Family

by Louis Moore                                                                                         Vol. V, No. 5, September 1992

Associated Baptist Press (ABP), the press agency of liberal Baptists, released a story on 24 June which said, "too often the family is described only in terms of the age-old nuclear definition of 2.3 kids, a cat and a dog.” The article contained remarks by Baptist Center for Ethics (the liberal Baptist rival to the SBC Christian Life Commission) associate Kay Shurden and Doug Cole, executive director of the Council on Christian Life and Public Affairs of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.

Cole defined the family as "any place that one finds the kind of small network of support where emotionality, intimacy, love and nurture can be experienced and which creates wholeness." Shurden remarked, "I think imposing a model on a Christian woman or a Christian man or a Christian family is absolutely trying to play God to them."

Richard Land, executive director of the SBC Christian Life Commission, said, "Whether purposeful or not, that kind of definition opens the door for calling all kinds of perverted relationships family relationships. A menage a trois might claim the same thing. But, from a biblical perspective, their relationship is not familial. It is sinful. To claim anything else is morally repugnant to evangelical Christians. ... God's word about the family does not change. We must hold up His ideal.

"We lament with single parents and divorced individuals the struggles they experience. Churches need to redouble their ministries to dysfunctional families, single people, and hurting children. But that does not mean we toss out the biblical model of the family. No matter what happens societally, God's model remains one man, with one woman, in a one-flesh relationship for life. This is not a model we are imposing on the family; this is the model God has designed for the well-being of His creatures and the human community." (BP)

[Comment: Sharpen your discernment. Reread the liberal redefinition of the family quoted above and consider how it reflects rebellion against God's Word, how it panders to what the world is trying to impose, how it would legitimize homosexual, adult-child, group, or any other conceivable living arrangement. Words are the most dangerous weapons known. Stay alert!]