The Disintegration of the Family When Men Fail to Lead
Typically, no individual member escapes the consequent sorrow of a family breakup. And a family in distress can take years to manifest before the fatal blow. When trouble does enter the picture, accompanied with early warning signs, you can be sure it was because there always was a leaderless man to blame.
Country music aside, I’m referring in this writing to the traditional family consisting of a father and a mother and their children, living together under one roof.
I know, I may lose some of you because of the state we find our society in now and all that we have been socially conditioned to accept — though I don’t. I can’t tackle all the exceptions and preferences here, only what used to be considered the norm for human populations to regenerate its kind in the effort to secure a strong and healthy environment for each new generation to thrive in.
I’m specifically referring to the traditional western family, in which I was born, where faith in God and knowledge of his word was common and had the profound impact of establishing the structure and subsequent prosperity toward courtship, marriage and childrearing.
When properly understood, this model reflects the relationship between our Creator and his offspring. We are literally the children of God when viewed in this light, as the Apostle Paul revealed to the men of Athens on Mars’ hill:
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said. For we are also his offspring.
In the family of God, Christ is the head of the church, which is his body, and being the head directs the body, much like the father directs the family by following the pattern set out for him:
For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the Savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it.
That headship role is best fulfilled when the husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church. It doesn’t mean the church will always do right or will not grieve the Spirit given unto her. But carrying through on the principles of biblical family design, he is to lead, instruct, protect and correct his family by the pattern shown him of Christ from his word.
If a man will not accept that responsibility due to apprehension, impotence, cowardliness, bereft of cognizant duty, or simply chooses not to believe his Maker, the family inevitably suffers.
But I don’t love her anymore! See above.
Progressing in the model of how Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, the marriage prospers and matures with the head/leader and supporting role, bringing their own unique gifts into the union, setting themselves up to achieve true and lasting happiness. Their children likewise receive the greatest potential for success and happiness in their own lives and families.
The consequence of not exercising the honorable role of paternal leadership in the home, for any reason, but especially because the head is not a member of the household of God, denotes a different outcome:
Wherein in times past (speaking here to obedient children), ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversations in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
When young children are growing, they are short of knowledge and understanding and walk according to their passions and tendencies until a loving, but firm, hand and voice instructs and trains them otherwise — with patience — with the promise that in the end these same children will not depart from the faith of their fathers.
When a disobedient father, one who still walks in his passions and tendencies, who rejects the love and wisdom of his father in heaven… when he attempts to manage his own house and family, sound judgement is against him vexing his mind and body.
On a wider scale, when men fail to be the leaders of their homes, communities and country, the nation collapses. Nations are frightfully easy to conquer when its men are weak and faithless.
Young men without the modeling of strong and wise fathers, uncles and grandfathers fall into mischief and lose their direction, perpetuating the cycle of disobedience, thrust into adulthood without the proper guidance and wisdom to survive the arduous journey of life.
But it ought to be less arduous and more pleasant if men knew and understood their roles as providers, defenders of truth and homeland, and chose the road less traveled — that of faith in God and in his uncorruptible word. That alone would answer the many who cry out in bewilderment why our world is crumbling.
The women would be much happier, that’s for sure. After all, women (in general) seek fulfillment in their customary roles as mothers and caregivers when they are supported and loved by their families.
Men would gain the respect they so intensely crave, in addition to delicious meals, sweet company and the desire of their wives. Stress, anxiety and loneliness would be dissolved.
Alas, I’m sure I’m painting a personal picture of a future that might’ve been.