The Integrity of the Family
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
This passage from the Gospels has until fairly recently been a central part of wedding ceremonies in the U.S. for centuries. It is repeated in Mat. 5:31, Mark 10:7-8 and Eph. 5:31. Jesus went on to say, according to this passage, that the only reason for divorce was unfaithfulness: not "incompatibility" or financial troubles or disagreements over child raising. But recently the idea of "no-fault divorce" has hit the scene, resulting in millions of broken homes and families. This is not only a family tragedy, it is a national tragedy.
John Quincy Adams, son of a co-founder of the United States John Adams, wrote in 1842 -
"The social compact, or body politic, founded upon the laws of Nature and of God, physical, moral, and intellectual, necessarily pre-supposes a permanent family compact formed by the will of the man, and the consent of the woman, and that by the same laws of Nature, and of God, in the formation of the Social Compact, the will or vote of every family must be given by its head, the husband and father.
"The union of the sexes, founded in the law of nature necessarily precedes the social compact which constitutes the body politic, which is an association of families. The human being comes into life, the child of two parents, male and female, both of one species, but of different constitutions, adapted to each other for union. [Monogamy is] one of the most excellent purifications of the law of nature, by the precepts of Christianity."
From this, we see that the natural family precedes and forms the basis for the "social compact" - the state. The state does not give the family the right to exist; rather, the natural family gives the state the foundation on which the state exists.
But today there are forces and ideologies that seek to overthrow the state by undermining the natural family. Not only no-fault divorce, but also "the Pill," state encouragement of single motherhood, HIV-AIDS, abortion, "open marriage," Ebola, transgenderism, and homosexual "marriage" all discourage or do away with normal familial relationships of mutual love and respect. When the natural family breaks down, of course the state steps in, replacing normal relationships that should be based on love and trust with legal relationships based on force or the threat of force.
Consider "the Pill" - oral contraceptives were introduced in the 1960s allegedly for "family planning" purposes, for married couples to avoid having children they could not afford to raise. But in actuality, almost immediately these birth control pills were being prescribed to unmarried young women who just wanted to have sex "without the consequences." Here's where the "Rule of Unintended Consequences" kicked in:
According to the article Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk on a U.S. Government website, there are increased risks for various types of cancer from taking birth control pills, mostly breast cancer and cervical cancer. This is because these pills contain female hormones that mimic pregnancy, which causes these organs to respond in order to prepare for birthgiving and nursing.
Another article, Birth Control, Blood Clots, and Untimely Death: Time to Reconsider What We Tell Our Teens? tells of a seemingly healthy twenty-year-old woman, a college student who last year "collapsed in the driveway of her parent’s home. She was rushed by ambulance to Duke University Medical Center and, for twelve hours, surgery and post-ops teams tried to revive her. At the end of the day, the doctors told Alex’s parents that she had little to no brain activity. On September 27, after being removed from life support, Alex died." An autopsy revealed that she had blood clots in both lungs and died from a pulmonary embolism - a clot going from the lungs to the heart.
She had obtained birth control pills from Planned Parenthood that were supposed to reduce the risk of certain cancers, but the only warning about clots is directed to people who smoke. Such a "venous thromboembolism" (VTE), however, can also occur - albeit less frequently - with women who do not smoke: about 200 women die each year from VTEs when taking "the Pill." As the article states,
"When that risk is combined with the added risk of stroke and heart attack, between three and four hundred women die every year in the United States due to their choice to use hormonal contraception. To give some perspective, meningitis killed 45 people (of all ages) in 2017. Most states in the US mandate meningitis vaccination for college and university students. Would they consider the same kind of prevention campaigns for the deadly blood clots caused by hormonal birth control?"
Why do colleges and universities encourage students to take the "Pill" and get vaccinated against meningitis, but fail to warn them about the other consequences of premarital sex? It's because these institutions promulgate the worldview of statism and socialism, which need to undermine the natural family in order to succeed.
God's purpose for the family is not only for procreation, but also to provide an example to the children of how much Christ loves the Church: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for it; that He might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present the Church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself" (Eph. 5:25-28).
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
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