Yet another reason why honoring parents and long enduring civilization are connected is strong families form a major bulwark against totalitarian regimes. A standard feature of totalitarian regimes is the shifting of children’s loyalty and obedience from their parents to the state. One of the first things totalitarian regimes seek to do is weaken parental authority and replace it with the party or state. In such countries, children are encouraged to inform on their parents if they make critical comments—or even tell jokes—about government leaders or about the dominant ideology (in the modern period, that would almost always refer to communism, Nazism, or radical Islamism). Consequently, parents would often fear to speak openly in front of their children.
Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom, pg.258
5 comments:
The strength and benefit of the nuclear family is beyond questioning. We can see how the deterioration of the family unit brings about so much misery. It's almost miraculous when children of broken homes still turn out well. It's a sign of good parenting by whichever parent has custody and the devotion to that parent by the children. The sense of comfort, love and security two parent homes provide for the kids is essential to their development as upstanding citizens. And truly, it's hard enough with both parents present!
Hi Art,
Well a person turning out good from a broken home isn't necessarily due to one of the parents' raising of the child.
My parents divorced when I was 12. My father was a very abusive person and not Christian and became a Mormon a couple years after the divorce and died that way while on his 3rd wife (and after many affairs). My mother was a fairly good parent but too often too distracted with her own troubles with my father. She was/is also a non-believer. My father got custody of me and my brother (16 months younger) while my mom got the three girls (one 16 months older than me, one 7 years younger and the other 9 years younger). My dad took us from Ohio to Denver, CO and moved in with a couple who Dad had previously met (and while living there he was having an affair with the wife when the husband was at work). My mom came to Denver with the girls a few months later so as to be able to see us boys now and then.
Like my dad, my mom soon got involve with men before finally marrying one. My dad was abusive to us boys and we had a horrible life with him. My older sister got a bit wild and took after mom, getting pregnant when she was 16.
When us boys reached the age when we could choose who to live with and mom want us after she married, we took the opportunity to get away from our father (who by the had married a horrible woman). But while we got into a better environment there was an awful lot of not good. My step dad knocked my sister around because she was pregnant (she ended up moving in with the family of the father of her child, a radical LEFTIST). He was more abusive to my brother than he was to me because my brother looked a lot like my dad.
Suffice it to say I saw all the things wrong with divorce and affairs and abuse and wanted none of that in my life. I joined the Army right out of high school in 1970 to get away from it all, and it was while I was in the Army that I became a believer in January of 1974. Meanwhile I was home on leave in 1971 (by then a paratrooper with self-confidence) when we were at a family picnic and my step-dad got a bit tipsy and decided to go after my brother of something. I got between him and my brother and told him if he touched my brother I'd klll him. That sort of ended the picnic. My brother joined the Army a couple weeks later at the end of high school. Years later my younger sisters said they felt like we abandoned them to the abuse (I had no idea that was happening, after all when Left my one sister was 11 and the other 9).
My point here is the fact that I turned out well was because I didn't like what I saw growing up and didn't want to be like that, and instead wanted to be like all the good guys I read about in books (mostly history books). And then I became a believer. I can't give credit to either parent.
Glen,
What a witness of God’s salvation! By the world’s standards, you should probably have had a messed up life like your dad’s. But I know you and Jill are blessed in your marriage and are a testimony to His loving care. Grateful for how the Lord uses both of your blogs to keep His truth proclaimed. I do hope your mother comes to the Lord. He makes all the difference in families. Keep praying!
Kathryn
Hi Kathryn
Thank you.
Jill and I have preached the gospel to my mom every time we visit (either her here or us in Alabama) and she is relentless. She attends a Unitarian church and calls it her "fellowship." She keeps saying that she just doesn't and won't believe the way we do. But we never stop trying. She will be 86 this year. Ya never know.
Hi Glenn,
I second Kathryn's remarks. What a witness and testimony of what the Lord does in people's lives!!
-Carolyn
Post a Comment