Between Two Worlds

Here's Andreas Kostenberger, responding to a recent LifeWay survey on the top 10 issues facing today's family:

If all those “Top 10 Issues Facing Today’s Family,” then, are merely symptomatic, what is the primary root cause of the failure of Christian marriages today? In my judgment, it is people’s lack of grounding in biblical teaching on marriage and the family. As we try to lay out in our book God, Marriage & Family, the current cultural crisis surrounding marriage is really symptomatic of a deeper spiritual crisis that can be remedied only by a return to the biblical foundation, that is, the scriptural teaching on marriage and the family.

Clearly, it is not for lack of good intentions that Christian marriages fail. Nor is it lack of Christian resources. These are aplenty. What is lacking is the right kind of resources, plus the recognition that marriage and family are at the heart a divine institution that is the target of intense spiritual warfare. For this reason good intentions or superficial remedies are not good enough. Rather, people must once again be taught God’s plan for marriage and the family, and they must commit themselves to live out this teaching as part of their Christian discipleship and as an expression of their witness to Christ in this world.

May I suggest, therefore, that we substitute for the “Top 10 Issues Facing Today’s Family” the one issue that is truly foundational for the recovery of Christian marriages and families in our day: the need of Christian men and women to rediscover the biblical teaching on marriage and the family on a profound, spiritual level, and to commit themselves to live by this teaching in the midst of those other issues. I believe that what we will find is that once the root issue is addressed, these other issues will be reduced to mere gnats yapping at our heels.