Jerry C. Brewer
Introduction
Institutions are the sum of their parts and reflect no higher virtues than those that inhere in those parts. Thus, the vices and virtues of civil society only mirror those of its components. An unholy restlessness and unhappiness with God’s order that had been stirring for decades in American society erupted in the 1960s in what was termed a “sexual revolution.” Since that time, we have witnessed a steady decline in morality because the individuals who compose that society have rejected God’s absolute law of marriage.
One manifestation of our moral decline is the increasing rate of teenage illegitimacy. In Oklahoma, the percentage of children born to unwed parents recently rose from 25 to 28 percent, which means that more than one fourth of all babies born in Oklahoma are illegitimate. When children bear children out of wedlock at increasingly higher rates, sodomy is approved and celebrated in the highest levels of government, and the word “family” is redefined to mean “two mothers,” “two fathers,” or “a father and a mother” it ought to be evident to anyone who can see through a ladder that we are swimming in a societal cesspool of immorality. How have we come to this? The answer is in the Word of God:
Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. …And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient (Rom.1:21-22, 28).1
Paul’s description of the depravity into which the ancient world sank vividly describes the society of 21st century America. Because individuals in our society have rejected God’s plan for the family, we are in the midst of a disintegrating civil order. The family is the basic unit of any society—the foundation upon which it stands—and no society can long endure when the family disintegrates. The only hope for moral strength in society is for the homes which under gird it to be strong, and they cannot be strong unless they are patterned after God’s order.
God’s Plan For Marriage From the Beginning
When the Pharisees tempted Jesus, asking, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause,” He replied, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?” (Mat. 19:4-5). God who created mankind ordained marriage “in the beginning” for the best interest of the race.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:26-28).
God said, “let us make man, then proceeded to create two genders whom He called “man.” “Man” in this passage is the antecedent of both “him” and “them”—God created man (him) as male and female (them). The female is comprehended in both terms. The Greek has three words that are translated “man”—anthropos, aner, and arsen—the first meaning “mankind” and the latter two meaning a “male.”2 The Hebrew has two such words—adam, meaning “mankind” and iysh, meaning a “male.”3 When Moses was inspired to write the account of the creation of the human race, he was given the word adam which, like anthropos in the Greek, comprehends both sexes.
God then took Eve from Adam’s rib and gave her to Adam for his wife and pronounced His immutable law of marriage which Jesus quoted to the Pharisees (Gen. 2:24). The home, composed of male and female, was the first of God’s institutions and serves in this earthly life for the benefit of all humankind. As the home is the foundation of an orderly society, so one male and one female, joined together for life, constitute the foundation of the home itself. No orderly home can exist upon any other foundation. So-called “marriages” between sodomites were never part of God’s law, nor does He condone such perversion today. That is clear from Jesus’ statement, “that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Mat. 19:4) and then reiterated that law from Genesis 2:24.
God destroyed (turned into ashes by fire and brimstone) the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of the sin of sodomy (see Gen. 19:5; 2 Pet. 2:6). Among other things, this was done as a warning to those who would live in rebellion to God’s will. The sin of sodomy is detestable in the sight of God!4
The Purpose of the Home
One purpose of the home is for the comfort of man. “God said, it is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him” (Gen. 2:18). Thus, God made woman from man’s rib and by virtue of that she is bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. Hence, Adam declared that, “she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man.”
ish signifies man, and the word used to express what we term woman is the same with a feminine termination, ishshah, and literally means she-man….The truth is, our term is a proper and literal translation of the original, and we may thank the discernment of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors for giving it. pombman, of which woman is a contraction, means the man with the womb. A very appropriate version of the Hebrew ishshah rendered by terms which signify she man.5
As Adam was a creature far different from the beasts which populated the earth with him, so God made him a suitable help meet—one of his own kind who was taken from his very bones and flesh. Thus, woman was created for man (Gen. 2:21-24).
Another purpose of the home is the production of children for the perpetuation of the human race (Gen 1:28). It was God’s intent from the beginning that children were to be produced in homes where men and women are married. That law was unchanged in Jesus’ day and remains unchanged in our day. God never intended that mankind should roam and breed freely as do the animals of the earth, but that one man and one woman would form a union for life. For every unwed mother today, there is also an unwed father and that has become a problem of epidemic proportions in modern American society.
