The concept of family has been attacked and vilified over the past half-century. At the same time the Christian faith has come under attack. In his book Future Shock, written more than thirty years ago Alvin Toffler cited so-called authorities who predicted the demise of the family. They envisioned a time when the family's only function would be that of handling the first year or two of child raising. Since that time an enormous amount of energy has been poured into attempts to make that happen.

While the attempts to discredit the value of the family have not been entirely successful, we have seen the development of some enormous family tensions. We were reminded that a sense of family has an enormous value over this past weekend. We gathered with about seventy members of our family to renew our bonds with each other. We had not seen some of them for many years. Some of them may have stretched the truth a little bit, when they said things like, "Honey, you haven't aged a bit since the last time I saw you." Surely the Lord will forgive their lack of total honesty. Or perhaps we need to remember that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." We shared stories and looked at old pictures. We celebrated the things that we have in common. For us it was an uplifting experience that we won't soon forget. It was especially exciting to see the younger cousins and their spouses get so excited to learn about family members from years gone by. Those of us who are older members of families need to be sure that we continue to keep our family "story" going by passing it down. What a blessing to know they are interested in learning as much as they can about "family."

Family was God's idea, a basic building block for the orderly conduct of affairs among people. We continue our series on preserving the Christian family. Today's installment calls attention to the manner in which Christian families benefit society.

Norman and Ann

Strong Christian families provide a compelling model for the world to see and imitate. Even people with a strong anti-Christian bias will respect a family in which there is genuine love, respect, honor and mutual sharing. If you've learned to live with the rest of your family in a productive and useful way, people are going to want to know your secret. If people don't have a strong, supportive family, chances are they want one and there's not much in this life they want any worse.

Many Christians are concerned about our credibility in the eyes of a skeptical world. In reality, the world asks only two questions about us. (1) Are we consistent with what we say we believe in the way we conduct our lives? (2) Do we love people? If the answer to either of those questions is negative, we cannot expect to gain a hearing from the population at large. On the other hand if people outside the confines of the Christian faith can see us answer those questions affirmatively, many people will say, "tell me more." The family may well be the place where we have the greatest opportunity to demonstrate our integrity and our love.

How can we maintain quality family relationships in a society that is torn apart by competing ideologies? How do Christians avoid getting caught in the same snares that wreck so many families? When we passed through some serious marriage problems some years ago, we decided to spend time in the company of people who had wholesome marriages. We learned from those folks. Not too long ago, we were involved in premarital counseling with a young couple planning to get married. We asked them what they wanted their marriage to be like. The young man said, "I'd like to have a marriage like my grandfather and grandmother have." That young man was very fortunate, because he had the opportunity to take a close look at wholesome family living. He knows what family life can be like when people really live out their faith in the home. Our culture needs many homes like that. We can profit from positive models and we can work toward modeling Christian values in our own homes.

But what specific steps can we take to insure those models will continue? That will be the subject of next week's installment.

Author Unknown

When we chose the perception's article for this week we didn't realize how closely it would tie in with the series on families. Then the realization of what the topic for next week's newsletter is to be, almost made us take a second look at whether or not we would use this article. Perhaps as you read the actions that show a Christian personality you will be prepared to insure the Christian model will be passed down to the next generations in your own family. You can read about these personality traits