What are your thoughts on the direction society has headed?
What do you think about the new “normal”?
I do not generally post religious material, but this post in my morning news letter really got me to thinking about why our country is in such turmoil.
I am thinking about what so many of us ARE teaching our kids, and what so many of us AREN’T teaching them. This post about marriage, and what society is considering “normal” now is spot on. You all read about LG in a lot of my stories and posts, here and at the WON. I guess if being faithful, loyal and supportive is no longer “normal”, I am daring her to be DIFFERENT. I am doing my best to raise her with values!
| Practical ChristianityWednesday of Epiphany 330 January 2013 |
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| While listening to American Public Media’s business news show “Marketplace” on the radio, I heard a report on businesses owned and managed by the partnership of husband and wife. In the report husband and wife restaurateurs were featured and the wife in the team spoke of how she and her husband managed the challenges of business life together, “It’s not that we’re so great, but it’s just that we just keep plowing through. Even during the difficult times. And when I can’t plow anymore, he does it. And when he can’t, I do it, you know. That is really so much strength to run a business with.” Right. But it struck me; that is the same strength that could run a family and manage a marriage. What husband and wife business teams have discovered is not just how to run a business, but how to run life, including marriage and family. When one falters the other picks up the slack and vice versa. This is “mere” human wisdom. This is the advice that our mothers should be telling us before we enter marriage or that we should see modeled in our own parents’ marriage.The problem with “mere” human wisdom is that it is not often exhibited in the primary instructors of our culture: media and Hollywood; in which the abnormal and dysfunctional has become the normal and expected. Daniel Patrick Moynihan named this devolution of our culture “defining deviancy down.” The results of the onslaught on marriage and family have been disastrous. Now divorce and dysfunction are the new normal. Those who insist on supporting traditional marriage and its cultural concomitants such as marital faithfulness and sexual purity are accused of the only deviancy now. “How dare you advocate for sexual purity and marital faithfulness, you narrow-minded prude!”The pop term for Moynihan’s more elegant phrase is: “Everyone’s doing it.” And if you aren’t, you’d better soon, or you will be left behind by the rush to new lows or crushed by those stampeding over the cliffs of perversity. Now those who defend traditional morality are excoriated and vilified by those who support the new normal (read: “deviance”). Nietzsche has triumphed. The church has a hard road ahead of it where “mere” human wisdom is no longer passed on in our culture and is subverted by the media. She cannot begin to lead the community to a higher order of self-sacrifice when basic morality is dead.We Christians have that higher life in marriage. It is a gift from God. No marriage can be truly happy without the recognition that it is a gift from God. Here is the greater wisdom. Here is the help when neither husband nor wife can plow any more. Here is the way to take what seems a purgatory and make it an Eden. Here is patience to suffer trouble. Here is the power of the forgiveness of sins in daily life. Often people say, “Pastor, can’t you make Christianity more practical?” What’s more practical than being able to forgive your spouse in marriage? But often what we mean by more practical has to do with “mere” human wisdom than the divine wisdom of the mercy of God lived out on a daily basis. |
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Mia Anstine is an outdoor writer, licensed outfitter, hunting guide, life coach, keynote speaker, and range safety officer, firearms instructor, and archery instructor. She is the founder of MAC Outdoors and Host of the MAC Outdoors Podcast.
Mia Anstine strives to encourage others to get outside, hunt, fish, shoot, and survive life with others in a positive way.
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Mia Anstine
MAC Outdoors LLC
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Spot on, Mia! Thanks for having the courage to buck the tide. We can no longer afford to buy in to our bankrupt culture.
OUTSTANDING POST MIA. Thank you for writing this.. Proud!!!!
Amen Sister
I like what you have to say Mia! Marriage is a special thing and when two sinners come together under one roof, they need God!
When I was at Fort Lewis College, I saw a lot of the attitudes of “everyone is doing it” and that sexual purity was not normal or okay. Sadly it doesn’t just stop on college campuses – after graduation, they go off into the workplace or other parts of their lives still carrying this mindset.
And then they teach it to their children. It is sad, & honestly scary, to see what so many call “normal” now.