(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.)
Societal Matters
We have less control regarding societal matters than the previously discussed personal matters. But I do believe we can influence some of these things at least within our own families. If enough families change, society changes.
The First Step
The first step is adjusting how we view these problems. For instance when we view the issue of homosexuality, many view this primarily as a moral failing or disgusting or that they simply don’t like it or it is just a personal choice? These things may be true but, how many view it as an existential threat to the continuation of their own family line should it arise in their own children or grandchildren? How many view it as a threat to our society’s health and perhaps continuance if we are unable (unwilling?) to reproduce at a rate that allows us to continue? Homosexuality is a very real threat to your DNA and to the continuation of your civilization. The transgender movement is the same.
China pursued their One Child policy for decades. This was a policy against life. Now they are reaping the problems associated with this policy. Their society is aging with fewer and fewer people to take care of their elderly people. Japan is facing similar issues. Both countries are facing big problems in the coming years. We could face the same issues just for different reasons. Some would say we already are facing the issues.
So the first step in change is realizing the seriousness of these problems. These are life and death problems for our families and society.
Value Traditional Roles in a Biblical Manner
As I peruse the Internet, I run across what seems to me to be an increasing amount of discussion about returning to traditional values. Unfortunately, some of this talk comes from men who seem to hate women perhaps because they have been rejected, burned in divorce or because of other issues. Some men desire a return to some version of the past they have in their mind where all the women were hot, subservient, barefoot and (maybe) pregnant while catering to their every whim. All at the same time. These men seem to consider themselves “alpha” males and look with disdain on all the “beta” males they view as running around subservient to their wives or girlfriends. I personally suspect at least some of these men are writing from their parent’s basement but probably not all.
I note all this because I want to make it crystal clear I do not believe this is valuing traditional roles. This is immature garbage that adds fuel to the fires that are burning down our civilization.
The Biblical picture of gender roles is very different. First there are to be no long term “girlfriends” in the modern sense. There are to be fully committed husbands and wives. The husband is to be the head of the home. He is to love his wife in the pattern of Christ who, while the unchallenged leader, gave his life for his bride the church. Husbands are called to lead and be willing to die for their wife. The wife is to be the husband’s helpmate. She is called to obey and assist him in the goal of building a loving, Godly home and living an orderly, productive life. This is also assumed to normally be a fruitful relationship where children are born and are loved.
Some are not called to this life but most are. Again this was the established pattern prior to the fall. The loving relationship and complementary roles commanded are not the result of the fall but are one of the few places where we can live and enjoy (at least imperfectly) some of the pre-fall model now.
I would add that there is nothing Biblical about homosexuality or same-sex marriage. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah reveals two things about homosexuality. The first is that it at some point it seems to turn to violence as the two cities were full of violence per the Biblical record. The violence of the Stonewall Riots and the violence that occurred years ago when California briefly passed a bill protecting traditional marriage would seem to indicate that is still the case. Secondly, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. I do not think He is to be trifled with in general and certainly not on this matter.
Value Children
Many in our society view children as simply in the way of what is “actually valuable”. This could be career or money or travel or political ambition or…
Children are miniature humans. In the Christian faith, humans are image-bearers of God. God sent his son to die on a cross for these little humans, so just how important are they? Or perhaps more to the point how unimportant are these other things that we often value over children?
Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” He set people straight about the importance of children.
Even in loving families, people complain regularly about pregnancy, childbirth, child care, childrearing expenses, the limitations children place on your life, and more. I am not here to say children are easy. Far from it. And people are going to vent from time to time about the difficulty of bearing and raising children. But if children and young adults consistently hear too much bellyaching about childbirth and child care from older people along with all the societal rhetoric about there being too many people, they are less likely to want children of their own. They are less likely to make the very real sacrifices necessary to raise children. And they may be more likely to abort “unplanned” pregnancies.
Part of valuing children is assisting them through the very real mental and emotional challenges that changing hormone levels and just growing up in this world cause. What does the average parent, grandparent, etc. know about the mental and emotional struggles the children under their charge are presently enduring? How many of those struggles might parents, grandparents, other adults, etc. be causing wittingly or unwittingly? How many adults effectively communicate to children that struggles are okay, normal, and can be overcome at any age?
Homeschool Them!
My wife and I home-schooled our children for a variety of reasons. The first reason was to instill Biblical principles in them. Another reason however was because in our experience and the experience of many, public school was a “meat grinder” that chewed apart young people when they were at awkward or vulnerable stages of their life. Many would argue that this “socialization” is necessary and normal to build adults. My personal experience on the matter is opposite and two-fold.
First, in my own life, as soon as I was working full time in the world of adults (at age 15) rather than in the realm of the public school, my confidence and self worth improved dramatically. Almost nothing I had learned about school socialization was relevant and it was quickly jettisoned with pleasure. I quickly began adopting the behaviors of the older men around me and was much happier. I was also fortunate to have some Godly men in my circle and this made it all the better. My wife’s experience was largely the same.
Secondly, as a Navy Chief/Senior Chief for more than a decade, one of my biggest challenges with my junior personnel was to remove probably ¾ of the so-called social skills new people had learned in school and replace them with social skills that actually work in an adult environment. In other words, make them grow up and quit acting like idiots.
There is value in children/young people interacting with their own age group and they need some of that. However, I have yet to understand how you develop adults by segregating children predominantly with other children with minimal and often overwhelmed adult supervision. How does a child learn adult behavior from children? That is the blind leading the blind. From my reading of history, this “warehousing” of children was largely a 20th-century and maybe late 19th-century invention. One could also argue that this warehousing appears to have been invented to program children outside the influence of their families to be “useful” to the state. Prior that, children were predominantly integrated into adults lives and then spent limited (although important) time playing with other children.
For all these reasons and many more, I encourage home-schooling if you have the means and discipline to do it. If your situation makes this impossible, I believe you need to spend all the more effort influencing your children in the correct direction to counter what they learn socially at school.
Summary
I would like to end this with an observation that a conservative political pundit made very recently about this year’s State Of The Union address.
He noted that though there were numerous topics our President could have talked about and gotten excited about that would positively affect American lives, three negatives appeared to animate him and were emphasized vigorously.
War – There were virtually no limits in time or money the administration was willing to expend to the support a foreign war thousands of miles from our shore in which hundreds of thousands of people have died and more are dying. A war that is gutting a nation so badly that the average age of its army is approaching mid 40s. A war that virtually everyone agrees could trigger a nuclear war should any of a number of parties make a bad decision or simply slip up. It is of utmost importance to this administration.
Abortion – The ability, both legally and practically, for a woman to be able to end the life of a child in her womb is of utmost importance to this administration.
Transgenderism – The ability, both legally and practically, of people (both adults and children) to chemically castrate themselves, sever their penis and/or breasts from their bodies and/or mutilate their vagina is of utmost importance to this administration.
Since each of these priorities can only end in death or the prevention of new life, one might come to the conclusion that maybe our leadership does not like us very much and would like to see far fewer of us in existence. By us, I mean all humans.
As I said at the start, I have probably not brought very much new factual information to many (most?) readers. What I hope I have communicated is the life-and-death nature of the things that are going on and perhaps the interconnected nature of these things. I hope to increase your sense of urgency on these matters. These are not just individual social and political issues. These matters are a full scale attack on the sanctity and value of human life. We need to reverse course on it all and regain a Biblical respect for human life. We need to return to Biblical principles and we need to pray.