You would be shocked to learn what is being done right now to destroy the family unit.
Are you aware that the family under deliberate assault by some of the highest and most influential elements of our society?
Are you aware of the role of government in the steady, sustained attack on the family as we have traditionally known it?
The assault on the family is deliberate. The attack is not an accident. It is held together by a whole body of prejudices. These prejudices reflect an animosity toward the laws of God.
They emphasize sexual license over God-given restraints. Sexual equality over God-given distinctions and roles. Family "democracy" over the parental authority which God created. And alternatives to the nuclear family as God ordained it.
Four Crucial Areas
Of recent date, these prejudices have reared their head in four crucial areas. First, some social activists and commentators are proposing a new definition of the family-a definition that would allow for all sorts of permissiveness and sexual license. Second, the same kind of people are pushing the idea that human civil government — not parents — should have the responsibility for children. Third, in the legal arena, there is a concerted movement to downgrade the family unit, and in particular, to give children legal rights against their parents.
Finally, there is an effort on the part of officials high in governments to push antifamily prosexual license ideas.
The New Permissive Definition of the Family
An influential element of society, mostly intellectuals and feminists, are pushing an idea of family that includes almost any form of cohabitation.
Lois A. Lund, dean of the College of Human Ecology at Michigan State University, offers this new definition of the family: "Two or more persons who share resources, share responsibilities for decisions, share values and goals and have commitment to one another over time."
And Betty Friedan, the archfeminist "spokesperson," offers a similar definition: "Family is people who are living together with deep commitment and mutual needs and sharing."
An even more liberal definition was offered by a 1976 panel representing one large Protestant body: "A relationship community of more than one person."
Words like commitment, sharing and mutual may have nice, warm cozy rings to them, but they do not hide the truth that these definitions include any number of antifamily and nonfamily relationships.
Thus, two or three or five or ten homosexuals living together could qualify as a "family" under the new definitions of family. So would any reasonably long term "shacking-up," between unmarried heterosexuals. Even affinity groups (say five computer enthusiasts who share the same house) could qualify as a family.
The new definition of family leads to absurd results. It insidiously implies that, to use the language God uses, fornication, adultery, homosexuality and vice all can be dignified with the label "family" if there is sufficient "mutuality" and "sharing." About the only kind of "living together" that the definitions don't call a family would be cohabitation with animals!
To these human definitions God thunders: "Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).
But what is God's definition of a family? The nucleus of a family is a marriage between a man and a woman. Heterosexual marriage is the minimum requirement for a family, based on the revelation that God gave to the first human beings after the creation of mankind: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:5).
A family will normally include children (see Psalm 127:3-5), and may include relatives, such as grandparents, aunts or uncles. (Consider that the patriarch Jacob's family, as described in Genesis chapters 37-46, included a grandfather, married children and grandchildren, all living as one family) Nevertheless the structural core of the family is heterosexual marriage.
This is the biblical test for family. It corresponds with the traditional family of the Western world.
The Inhuman Wedge
The grossly over-broad definitions of "family" are not the only insidious attack on the family as it was constituted by God.
A far more frightening-chilling development is the attempt to drive a wedge between parents and children. The means by which the wedge is driven is the assertion that human government owns your children.
God asserts that children are His gift (Psalm 127:3). God puts responsibility for proper child rearing squarely on the parents (Deuteronomy 6:7, Proverbs 22:6). A parent is, while not an absolute owner of a child, God's trustee who has the God-given right to care for and train the child as God's steward.
But a different idea is gaining influence today. The idea is government owns your child. The reason behind the idea is that social planners-people who consider it their business to remake society according to what they think is good-will be unable to bring about a "just" or "equal" society unless government is able to control child rearing.
Mark the following frightening words: ". . . the fact that children are raised in families means there is no equality. In order to raise children with equality we must take them away from families and communally raise them" (emphasis ours).
The statement was made by Mary Jo Baine, assistant professor of education at Wellesley College.
The sentiment is echoed by top government bureaucrats in the United States. "Children do not belong to parents," says Edward Zigler, director of the U.S. Government Office of Child Development.
The 1972 Minneapolis Declaration of Feminism, as you would expect, follows the antifamily party line: ". . . With the destruction of the nuclear family, children must be seen as the responsibility of the entire society, rather than the individual." (Evidently, the Minnesota feminists don't even recognize the existence of parents, only that of society and individuals).
Even more chilling is the fact that such jackboot antifamily sentiments are occasionally found among judges in our society. Judge Lisa Richette of the First Judicial District of Pennsylvania, reportedly said: "If there is a least detrimental alternative, remove the child and don't worry about the right of the parents. The child belongs to society. The parents were only biological producers."
(Evidently, Judge Richette has never read the decision of the American Supreme Court made in 1925 before the recent attack on the family, which directly contradicts her sentiments. "The child," said the Supreme Court in one of its greatest moments, "is not the mere creature of the state" (Pierce v. Society of Sisters).
When you read of the statements of people such as Professor Baine, Mr. Zigler or Judge Richette, you cannot help but be reminded of a book that showed penetrating insight into the modern world. It is George Orwell's 1984.
The book prophesies a horrible, nightmarish future for mankind. Life will be a vast prison-human government will be in control of everything. There will be no freedom. There will be no individuality, and the family will be or made the servant of the state.
The following passage from 1984 practically describes to a tee the kind of world advocated by Ms. Baine, Mr. Zigler and Judge Richette: "Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it."
In George Orwell's nightmare world of 1984, children will be allowed to remain with parents, but the human state will claim their loyalties. Children will certainly "not belong to their parents." They will belong to "Big Brother" (the government). In fact, in Mr. Orwell's prophetic novel, children are encouraged to spy on, turn in and terrorize their parents!
Compare author Orwell's prophecy with the equally prophetic words of Jesus Christ, describing the time before the return of Christ: ". . . the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death" (Matthew 10:21).