Teaching Our Children About Marriage

This is family policy matters program is produced by the North Carolina family policy Council of profamily research and education organization dedicated to strengthening and preserving the family and elf in the studio.

Here's John Rushton, president of the North Carolina family policy Council, thank you for doing it for 20 profamily policy matters. It is our pleasure to have Jeff constant with us on the program. Jeff is the gender issues analyst for Focus on the Family, where he researches and writes about a variety of subjects related to human sexuality is with us to talk about a new resource from Focus on the Family entitled teach your children about marriage. We will be talking with Jeff about this new resource and how it can help parents counter the false messages about marriage and relationships. The children are hearing so much from our culture today just welcome to the program is great to have you with us. Hi John, great to be here. Thanks for having me will sure thank you for taking time out of what we know is a busy schedule. We talk about the new resource kit from Focus on the Family. Let's talk for a few minutes about the cons of the messages our children are receiving from our culture about marriage and relationships, especially from the media but also from other forces like the government. What are some ways that American culture is really promoting a distorted view of marriage to our children well really understand that question we want to start first by talking about what marriage is and marriage as we know it is the relationship that unites one man and one woman in any children that they have marriage is what brings together the two houses of humanity, male and female and basically because that's what makes children, male and female together a man and woman united together in marriage was intended by God to be permanent, monogamous and exclusive.

He wanted couples to stay together for a lifetime and we would learn about this from reading the Bible from what Moses wrote in Genesis and from what Jesus said what he taught about marriage. But we also look at this when we look at marriage or cross culturally and it's the same it's the union of a man and woman and any children they have and and that's because cultures recognize that children are the most vulnerable and in some ways the most important members of society because there the next generation strong marriages protect kids and equip them and raise them to be the next generation social research supports this as well. Marriage isn't just good for children though. But it's also good for men and women in our society in general that now you get back your question for minute I marriage has been distorted in a number of ways in our culture. Probably the biggest distortion is that instead of thinking about it as a man and woman united for life and any children that they have.

We've made marriage to be about the adults and we said marriages about any two people who love each other with a problem with that is that we know that feelings can change and romance can fade. So then we have divorce and it was really the shift in divorce in the 60s and 70s and the bringing about of no-fault divorce that changed marriage and made it one of the easiest contracts in the world to break which is a really sad thing and then there was a rise in cohabitation which is kind of like a trial marriage or marriage without the commitment and in the US we seen a huge increase in single-parent homes, especially fatherless homes, and more recently attempts to redefine marriage so that it's not about a man and woman anymore, but it's about any two people who love each other so to be two men or two women or in some cases were even seeing the push for plural marriages and polygamy right now just thank you for starting us out on that basis, I think I was really helpful and clearly our nation is currently, as you mentioned in the middle of a significant battle over the definition of marriage, and several states have actually now legalize marriage between same-sex couples when governmental entities take upon themselves to redefine what humankind up to this point has known marriage to be. It really makes it that much harder for parents to teach their children about the true meaning and purpose of marriage as God designed it specific challenges and in your mind goes, the legalization and the promotion of same-sex marriage present for parents who are trying to teach their children about God's perfect and purposeful design for marriage or as you mentioned the promotion of same-sex marriage shifted marriage from something that is always been the union of a man and woman and their children, so I consent starting to sound like a broken record but we want to keep repeating that for people so that they understand this is what marriage is the union of a man and woman in their children and same sex marriage upends that completely so that it's about any two people who want to be together and that the push for same-sex marriage is not just illegal. Push the first day to have same-sex marriages was Massachusetts and that was a court decision about 10 years ago and we've got had about 15, 16 other decision since then, primarily court decisions, but some legislation and there's been a shift in the legal culture, but that has created a shift in other areas, to so one of the areas where we see changes in the views about marriage, is it the education system. There was a case in Massachusetts some years ago, where father complained about some books that his son brought home from kindergarten, one of the books is called King and King. And it's about a prince who needs to marry. So all these princesses are brought before the young prince, and he doesn't fall in love with any of them.

Then he meets another prince and falls in love and they marry and live happily ever after all this parent was a Christian and complained to the school and then he brought about a lawsuit about the school, pushing this kind of agenda on his kids, and the court said to him, because same-sex marriage is legal in this state will have to inform you about what we teach your child and we can go ahead and keep these books in the schools because it's the law now so this is one example where the education system is starting to push the ship agenda and your kids might be hearing about this in school and then of course there's the arts and entered payment world where there's been such a huge shift in the in the culture shift away from God's design. If you would turn on a television show. Now, you might find dozens of gay characters on different TV shows and lesbian, gay, transgender identified people probably make up about 2 to 4% of the population. And yet if you watch those same shows it would be really hard to find a positive portrayal of a Christian on their shows and and were much higher percentage of the population, so your kids watching TV will see again lesbian agenda.

There are no see gay and lesbian characters portrayed or they might even be watching now the Super Bowl and there was an ad for Coke that had two men who were parents. This little girl portrayed in the ad and now for the winter Olympics.

Chevy has a series of ads that also include same-sex couples fear our kids are starting to get this from education.

Their singing in the legal world and in arts and entertainment, and you can also see the shift in language, the language used on the Internet and the language used by the news media.

Those of us who currently believe God's design for marriage that it's one man and one woman were not talked about in those terms anymore were called intolerance or bigoted or anti-gay or anti-quality and so our kids are picking those messages up in all these different areas of the culture. Just let's talk about the this new resource from Focus on the Family teacher children about marriage and why it is such an important resource for families, in light of the circumstances that you just described marriage as a foundational building block for society and in children do best when they have a married mother and father, and healthy marriages are the best way we know to combat poverty and a whole host of social issues, so we wanted to create a resource work where parents could explain this to their kids and explain what marriage is and pass on their own values to their children. Most people probably haven't thought about talking to the kids about what marriage is and will why it's so important for culture and so we wanted to bring something out into the open and say you know you can't really assume this anymore and it's gonna be important for you to talk to your kids about what marriage is there there to hear a different message out there in the world so team worked to put together a simple user-friendly tool. It's a two-part kit. As you said called teacher children about marriage and we want to help parents understand God's design for marriage help them model a healthy marriage to their children and then give them some ideas for talking to their kids about marriage at different ages and stages.

The first part of the kit offers parents tips on how to model healthy marriages to their children is used.

Give some examples of the kinds of tubes it offers and why this is an important part of teaching our children about the true meaning of marriage bicycling all know that I'm children learn a lot just by watching us.

We can talk to them about things, but there watching us to see what we do and so we wanted to encourage people to start first with their own marriage and strengthen their own marriage and talk about their own marriage in front of their children so we have some really simple, but creative ideas for this one of them is just to pray a blessing over your spouse when you're giving thanks at dinner time. Thank God for your husband or your wife to and talk to him about what you're thankful for, so that the kids hear you say things like that and then tell your kids how committed you are to your spouse that you made a promise to stay with them your whole life and in a world where marriages fail. Kids need to hear that Josh McDowell is a Christian author and teacher and he says that the greatest security for children today is to know that their father loves their mother and that their parents will never divorce so telling your children out and speaking those words to them is really important and then speaking loving words about your spouse in front of your kids talking to your kids about what you like about your husband and wife is very important to where your building up your spouse are funnier children and those are just some of the ways that we have to model a good marriage and to strengthen your own marriage. First of all, Jeff clearly in our current culture and you earlier in the discussion mentioned some of the specific examples of how our culture and in so many ways is embracing homosexuality and promoting same-sex marriage in our children are really being bombarded at every turn with wrong and distorted messages about marriage, about sexuality and about gender when the issue of same-sex marriage comes up in a family discussion.

Obviously that can be a little disconcerting for parents are uncomfortable for both the parents and the children.

What advice do you have for parents in terms of how to handle those types of questions and discussions when issues are around same-sex marriage comes out particularly among younger children well the first thing you want to do is hold up God's design and his standards that he made us male and female in his image and that those are good things that he wants marriage to be between one man and one woman, and we want to be a light showing people a better way. So we start there and then then we can talk about how because of sin in the world.

There is confusion about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman and there's confusion about relationships and what marriage is. And there's a lot of brokenness and sin and pain in the world so we can talk to our kids at a real basic level about that but that we can also show them that God has brought about a way to bring healing and transformation into the world that he is a God of redemption who loves us and he wants to bring people back to his standard into his design for sexuality, so we suggest talking to kids in that kind of a model where we talk about God's design that we can talk about sin in the fall and then we can talk about God's redemption and how he wants to bring us back to a place of wholeness and healing. The other thing I think that is going to be really important for us to do with our children is is not just to make sure that they know the truth but to make sure that they are prepared for hostility. There can need more than just the truth and answers that you need courage and it's not just parents who can bring this message to kids. It's it's grandparents it's teachers at Sunday school teachers and even single parents are stepfamilies whether there has been sin and brokenness can still point to God's design. Talk about what went wrong with it was sin and then begin to talk about God's healing and restoration.

So even if you've made mistakes in your own life, you can still hold up God's standard for marriage and you can still talk to your kids about redemption.

The healing that I don't know any of us who haven't made mistakes in relationships and so we can share that honestly with our kids. With that we know without going into the detail in the appropriate for Howell there will that's great. I just think this is an exciting and a grown wonderful resource and we are so appreciative of you and Focus on the Family of putting it together and we would really encourage our listeners to avail themselves of this. Jeff unfortunately were nearly out of but were coalitions go to get a copy of this new resource teacher children about marriage, they can go to the Focus on the Family website, which is focusonthefamily.com and then if they click on the social issues brought button. The social issues button will take them to an article which is the lead into these kids and they can find the kids there. Teacher children about marriage again. It's focusonthefamily.com teacher children about marriage Jeff again were so appreciative of of you and Focus on the Family for putting this resource together and just encourage our listeners to take advantage of it.

Jeff Johnston, thank you so much for being with us today own family policy matters. We appreciated.

Thank you John, thanks for having family policy matters. Information and analysis, future of the North Carolina family policy Council join us weekly discussion on policy issues affecting the family. If you have questions or comments. 91 907-0800 or visit our website and see family.1