A DISTINCTLY CHRISTIAN VIEW OF FAMILY

THE TRANS-CULTURAL ESSENCE, FORM AND MISSION OF FAMILY

AUGUST 2008

8605 EXPLORER DRIVE ● COLORADO SPRINGS CO ● 80920

 What is a family?
What purpose does family serve?
Is there a Christian view of family that transcends particular cultures?

Is it reasonable and compassionate to say some family forms are better

than others?
____________________________________

The U.S. Census Bureau defines family as “a group of two people or more
related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together.” 1 Most developed
countries characterize family similarly, and Focus on the Family has used this as
a functional definition as well. While a helpful and durable explanation, it fails to
capture the fuller human and spiritual essence of family.

Illustrating the wonder of family is difficult because it is the most consequential of

human enterprises: the fountainhead of humanity. Therefore, family is the
primary and most natural source of human well-being, as well as the most
fundamental driver and glue of civil society.

But for Christians, the family is still much more.

Our evangelical Christian faith - which is the foundation of Focus on the Family’s
work - has a great deal to say about what family is, what it does and why it
matters. And while this understanding is deeply and distinctly Christian, its truths
and implications are not confined to those individuals, groups or societies that
seek to honor Christian teaching.

All human cultures – ancient and modern, primitive and advanced – acknowledge
some basic family norms to their benefit or ignore them to their peril. This is a
fundamental sociological and anthropological law. Family serves the common
good and Christ’s command to love our neighbor demands that we preserve the
family. This institution is central to all cultures because all cultures, despite their
remarkable differences and particulars, consist of persons created in God’s
likeness. Therefore, there are essential universals – things we find in all cultures
at all times -- many of which are rooted in the family. These primary human and
cultural family universals - marriage 2 , child-bearing and rearing, motherhood and
fatherhood, family cohesion and sexual mores – are present in all societies, at all
times, transcending profound cultural differences in politics, economics, law and

1
“Current Population Survey (CPS) - Definitions and Explanations,” U.S. Bureau of the Census,
http://www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html.

2
Different cultural mores and marital traditions mean there are different ways that marriages are
entered into and “ordained” or “solemnized” by the community, but whatever these differences
might be, all cultures have some form of permanent or long-term, socially-recognized exclusive
pair-bonding between men and women as the foundation of family and community life.

2
religion. 3 They transcend because they are fundamental to humanity and we
examine them here given Focus on the Family’s mission to “nurture and defend
families worldwide.”

This paper consists of three sections:

I. WHAT IS THE PRIMARY ESSENCE OF FAMILY?

II. DOES FAMILY HAVE A PROPER FORM?
III. WHAT FAMILY DOES?

I. WHAT IS THE PRIMARY ESSENCE OF FAMILY?

Family gains its ultimate meaning not only because it was created by God, but
because it was ordained by God to show forth His very image in creation. This
reality makes the Christian story of family distinct from other creation-based
anthropologies as the human family is a unique and distinct picture of who God is
in His deepest sense.

The first chapter of Scripture tells us that after five days of creating, God declares
He will make something with a grand distinction: it will bear His image, giving the
created world a tangible, experiential picture of the invisible, immeasurable God.
Here God says:

Let Us make man in Our image, in Our likeness…

Genesis 1: 26

What will this new creation be? What is it that will soon appear to give all of
creation a picture of God’s image and likeness? All creation must have stood in
absolute silent anticipation to see what this new creation would be. Scripture
explains:

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He

created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27

Both man and woman are this earthly image of God. That means you, in your
sex/gender and individuality are a unique representation of God in the world.
3
Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, Vol. I, (New York: The Allerton Book
Company, 1922). George Peter Murdock, Social Structure, (New York: The MacMillan Company,
1949); Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex, Culture and Myth, (New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc.,
1962); Ward Hunt Goodenough, Description and Comparison in Cultural Anthropology, (Chicago:
Aldine Publishing Co., 1970).

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That is a nice day’s work! And this couple, man and woman, received God’s
blessing and were pronounced very good! In the whole of human literature, there
is no more profound statement about what it means to be human – or male or
female -- than this. Francis Schaeffer, in his treatment of these early chapters of
Genesis, explains:

For twentieth-century man [and twenty-first century man] this

phrase, the image of God, is as important as anything in
Scripture, because men today can no longer answer the crucial
question, “Who am I?” …If anything is a gift from God, this is it –
knowing who you are. …It is on the basis of being made in the
image of God that everything is open to man. 4

Both man and woman are designed to uniquely and beautifully reflect the very
image of God in distinct ways as two distinct types of humanity. They both reveal
it, and in ways that the other cannot, for male is not female and female is not
male. Consider all the competing views “out there” of what it means to be human
in general and male and female in particular. No philosophy or religion will rival
this that each one of us images God in a unique way. Christianity takes a
singularly high view of what it means to be human as male and female.

But what is this image in which we are created?

The image of God as a solitary Being existing alone in the cosmos prior to
creation is not a Christian conception. The Christian God is Trinitarian: one God
manifest in three eternal persons. The core of the universe is the intimate
community of the Godhead, an “Us” and “We” as He describes Himself in the first
chapter of Scripture. Schaeffer illuminates this in his explanation of the
importance of God as Trinity, “Among the things we know about the Trinity is that
the Trinity was before the creation of everything else and that love existed
between the persons of the Trinity before the foundation of the world.” 5

A solitary God cannot be love as Scripture tells us He is. 6 Love cannot issue from
solitude. It requires at least another: a lover and a beloved. But the Trinity is not
just a couple – a relationship – but a community, three divine Persons living
intimately in one Godhead. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit.
One God, Three persons, a beautiful mystery.

