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LESSON 4: A Model for Family Restoration

A. What has been lacking is a family model which meets the challenge of modernity, a universal theory and practice revealing how the healthy family should function no matter which culture one lives in.

To approach this problem, we first must understand the purpose of the family. That purpose came ultimately from our Creator, God. Second we must understand the root cause of family problems. That is, what we did, and continue to do, in violation of the purpose of the family.

1. God's purpose in establishing the family: to establish a partnership of love with human beings.

• God is love; love is the force which unites two into one.
• Love therefore requires two partners, a division of complimentary pairs.
• Therefore God created all things in pairs so that they can unite in harmony.
  • Male and female.
  • Plus and minus.
  • Yang and yin.
• When they create unity through true love, humans fully manifest the image of God and recreate the wholeness of God.
  • Mind and body.
  • Husband and wife.
• When we live in harmony, we make a base for God to enter. We draw God and God draws us; we meet in the middle, in harmonious give and take.
• God exists where there is oneness of love.
  • He wants to dwell in the midst of the family.
  • The love of husband and wife.
  • The love of parents and children.
• God rejoices when He beholds us, in His image, as His partners in substantial bodies. This is the fulfillment of God's love.
• Love in the family was to expand to a society, nation and world filled with divine love.
• Therefore the family is the environment in which each person learns to live for the higher purpose. This is another important purpose of the family: the school of love through which we can perfect ourselves.
• This is the path toward individual maturity or completion (Matt. 5:48) and the application of personal responsibility to the creation of a world in which all people live for the higher good.
• This would be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the fulfillment of God's ideal of creation.

2. Self-centeredness destroys the purpose of love and cripples the family, creating a hellish society, a hell on earth.

• We did not inherit true love from our parents. This problem logically takes us back to the failure of the first parents to establish a true family based upon true love.
  • This means that the first human beings consummated love prematurely.
  • They must have been selfish and immature.
  • They engaged in physical love without spiritual love. We call this false love.
  • Their wounded hearts became cold and self-centered. Filled with guilt and shame, they fled from God, the source of true love.
• Human beings thus lost the potential to realize true love.
• Human beings came into conflict and rippling disharmony: mind and body, parents and children, husband and wife, brother and brother.
• All problems, beginning with selfishness, blame, anger, falsehood, seduction, fear and so forth, originate in the false love between man and woman.
• This flawed love has been passed on from generation to generation, infecting and corrupting the entire human race. No nation or religion is exempt, and it has come down to your grandparents and parents, to yourself. This is the real meaning of the original sin.

3. All religious traditions have accounts of how humanity is corrupted and unable to function in an ideal manner. Some are similar to the biblical Fall. Others are not. Yet all regard humanity as having a wounded spirit that needs repair before we can have an ideal world.

• Evil inclination (Judaism).
• The Fall in Islam.
• Pandora's box (Greek mythology).
• Buddhist Noble Truth of Suffering.
• Hindu myths on the origin of karma.
• Native American and African stories.

4. Religions have raised mankind now to the point of restoration of true family life, but they have not accomplished that restoration. This is not to denigrate or deny the value of the religious founders.

• Existing religions offer salvation on the individual level. They prepare the foundation for forming godly families. But the founders did not actually establish such families.
• Jesus Christ never married. He is the model of a true man. But he cannot fully reveal the ideal of the family.
• Thus, many Catholics regard the unmarried state, which resembles that of Jesus Christ, to be the highest measure of devotion to God. St. Paul said, "He who refrains from marriage will do better." (1 Cor 7:38)
• The teaching that women cannot be ordained priests comes from the model of Christ, who was male.
• The Buddha left his family when he started his search of truth. Buddhists regard monasticism as the highest religious vocation. Attending the Buddha cannot fully reveal the ideal family.
• Islam has good rules about family life. Mohammed was an exemplary husband and provider, and a number of his wives are celebrated. But Islam does not proclaim the ideal family. Its view of family is pragmatic and accommodating to human weakness, permitting divorce and polygamy. Its vision of heaven is paradise for unmarried men, attended by doe-eyed houris (maidservants).
• Confucianism proclaims the family model as an ethical ideal. But the ideal family is grounded on true love, which is deeper than the commands of an ethical system. Confucianism's ethics are excellent, but it lacks a deep understanding of God and of how God's love can live in the human heart.

5. As the result of this inability to create true families, all attempts to create a good society have fallen short.

6. Horrendous evil stalks the human race. Even thoroughgoing Christian nations, such as Germany and France in 1914, are capable of massive carnage and unmitigated violence.

7. This repeats in history because of the incompleteness of man-woman love, which prevents the family from being the dwelling place of God.

8. The restoration of the true family means to establish true love between husband and wife.

• It has nothing to do with selfishness.
• It has God's unreserved, joyful participation and blessing.
• God's love flows through the family's love.
• The family partakes of God's love, life and lineage.
• This is the weak point of all religions.
• Therefore, the perfection of the family leads all religions to their fulfillment.
• This will enable the religions to lead humankind to fulfill their ideals of peace, freedom, unification and happiness.

B. True families should live by true family values.

1. The basic standpoint of true family values is that of living for the whole.

• The individual is always connected with the whole family and is responsible to others in the family.
• Likewise, the family is connected to the whole society and is responsible to help build a good society.

2. The goal of true family values is the perfection of love.

• True family values are not just meant to maintain the status-quo, but to lead us to a truly sanctified life as a family.
• The fount and way of perfection is true love.

3. True family values are a spiritual checklist.

• We need a map to know if we are heading in the right direction. Many families, even well-intentioned ones, get lost because they mistakenly think they have reached the goal, when in fact it is only a comfortable plateau and they have far to go.
• True family values trace the path, the way, to the summit of family life.
• The fulfillment of my family life is nothing less that the fulfillment of all families, which is the fulfillment of God's purpose for family life.

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MEANINGFULL ENCOUNTERS