Despite the efforts of the last several years, the institution of marriage by some measures is losing ground. The census found that in the 1990s, the number of unmarried couples living together jumped by 97 percent in Oklahoma, 125 percent in Arkansas and 123 percent in Tennessee. These increases in the buckle of the Bible Belt are well above the 72 percent increase in unmarried couples that the census found in the nation as a whole.6
In this time of ‘live in’ boyfriends and girlfriends—shacking up—it is no wonder that many are confused about marriage. The world has long tried to destroy marriage and justify itself in its evil deeds while Christianity has uplifted marriage to the lofty plain that it deserves. The world has cried that marriage will be defeated and that it will not survive but like all things created and sanctioned by God, marriage is here to stay and is a viable part of society.
Nevertheless, some have chosen to live contrary to God’s law concerning marriage and have advocated that marriage is no longer needed being outdated. Or by some perverse rationale, they reason, ‘You wouldn’t buy a pair of shoes without trying them on. So, don’t get married without first trying out your mate.’ It is often the case that those who cry such foolishness are the very ones who cry that they do not want to be treated like animals or inanimate objects. Yet, this is the very thing they are advocating. Dear reader, we are not talking about a pair of shoes, we are talking about humanity. Let us never be guilty of treating one we are considering to marry as if they are a pair of shoes!
In 1983, Newsweek reported that only 16 percent of college students considered it harmful ‘for a man and woman to live together before marriage’ while 61 percent said it would be ‘helpful.’
Fornication is a broad term and means illicit or unlawful sexual intercourse. It would include such things as adultery (sex with someone other than one’s spouse), homosexuality (sex between persons of the same gender), bestiality (sex between a human and an animal), promiscuity (sex with various partners), paedophilia (sex with a child), and prostitution (sex for money or hire). Thus, fornication is sexual activity outside of its proper place—marriage.
Within the proper context of marriage, sexual activity is sanctioned by God. The Bible says, ‘Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.’ (Hebrews 13:4). However, sexual activity outside of marriage is fornication.7
Growing out of the responsibility to perpetuate the race is the responsibility of parents—one woman and one man—to provide both material and spiritual necessities for their offspring. This was, and remains, the primary responsibility of the father, as Paul reminds us. “But if any provide not for his own, and specially those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Tim. 5:8). It also was, and remains, the God-given responsibility of the mother to be a keeper at home and guide the children. This is absolutely the only pattern for the home that can and will produce morally upright citizens.
In more than the half-century since World War Two ended, women of all ages have filled the work place. Additionally, the Feminist Movement began agitating a few decades ago for “equality” on the job between males and females. Ask a young girl today what she wants to be when she becomes an adult and, chances are, she won’t say, “A homemaker” or “A Mother.” A secular humanistic society has so tainted even the thinking of Christians that it is now expected that females will all grow up to pursue careers outside the home. These things ought not so to be. Nothing is clearer in the New Testament than that young women should be keepers at home in their God-ordained roles as homemakers.
We often quote Paul’s injunction to Titus about “sound doctrine” and exclusively apply it to such things as the plan of salvation, the church, etc. But, have you ever looked at Titus 2:1 in its immediate context? The “sound doctrine” he delineates in the verses immediately following includes, (1) that older men be sober, grave, sound in faith, (2) that aged women behave themselves properly in holy behaviour and as teachers of good things, and (3) that the older women teach the younger women “to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.” (Titus 2:4-5). The home as God ordained it in the beginning is the home where fathers, under Christ’s authority, provide for their families and mothers, under that same authority, guide their households.
The modern phenomenon of so-called “day care,”—what I call “Kiddie Kennels,”—where mothers drop off their children as they would a pet puppy and head off to work in the outside world, has produced a generation of adults who have no direction in life but the natural urges of the flesh. That is not God’s plan for rearing children, and even some people in the secular world now recognize that “Feminism” has created a society where it’s legal to neglect one’s child—so long as he’s placed in day care.