Christ speaks of this eternal relationship in a conversation with the Father, on

which we get to eavesdrop on in his high priestly prayer in the garden the

4
Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
1972), p., 46, 47.
5
Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1968), p.
97. On this, Schaeffer points to John 17:24b.
6
I John 4:8 “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” NIV.

4
evening before his death “…You loved me before the creation of the world.” 7
The fountain of all reality is love, intimacy and community. This is what lies
behind, under, through and over all reality and it is intensely personal. For this is
exactly what God as Trinity is.

If we only understand the Trinity as merely an abstract metaphysical structure or

high-minded intellectual archetype, the Trinitarian God remains a confusing
theological puzzle that most of us would rather avoid…and unfortunately too
many do. But if we see the beauty of the Trinity as a floodlight which illuminates
God’s most intimate nature and very personality, it comes alive in the most
profound and practical ways. As British theologian Colin Gunton explains,

The Trinity has more often been presented as a dogma to be

believed rather than as the living focus of life and thought. …In light
of the theology of the Trinity, everything looks different. 8

Professor Gunton is right. Because God is not solitary, love, intimacy and
community are the core of the universe. Therefore, God is fundamentally
personal and relational and therefore, so are we as His image-bearers. We are in
alignment with our created purpose when we live in love and intimacy with other
people. When we live in exclusion - whether this be physical or emotional
isolation from our family and larger community – we fail to fulfill one of God’s
overarching purposes for our lives. God’s fundamental character is toward others
- first toward the other Persons of the Godhead and then toward us. Likewise, we
are made for others and in this we find our greatest meaning.

This truth is demonstrated to us by God in what is His second most profound

statement about humanity. We find it in the second creation narrative:

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will
make a helper suitable for him…"
Gen. 2: 18

Reflect on this remarkable statement about humanity. God says there was
something that was “not good” before the Fall! God did not make a mistake, but
rather He is telling us that “aloneness” is not in man’s nature because it is not a
part of the nature of God, which we reflect. This is precisely why solitary
confinement will break even the most unscrupulous, hardened criminal - and why
heaven is marked by community and hell, isolation.

Some of us, however, might respond to God’s statement about aloneness by

saying, “But God. I am not alone. I have YOU and You are all I need.” God,
however, would not agree. He created our need for intimacy with someone like

7
John 17:24, NIV
8
Colin F. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 2nd Edition (Edinburgh: T&T Clark. Ltd.,
1997), p. 3, 7.

5
ourselves who, while sharing our humanity, was yet different and distinct. God
solved this problem by creating someone of man’s own flesh, His own essence,
but also very different: woman.

Adam immediately recognizes the woman’s similarities to his:

The man said,

"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman’
Gen. 2: 23

But he also notices her differences, her physicality, her body. What we often
think of as “carnal” is the first thing Adam recognizes and did so to God’s great
delight. This negative view of the body, which some Christians mistakenly hold,
stems more from the influence of Hellenistic Platonism via Augustine (who was
deeply influenced by the Neo-Platonists who viewed the physical world as evil
and the spiritual world as good) rather than authentic Christianity. As C.S. Lewis
understood:

Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which

thoroughly approves of the body—which believes that matter is
good, [where] God Himself once took on a human body. 9

God gave male and female distinct bodies, souls and minds and made them for
each other. But man also recognized something important about himself. His own
physicality now made sense. Until now, there were certain parts of his body and
psyche that made him a physical and emotional oddity, for some things just
seemed strange. With Eve, his full physicality, emotion and humanity found
reason, purpose and completion.

And this leads us to God’s first command for this small “God-imaged” unity of
two.

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in
number…”
Gen. 1:28

And as they came together in this God-commanded (and God-blessed!) sexual

embrace of passion, love and intimacy, they “became one flesh,” and that union
eventually resulted in the two as one flesh participating in the creation of a third:
their God-image bearing offspring. This new human community of husband, wife
and child is a mystery of three distinct beings comprising one essence and flesh.
They are a human trinity in a manner of speaking, a created, physical version of

9
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 91.

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the uncreated, spiritual Trinity. 10 We all come forth into this world, ideally, in the
essence of God’s very nature of intimacy, as Catholic theologian Michael
Downey explains so well:

The human person is not an individual, not a self-contained being

who at some stage in life chooses or elects to be in relationship
with another or others. From the very first moment of existence, the
infant is toward the other, ordinarily the mother or father, who in
turn is toward the infant. From our origin, we are related to others.
We are from others, by others, toward others, for others, just as it is
in God’s nature to exist in the relations of interpersonal love. 11

And just as we each issue from the intimacy and community of the Trinity, we
each also issue from the intimacy and community between our mother and father
where they are toward each other in the most intimate of ways. Every human
person shares some basic things in common: our humanity and our entrance into
this world through a union between our mother and father. We come into the
world from intimacy and communion and we live for intimacy and communion.
(For more on this truth, see Appendix I)

We might say that humanity is like an elite country club. You have to know
someone to get in. And just as our original parents, Adam and Eve, were created
out of the love, intimacy and community of the Trinitarian God, children are
intended to come forth out of the love, intimacy and unity of their parents. 12 This
fundamental human procession reflects the glorious Heavenly Trinity where the
Nicene Creed tells us about the Third person of the Trinity: “the Holy Ghost, the
Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” 13 The Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, not mechanically, but from Their
love and intimacy. The Church understands the Holy Spirit is personified love
shared between the Father and the Son. This is the image that every human life
and every family models, whether the participants realize it or not.

