The Lack of Spiritual Life

 There is not much said today about the disintegration of the American family. There are books, articles, blogs, and videos on single-parent living, but only a little about why this is happening.

I am not an expert on marriage and divorce; I can only relate to what I have experienced in my fifty-four years as a minister. I have heard for many years the number one problem is marriage is material. I'm afraid I have to disagree with this being the main issue. It is not how much money is brought home by husband or wife but rather the spiritual condition of both.

The lack of a holy spiritual condition deprives the spiritual unity that makes for a spiritually loving family. A sacred spiritual condition based on a personal relationship with the LORD makes for a solid foundation. It gives a sense of mutual spiritual belonging to something more significant than the individual.

The American family has been in a spiritual crisis for some time. The lack of spiritual values in the family has created moral, ethical, and religious turmoil in our culture. 

From the time a child is born, they are programmed to ignore their spiritual life. Their life is surrounded by everything that divides people rather than unites them. They are programmed by the movies they watch, the music they listen to, the video games they play, and the social media they use. These foster selfishness, hedonism, greed, and a disregard for the sacred, destroying kindness, mercy, compassion, and respect for human life.

If you are a student of history, you know that the destruction of a nation of people comes from a spiritual-religious crisis, expressed in every culture by the decay of the family.

The family is the foundation of spirituality. God designed mankind to grow and survive through the family. God told Adam to multiply and replenish the Earth. How was this to happen? Gen.2:18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."

The very first institution God founded upon the Earth was the home (Gen. 2: 18-25). God established a marriage between a man and a woman. Scripture places tremendous emphasis on the sanctity of marriage. Marriage is integral to His plan. If we have weak marriages, we will have weak families. If we have weak families, we will have weak churches. If we have weak churches, we will have weak communities. And if we have weak communities, we will have a weak nation. That is why He demands that marriages be treated as sacred treasures. If spirituality falters and weakens, then it weakens, first of all, in the family tradition and family life. But once shaken in the family, it begins to weaken and degenerate in all human relationships and organizations.

We should understand that the troubles of the modern family lie in spiritual depravity, in the loss of culture and relationships in the family, and the absence of respect for the hierarchy established by God, but we do not seem to acknowledge the problem.  

More often than not, the relationship is based on sexual attraction and not on true love. Once the sexual attraction is gone, so is the marriage. And if there is no love? This tremendous creative power and man's supreme moral state fall apart, and disaster ensues.

Some say that love missing from a relationship will end in mutual disgust, hatred, suspicion, and family scenes,' which is a natural breeding ground for sick characters, psychopathic tendencies, neurasthenic lethargy, and vital 'failure.'

This often happens in the modern family. All values are turned upside down. Women cheat on their feminine nature, acting like men. Men cheat on their masculine nature, acting like women. The soul yearns for freedom and love, but being in the grip of a perverted understanding of self, relationships, and the world, it suffocates and blindly surrenders itself into the hands of cunning manipulators who skillfully impose patterns of behavior, tastes, and lifestyles. Is it any wonder our youth are confused about their gender? 

 A unique environment based on a spiritual life is needed for the personal and psychological development of the child. After all, here in a completely informal setting, in the process of daily life, a child sees the relationship between adults and people of different sexes at first less consciously, and then more and more consciously learns moral behavior and experience in solving problems, including everyday life. (More behavior is caught than taught.) If the spiritual aspect of life is ignored, a generation will not know God and live according to what they see right in their own eyes. The result--broken families.