Previous posts in this series can be found in my article, A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Men.
As a pastor for twenty years, I spent a good amount of time counseling married and engaged couples. I could write an entire book giving marriage advice. But if there is one thing I would tell Christian couples today, this is it:
There is a bear stalking our homes
Fifteen year-old Hayes Sherman and his friend were watching TV in Hayes’ Lake Tahoe home while his mother slept upstairs. Suddenly, a hungry bear entered their kitchen through an open garage door and began rummaging through the refrigerator. Realizing that the sounds of grunts and crashing containers of food emanating from the kitchen were sure signs that there was a bear in their home, Hayes urgently called his mother upstairs to tell her about the ravishing bear trashing the kitchen and that she shouldn’t come down the stairs.
As he talked to his mom, the bear bumped into the door separating Hayes and his friend’s room from the kitchen. While they held it shut, the door shook as the bear tried to open it multiple times.
“That is the worst-case scenario as a parent, to have a bear between you and your children,” Hayes mother recounted latter to CNN. “I am glad that I didn’t run downstairs, because that probably would have just agitated the bear.”
After speaking with his mom, and still holding the door shut with the help of his friend, Hayes called 911 and soon the police arrived, opened the door, and let the bear out of the house.
Like the bear in that Lake Tahoe home, there is a bear in our homes and it seeks to destroy them.
Moral relativism is the bear stalking our homes
That “bear” is moral relativism and it is as destructive to our marriages and families as any literal bear possibly could be. The philosophy of moral relativism views moral values as “relative” to individual beliefs and prevailing cultural norms. This philosophy holds that there are no objective morals that are true for all people in all societies at all times. Rather, moral values can change, depending on the person and the culture that the person lives in, or, as the saying goes, there are “different strokes for different folks.”
With respect to sexual morality, moral relativism is the de facto law of the land in American culture. The logical conclusion of relative sexual morality, therefore, is a laissez-faire attitude toward marriage and family. One can arrange one’s sex life and one’s family life, according to one’s own desires and convictions, that is, if one wants to get married at all.
The result is an implosion of the institutions of marriage and family in America.
While Christians have been warning about this cultural maelstrom for years, the sad fact is that moral relativism now infects even our churches, along with the hearts and minds of individual Christians like ourselves.
Our homes need men of God to protect them against moral relativism
Notably, the story of the bear in that Lake Tahoe home makes no mention of a husband and father who could protect the mother and children from the deadly bear.
Like that defenseless family in Lake Tahoe, millions of American families stand helpless against the bear of moral relativism because it has robbed them of faithful men who will always be around to protect them. Without the basic guiding principles that 1) sex outside of marriage is wrong, and 2) marriage is between one man and one woman only, principles that buttressed Western civilization for two thousand years, men dessert their families by the millions and let them dissolve into chaos.
Even many men of God who should know better have allowed moral relativism to seep into their homes. Some dabble secretly in pornography. Some have affairs. Some approve of same sex marriage. Some even allow their adult children and unmarried partners to live with them so they can save money to buy a home.
One important way men of God can combat moral relativism is by demonstrating fidelity to our wives and children
Given our current cultural debauchery, faithfulness to one’s marriage covenant, as taught in the Bible, is a radical lifestyle these days. Not laughing at a crude sexual joke told by one’s boss, not looking at online pornography, not longing for someone else’s wife, not approving of an adult child’s relationship with an unmarried live-in lover, not going along with the crowd when it comes to attitudes about same sex marriage, not watching movies that trash marriage and biblical sexual morality, all of these actions are examples of how we can counter the bear that threatens to destroy us and everything we stand for.
We truly strike a blow for Jesus Christ and biblical truth when we bravely and boldly demonstrate fidelity to our wives and children by our actions.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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