Of course, an infinite difference exists between the eternal mystery of love and
creativity among the Trinity and the manner in which male and female generate
new life in becoming one flesh. God is spirit, not flesh. And God is passionately
intimate, but He is not sexual. Nevertheless, in the biblical vision, human

10
Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5 NIV
11
Michael Downey, Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality, (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000),
p. 63.
12
Of course, our coming forth from the intimacy and love of our parents is both the norm and the
ideal. However, many humans come forth from sexual exchange that is not loving. This, of
course, does not diminish the value or humanity of the new life which issues forth from such a
union. But as we will see later in this paper, it can negatively impact their physical, emotional and
psychological well-being. This is a fundamental reason why the sex act should not be entered into
outside the confines of loving, self-giving, faithful marriage.
13
This phrase, the center of the filioque controversy between the Western and Eastern Church, is
not used by Eastern Orthodox churches.

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sexuality reflects something – or, is intended to reflect something – of the eternal
exchange of life-giving love found in the Holy Trinity. This is why a painting such
as Vincent Van Gogh’s First Steps can be so much more deeply appreciated by
Christians, for it speaks to this truth when it only appears, at first glance, to be a
merely a nice picture of a mother, father and child. (See Appendix II)

Heavenly Trinity Earthly trinity

The third proceeds from the love and intimacy of the two, creating community.

FATHER SON HUSBAND WIFE

HOLY
CHILD
SPIRIT

A human family, like God, is intrinsically Trinitarian:

Godhead: Three distinct and eternal Divine Persons, with one spiritual
essence, communing in unbounded love, intimacy and cooperation.

Human family: Three distinct, created persons who will live as one
generative personal unity communing in love, intimacy and
cooperation.

Consider that this is exactly how Christ, in what C.S. Lewis called the “grand
miracle,” entered our realm as a flesh and blood Human at the intersection of a
humble earthly trinity – the holy family – that lived in a real place in real time.

The origin of the holy family as an earthly trinity is beautifully expressed by

Bartolome Esteban Murillo’s painting, The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities, as well
as Jacob DeWit ‘s Holy Family and Trinity (See Appendix III).

The origins of every other family – and every individual’s existence – is

provocatively represented in the fifteenth century painting titled Couple Receiving
a Child from the Holy Trinity where every human comes from the love and
intimacy of the Trinity through the love and intimacy of our parents, an incredible
and divine interchange. (See Appendix IV).

The importance of this fundamental human union – marriage – is demonstrated

wonderfully in the truth that God’s Word starts with a marriage in Genesis

8
(chapters 1, 2) and ends with the culmination of time: the marriage of Christ and
His imperfect, but redeemed Bride, the Church (Revelation 19:7-9; 21:9; 22:17).
This is not accidental or merely convenient language. It speaks deeply about the
nature of God, mankind and how important marriage is.

Summary:
The reality of the Trinity in Christian understanding is so much more
than a theological Rubics Cube. It explains to us the deepest
essence of God in whose image we are each created and,
therefore, the wonder and deepest essence of our families, and
therefore ourselves. The human family uniquely reveals and
proclaims most fully, this side of heaven, the nature and character
of the Triune God. The family is an earthly icon of this heavenly
reality. This is the theological reason why we “focus on the family,”
for the family reveals the nature of God in the world.

II. DOES FAMILY HAVE A PROPER FORM?

Focus on the Family is often, albeit unfairly, charged with favoring a very narrow
and historically unique form of family, such as those found on 1950s-era
television shows. To the contrary, it is not a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era
that animates our work to strengthen and defend families worldwide. As we have
just learned, it is something much larger and more profound. But we are driven
by something else that is closely related: human well-being.

Because of this inherent design, there are particular family forms and values that
are essential for all cultures to recognize and esteem. Transcending the culturally
distinct pressures of politics, law, religion and economics, societies typically
follow these basic forms to varying degrees because they find they best serve
individual and community well-being. They work because they align with the
image in which we are all created, and this is true whether we realize the
connection or not. Let us address the most basic family forms, attributes and
qualities that drive the work of Focus on the Family,

SELF-GIVING LOVE: Opponents often tell us that “love makes a family.” This is
true, but it is not the whole truth. It is like saying, “Flour makes a loaf of bread.”
Love is the most fundamental component of a healthy family, like flour is the
essential and primary component of a good loaf of bread. But a family and a loaf
of bread require more in order to be what they are supposed to be.

Familial love is more than mere feelings of closeness, romanticism and even
commitment between various people. Familial love is based on relationships that
flow from marital love – that of a man and woman in an exclusive, all-giving,
sacrificial, lifelong bond from which children originate. A leading Polish
philosopher of love and family explained that the most intimate, complete giving

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of all human interactions - the marital embrace- “is the natural foundation, as well
as the ontological core, of the family.” 14

Every family should seek to emulate the love, intimacy and service of the Trinity,
for this is what families are created from and for. A family may appear idyllic even
as, in reality, its members are selfish and narcissistic. Such a family is unhealthy
and cannot flourish. It is a community that is not fulfilling the role of family.
However, while families require sacrificial love, they demand more as explained
below.

Focus on the Family seeks to help families and the individuals comprising them
to be as loving, caring and giving as they can be, as imaged to us in the Trinity.

IMPORTANCE OF MALE AND FEMALE: Both male and female are necessary for the
family because the trinity of family demands these two distinct parts of humanity.
A family that says it has no need of either male or female is not healthy because
it rejects one half of humanity. Both male and female, being unique, represent a
part of the image of God that the other cannot. That is why it is not good for man
to be alone and why all cultures throughout time center family on the coming
together of the two halves of humanity.

