God’s Plan for Marriage, Family, and Life-long Care
One of the lasting vestiges of communism/socialism is the idea that the state can replace the family in the essential roles that the family has played for millennia. It was a social experiment that has proven itself a failure and yet it continues, fomented by an anti-God fervor that is sending humanity to its destruction, not only in the hereafter but also in the here and now.
The essentials of biblical social order.
God established marriage as the basic building block of social order. Biblical marriage is the life-long commitment of one man and one woman to each other in companionship, life-partnership, and procreation (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5-6).
Procreation is not just a nice idea for people who are into the parenting thing. God’s first command to Adam and Eve was to multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28). If one generation refuses to obey, humanity ceases to exist. Certainly, there might be rare reasons why a Christian couple might choose not to have children—hereditary diseases for example—but that should be the rare exception. Personal convenience is not a biblical reason for such a choice. Children are the blessing of God upon the marital union (Psalm 127:3-5)
God designed a plan for biblical parenting, guided by specific gender roles based upon the physiology and emotional makeup of men and women. Commands for fathers to lead, command, protect, and teach their families are found throughout scripture (Deuteronomy 6:7-9, Proverbs 22:6, Proverbs 13:4, Exodus 20:12, 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12, Joshua 24:15, Proverbs 14:26). The biblical pattern for leadership is NOT over-bearing or abusive, but firm and self-sacrificing (Ephesians 6:1-4).
God also commands reciprocal care within the family unit. Parents care for children. Children care for one another as is necessary, and in the frailty of the final years of life, children care for parents (1 Timothy 5:8).
These are not just good ideas, this is a construct established by the Creator. It is the way He designed the world and human beings to function.
Yes, God established human government, but its purpose differs from that of the family. The role of human government is the administration of justice and the facilitation as is needed for such things a business and commerce (Genesis 9:6, Romans 13:1-7).
The nanny state has failed.
The great social experiment that rose with the atheistic communist revolutions of the 20th century has miserably failed. Communism considered marriage slavery and the family unnecessary. That premise is demonstrably false.
The nanny state took the care of family members away from the family—this is especially true of the elderly. The welfare culture encouraged sex and cohabitation without marriage, penalized men, especially for being married, and encouraged single-parent homes, especially single mothers. The following is from an instituteforfamilystudies.org article dated October 7, 2019.
The black American family provides a stark example. From 1890 to 1950, black women had a higher marriage rate than white women. And in 1950, just 9% of black children lived without their father. By 1960, the black marriage rate had declined but remained close to the white marriage rate. In other words, despite open racism and widespread poverty, strong black families used to be the norm.
But by the mid-1980s, black fatherlessness skyrocketed. Today, only 44% of black children have a father in the home. In unison, the rate of black out-of-wedlock births went from 24.5% in 1964 to 70.7% by 1994, roughly where it stands today.
This is not a result of black culture because black culture existed between 1890 and 1950. The difference is the rise of the welfare state which disproportionately impacted the inner-city communities. The welfare state destroyed marriage and the family unit and with it the lives of many millions of people.
It expanded the role of human government away from justice and began to dictate to families how children should be raised and educated.
The result has been a crisis.
Men are increasingly less interested in marriage, especially when they can use pornography as an outlet for their sexual urges.
Women are forgoing marriage for what were more masculine traditional roles and waiting until their 30s and older to consider having children, which tends to lead to smaller families if fertility remains at all.
One of the reasons for the propagation of the race—elder care—has disincentivized child-bearing to the point where we have a population crisis. Korea’s fertility rate has dropped to .72 babies per woman in 2023 from .78 babies per woman in 2022. It is simply a matter of statistics to understand the nature of the crisis. If the trend flattens out where it is, the population will more than halve in every generation. If a child-bearing generation is approximately 30 years old, each succeeding generation will only be 36% of the size of the preceding generation—50 million today, 18 million in 30 years, and 6.4 million in 60 years. The one-child policy in China has produced similar problems.
There is nothing evil about a declining population, but there is something alarming. There will be an overbearing load placed upon young people to care for an aging population cursed with longer and longer lifespans. This is the curse that accompanies abandoning biblical principles regarding marriage and family.
The need for family units of both mothers and fathers has statistically proven essential over time as much as it was declared essential by scripture. There are unfortunate situations in which children find themselves in single-parent homes. In such situations, extended family and church family should step in to fill the gap, but when a culture abandons two-parent homes, the burden to meet the mountain of need becomes too great.
What can we do right now, today, to address the problem?
I consider the following just the opening of discussion on the subject.
Christians must make sure their thinking is biblical. Christians should marry if possible and obey the biblical mandates for marriage and family. Marry for life. Honor your marriage vows—especially the “for better or worse” part which covers a LOT of very difficult situations.
We should teach Christian young people by precept and example not to put career ahead of marriage and to marry at reasonably younger ages–while they are spiritually and biologically prepared to have and raise children for God’s glory.
To do this, we must completely rethink college education—especially the massive debt that young people are taking on to get college degrees. Not everyone needs to go to college, even Christian colleges. Over the last half of the 20th century, parents and churches have abandoned the discipleship of young adults to Christian colleges. Parents and churches must reclaim this role. Our families and churches have suffered from this choice.
Education debt must be kept small or non-existent. One of the most often cited reasons for young people delaying marriage is debt.
Christian parents should do more for their children by encouraging them to get married and have children—not nagging them to do it, but helping them to do it. Instead of making young people wait for inheritance, we ought to think about investing in them in the time of life when their needs are greatest—as they marry and begin to have children. The golden years should not be all about the gold—lots of possessions, early retirement, and expensive vacations. Even Christians get sucked into this thinking. Just because those years were hard for us, does not mean that we should abandon them in their time of need.
We cannot easily change the legal definition of marriage, abortion laws, or the parental rights of fathers. But we can behave differently in our own homes as we continue to be salt and light in the world.