911, Church and Family — Culture, Spirituality and the Gospel

On 9/11/2009, I was reading some articles on 911 and its impact on the world. There was an interesting article that said that 911 was essentially a war of the middle eastern civilization against the modern western civilization. The writer argued that the Jihadists do not have to have to repeat another 911 to achieve their goal – ‘to bring down the western civilization’. The writer says that to achieve this goal, all the jihadists have to do, is to ‘wait it out in the caves in Afghanistan and allow the western civilization to cave-in under its own weight’.

He says that the modern western civilization will eventually fall as people do not have enough children anymore, the population is stagnant. Any civilization where people don’t have enough kids will eventually fall because there aren't enough young shoulders for the civilization to stand on. On the other hand, the middle eastern civilization which the jihadists are the protagonists of, is procreating at an amazing pace. The hypothesis of this writer is that when the western civilization collapses because there are very few people in the next generation, the children of the people representing the middle eastern culture would inherit the world by default. The writer says that the Jihadists don't see a need for another 911.

This may seem a radical idea to some people, but I think there is some truth in this. No civilization can survive if the fabric of family life is destroyed. The institution of family life is needed for a sane stable society and for a thriving economy. Perhaps, the post-Christian modern civilization which is getting more liberal and moving away from family values would soon realize that the pursuit of radical individualism at the cost of family life is a formula for disaster and a violation of God's first command to the first man and woman.

In the by-gone years of western civilization young boys and girls were trained and ‘conditioned’ to be family builders. Back then having a prosperous and joyful family was the greatest 'pursuit of life'. But now, the greatest pursuit of life has become the ‘pursuit of individual pleasure’. Today's young children in the 'ultra-developed' post-Christian world, aren’t trained or ‘conditioned’ to build families they are ‘conditioned’ to pursue their ‘radical individualism’. Radical individualism is the pursuit of individual wants and cravings, with absolutely no regard for the community, family or the neighbor next door. Radical individualism of this kind predisposes the young people less willing to undertake the hardships and the commitments needed to build a family.

In the post-modern post-Christian culture, we find many people conditioned to delaying marriage, of those they marry many delay having children, almost half the marriages end up in divorce, three fourths of the second marriages end up in divorce as well – all of this contributes to perpetually stagnant or reducing population. The reason for this trend of reducing population in this post-modern, post-Christian civilization is a fundamental problem with people's idea of the most important 'pursuit of life'.

Today's young man needs to be willing to commit to and have the ‘spine’ (courage) to start and sustain a family with a young lady. Today's young lady needs to be willing to be patient and in modesty wait for the guy that is worth starting a family with. The society does not instill in them the virtues of commitment, courage, patience and modesty. Sadly, often, the church does not help the young men and women either. It is a blatant irony that the Church should forget to help young men and women fulfill the first command that the Lord gave mankind - to ‘multiply and be fruitful’.

Putting my ‘critic’ cap on, I wonder why the modern Church has not addressed this problem. I have been a part of singles fellowship in a bunch of different Churches over the course of the past few years. Honestly, I can't recall any place where I have been taught the basics of family building.

I wonder why the modern Church has a ‘singles fellowship’ at all. I understand the need for children’s Sunday class at Church. I understand the need for teens fellowship and youth fellowship. After youth fellowship, I think there should be family fellowship. But in most of today's Churches, between youth and family fellowship, there is the ‘singles fellowship’. The Church, instead of trying to mitigate the need to have the singles fellowship, endeavors to making the singles contented in their singleness thereby slowing down the process of family creation.

I think building families within singles group at Church shouldn’t be left at the mercy of time, chance and opportunity. Rather, the Church should work in instilling the values and virtues in the young men and women to help curb their predisposition to radical individualism and help them find their life partners and build strong Christian families. If only the pervasive problem of radical individualism that is causing decadence from within is systematically confronted, this postmodern civilization may get closer to where God wants it to be.