Some families, indeed, are missing either male or female due to death, desertion
or divorce. Few in such families would contend that this is the ideal situation.
Those who do proclaim its idealism violate the truth of gender significance.
Families that reject either male or female by design, such as same-sex homes,
fail to recognize the importance of each gender in this fount of humanity - not just
in procreation, but in the ongoing survival and development of the human life and
family. They fail to recognize the fullness of humanity as expressed in the nature
of God.

Therefore, Focus on the Family seeks to help families value and make use of the
complementary and essential benefits that a male and female bring to family as
spouses, parents, and siblings.

MARRIAGE: The first command that God gave Adam and Eve was to join together
as one flesh. As such, the first human institution is marriage. It has existed since
the dawn of human civilization, 15 and every culture has some set of laws, rituals

14
“Ontology” is the philosophy of being, what a thing is in its being. The marital embrace is
distinct from mere sex between two people because it is a total union and giving of the totality of
the person to another. Sex between unmarried persons is sex that holds back other parts of the
person and more likely to be “taking” rather than “giving.” Karol Wojtyla, Person and Community:
Selected Essays, New York: Peter Lang, 1993), p. 339. (Of course, this Polish philosopher went
on to become Pope John Paul II.)
15
Suzanne G. Frayser, Varieties of Sexual Experience: An Anthropological Perspective on
Human Sexuality, (New Haven, Conn: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1985); Edward
Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, Vols. I-III, (New York: The Allerton Book
Company, 1922).

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or community-held mores about marriage. Most cultures also have maintained,
until very recently in the West, taboos against children being born outside of
marriage. Anthropologists tell us that marriage benefits men, women and society
as a whole because it curtails sexual competitiveness in a culture, where men
are enticed to become sexual predators and consumers and woman become
items to be collected and used. 16

Focus on the Family believes that marriage is the basis for healthy families and
that husbands and wives should love, serve and care for one another within such
a context. The husband is to lead in this service, taking Christ as his example, as
He served and laid down His life for the Church. 17 Marriage is the foundation of
the family because it is the relationship where man and woman come together
and give themselves totally and exclusively to one another in the fullest human
way. They give to their spouse the trinity of their own being: body, mind and
spirit, for this is what is offered in the marriage ceremony, a public pledge of total
self. Sex outside of marriage is a private taking of flesh alone, for it lacks any
true, lasting commitment.

SEXUALITY: The sexual embrace is the most intimate of all human communions,
so much so that it is God’s symbolism of the two becoming one flesh. Most
cultures – Christian and other - recognize that a marriage is not finalized until it
has been consummated and the man and woman have become one.

Sex is a gift we receive from God and that we give to another, by surrendering
ourselves totally, completely and exclusively in this embrace. We offer ourselves,
not just physically, but also mentally and spiritually. We give our total selves as
an expression of love.

Focus on the Family seeks to help individuals adopt attitudes, values and
behaviors that will make for strong, fulfilling and life-giving sexual relationships
within the protective confines of marriage.

PARENTHOOD: Parenthood is where every human – either as a parent or as

someone’s child – enters the communion and mystery of the human trinity, the
reflection of the very nature and character of God. The love of a couple should
flow into the creation of new life in the family via procreation or adoption.

Parents bring new life into the world through love and passionate intimacy and,
ideally, welcome children with great anticipation, warmth, provision, and
protection. While conception can be the result of cold and impersonal copulation,
few desire such a union as the source of their lives. We would all like to have
proceeded from and been raised in the love and intimacy of a mother and father.

16
Helen E. Fischer, Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce,
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
17
Ephesians 5:25 NIV “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave
himself up for her…”

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Mental health professionals explain that an individual’s deep emotional struggles
arise primarily from the absence of this warmth and love from a child’s earliest
years.

Therefore, Focus on the Family is committed to helping mothers and fathers

raise their children together in homes that are caring, nurturing, protective, and
equipping, so that these children grow to be the next generation of warm,
guiding, caring, intentional parents. This ensures physical, emotional and spiritual
well-being from generation to generation as well as a safe, healthy, and
productive society.

EXTENDED FAMILY AND KINSHIP: The nuclear family, as anthropologist refer to it, of
father, mother and child(ren) -- the trinitarian family model -- explains the starting
point, not the end, of family. This nucleus is founded upon self-giving of the two
parts of humanity in marriage and parenthood and, when healthy and growing,
will result from and in an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and
cousins…our kin who connect us with the story of who we are. These are the
people who are most likely to help nurture and protect the formation and healthy
growth of the essential nuclear unit. Sometimes, extended families live together
in the same home. Other times, they live apart. But kinship matters.

Focus on the Family is committed to encouraging the healthy dynamic that

extended family provides for the fundamental unit of husband, wife and children.

Contemporary Enemies of These Basic Family Ideals:

While the values described above embody the work of Focus on the Family,
there are many ideologies at work in society today that run contrary to biblically
based convictions. We oppose these for good reason: they not only take us away
from God’s ideal for families, but they pose serious hazards to the health and
vitality of both individuals and the culture at large. In short, they do not contribute
to human well-being, but rather detract from it.

INDIVIDUALISM, SELFISHNESS: Self-denial and service to others are not popular

values today. This widespread problem erodes the heart and spirit of family
because it fails to model the love of the Trinity, whose Members serve the others.
Following this example, we first learn to live for others within the context of a
family. (See also Appendix I)

ANTI-NATALISM: Related to this first point is a troubling trend away from married
couples bearing and raising children. The National Marriage Project in the United
States in 2006 warned that “demographically, socially and culturally, the nation is
shifting from a society of child-rearing families to a society of child-free adults.” 18
Demographer Phillip Longman warns, “No industrialized nation still produces

18
David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “The State of Our Unions, 2006,” The National
Marriage Project, (Rutgers University, July 2006), p. 13.

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enough children to sustain its population over time, or to prevent rapid population
aging.” 19

Children are a precious gift from God, His image-bearers for a new generation.
Raising healthy, thriving, loving, intelligent and diligent children is something we
must do intentionally with great sacrifice and effort. This is the most important
task of families and society as a whole. Children are a blessing, not a curse or
nuisance. The decline of child-bearing in different societies of the world is having
very serious consequences for both the present and future productivity and
stability of these cultures. 20

DIVORCE: God is very clear when He says, “I hate divorce” 21 (Malachi 2:16). He
hates it not based on some empty or old-fashioned moralism, but because it
tears apart the individual who has become one flesh with another, be it husband,
wife or children of the marriage. It is a vivisection, not just of a family, but of every
individual in the family. This explains what novelist Charles Williams meant when
he said, “Divorce is not bad morals; it is bad metaphysics.” 22 Divorce viciously
undermines the very basic essence of who each of us is as a spouse or
someone’s child. Mountains of research stemming from the West’s 40 year
experiment with no-fault divorce show it to be harmful for men, women and
children in far deeper ways than even the most conservative critics ever
imagined. 23

POLYGAMY AND MULTI-PARTNER MARRIAGE: As God declared, prior to the Fall, it

was not good for man to be alone. He was illustrating that alone, man did not
reflect God’s image. What God gave to Adam as a solution is a profound answer
as to what man was made for. What He provided was woman…one woman. This
“other” is God’s dramatic demonstration of what man and woman need,
explaining why women tend to be treated better as persons, with dignity and
respect, in monogamous cultures. In polygamous cultures women tend to be
seen more as objects to be collected and used in sex, child-bearing and

19
Longman explains that 59 countries (44% of the world’s population) are currently not producing
enough children to avoid serious population decline and the UN projects that by 2050, 75% of all
countries, even in underdeveloped regions, will face this problem. Of all countries above
replacement level, only two saw an estimated rise in total number of children born, but the rise
“was barely more than zero.” Phillip Longman, The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates
Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It, (New York Basic Books, 2004), p. 8, 26, 30.
20
Longman, 2004: Ben Wattenberg, Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will
Shape Our Future, (New York: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).
21
Malachi 2:16, NIV "I hate divorce," says the LORD God of Israel,
22
Charles Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 117.
23
Katherine Reissman and Naomi Gerstel, “Marital Dissolution and Health: Do Males or Females
Have Greater Risk?” Social Science and Medicine 20 (1985): 627-635; E. Mavis Hetherington,
For Better or For Worse: Divorce Reconsidered, (W.W. Norton, 2002); Judith Wallerstein, et al.,
The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study, (Hyperion, 2000); Judith
Wallerstein, “The Long-Term Effects of Divorce on Children: A Review,” Journal of the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 30 (1991) 349-360; Elizabeth Marquardt, Between
Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, (New York: Crown, 2005).

13
domestic labor. This is true in typical and serial polygamous cultures where men
either have many wives at one time or a number of wives, one-at-a-time, over a
lifetime.

Yes, polygamous marriage is presented in biblical texts, but these texts are only
descriptive, not ethically prescriptive. By His example, God does not condone
polygamy as demonstrated in the first chapter of Genesis, Christ’s affirmation of
the Genesis model in Matthew 19:4-6 and the last chapters of Revelation where
Christ takes one beloved Bride for himself, the Church.

PREMARITAL AND EXTRAMARITAL SEX: Any sexual activity outside of the

covenantal bonds of marriage is harmful to individuals and entire societies
because it joins two people physically without also uniting them mentally and
spiritually. In marriage, a man and woman publicly commit themselves wholly
and exclusively to another in the totality of their being: body, mind and spirit.
Non-marital sex, on the other hand, says, “I only want part of you, not all of you.”
The marital union is a lifelong, complete relationship, while non-marital sex is
isolated, limited and transient in every way. It is not true intimacy because it
holds back. This is why C.S. Lewis calls it a “monstrosity”:

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that

those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the
sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go
along with it and make up the total union. 24

It is not mere coincidence that social science research consistently demonstrates

the most sexually fulfilled people to be the faithfully married, particularly those
who come to marriage as virgins. 25 It is only through the exclusive, marital giving
of body, mind and soul that real intimacy can take place.

COHABITATION: Yet another refusal to give the totality of one’s self to another is
evident in cohabitation. This living arrangement is functionally much different,
and less healthy, than marriage. Cohabitating relationships are consistently less
durable and more volatile, experiencing significantly higher rates of domestic
violence and keeping individuals more isolated from family and friends.
Cohabiters encounter higher levels of infidelity, depression and drug use and do
not fare as well financially as their married peers. 26 Many sociologists believe this

24
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1960), p. 96.
25
Glenn T. Stanton, Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern
Society (Colorado Springs: Piñon Press, 1997), chap. 1; Robert T. Michael, et al., Sex in
America: A Definitive Survey (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), p. 131; Edward O. Laumann, et al.,
The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 364, table 10.5.
26
Michael D. Newcomb and P.M. Bentler, “Assessment of Personality and Demographic Aspects
of Cohabitation and Marital Success,” Journal of Personality Assessment 44 (1980): 11-24; Kersti
Yllo and Murray A. Straus, “Interpersonal Violence Among Married and Cohabiting Couples,”
Family Relations 30 (1981): 339-347; Jan E. Stets, “Cohabiting and Marital Aggression: The Role

14
is because cohabitation tends to promote more individualistic attitudes and
confused expectations among couples regarding the future of the relationship. 27

ARTIFICIAL REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGY: This is a new and culturally specific issue

due to its highly technological nature and concerns the ability to produce new
human life outside the intimacy of a child’s mother and father. Artificial
reproductive technology (ART) can help facilitate conception for married couples
facing infertility. This option is morally and ethically acceptable provided the
couple does not go outside the relationship to obtain reproductive material or
fertilize more eggs than can be carried and delivered by the wife.

