The Post Marital World

Light in Dark Places

The nuclear family is finished, dead, and buried--we are told.  Not so fast, says Family First, an organisation devoted to the promotion of family life, resisting the deconstruction of families.  Many of the headlines about the "research" celebrating the end of the nuclear family in Western societies is suspect and oozing with cant, it says.

Consider, for example, a recent release by Family First slamming a particularly biased  piece, masquerading as serious research.  Nevertheless that piece garnered sensational headlines.  The point of those headlines was to announce that the nuclear family was passe.  The "traditional family" was now thoroughly deconstructed, implying that anything or everything which might replace it was to be welcomed as part of the Brave New World.

But the broader point at issue is worth considering.
 It used to be true that Western society believed and practised traditional marriage and the nuclear family as the norm.  It was expected that the vast majority of people would grow to adulthood, marry for life, and have children who would then go on to repeat the pattern in their generation.  Laws, traditions, and institutions not only reflected this reality, but they supported and promoted it.  These social arrangements were so universal and widespread that societies believed them to reflect Natural Law.  They believed there was nothing distinctly Christian about them (although most Western countries were nominally Christian).  Rather, the nuclear family was considered fundamental to society, as food to life.

But no longer.  This is something to which Christians and the Church need to face.  Marriage and the nuclear family are indeed a creation ordinance; Christian theology has traditionally (and correctly) regarded leaving and cleaving for life as a God-ordained ordinance for all mankind.  Lifelong marriage and children being born into the consequent household were ordained before the Fall.  [Genesis 2: 20-24]  Hence, a man and a woman left and cleaved--and no death and divorce was in sight.

The ordination of life-long monogamous marriage, ended only by the death of one, became the ordained and commanded institution for all men after the Fall, as Jesus Christ made clear.  [Matthew 19:8]  It was indeed part of Natural Law by which we mean the order of creation itself.

But when a society enters into the darkness of rebellion against the Creator, the centre of society cannot hold.  Consequently, monogamous marriage and children being born into such a holy institution will eventually be thrown out, unless God miraculously intervenes.  It is not by accident that monogamous lifelong marriages were not recognised by their "owners" amongst the slaves of the Victorian era--or in any era, for that matter.  That evil institution sought to break down such divine ordinances and replace them with men as mere economic labour units.

As the West moves rapidly into its revival of ancient paganism, it is not surprising that its rebellion would extend even to the extent of throwing off the Creation Ordinances.  By extending the rebellion thus far--into unnatural social relations--the West will reap the bitter fruits of its attempts to deconstruct the sacred natural social order.  A slew of suffering, malformation, and societal destruction will follow in its train.

The Christian community, of which the Church is a central part, needs to respond in an appropriate manner.  Amongst other things, we need to start proclaiming marriage not as a creation ordinance common to all men (which it is and ought to be) but as a distinctly Christian ordinance, enjoyed by God's elect and beloved people.  It is one of the great privileges and blessings bestowed upon us by our Creator and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.  As the fruits of Unbelief increasingly become putrescent upon the vine, monogamous lifelong marriage, together with children born into secure households, loved by parents and siblings, until "death do them part", will become a quaint social oddity.  Christians will become "Armished", if you would excuse the neologism.  But these things will also become increasingly spectacular and glorious--bringing honour to the Son of God.

The day is coming--in fact it is already here--when work colleagues will find it strange to hear their Christian colleague not just speaking about "Mum and Dad", or his brothers and sisters, but also speaking about them with deep affection and loyalty.  But some will find it strangely glorious and will long for the Kingdom of God, which they have never seen, let alone known.

Marriage is a Christian ordinance.  The nuclear family belongs to the Christian Church.  It's what we Christians believe and live and do.  What unbelievers do when it comes to cohabitation and child bearing is increasingly part of what the Scripture calls the "madness of the Gentiles" [Ephesians 4:17; I Peter 4:3].  We once had just schools, and now we need to speak of Christian schools.  So we once had marriage and family common to all;  now we need speak of Christian marriage and child bearing as things distinct from what the Unbelievers do--and all the more glorious for being so.