By Guy Mompoint
The family is a fundamental social institution that has functioned as the primary unit of society from the beginning with Adam and Eve. It provides basic emotional, social, sentimental and physical support to the individual, it improves economic stability, and it is overall the means for reproduction and survival of the human race.
Families have always played a crucial role in transmitting cultural values, ensuring societal continuity, and addressing individual and social needs. The Institution of Family is the primary unit of society, well in advance of church, school and government. The family is the first and most influential agent of socialization, shaping an individual’s values, beliefs, and behaviors from early childhood. Families do indeed teach children cultural norms, values, language, and social expectations, which are passed down from one generation to the next. Families provide a firm foundation on which their members stand, offering emotional security, love, compassion, care, and practical support. The family, as already stated, is the fundamental unit for procreation, ensuring the continuation of the human population and the transfer of cultural knowledge and wisdom. Families often provide financial support, distribute resources, and participate in household labor, fulfilling essential economic roles within society.
Yet, these noble and essential traits were the very reason why a war has been waged against the family in the past century. While the phenomenon of generational gap existed in previous societies for millennia, the vastness of the gap had never reached such an alarming point. The premeditated and contrived widening of the generational gap has delivered a death blow to family harmony. The root cause of this deep divide is much more spiritual than social, cultural or else.
It is the responsibility and even the obligation of each human being to learn about his Maker, to know His attributes, to investigate the truth about His nature, to understand His will, and then to trust and obey. The One and only true God revealed Himself in the Holy Scriptures. That is the sole reliable source of truth about Him.
Hebrews 1:1-4
God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; 3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.
If knowing God were left for each individual’s imagination without a unique universal source of truth, without a direct revelation from God Himself for all of humankind, that would result in the existence of eight billion gods. That’s why it is so crucial to read, listen and study the Bible, the Written Word of God which has the exclusive ability to introduce and lead to the knowledge of the Living Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are witnessing the accomplishment of two prophecies of the New Testament concerning the last days. The first was uttered by the Lord Jesus Christ, and the second came from the pen of the apostle Paul.
Matthew 24:12
And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.
2 Timothy 3:1-5
But know this, that in the last days, perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, 3 unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!
The family must remain the heart and soul of human society, if we are to survive. Family, as God intended, ought to be the place of love, intimacy, and joy. It is the unique place where great memories don’t die; the place where the fear of God is first introduced to the soul, and where morality takes shape. It ought to be the most secure place of all, where confidence is built, where both tears and laughter are embraced with hugs, and where sadness and happiness are shared openly and sincerely.
Why has the institution of the family faced so many seemingly insurmountable and unsolvable problems for the past sixty years? Why has our post-modern society, along with so many family experts, sociologists, psychologists, and counselors have been incapable of slowing down the process of the disintegration of human relationships?
– They have all been looking at the wrong place!
Let this quote from a related article on the Master’s Edu website, https://www.masters.edu/thinking_blog/the-destruction-of-the-family/ have the last word:
