Lynn Green

Tag: Marriage

  • Do Morals Evolve?

    Do Morals Evolve?

    Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash.

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    A couple of days ago, I was talking to a young man about relationships, marriage, sexual intimacy—that whole range of subjects.  He was explaining to me how values and attitudes have changed a lot since I was his age and that now they are better.  He was particularly confident that his peers, women and men, know how important it is to be sexually compatible within marriage and that the only way to find that out was to have sex with the people you date— but only if the relationship “has further potential”.

    We talked about whether this approach has resulted in a higher percentage of happy marriages, better mental health, fewer cases of sexually transmitted diseases—overall, a stronger sense of general well-being.

    There was an underlying assumption for his position in this conversation and we eventually got to it:  Do Morals evolve, or are there some moral values that are constant?

    A simple illustration

    A man by the name of Harry Conn made a big impact on me when I attended the School of Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland.  I can still remember so much of what he said, though it is now nearly 50 years further on.  In one of his lectures, he said, “If I have a TV and I keep a heavy rubber mallet on top of it (these were the days before flat-screens), and each time I come into the room I pick up the mallet and gave it a good whack, what will happen?  Probably sooner, rather than later, it will break down.  It wasn’t designed to withstand being struck with a heavy object.  No one should use a TV that way.” He went on to explain that we were not designed for sin and that the Bible has some similarities to an operator’s manual for human beings.

    Sin is now a word that is used rarely, but the Bible clearly states that some things are always right, and others are always wrong, but many people don’t believe in right and wrong any more.  However, whether or not we believe in right and wrong, I’m convinced that there are universal moral values and those who violate them suffer consequences—not always immediately, but sooner or later.

    This is not because God likes to punish us, but because He knows how he made us and what will lead to happy, joyful lives.  Those who live in a manner that is consistent with His design are much more likely to live joyful lives than those who live in ways for which we were not designed.  I think there is a direct connection between our beliefs, our behaviour and the growth, especially amongst young people, of self-harm, depression, addiction, suicide attempts and so on.

    God didn’t just create us and then leave us to get on with living; he also revealed Himself to us.  The Bible can, in some ways, be thought of as a user’s manual for human beings.  One of the scriptures I memorized those 50 years ago comes from the book of Ecclesiastes, where it explains that “Because sentence against an evil deed is not speedily executed, the hearts of the sons of men are fully set in them to do evil.”  In other words, when we have whacked our TV a couple of times and it still works, we think we can carry on that way. But any bad behaviour will eventually result in painful consequences.

    We were made for transcendence

    The next day after that conversation, I was reading a book that my wife, Marti, said was worth reading:  God and Churchill by Sandys and Henley.  I came across a very well written passage; the context was WWII and the battle with the Nazis.

    “The initial fragmentation of revelation and reason occurred in the philosophy of ancient Greece, which the Nazis intermingled with their own world view.  In the fifth century BC, Protagoras provided what would later become the mantra of scientism:  Man is the measure of all things. What cannot be subjected to human reason is considered invalid. A major consequence of this philosophy is the limitation of wonder and awe to the observable, measurable world.  Ultimately, it means that only that which exists on the scale of human reason can be worshipped. Anything that is transcendent is ruled out a priori.

    So much of the Western world has moved away from the transcendent and the Scriptures upon which it was built.  Much of this move away from faith in God occurred in the world of philosophy and then was multiplied through our educational system.  It is safe to say that there is now only one accepted explanation for who we are:  we are the product of eons of time and chance.  No transcendence.  And without it we have no hope.

    There is another path

    I am so grateful that, as a young man, I surrendered to my creator and began to take His instructions seriously.  The life that has unfolded for me has been so blessed, happy, fruitful and saturated with a sense of meaning and significance.

    All of us, but particularly young people should have the chance to hear and understand God’s Good News for every person.  Each person has the potential to live “the good life” through meeting the One who designed them and will show them how to live well.

    This is the only way to escape the painful path our Western cultures have taken in recent decades.

    Lynn Green.

  • Family: God’s Loving and Kind Design

    Family: God’s Loving and Kind Design

    Photo ©Guduru Ajay

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    I’m sitting at my computer with my wife of nearly 50 years just a few feet away, in front of a warm wood fire.  These circumstances stir up thoughts about the goodness of God and the infinite intelligence displayed in his design of family.

    SHAPING ONE ANOTHER

    We have been companions for the past 5 decades.  Some moments have been hard, fractious and frustrating, but the overwhelming themes have been love, mutual support, encouragement, affection, intimacy, warmth and complementary abilities.  We have loved one another and, at the same time, have discipled one another.

    We have seen four children into adulthood, into marriage and into parenthood.  We look back at many things we could have done better.  Things we know now that we wish we had known then.  We have been humbled by our failures as parents and basked in the joy of seeing our children do great things.

    AT LEAST THREE GENERATIONS

    We deeply enjoy the pleasure of 11 grandchildren, all of whom live within a short distance of us—a blessing we never anticipated.  But, even though all our children have travelled widely and are mostly still engaged in other nations, they have chosen to live near us—a pleasure find hard to believe!

