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On Faith Andy Stennet |
Traditional families
form soul of societyThe commonsense foundation upon which every stable and prosperous society is able to exist can be found in Matthew's gospel, Chapter 12:4-5. Here the master teacher (and savior to the Christian world) Jesus Christ proclaimed, "Have ye not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female and ... for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh."
It would seem that Christ's directive, a reprimand to a certain few who were attempting to manipulate the laws of marriage in his day, renders the decisive verdict in today's debate to erase gender from our marriage laws. You see, no matter what semantics one chooses to apply, the terms man, woman, wife, father and mother invariably infer gender-specific roles in the case of marriage and family.
To Jesus Christ, then, gender in marriage does matter. End of story, at least for those who subscribe to biblical and Christian beliefs.
For those who hold the great nation of America as only a secular republic and contend that gender in marriage is moot, I would leave with them my own testimonial in respectful disagreement.
Spiritual or secular, America needs a collective soul. Without such a collective psyche, it would only be doomed to lawless anarchy or come to be ordered by some military regime.
As a father of six, I have observed firsthand how traditional families provide such a soul and safeguard to America. In the family, the culture of basic human decency and regard for others is spontaneously cultivated and perpetuated. And if we choose to supplant traditional families and marriages, or even begin to make exception to them, then our society is sadly electing to choke off its lifeline of basic human decency. Who among us could stand the thought of America evolving into just another "me first" society, where the "rude jerk" on the freeway became the rule rather than the exception?
Perhaps even more sobering to contemplate is the present tense of unsavory social ills that are severely crippling American society, namely urban lawlessness embedded in sexually transmitted diseases and rampant drug addiction.
Contemplate also that in peaceable, religion-centered families, children typically gain enough self-esteem to withstand the fantasy of well-being through drug or alcohol abuse and anything-goes promiscuity, from which the modern pandemic of AIDS sprang.
So the next time you see a family that's holding it together, rise up and cheer. Give them a hero's salute. Protect and celebrate the inviolate institution of traditional marriage and family. These are the irreplaceable fibers of society's soul and the very background of America's peace and stability.
Andy Stennet is the bishop of the Lihue Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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