Nehemiah 13:25 I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God's name and said: "You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves.
I am not recommending using the Nehemiah approach to changing culture. In our reading today he used rebuke, cursing, beating people up and pulling out their hair. Just to clarify, that is not how I lost mine.
Israel was a theocracy where God was the king and His law was the constitution. Given that the nation had just returned from 70 years of captivity caused by their rejection of God's commands about marriage, I can see why Nehemiah was a little over the top with this issue.
But make no mistake about it; marriage is the building block to all nations. That puts our nation on the trajectory of extinction.
So how do we change the culture? Let me make two suggestions. First, I am making a call to art not a call to arms. From my perspective, TV and the movie screen have changed our nation more than anything else. So to change it back again I want to encourage you to have a movie night at your house. Here is a list of movies taken from "Movie Guide" that celebrate marriage: Father of the Bride, Cheaper by the Dozen, Shadowlands, It's a Wonderful Life, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Quiet Man, The Sound of Music, Julie and Julia, Fireproof and Up… just to name a few. Show the movie and have a discussion with your friends or neighbors about marriage.
Second, is to change our political strategy. The Church has the wrong strategy. Jacque Ellul, the quirky French philosophy, in his book "THE POLITICAL ILLUSION" pointed that the current cultural view is that all problems are political therefore all solutions are political. Christians have bought into for the past several generations. To make our country a Christian nation we must do it by passing Christian laws. We measure our success by the number of laws we get passed. To be clear, I am totally in favor of being politically active, voting, being informed, and staying informed on all the current issues. Laws are important because they either open up pathways to Biblical morality or shut pathways down. But politics is always downstream from culture. Politicians hold up their finger to detect which way the wind is blowing and get in front of it. Their goal is to get elected.
Here is how I propose we engage and change the current marriage culture in our country. Show the world our sizzling marriages as Christians. Show the world by example that we have great marriage relationships. The world needs to see how much we love, romance, sacrifice for, have fun with, spend time with, and experience the deepest human relationship possible on earth. When they see this they will want to buy in again. That is the goal.
It may be that the culture will soon be beyond repair – that traditional views will not be tolerated. Or, maybe not. But one thing is for certain, we must use the arts and our lives to pull this culture back to a healthy view of marriage and it will only be accomplished one heart at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment