America is in the fast free falling process of seeing the family go down in flames. When I graduated high school in 1995 it was still pretty rare for the kids in my peer group to have parents who were divorced or to be a child born out of wedlock… possibly conceived out of wedlock, but usually born in. However within the next five to ten years that would change.
I remember the scare that went across America when we began to draw near to the new millennium. Y2K was in full media effect. People were buying toilet paper and non-perishables by the truck load… literally.
The world was freaking out.
How on earth could our beginning-to-be-technologically-driven world ever survive when the computers have to go to a 00 ending? What ever shall we do? The banks will crash, the stock market will plummet, hospitals will lose power and everyone will die!
I remember being my ignorant little southern early twenties self and thinking… really? Our world has survived for over 6000 years without all this tech stuff and we really think that a date roll is going to destroy it as we know it?
That, my friends, is how easily the media can create chaos and bring stupidity out in massive proportions. It’s propaganda my friends… and it has been proven over and over to work easily and quickly and almost flawlessly.
It plays on fear. And it plays on the fear of fear.
Whenever we make a decision based on fear you can almost guarantee it’s always the wrong decision. If we say the words, “I’m afraid that if I don’t then….” before a decision we are trying to make, then I suggest we stop and re-evaluate. Our decisions should be made based on the peace of God, not fear created by the words of man. If we are making a decision based on the words of people rather than the Word of God… then it is the wrong decision.
When the world shouts Y2K and is running around stocking up on toilet paper… the people of God should be found being still and knowing that He is God…
He is the One that controls the end of the world… not a date roll.
In the book of Nehemiah we read…
Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons and their daughters, all those who had knowledge and understanding,
Nehemiah 10:28 (NASB)
Obviously the underlined emphasis is mine. Right here in this passage we see the only way that we can separate ourselves from the media induced crazy mass chaos of confusion and fear of the “peoples of the land” is to separate ourselves to the law of God. If you separate from it to anything else you are still in it… just from a different angle. You still will lack knowledge and understanding and find yourselves being led by the words of men and fear rather than the peace of God that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7).
Today in America we see the family going down in flames. The peoples of the land are attempting to completely re-define family in general… and they are trying through television programs and other forms of media to make the family a joke and a place of aggravation and foolishness instead of the place of strength and confidence and safety.
In human context, a family (from Latin: familia) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage), or co-residence/shared consumption (see Nurture kinship). Members of the immediate family may include a spouse, parent, brother and sister, and son and daughter. Members of the extended family may include grandparent, aunt, uncle, cousin, nephew and niece, or sibling-in-law. In most societies the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children, anthropologists most generally classify family organization as matrifocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a husband, his wife, and children; also called nuclear family); avuncular (for example a brother, his sister, and her children); or extended family in which parents and children co-reside with other members of one parent’s family.
~ wikipedia
The term nuclear family comes from the word nucleus in relation to atoms… you know the building block of all matter. The nucleus is the central and most important part of an object, movement, or group, forming the basis for its activity and growth. The family with a husband, a wife, and children is what is termed a nuclear family.
We homeschool our children… and one of the largest fears of non-homeschooling families is the media induced lie of “socialization”. If our kids do not attend public school how on earth will they ever learn to function properly in society?
Y2K people.
Y2K.
Even wikipedia states the truth, “In most societies the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children.”
So here’s my question to the church… is the church participating in the destruction and decline of the family or are we working to strengthen and build it?
If your “ministry” is bringing misery to the family… specifically your own… then is it really ministry?
Let me ask you… how was Satan able to deceive Eve? Was she with her family? Or did he catch her while she was alone… separated from her husband.
Are the “ministries” of your church doing more to add stress to the families within it? Are they keeping the families separated… parents running crazy in fifty different directions all week… and constantly draining the families finances forcing parents to choose between buying their children shoes or sending them to dinner and a movie with the youth group? Are you constantly pulling kids away from their parents or planning events around the building up and strengthening of the relationship between parent and child.
Are you eliminating the possibility of a child who does not have a strong christian family with both a mother and a father in the home from experiencing the reality of one by always keeping them surrounded by only their peers for fear of them feeling “left out” because they don’t have a christian home?
In our attempt to “reach the children” are we helping to destroy the foundation that God Himself designed and laid as the tool to reach children… the family.
There is a reason that Leave it to Beaver was such a hit… kids who didn’t have this is reality got to see it in possibility, which meant they could see how to do things differently with their families one day.
I loved what I read the other day in a blog post by Connie Jakab,
Ministry needs direction, and our attention as well, but through this experience I’ve started to question ministry culture. We ambitiously build for the kingdom, but are we building something because “ministry culture” has told us to? Is it really necessary? Do I really need to slave away my time, energy, and resources on these things, or is reevaluation needed? This is a personal question only we can answer for ourselves as every situation is different. We need to look at what we do from an outside perspective to see if our work is producing the fruit God desires and if it creates health for our families or if it doesn’t.
You can read the full post here: When Family Pressures Threaten Your Ministry. However I believe the post title should have been When Ministry Pressures Threaten Your Family.
The health of our families should be a priority in our lives and in the ministry of the church. We as the church should never catch ourselves being a part of adding even more stress and unbiblical burdens and unwarranted guilt on our members. Because when the rubber hits the road… the family will stand before God by families… not by church membership.
The land will mourn, every family by itself; the family of the house of David by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Levi by itself and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself and their wives by themselves; all the families that remain, every family by itself and their wives by themselves.
Zechariah 12:12-14