The Assault on Families

Last Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  Jesus and Mary were without sin, but this isn’t what made their family holy.  Despite their purity of heart and soul, the holy family lived in poverty and was forced to flee for their lives from the murderous Herod.  Mary and Joseph were distraught with fear and anxiety when they lost the twelve year old Jesus on a trip to Jerusalem, and they suffered the anguish of Joseph’s death sometime before Jesus began His public ministry.  Jesus was no doubt taunted for not having married by the age of 30, and He was castigated by religious leaders of the very people He came to save, and Mary suffered the sight of her son’s brutal torture and death.   Being holy was no panacea from the struggles and trials of life.

What constituted the holiness of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was their mutual belief and trust in God.  Mary trusted God, knowing that she would face recrimination.  Joseph trusted his dream-visits by an angel, and of course Jesus trusted God the Father, even though it meant His torture and death.  The fact that all three placed their trust in God is what made them a “holy family.”  We might think that holiness is reserved for a sainted few, or that it is only attainable by people who are able to avoid temptation and sin, but this is not the gospel message.  Paradoxically, sinners can be holy and establish a holy family of their own, simply by trusting in God and His mercy. 

To paraphrase Aristotle, the best of friends are those who share a common belief or love in some third entity.  Think about it, aren’t the friends you enjoy most, the ones who share your opinions and beliefs?  Sharing belief in God with your parents, spouse, and children is what makes a family holy.  And by holy, I don’t mean pious or scrupulous.  The very word holy derives its meaning from the same word as whole.  To be whole or wholesome is to be complete.  There is no greater sense of completeness than to find your soulmate and share life with them in all its fullness.  In the Genesis account of creation, God says “It is not good for man to be alone,” and so He created woman because alone, man was incomplete.  It is well-understood that women have distinctly positive impact on men in every regard.  The love of a woman reorders a man’s life and priorities, to a higher order, a more meaningful existence, one that can be life-giving and more fulfilling.  God had a purpose in creating us as men and women, complementary in every regard: biologically, emotionally, and perhaps even spiritually.  He also created men and women for a permanent, monogamous relationship, one in which children would be born into a loving, stable, and wholesome environment.  This is the very meaning and purpose of marriage, to create a family and a safe, secure atmosphere for the rearing and education of children by both father and mother.

[This has been universally understood and encouraged for millennia, until the last century and a half.  The nineteenth century saw the rise of atheism which posited that since there is no God and no afterlife, the greatest good in life is to attain the most happiness possible.  Atheist philosophers claimed that humans are essentially just highly evolved animals with the ability to reason, and there is no absolute good or evil, only happiness and unhappiness.  Therefore, if happiness is the greatest good, and there are no eternal consequences for our actions, we should pursue happiness at any cost.  The likes of Rousseau,(who abandoned all five of his sons to orphanages) and Nietzsche (who declared himself the anti-Christ before going insane), advanced this idea, which was taken up by Marx who politicized the greatest happiness could be achieved by creating a government in which everyone was equal.  To achieve this, Marx insisted that government should own all property and dictate rules to ensure equality among the working population.  This led to Lenin overthrowing the Czar and establishing the first Communist State in which religion was outlawed, and workers were shot for neglecting to follow rules, or simply for failing to show up for work, on holidays for instance. 

The twentieth century bought forward Darwin’s notion that humanity could be improved, just like livestock, through eugenics.  His second book, The Descent of Man, was all about how humanity was in decline because it allowed the weak and the poor to hang on.  Hitler carried this forth in the belief that the greatest good to mankind was to eliminate the weak, the feeble-minded, and those who were a drag on society, and we know where he went with that.  Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, another well-known racist, lobbied successfully for promoting eugenics, even getting it included in high school text books.  (This is what the infamous Scopes trial was really about, not the Hollywood version which demeaned Christianity).  In the meanwhile, Freud pronounced that every human was sexually repressed, an idea that was taken seriously by Margaret Mead who decried the plight of housewives, and advocated open marriages and the elimination of traditional Christian sexual morality.  Betty Friedan, the cofounder of both NARAL and NOW, wrote The Feminine Mystique,  insisting that women have the right to abortions and freedom from family responsibilities in order to pursue their fulfillment in the workplace.  Her greatest success was Roe v. Wade.   To round out this effort at redefining the role of the sex as the key to all happiness, Alfred Kinsey published his pseudo-scientific report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, claiming that nearly half of all men were homosexuals, based on his interviews of men serving time for sex crimes, and biased samples taken mostly from the underground gay community.  He concluded that any and all perversions of sex, including incest and pedophilia should be embraced in the interest of human happiness. ]

All of this may sound extreme, but is has blossomed into our twenty-first century notions of “gender-equality,” “marriage equality,” and most recently, “income equality.”  The defining purpose of marriage (establishing a family) has been set aside in favor of adult happiness, even if it means depriving children of one of their biological parents.  Not only is this the commonly accepted mantra of the media and progressives, it is being codified into administrative law.  Freedom to exercise our religious belief about the sanctity of marriage, and the intrinsic evil of abortion, is now considered “intolerant” or a “civil rights violation,” subject to fine and imprisonment.  Pro-life groups have been indicted on racketeering charges, florists and bakers have been fined for refusal to participate in gay weddings, and employers face immense fines if they refuse to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.  Our culture has bought into the lies and deceits of the atheist mindset and their anti-marriage, anti-family agenda.

In the midst of all this, Christian families are struggling to carry on.  The single most important thing any couple and family can do is share their faith with one another, and mutually put their trust in God.  The best example we have for this is Jesus, Mary and Joseph aka The Holy Family.  Faith gives us strength and courage to be counter-cultural in the face of a full-on assault against the family.  Couples who share a deep and abiding faith are far more likely to remain married, and to raise children who succeed in life because they have good role models from both parents.  Each of us is called to be holy, that is, faithful to the truth as revealed by God, not as defined by our eroding culture.  It is high time we speak out about our faith and insist that we be allowed to live it out in our daily lives, as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution.  Holiness is not confined to our worship service or our private beliefs, as our president insists when he speaks about “freedom to worship,” it is meant to be lived out in our everyday lives as witnesses to the Truth, and especially the Truth about marriage and families.