that children are a blessing from God, and that we humans are participating in the divine will by begetting children and raising them up to carry on our civilization….

Mankind has consumed not only the crop, but the seed for the next planting as well. Whatever may be our Pollyanna inclination, this fact cannot be avoided. Under any assumptions, the implications will be far-reaching for the future not only of the family but of our civilization as well. The question is no longer a moral one; it is social.”

Building the family is the only option for surviving–slice it any way you like, our ideals and personal opinions won’t erase factual reality.

Our nation stands on the brink of becoming something entirely different than we’ve ever known.  I found the following article quite timely in regard to the topic at hand:

“In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble. In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution.

In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness.

Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures.”

Read the rest of Perspectives on Communism from a Russian Immigrant

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.”

Interesting…a reader sent me this quote:

“One of the mantras we hear repeatedly these days is, “we don’t want socialism.”  While that sounds good (and conservative, and constitutional, and patriotic, etc.), it rings hollow when you consider the overwhelming majority of the people leading the charge have their children in what amounts to socialized education.  What’s the difference?  If you’re really against government-run, socialized programs, yank your kid off the yellow prison bus and just say no.”

Read the rest of  The Yellow Prison Bus and the Future of American Healthcare

Sunday, Joel McDurmon, with American Vision stated those sentiments more eloquently in a message he spoke at our church.  What’s better, he concluded with an encouraging word to believers:

“The sin-gripped heart lives and breathes in a cloud of its own delusion, in which it exhibits all the functions of the Image of God which it bears—it worships, it gets outraged over moral issues, it preaches, it evangelizes for its cause, it cares about knowledge and order—yet it directs these functions toward an untenable false god (some aspect of creation) instead of the true Creator. The worship of this false god—be it that of another religion, or man himself—consumes all that fallen man does, and in the end all the failures of that false god manifest as the failures of the sinners who followed it. That is, to the extent that men worship a corrupt god, to that extent their lives, families, and societies will grow corrupt. And the more they grow corrupt, the more they worship their idols, and the whole process compounds upon itself.

This process, of God abandoning sinners to fill up the measure of their own sinfulness, rarely gets talked about, but it appears all through Scripture. It is one of God’s specific ways of sending judgment upon a people: removing His restraints from a society and allowing that society to have the full measure of the sins they so badly lust for; and the ensuing self-destruction of that people as they devour one another and cannibalize themselves, stands as a testimony to God’s truth as the only salvation for mankind….

The sins of a people (even of individuals) become the method through which God judges that nation unto its own self-destruction. When a nation, even of many professing Christians, elects to educate its children through godless, unbiblical means, that very means becomes the method of driving that generation and its future inheritors further into destruction. When a culture adopts abortion and other family planning measures in order limit and even cancel the growth of families, God judges that nation through that medium and thus destroys its inheritance and continuance into the future….

When a culture denies just weights and measures, God will abandon them to that injustice, and that very tool will run their measures of food and shelter and meaningful work empty. When a culture looks to government to be its benefactor and savior, God will give them their government in all its glory and power to be their savior, and they will all go down together. When a culture attacks everything godly about families and freedom, God will abandon them to a rootless, loveless, tyrannical end.

As people who abhor these very idols, who pray for deliverance, who cry out about the evils around us, who do everything we can to preserve a godly family and society, and yet watch all of it slowly slip away around us due to the lusts of our countrymen and the heart-idols of many of our religious peers, we tend to lose heart….

The question is not whether we can stop it; the question is whether we can be the Ezekiel and the faithful that shall remain after it dies and decays away. Because the ultimate goal of such judgments is to separate the sheep from the goats. To destroy the deluded and gather God’s people unto Him. This is how Ezekiel concludes in verse 11: he intends to punish the false prophets and idolatrous in order that the house of Israel may no longer stray from Me and no longer defile themselves with all their transgressions. Thus they will be My people, and I shall be their God.

It’s a good time to have babies, to join together in churches that support godly causes. It’s a good time to be productive and wise. If you can’t have a big family, the church is your big family; support it in every way you can, and defend her purity and peace. These are basic, simple measures that will keep us gathered to God as the God Delusion leads his enemies to cannibalize themselves; and the meek shall inherit the earth, and the righteous shall have the kingdom of heaven. “

And when it comes to strong societies–family, family, family.

I almost get sick to my stomach when I hear Christians tsk other Christians for “making too much of the family”.  I suppose there could be such a thing, but I think we make a grave mistake assuming one can be “too concerned” about the health of the family.

R.J. Rushdoony writes:

“The growth of statist power in health, education, and welfare has been marked by a retreat of Christians from those sectors.  This has enabled the state to enter by default into society’s key area of power, the family.  Control of the family means control over all of society.  The church cannot be strong where the family is weak.  The decay of family and church is the decay of society.”

And can’t you see it?  The devastating results of “too little emphasis” on the family?  When we stop investing in our families, they make an easy, open target for attack.

We live in an era where even the church elevates the individual, often to the demise of the family.  Throughout Scripture we see where God worked through families, and largely even through nations and generations to fulfill His purposes.  He is a far-sighted, generationally-reaching God, and we are to be too.

Which is why we have to pay such careful attention to our health as a family.  It is why divorce among believers should make us weep; it’s why we must invest every ounce of our being into nurturing the souls of our children; it’s why we should help them approach marriage with a gravity and preparation unheard of among pop-culture.  It’s why we must see ourselves as one force, worthy of defense, united in purpose and vision.

And ultimately, why we should be seeking to share this vision with other families, taking them under our wings and encouraging them to fight the good fight and march under the banner of Christ.