Have you ever thought of yourself as an EXPLORER?
I have a new favorite author and his name is Robert Morgan. He is a prolific writer and in his new book, the Jordan River Rules, he has an illustration that I want to borrow to make a point. Morgan says that the earth weighs approximately 6.6 sextillion tons, is nearly 25,000 miles in circumference at the equator and until modern times most of the Earth’s 196.800,000 square miles was uncharted. That changed in the 1800’s when a number of “unbelievable men and women raced one another to the ends of the Earth during a Golden Age of Exploration.”
Morgan goes on to say that each us are just one of the seven billion explorers on the planet that need to move forward into the unexplored future. If you will allow me freedom, the point I want make is that today’s culture is fast becoming like those unexplored regions. Cultural change is taking place so rapidly that “NORMAL” seems to be just a setting on the dryer!
While some change is good there are some areas of life that need to stay constant or the result is chaos. One of those areas is the family. Andrew Beckwith in his challenging book, Engage the Baystate - A Call to Civic Stewardship draws a line from the present-day transgender craze back to the breakdown of the family. He begins with ‘No Fault Divorce’ in the 70’s and then ‘Same-sex Marriage’ and now we are at ‘Transgenderism.’
Andrew describes this progression as a systematic unraveling of what Jesus said in Matthew 19:4-6. Here is his statement, judge for yourself… “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So, they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
The traditional definition of family was a constant for thousands of years. It’s never been perfect because of the human element but until recently it was the standard and most people looked forward to starting a (traditional) family. One recent study showed that 74% of women and 45% of men are waiting until mid-life to marry for the 1st time and that is sad. It should pain us when we hear people say that they don’t want to bring children into this world. Children are meant to be a gift from God and the traditional family is meant to be the prescription for loneliness.
My thought and prayer is that this Thanksgiving and Christmas season will bring forward the EXPLORER in each of us. No matter what our family dynamics are we can always move forward towards greater stability and love. My dad was an alcoholic for 28 years but at age 55 he surrendered his addiction and as a result God gave us many Thanksgivings and Christmas’ together as a family. Take time this season to explore the unchartered territories of your family and with God’s help, see what you might discover! For Faith and Family in RI,
David Aucoin Rhode Island Family Institute www.rhodeislandfamily.org Daucoin@RhodeIslandFamily.org