Although ART can be useful in helping infertile couples conceive, it can also
foster impersonal, disembodied procreation outside of marriage for intentionally
single people and same-sex couples. Such individuals and couples come to see
the other sex merely as a “sperm or egg donor,” for that is the only thing they
seek from the donor. Here, reproductive materials do not meet in the beautiful
warmth, intimacy and love of an exclusive and fully committed marriage, but
rather in a medical laboratory following the foreplay of a business contract.

Children of these unions are coming of age and telling us what they think about
their conception. On numerous Web logs, these adult children refer to
themselves as “lopsided,” “half-adopted,” “genetic orphans,” and “kinship slaves.”
Some born to same-sex parents refer to themselves as “queer spawn”. Lindsay,
a young Ohio woman, laments, “I feel my right to know who I am and where I
came from has been taken away from me.” Joanna, a doctoral student in
Australia, speaks for a number of adult donor-conceived children, “Our kinship
was broken as a part of a reproductive ‘service’ to the parents that raised us.
Unlike…. adoption, this is not a last resort, nor could severed kinship be said to

of Social Isolation,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (1991): 669-680; Larry L. Bumpass,
James A. Sweet, and Andrew Cherlin, “The Role of Cohabitation in Declining Rates of Marriage,”
Journal of Marriage and the Family 53 (1991): 913-927; Lee Robins and Darrel Regier,
Psychiatric Disorders in America: The Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study (New York: The Free
Press, 1991), p. 64; John D. Cunningham and John K. Antill, “Cohabitation and Marriage:
Retrospective and Predictive Comparisons,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 11
(1994): 77-94; Judith Treas and Deirdre Giesen, “Sexual Fidelity Among Married and Cohabiting
Americans,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (2000): 48-60; Linda J. Waite and Maggie
Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off
Financially, (New York: Doubleday 2000), p. 93, pp. 110-123; Renata Forste and Koray Tanfer,
“Sexual Exclusivity Among Dating, Cohabiting, and Married Women,” Journal of Marriage and the
Family 58 (1996): 33-47; Janet Wilmoth and Gregor Koso, “Does Marital History Matter? Marital
Status and Wealth Outcomes Among Preretirement Adults,” Journal of Marriage and the Family
64 (2002): 254-268; David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, “Should We Live Together?
What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation Before Marriage,” The National Marriage
Project, Rutgers University, 2002, p. 9.
27
Glenn T. Stanton, Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern
Society, (Pinon Press, 1997), p. 68.

15
be in our best interests…” 28 Such families are formed with seemingly little
thought about how this lack of genetic connection with two parents will impact the
child.

Important note: Artificial reproduction is different from adoption, in

that children of adoption are not intentionally conceived in
separation from their biological kin. Adoption is a heroic, special-
case act to meet the needs of children who have lost parents or
who cannot be raised by their biological parents or extended family.
Artificial reproduction, on the other hand, is often a deliberate way
of bringing forth children while avoiding the commitment, intimacy
and work that provides a child with a married mother and father.
While adoption is deeply child-centered, artificial reproduction
technology is often very adult-centered.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND FAMILIES: Since both man and woman uniquely
represent the image of God in ways the other does not, a successful family
demands the involvement of both sides of humanity. Same-sex families, by
design, reject the necessity of male and female for children and the family. Any
family that says that male or female are optional is not a healthy human family.

III. WHAT FAMILY DOES

The late Pope John Paul II, one of our age’s most sophisticated thinkers on the
nature of family, explains the work of this institution:

[T]he fundamental task of the family is to serve life, to actualize in

history the original blessing of the Creator – that of transmitting by
procreation the divine image from person to person. 29

Family alone accomplishes this vital and fundamental task – that of transmitting
the divine image within each of us – from generation to generation. It is the place
where we most successfully learn to be fully human. It is where we learn to love,
to give, to serve and receive, to forgive, to think, to make wise, healthy choices -
in short, to reflect the very nature of God in the world.

Because family powerfully provides for the important measure of individual and
societal well-being, the structure of family – and our understanding of it – has
profoundly practical implications. As was stated at the beginning of this booklet,
individuals and cultures either adhere to the biblical and traditional mandates
regarding families to their benefit or ignore them to their great peril.

28
Elizabeth Marquardt, Principle Investigator, The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging
Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs, (New York: Institute for American
Values, et al., 2006), p. 18, 36.
29
John Paul II, The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World, Familiaris Consortio, given
November 22, 1981. (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1981), p. 46.

16
There is a virtual ocean of sociological, medical and psychological research data
published in a wealth of scholarly journals and books over the last 40 years
indicating that the family forms and qualities highlighted herein are the most
effective at elevating individual and community well-being. Their opponents, as
outlined, tend to diminish human well-being, sometimes in extremely serious and
harmful ways. This vast literature illuminates how marriage positively contributes
to every vital measure of well-being for men and women and that children
similarly thrive when raised by their married mother and father.

