I Know Its A Sin But Is It That Bad?:
The Destruction of Marriage
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The Bible
God’s Ideal Genesis 2:21-25
And the LORD God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his
ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto the man. And Adam said,
This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
1 Timothy 3:1-2, 4-5
This is a true
saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband
of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to
teach;
One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in
subjection with all gravity; (For if a
man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of
God?)
1 Timothy 3:11-12
Even so must their
wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife,
ruling their children and their own houses well.
If these verses show us God’s ideal, His plan for the family
He will bless, we can draw the following conclusions.
1. The family was to be one husband and one wife.
2. In God’s eyes the husband and wife were equally important
to the family.
3. There was never a hint in God’s ideal plan for more than
one spouse.
4. The husband was responsible to God for the welfare and care
of the family.
God’s Commandment
Exodus 20:12
Honour thy father and
thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God
giveth thee.
Deuteronomy 5:16
Honour thy father and
thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be
prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy
God giveth thee.
The family was included in the 10 commandments. Here we are
commanded that the father and mother were to be treated with honor, showing that
God held the family in high regard as something sacred and valuable, essential
to the nation of Israel’s long life and keeping their land.
God’s Blessing
Psalms 127:3-5 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and
the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man;
so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of
them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the
gate.
Psalm 128:3
Thy wife shall be as
a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants
round about thy table.
God views the family, the wife and the children as his
blessing. Anything that would destroy or hinder the family, or the members of
the family would be against God’s blessings.
Jesus Teaching
Matthew 19:3-9
The Pharisees also
came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put
away his wife for every cause? And he
answered and said unto them, 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?
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.
They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of
divorcement, and to put her away? He
saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to
put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away
his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth
adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
Summary:
God’s ideal for the family, presented in these few verses
but seen throughout scripture, is one man, one woman and children under the
protection and instruction of the father and mother. Anything that would go
against this ideal would be outside of God’s will and his blessing.
The Bad
The family is under direct Satanic attack in today’s
society. Should the family fall, our
nation, society, and churches will also fall. Much of our society’s new
openness to homosexuality, same sex marriage, lack of church attendance, denial
of gender, etc are due to the failure of the family.
Cohabitation
According to the latest Census report, the number of
cohabiting couples escalated from 6.7 million in 2009 to 7.5 million just one
year later in 2010. Living together has
become today’s “normative experience,” with nearly 50 percent of young adults
aged twenty to forty cohabiting. Moreover, the percentage of women in their
late 30s who said that they had cohabited at least once reached 48 percent in
1995. While increasingly common among
college students and young professionals — even Prince William and Kate
Middleton, who have just announced their engagement, have been living together
in Wales — cohabitation is significantly more prevalent among those who are
less well-educated and poor.
The truth is that only a fraction — barely 10 percent — of
cohabiting couples are able to move on to build a strong, happy marriage that
lasts a lifetime. More typically,
cohabitation is preparation for divorce, rather than training for
marriage. The two household arrangements
(cohabitation and marriage) are decidedly different, and that is why the vast
majority of couples who live together before getting married end up divorced;
the divorce rates of women who cohabit are nearly 80 percent higher than the
rates of those who do not. Consequently,
the majority of cohabiting relationships do not end in marriage, as was
previously the case. During the 1970s,
about 60 percent of cohabiting couples married each other within three years,
but this proportion has since declined to less than 40 percent.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, of all
violent crimes against women by their intimate partners between 1979 and 1987,
about 65 percent were committed by either a boyfriend or ex-husband, while only
9 percent were committed by husbands.
Another study, published in the Journal of Family
Violence, explains the following regarding the association between batterer and
victim, “The most frequently cited relationship was cohabitation, with close to
one-half (48 percent) of the couples living together.”
The Family Violence Research Program at the University of
New Hampshire conducted a study of more than two thousand adults concerning
this subject. It was concluded that the overall rates of violence for
cohabiting couples was twice as high and the overall rate for “severe” violence
was nearly five times as high for cohabiting couples when compared with married
couples.
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, of all
violent crimes against women by their intimate partners between 1979 and 1987,
about 65 percent were committed by either a boyfriend or ex-husband, while only
9 percent were committed by husbands.
Another study, published in the Journal of Family
Violence, explains the following regarding the association between batterer and
victim, “The most frequently cited relationship was cohabitation, with close to
one-half (48 percent) of the couples living together.”
The Family Violence Research Program at the University of
New Hampshire conducted a study of more than two thousand adults concerning
this subject. It was concluded that the overall rates of violence for
cohabiting couples was twice as high and the overall rate for “severe” violence
was nearly five times as high for cohabiting couples when compared with married
couples.
Divorce
Recently, a report by the Institute for American Values, a
private, nonpartisan family think tank, challenged the divorce presupposition.
"In popular discussion and in scholarly literature, the
assumption has always been that if a marriage is unhappy, if you get a divorce,
it is likely you will be happier than if you stayed married," said David
Blankenhorn of the Institute. "This is the first time this has been tested
empirically, and [the tests show that] there is no evidence to support this assumption."
The research shows that unhappily married adults who had
divorced were no happier than those who had stayed married.
"Divorce leads to many ills including poverty,
depression, poor health and a greater likelihood of suicide," said Bridget
Maher, a policy analyst on marriage and family at the Family Research Council.
