Recovering the Family (Part 1)

Chuck Colson, speaking at the dedication of the new headquarters for Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado, made a very sobering prediction. Referring to the death of conscience and the loss of a moral code in the American society, Colson blamed this primarily on the breakdown of the family and predicted that the present moral chaos would lead to tyranny within five years, unless God's people can reach and save the family (taken from a report in the "National and International Religion Report," Vol. 7, No. 21).

We have witnessed the amazing collapse of the Soviet Union due largely to a failed economic and political policy. We may also behold the collapse of the United States due supremely to moral decay and the lawless anarchy resulting from it.

Whatever the ultimate conclusion of the matter in God's Providence, no one can honestly dispute that moral decay prevails more and more in our nation.This moral decay has many causes, but surely among the foremost of these causes is the failure of the family to provide moral, spiritual, mental, and emotional order and stability for adults and young people alike. Without this order and stability, both young and old are driven by base passions and are led about by those who appeal to those base passions for personal gain.

How rare it is to find a family founded upon a strong, healthy marriage; a marriage in which the husband and father stands as a mature, wise, and unchallenged leader; a man whose leadership is rooted in a well-grounded conviction concerning spiritual and moral absolutes, and whose leadership is administered with the proper balance of firm resolve and compassionate understanding.

How rare it is to see a man who leads by example and by precept and whose wife and children follow him with delightful submission. How unusual it is to discover a wife and mother who correctly perceives her unique and special niche according to God's perfect plan: a woman who strives before God to develop all her abilities and skills to the utmost, not in order to usurp leadership from her husband, but so that she might honor God by supporting him and facilitating his leadership to the fullest within the family. Her joy and contentment are found in serving her husband and children with the many faceted talents that God has bestowed upon her. And whatever she does with reference to concerns outside the family, her heart and will are uncompromisingly geared to her God-appointed roles as wife and mother.

The rarity of what has just been described demonstrates what has gone wrong in the family and, thus, in America. Whatever else must happen, if our nation is to be saved, men must become the moral and spiritual leaders that God requires them to be; and women must become the strong, intelligent, and supportive wives and mothers that God designed them to be. Unless these roles are recovered and filled properly, all is lost!