James Q. Wilson, former UCLA and Harvard professor as well as one of the
world’s leading social scientists, summarizes how marriage improves well-being
for adults across cultures:

Married people are happier than unmarried ones of the same age,
not only in the United States, but in at least seventeen other
countries where similar inquiries have been made. And there
seems to be good reasons for that happiness. People who are
married not only have higher incomes and enjoy greater emotional
support, they tend to be healthier. Married people live longer than
unmarried ones, not only in the United States but abroad. 30

One of the studies to which Professor Wilson refers examined the connection
between marital status and personal happiness in 17 industrialized nations with
diverse social and institutional frameworks. The findings were as follows:

Being married was 3.4 times more closely tied to…happiness than
was cohabitation and marriage increases happiness equally for
men and women. …Further, the strength of association between
being married and being happy is remarkably consistent across
nations. 31

This report explains that the top three indicators of personal happiness are levels
of self-reported health, financial satisfaction and marital status, in that order. 32

Scholars working jointly at Harvard University and in the United Kingdom

observe:

There is remarkable evidence that marriage helps to keep human

beings alive. People who are divorced or separated or widowed are
at a particularly high risk of dying prematurely. Those never married

30
James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (New
York: Harper Collins, 2002), p. 16.
31
Steven Stack and J. Ross Eshleman, “Marital Status and Happiness: A 17-Nation Study,”
Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60 (1998): 527-536.
32
Stack and Eshleman, 1998, p. 535.

17
 face somewhat lower risks of death in any given period, but the
married have easily the lowest risk of all the groups. Evidence for
this is now widespread across the world. 33

Regarding psychological health, long-term studies find that “married individuals

have a higher level of psychological well-being than members of any other
marital status group” and this elevated well-being is related to the protective
nature of marriage rather than psychologically healthy people being more likely to
marry. 34

The data on how marital status affects the physical, psychological and academic
health of children is diverse and strong. The child advocacy organization, Child
Trends, examined the question of whether family structure impacts child well-
being. The group concludes:

An extensive body of research tells us that children do best when

they grow up with both biological parents in a low-conflict
marriage… Thus, it is not simply the presence of two parents, as
some have assumed, but the presence of two biological parents
that seem to support child development 35 (emphasis in original).

Another child advocacy organization, the progressive Center for Law and Social
Policy, investigated the same question on family status and child well-being with
the following results:,

Over the past 20 years, a body of research has developed on how

changes in patterns of family structure affect children. Most
researchers now agree that together these studies support the
notion that, on average, children do better when raised by two
married, biological parents who have low-conflict relationships. 36

A diverse team of family scholars working collectively from Rutgers

University and the Universities of Texas, Virginia, Minnesota, Chicago,
Maryland, Washington, and UC Berkeley recently reported that children
raised by their own married parents live longer, healthier lives, both
physically and mentally; perform better in school; and are more likely to

33
Chris Wilson and Andrew Oswald, “How Does Marriage Affect Physical and Psychological
Health? A Survey of the Longitudinal Evidence,” currently unpublished paper from the University
of Warwick, May 2005, p. 13. (paper accessed at
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/oswald/healthlong2005.pdf)
34
Hyoun K. Kim and Patrick C. McKenry, “The Relationship Between Marriage and Psychological
Well-Being,” Journal of Family Issues, 23 (2002): 885-911
35
Kristin Anderson Moore, et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family
Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?” Child Trends Research Brief, June
2002, p. 1-2.
36
Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?” Center for Law and Social Policy
Policy Brief, May 2003, p. 1.

18
graduate and attend college. They are less likely to experience poverty,
become involved in criminal activity, experiment with drugs and alcohol,
engage in premarital sexual activity, behave violently, or themselves
become victims of sexual or physical violence. These children are also
more likely to have successful marriage as adults. 37

Sara McLanahan of Princeton University, one of the world’s leading scholars on

the impact of family on well-being, remarks on her extensive investigations:

If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s

basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something
quite similar to the two-parent family ideal. Such a design, in theory,
would not only ensure that children had access to the time and
money of two adults, it would provide a system of checks and
balances that promote quality parenting. The fact that both adults
have a biological connection to the child would increase the
likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be
willing to sacrifice for that child and it would reduce the likelihood
that either parent would abuse the child. 38

CONCLUSION
Focus on the Family recognizes and appreciates the theological, anthropological
and sociological significance of family, seeing a very close connection between
each of these. God made us in His image, and, therefore, designed us for love,
intimacy and community. Family is an earthly picture of a heavenly mystery. This
is why men, women and children do best when they live in the protective,
nurturing confines of marriage and family. It also explains why societies are
healthier, safer, more productive, better educated, and happier when they care
for and protect the fundamental family relationships of marriage, parenting and
sexuality. What a culture believes and practices concerning the family directly
impacts its citizens and, thus, the society’s health and well-being as a whole.
This is why human cultures see diversity in the ways families live and divide their
labour, but husbands and wives and their children serve as the core of all
communities and families.

This is the foundation of Focus on the Family’s global work to nurture and defend
the family.

37
W. Bradford Wilcox, et al., Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: Twenty Six Conclusions
from the Social Sciences, (New York: Institute for American Values, 2005).
38
Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What
Helps, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 38.

19
“This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can
only destroy those civilisations which disregard it.