"Divorced men have higher rates of mental illness and death due to
accidents and suicide than married men. Also, divorced fathers who do not live
with their children are more likely to engage in behaviors that compromise
their health. A study of children's home environments found that divorced
mothers are less able to provide the same level of emotional support to their
children than married mothers."
One landmark study revealed that 90 percent of children from
divorced homes suffered from an acute sense of shock when the separation
occurred, including profound grieving and irrational fears.183 Fifty percent
reported feeling rejected and abandoned,184 and indeed, half of the fathers
never came to see their children three years after the divorce.185 One-third of
the boys and girls feared abandonment by the remaining parent, and 66 percent
experienced yearning for the absent parent with an intensity that researchers
described as overwhelming.186 Most significant, 37 percent of the children were
even more unhappy and dissatisfied five years after the divorce than they had
been at 18 months.187 In other words, time did not heal their wounds.
Same Sex Marriage
Same sex marriage is the straw that breaks the camel’s back
when it comes to the family.
If it is your right to marry whomever you want then how can
you prohibit polygamy, pedophilia, child marriages or marrying your dog or cat?
Answer you can’t.
Same sex marriage is not a marriage at all. To homosexuals
it is a tax issue but it does not change their promiscuous lifestyle.
Example - Jonathan Yarbrough (a bisexual) and Cody Rogahn (a
homosexual) were the first same-sex couple in Provincetown, MA to receive a
marriage application. They explained to the normal that “…it’s possible to love
more than one person and have more than one partner… In our case… we have an
open marriage…”
No human society—not one—has ever tolerated “marriage”
between members of the same sex as a norm for family life. And that is what is
at stake here, making “marriage” between two men or two women as normal as
between one man and one woman. It is saying that neither arrangement is any
better than the other. As Dr. Dobson writes, only until the last few
“milliseconds” of history and experience (i.e. Canada and some European
nations) have we arrogantly believed we can improve upon this ancient and
universal institution.
Anthropologists tell us that every human society is
established by males and females joining in permanent unions to build a life
together and bear and raise their children. The differences we see in family
from culture to culture are primarily variations on this model: how long the
male and female stay together, how many spouses either can have and how the
labor is divided. Some cultures make greater use of extended family than
others. Family diversity is largely confined to these differences. But there
has never been a culture or society that made homosexual marriage part of its
family model.
A British medical
journal reports male homosexual relationships last, on average, 1.5 years, and
gay men have an average of eight partners a year outside of their supposedly
“committed” relationships.
Research consistently
shows that married adults do better in virtually every measure of well-being.
Married people live longer, happier lives. They enjoy higher levels of physical
and mental health, they recover from illness quicker, earn and save more money,
are more reliable employees, suffer less stress, and are less likely to become
victims of any kind of violence. They find the job of parenting more successful
and enjoyable and they have more satisfying and fulfilling sex lives. These
benefits are largely equal for men and women.
Compared with children in any other situation, children with
married parents need to visit doctors less often for physical or emotional
problems, and they do better in all measures of intellectual and academic
development. They are more sympathetic toward others and much less likely to be
in trouble at school, at home or with the police. They are much less likely to
use drugs and be involved in violent behavior or premarital sexual activity and
childbearing. It is uncommon for kids who live with married parents to live in
poverty or be victims of physical or sexual abuse.3 Research is clear: marriage
makes a substantial, positive difference in people’s lives.
Research indicates
that children raised by homosexuals experiment with sexually aberrant behaviors
at a higher rate than children raised by heterosexuals and do so at earlier
ages. Heartbreakingly, according to a 1996 study by an Austrian sociologist,
children raised by homosexual parents did worse in nine of 13 academic and
social categories compared to children raised by heterosexual married couples.
A 2001 article in American Sociological Review reported that
children raised by lesbians are more likely to engage in homosexual behavior
and are “more sexually adventurous.”
Just this fall, Kansas State University family studies
professor Walter Schumm released a “detailed analysis” which reveals that,
according to AOL News, “gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than
straight parents.”
In fact, he concludes that when the analysis is restricted
to children in their 20s, a staggering 58 percent of the children of lesbians
self-identify as gay, and 33% of the children of gay men self-identify as gay.
All this while the overall population of gays and lesbians represents just two
to three percent of the population.
Compared with children in any other situation,
children with married parents need to visit doctors less often for physical or
emotional problems, and they do better in all measures of intellectual and
academic development. They are more sympathetic toward others and much less
likely to be in trouble at school, at home or with the police. They are much
less likely to use drugs and be involved in violent behavior or premarital
sexual activity and childbearing. It is uncommon for kids who live with married
parents to live in poverty or be victims of physical or sexual abuse
Conclusion
In the article The Public Purpose of
Marriage… by Glenn T. Stanton, he states,
“Research consistently shows that
married adults do better in virtually every measure of well-being. Married
people live longer, happier lives. They enjoy higher levels of physical and
mental health, they recover from illness quicker, earn and save more money, are
more reliable employees, suffer less stress, and are less likely to become
victims of any kind of violence. They find the job of parenting more successful
and enjoyable and they have more satisfying and fulfilling sex lives. These
benefits are largely equal for men and women.
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