Dearly beloved …

… we are gathered here today to witness the decay of the American society. 

Really L. Kyle?  Why are you always so negative? 

Hey I call ‘em like I see ‘em (unlike the replacement refs in the NFL this year).  I had the opportunity to witness a marriage ceremony recently which prompted my negative brooding; not because the wedding was bad, because it really was a nice wedding and not because marriage is bad, because marriage is a noble institution.  No, what prompted my negative brooding about marriage is the lack of commitment with which people enter into marriage, which is directly linked to the demise of the American family, which is linked to the decline of the great nation.

Demise of the family L. Kyle? There’s no such thing.

Sure there is. Some people don’t see it because they have been duped into believing that family is intact, just in a different form.  So just to be sure that we are all on the same page here, for the purposes of this blog post, family will be defined as the traditional nuclear family (dad, mom, and children). 

The pastor performing the ceremony stated a couple of times that the couple was entering into a covenant with each other.  The word covenant means roughly the same thing as a contract, but has more religious connotations (or is at least more religious sounding).  Marriage takes commitment, it takes work; it takes perseverance.  Families are, or at least should be, born out of this noble institution and the family is the basic building block of our society.

When constructing a building the most important aspect of the building is its foundation.  Without a sure foundation the building is susceptible to the elements, to shifting ground and will eventually topple over.  As an example, did you know the foundation which supports the Empire State Building is 55 feet deep.  The bigger the building, the deeper and more rigid the foundation needs to be to support its weight. 

A nation is a collection of people and the basic unit of a nation, the foundation, is the family.  The purpose of the family is to reproduce citizens.  The future of any nation is dependent on the quality of future citizens.  If the quality of citizens is poor then the quality of the foundation which supports a nation becomes compromised.  Much like a building with a compromised foundation will eventually collapse, nations with compromised foundations will collapse.

America, despite its immense resources, is in danger of collapse because we are no longer producing quality citizens.  Do not mistake a person’s worth for their quality of citizenship.  All human life should be valued from the baby in the womb to the elderly.  There are unfortunately some people who are lousy citizens, which is to say that they are not contributing to the greater goals of society. They are in essence not putting back what they are taking from the rest of society.

That is where family is so important and why the collapse of the family spells the end of this nation.  My job as a parent is to make sure that when my children leave my home I have equipped them with the proper tools to get and hold a job, pay taxes, have a family and ultimately make other productive citizens. 

Recently presidential candidate Mitt Romney made the comment that 47% of Americans are on some form of government assistance.  He has been skewered for his comment, but according to a February 2012 article on CNN.Money it is true that nearly half of America is on some sort of government assistance, the bulk of that is Medicaid.  That means that nearly half of this nation is not self-sustaining, and if they are not self-sustaining they are not really producing and contributing to the nation. 

If it is the family’s job to produce productive, aka self-sustaining citizens, then the family is failing at is job if nearly half of America is not self-sufficient.  The family is failing at its job because the idea of family has failed in this country.  Ward and June Cleaver look draconian in our modern world.  The idea of dad, mom and children has been attacked and discredited to the point that the Leave it to Beaver world is now the punch line in joke. 

The idea of the nuclear family has been replaced with ABC’s Modern Family and NBC’s The New Normal.  Both shows celebrate different forms of family. Both of these programs celebrate the fact that a family can raise children despite not being the traditional nuclear family. This notion in Hollywood is not new. Some might remember with the television character Murphy Brown became pregnant and raised her child by herself.  Very controversial for the times.  Can single mothers produce productive members of society?  Absolutely!

However, I could write pages and present research to back up my position that the breakdown of the family has negative effects on children.  I could show you the data that children from broken homes, blended families and single parent homes are at a greater risk of becoming juvenile delinquents, drug addicts, and teen parents (if you want the research leave a comment I will get it for you). But at the end of the day most people cannot deny that a stable family with a father and mother living in the same house produces more well-adjusted children than other family situations.

So if it is undeniable that stable families produce more productive citizens why are we not fighting  to defend the nuclear family structure?  Quite simply it is because our society’s acceptance of casual sexual relationships.  We no longer hold, or maybe we never did, the virtue of chastity or respect the fact that the sexual relationship was, nay is, intended for marriage. We celebrate on television, in the movies and in music the idea of casual sex, sex merely for pleasure and sex for self satisfaction only. Recent studies have shown that 90% of Americans have engaged in premarital sex. 

So what L. Kyle, everyone’s doing it and besides what people do in private is their business not yours!

But I ask what is wrong with sex only inside a marriage relationship?  If two people wait to get married to have sex, stay married “until death do us part”, what then is the ramification?  No adultery, no sexually transmitted diseases, fewer unintended pregnancies.  Gosh you’re right that does sound terrible. 

In the book of Hosea God warns His prophet about what will befall the nation of Israel “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7a).  This means that what they have sown they will reap in abundance.  The apostle Paul expounded on this principle and wrote in the book of Galatians “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal 6:7).

You do not have to be a Christian or believe in God to understand the principle that if you plant an apple tree you will reap apples.  What works in nature also works in society.  If we sow the seeds of casual sexual relationships we will reap in abundance the product of those seeds.  The produce of casual sex is not just disease, unwanted babies and broken hearts.  A line can be drawn directly from our acceptance of casual sex to decayed families and a line can be drawn from decayed families to eventual downfall of this great nation. 

Yes I am being so bold as to say that the acceptance of casual sex will be directly linked to the downfall of America. God did not command us not to commit adultery simply because He is a killjoy.  God created the sexual relationship and we have innate sexual desires and appetites, but God gave us boundaries in which to fulfill those desires.  And those boundaries are there for a reason, our protection.  Without boundaries we are like kids in the Willy Wonka factory without any supervision.  We are bound to get into trouble. 

Maybe some don’t know, but children are a byproduct of sex.  It appears that there are a whole slew of people this nation that either missed that day in biology class or weren’t paying attention.  Maybe we could have Bill Nye explain it to them.  Sex is directly related to pregnancy.  Sure there are other ways of getting pregnant, but sex is still the number one cause.  That is why God intended to have sex inside the marriage relationship only. Because if a man and women happened to get pregnant during sexual intercourse then there is already a family unit in place to raise the child.  And when the family is intact raising a child they become more productive members of society, better quality citizens.   Better quality of citizens is tied to a better nation.

But we’re so smart aren’t we.  We think “God, you have no idea what you’re doing, we should be free to have sex all the time with whomever we want. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Well, I guess we will get to find out.

Leftovers, enjoy

L. Kyle