For much of the world a radical change is taking place. Historically the ideal of marriage with children was taken as the most fulfilling personal context for life fulfillment. The children related together with generations, including those who did not marry so incorporating all persons for family context that generated much of human belief and conduct. It became the base for responsibility to society. These sometimes included persons adopted into a family by law or mutual consent. There is a new paradigm in formulation that incorporates options. The new approach reduces the physical relationship and enhances the mental/emotional base for acceptance of life paradigms. The dominant paradigm for centuries has been mother/father/child and the extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents). The new one may be characterized as optional, with the former as one of several options, but with significant additions of others, so subtracting from the dominance of the former. No option may appear in majority context even though the traditional one will always prevail as the largest even in decline (with its generation of children and maintaining their care). The added ones will form statistical comparisons with all options in reporting the physical make-up of societies. (There is an increase in the manufacture of children through artificial insemination which may become significant in some of the new contexts.) We see what is happening in various contexts such as same sex marriage (which most impacts children and family perceptions); and in the increase of ambition in the genders toward professional achievement and personal wealth so as to create society based on educations, managements, wealth, individualism with emotional needs met in the mechanisms of media distractions and personal friendships made with mutual interests not related to children or even significant in conduct or responsibility. This last, like same sex marriage, will impact children either in the decline of births or in births not related to the unknown biology of fore-parents.
What will these emerging ways of life mean to Christian context for meaning, faith and conduct? (We acknowledge that some are not new, but they were formerly kept in background, followed in rather limited subcultures, and with a general approach that tended to reduce minority contexts. In the outing of representatives of the various options, more persons were choosing the emerging contexts as their own.) The shift from the traditional will, for good or ill, make society different than it was. Some of the change is already achieved, but the evidence is not yet fully formed so to give caution to making prognostications, but there are some factors that can be watched to determine the consequences of the shifting and changes. The impact on the Christian church may remain significant to the biblical purpose and the Christian response.
As often noted in these Pages, Scripture is constructed on the family paradigm of father, mother and child. The paradigm implies acceptance of the pattern as the most acceptable with God. Even God relates the meaning of his trinity to it. This is further strengthened with biblical comments reducing the furtive paradigms for human life. As the public dilutes or loses that historical physical and spiritual pattern, the biblical narrative will likely lose some of its probity and influence. The emerging paradigms will likely either abandon any interest in Christianity, or push for new interpretations to accommodate the differences they hold with the Christian message. So it will be that instead of God informing mankind of what is acceptable to him, mankind will inform God what is acceptable to mankind. This is not likely to play well with God. Scripture makes clear that ultimately God will evaluate and adjudicate what happened to the creation of all things, including mankind. We know that evaluation will be his and that without recourse. Evidences of change, the modernization of mankind, are found in the literature about what is increasingly the shifting of the story for children. Abuse is increasing, neglect even to the omission of children found in attitudes and conduct of parents and other caregivers, with admissions that children may be unwanted by an increasing number of persons prove change from the natural pattern of service to others to a concept of self -interests leading to changes in many factors of daily life. The issues related to the discovery of spiritual life are finding new contexts to express our need for God. The lowest common denominator for the individual’s acceptance by God is in the redemptive story of Christ. God reveals himself in any context. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020