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The Challenge to Preserve the Christian Family Part 3:
What the Christian Family Means to Society
by Norman and Ann Bales
All About Families


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Strong Christian families provide a compelling model for the world to see and imitate. Even people with a strong anti-Christian bias will respect a family in which there is genuine love, respect, honor and mutual sharing. If you've learned to live with the rest of your family in a productive and useful way, people are going to want to know your secret. If people don't have a strong, supportive family, chances are they want one and there's not much in this life they want any worse.

Many Christians are concerned about our credibility in the eyes of a skeptical world. In reality, the world asks only two questions about us. (1) Are we consistent with what we say we believe in the way we conduct our lives? (2) Do we love people? If the answer to either of those questions is negative, we cannot expect to gain a hearing from the population at large. On the other hand if people outside the confines of the Christian faith can see us answer those questions affirmatively, many people will say, "tell me more." The family may well be the place where we have the greatest opportunity to demonstrate our integrity and our love.

How can we maintain quality family relationships in a society that is torn apart by competing ideologies? How do Christians avoid getting caught in the same snares that wreck so many families? When we passed through some serious marriage problems some years ago, we decided to spend time in the company of people who had wholesome marriages. We learned from those folks. Not too long ago, we were involved in premarital counseling with a young couple planning to get married. We asked them what they wanted their marriage to be like. The young man said, "I'd like to have a marriage like my grandfather and grandmother have." That young man was very fortunate, because he had the opportunity to take a close look at wholesome family living. He knows what family life can be like when people really live out their faith in the home. Our culture needs many homes like that. We can profit from positive models and we can work toward modeling Christian values in our own homes.

But what specific steps can we take to insure those models will continue? That will be the subject of next week's installment.

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