G. K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce

“When we defend the family, we do not mean it is always a peaceful family; when
we maintain the thesis of marriage, we do not mean that it is always a happy
marriage. We mean that it is the theatre of spiritual drama, the place where
things happen, especially the things that matter most.”

G. K. Chesterton, “The Home of the Unities”

Glenn T. Stanton is the director of global family formation studies at

Focus on the Family and a research fellow at the Institut du
Mariage et de la Famillie Canada in Ottawa, Ontario.

20
APPENDIX I

The Trinitarian Case Against Individualism

The Trinity is the core of the universe and this nature gives us an important view
of the distinction between personhood and individualism for our age. This
difference is something our modern society has completely lost and it plagues
community and family life in very harmful ways. Under the influence of the
Enlightenment, we tend to understand the acting person as an “individual” and
the highest value. Trinitarian Christianity deeply teaches the value of the every
unique person, but is a pointed guard against the cancer of individualism.

The persons of the Trinity, while distinct and unique persons, are not individuals
in any sense. This is a critically important distinction. Jonathan Edwards
understood that “God is within himself a holy society.” 39 That is, the members of
the Trinity do not exist apart from one another, but rather their very essence is of
deep communion. 40 This is described in the theological term perichoresis
(pronounced: peri-core-ee-sis) which means the eternal inter-
relatedness and inter-dependence of the persons of the Trinity.
This is a fancy word for the reality that is communicated in a
symbol familiar to Christians throughout the centuries. It shows
three distinct parts, easily discerned, but these three parts are
also inter-connected, intertwined, as to be simultaneously
both three and one.

As we have seen in this essay, man is created in the image of the

Trinitarian reality to show forth this image in the world. We are made as
individuals, distinct like snowflakes from anyone else, but we are not made to be
individualists, believing we can act on our own behalf and our behavior has on
impact upon others, for good or ill. We come from community, and therefore are
made for community. A human’s first community is family.

This is precisely what the deeply Christian writer John Donne meant in a famous
piece from his poetry,

39
Timothy George, God the Holy Trinity: Reflections on Christian Faith and Practice, (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 12.
40
The intense reality of this is seen in Christ’s passion in the garden the evening before his
death. Scripture tells us that in this experience, Jesus (God, the Son) was in great anguish and
sweated drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Medical dictionaries explain this rare physiological
phenomenon, hematidrosis, can happen when an individual suffers great physical or emotional
stress. Many assume that the great anxiety Christ experienced this evening was due to his
impending crucifixion. But consider instead that it was due to the fact that Christ knew that
tomorrow he would be, for the first time in eternity, separated from the communion of his Father,
with whom he had been one before the foundations of the world. Note also that Christ’s only
“complaint” at any time during his crucifixion was asking why his Father had forsaken him
(Matthew 27:46). Reflect on that reality. This is the only historical, relational break in the eternal
fellowship of the Trinity and it was for done because of our sins, so that we might be brought into
the eternal fellowship of the Trinity.

21
 “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less…any man's death diminishes me, because I am
involved in mankind…” 41

No man can fully be an individual any more than God the Father, God the Son or
God the Holy Spirit can be individuals. They have their essence in Another. And
we cannot be truly human outside of intimacy with another.

We come into the world at the intimacy of our parents at conception, take our first
breath at moment of their intense joy at our birth. We grow from their toil,
protection, provision and education. We are launched into their world by their
prayers, guidance and advice. We leave to form our own family and livelihood
with their blessings. We succeed with their help, encouragement and correction,
as well as from the friends we have made along the way.

The happy life is lived in relation to others: loving them, serving and receiving
from them, forgiving and being forgiven, contributing to their well-being and
benefiting from their commitment to us. It is found in sharing, loving, struggling
and growing together.

At the end of our lives, the greatest testament is the friends and loved ones by
our side and the many mourning our passing. The saddest life is the life absent
these, for whatever else might have been present, be it title, talent, knowledge or
wealth. Only others can bring us true happiness.

41
John Donne, Meditation XVII in From Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1623).

22
APPENDIX II

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)

First Steps, after Millet, (1890)
Oil on canvas; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

This painting presents more than meets the eye. The earthly trinity of
father, mother and child living life in relation and community with one
another is profoundly holy, even if they are doing common things.

Mother breaks from her work of hanging wash over the fence and father
from his gardening so they can both focus on helping their child
experience her first steps. A family doing everyday mundane things is a
glorious and beautiful mystery because it is a picture of something
profound.

23
APPENDIX III

A. Bartolome Esteban Murillo, (1617-1682)

The Heavenly and Earthly Trinities (1681-1682)
Oil on canvas; National Gallery, London

The holy family serves as an earthly representation of a heavenly reality. Christ is the
Second Adam, becoming and redeeming our humanity, providing the possibility and
hope of living in God’s relational ideal with our fellow humans and with God Himself.

24
B. Jacob DeWit (1695 -1754)
Holy Family and Trinity (1726)
Oil on canvas, Amstelkring Museum, Amsterdam

25
APPENDIX IV

Couple Receiving a Child from the Holy Trinity

Miniature from…
The Book Which Among Other Matters Deals with the
Birth of Our Lord Christ, His Life, His Passion…
vol. II, 15th century

God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”
(Genesis 1:26).That is not just a past historical fact, but an ever-present reality.
Every new life flows forth from the Trinity, from their immense and overflowing
love and into the world through the love and intimacy of a mother and father.
However, while each child in the world may not come from the pure love of a
mother and father -- for selfishness is too often at work in human relationships --
every child does come from the purity of the Trinity’s love. True, God-ordained
humanity seeks to replicate this godly love in our marriages and family life.

26