“The family is the primary social ordinance. When sin wreaks its havoc here, when the sanctities that guard and ennoble family life are desecrated and when family honor is laid in the dust, then all social order is out of joint and degradation reigns supreme in every realm.” — John Murray, The Christian World Order
The building blocks of society are self-governed citizens. Citizens, however, are not born with self-discipline or self-control, but neither are they born alone or into a vacuum. People are not purchased off the rack or manufactured in a factory. They are born into a family. People are the kind of thing that comes from other people. People are made and placed into a family.
Family is the place where people are born and raised. It is the classroom in which self-control, discipline, and instruction are received. Family is the government that God has assigned the duty of raising up governors. In other words, God has given the governing of children to the family. The family teaches its members to self-govern. These children then grow up into adults who start families of their own teaching their offspring to self-govern. And some of those men also become become governors of cities, counties, states, or nations. The Joneses have jurisdiction over the disposition of future judges. Every magistrate has a mother; every federal agent has a father. Every senator is the child of someone else's son. Every district court judge is the offspring of someone else's daughter.
Family is inescapable. Father hunger sits at the head of each table where dad is absent. Mother comfort is missed in every nursery where a stranger's hand rocks the cradle.
The state of a society is a reflection of the state of its families. The nightly news tattles on the previous generation's parenting fails. Degradation reigns where individuals lack restraint.
Proverbs 29:18
Where there is no vision,
the people cast off restraint.
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