Bernard Goldberg’s new book, ‘Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News,’ deserves to be a best-seller. …Goldberg—an Emmy-winning broadcast journalist who spent three decades at CBS—seeks to disprove the notion that media are fair. Best of all—from my perspective at least—he blasts one of the most protected bastions of political correctness: working mothers.
In a chapter titled ‘The Most Important Story You Never Saw on TV,’ Goldberg documents the steady decline in the behavioral, emotional and physical health of America’s children that has taken place as the percentage of latchkey and day-care children has increased. Some Examples:
From 1979-88 (a period that coincides with a sizable increase in two-income families), the suicide rate for girls ages 10-14 rose 27 percent, while for boys it rose 71 percent.
In 1970, only one in 20 American girls younger than 15 had had sex; today, one in 3 is having sex, and 3 million teenagers are infected with sexually transmitted diseases every year. A study of 5 million eighth-graders found that children left home alone more than 11 hours a week are three times more likely than children with after school supervision to abuse drugs, alcohol or tobacco.
A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human development, published in 2001, found that toddlers in full time day care tended to be more aggressive toward other children and defiant toward adults. This was the case, the institute found, regardless of the quality of the care.
Goldberg acknowledges that not all evidence is bad. Some studies on day care have found it’s not bad at all. (When one considers only studies conducted by people or groups without apparent bias, however—as is the case with the above study—the results almost always paint a not-so-pretty picture.) And he’s clear that he’s talking about parents who choose to work outside the home, not those who effectively have no choice.
Goldberg asks why the major media have not done more reporting on this. Why haven’t Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and their counterparts at the other major news networks shone their probing spotlights on growing evidence that great numbers of America’s children are getting the old short shrift by parents who decide that making more money and gaining status are more important than providing the best life for their children? Because this is about women, and in America’s newsrooms, women are a ‘protected class.’ Feminists are highly threatened by the sort of evidence Goldberg cites.
‘And so,’ writes Rich Lowery in the May 2001 National Review, ‘We are willing to do anything for the children except suggest that their mothers should stay with them; we are committed to leaving no child behind unless it is by his mother hustling off to make her career.8
The pattern for developing children into decent, God-fearing, adults was given by inspiration centuries before modern child-sociologists and psychologists created their industries upon humanism. There are four ways in which a child must develop to be a decent citizen of any society, and those are expressed by the inspired Luke regarding the human maturing of Jesus. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52).
The development of the child Jesus began with Himself. He “increased in wisdom and stature.” The order of these two things indicates the importance of them. Of first importance are the mental and physical development of the child. The next order is also revealing. He increased “in favor with God and man.” Thus, Jesus matured mentally, physically, spiritually and socially. But parents today are more concerned with the social and physical aspects of a child’s life than with the mental and spiritual. They want popular, athletic children with impoverished souls. And all of this springs from the greed that drives mothers to the workplace with the blessings of today’s fathers. These things ought not so to be, and will not be in the homes of godly parents.
Works Cited
1. All quotations are from the King James Version, unless otherwise noted.
2. James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible, Greek Dictionary of The New Testament (Nashville, London, Atlanta, Vancouver, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990) 12, 16.
3. Strong, Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary, 8
4. Thomas B. Warren, “Homosexual ‘Marriages’ Are Condemned By Plain Bible Teaching,” Your Marriage Can Be Great (Jonesboro, AR, National Christian Press, Inc., 1978) 515.
5. Adam Clarke, Clarke’s Commentary, The Old Testament, Vol. 1, Genesis to Deuteronomy, (New York, Nashville, Abingdon Press, n.d.) 45-46.
6. Blaine Harden, “Bible Belt Battles High Divorce Rates,” The New York Times, May 21, 2001 http://www.hvk.org/articles/0501/86.html
7. Chuck Northrop, “Our National Shame of ‘Shacking Up,’” The Gospel Preceptor, (Vol. 4, No. 10, Nov., 2003) 3.
8. John Rosemond, “Author Cites Working Moms In Deterioration of Morality,” in his column, “Parental Guidance,” The Daily Oklahoman, Mar. 11, 2002, 5B.