    Our marriage relationship has been the primary human factor in shaping our Christian lives.  We have argued, been angry or hurt many times, but the Holy Spirit has used these times to bring us to conviction, repentance and positive change.  Our children and grandchildren have provoked us to a rich prayer life together—alternating between desperation at times, and gratitude.

    PURE LOVING-KINDNESS

    Surely it is the unfathomable love of God that resulted in the design of family.  He kindly, you might say lavishly, made us male and female.  He decided that our intimate love with one another would result, normally, in children.  He planned for the children to be nurtured in the love between a man and a woman and that their humble, determined, but joyful efforts to make their relationship work would prepare their children for satisfying living in a sinful and suffering world.

    REDEEMING EVERY SITUATION

    And then, He made provision for those whose lives have not begun or been shaped in the context He designed.  Where children have been born and/or raised outside of a grace-filled love between a man and a woman, He extends his loving-kindness to redeem those lives and “make all things new”.

    MORE THAN WONDERFUL

    This Providential design is too wonderful for us to treat it dismissively or to decide that we can do better.  Though He can redeem all things, we are wise to seek the best of His original design.

    I think I’ll join my wife by the fire now.

    Lynn.

  • Time Bombs – In Education

    Time Bombs – In Education

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    Do you ever read something that contains a new thought, and then that thought begins to trigger little time bombs in your mind? That is, it continues to set off other new thoughts over the following days and weeks. Obviously that happens to me or I would not be mentioning it!

    EDUCATION FOR THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

    I read a statement which claimed that our current format for schools and education is the product of the industrial revolution. Leaders of formative industries needed to find a way to free adults from the responsibilities of caring for and educating their children so they could work in factories. So education, as we know it, developed as a by-product of the drive for economic growth and wealth creation.  Most of the workers producing this wealth were parents working long days while their children were in school.

    This cultural shift resulted in new and highly valued freedoms.  Boys were no longer destined to stay in the trade of their fathers and girls began a path to more opportunity than ever before.   I am grateful for all the wealth created; it has resulted in many benefits—better health, housing, food, literacy, democratic processes—the list could get very long.

    PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

    However, this must have some implications for how we think about education. I for one have long felt that the primary responsible for educating, training, developing children lies with parents and yet our current arrangement places that responsibility firmly in the hands of professional educators. They are the ones who have our children for the majority of their waking hours. Our cultural and financial expectations push us to turn our children over to others at a very young age.  We rarely know those “others” well enough to be confident about what they are teaching and whether or not they will model the values held by the parents.  They in turn have been shaped by professional educators and the content of what they teach is usually mandated by government policy and educational specialist in the sphere of government.  Is this a healthy thing?

    DESTRUCTIVE EDUCATION

    Most Christian parents on either side of the Atlantic over recent years will have been concerned about several aspects of the education of their children.  Recently, we have seen the shift towards sex education including redefining marriage, gender fluidity, normalising transgender medical procedures, etc.  These subjects are important.  However, equally or more important is the teaching of such foundational subjects as English literature, History and Science with a studied absence of any reference to God or any higher authority.  Our children usually absorb the idea that human intellect is the highest authority and that morals and values are relative and evolving.  Understandably, most Christian parents harbour some level of concern that the nature of their children’s education, if it is provided by State schools, does not build any sort of foundation of faith and is almost always actively destructive to Christian faith and behaviour.

    WHERE ARE THE NEW MODELS?

    At the same time, and paradoxically, the Christian community has a growing confidence in the intellectual integrity and consistency of their faith.  Yet we have little or no opportunities to impart that confidence to our children.  We are simply too busy to do that, and so out of practical necessity, we accept that professional educators will shape our children and to a great extent their beliefs.  I conclude that we have to “swim against the tide” and develop more ways to educate our children in the beauty of our faith.  We were created to “love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength”.  Without concerted, God-centred education, our children will not be likely to obey this, “the greatest of all commandments”.

    WHAT ARE WE MULTIPLYING?

    These thoughts have led me to think again about how we help less developed nations.  Christian missionaries and workers are often on the frontline of providing assistance, technology and finance to nations and peoples who are less developed. One of our assumptions is that they need schools like our schools.  Many Christians have committed themselves to developing education systems in poorer nations.  I have been to some of those schools and they can be wonderful.  The teachers are trained in the best of education principles but are also spurred on in their spiritual growth and their Christ-centred living.  But are we possibly imparting a system that is too vulnerable to follow the path of our developed nations?  Should we be looking at ways to engaged parents more in the process of developing their children?  Is the accepted format for education with at least five long days a week spent in school the best we can do?  Is the system itself somehow flawed?

    TAKING EDUCATION BACK FROM GOVERNMENT

    I am convinced that centralised, national governments are not the appropriate authority for overseeing education.  We will probably always want and need professional educators, but they should be directly accountable to parents.  We will have to work out more ways to develop good standards and oversight without abdicating our God-given, parental mandate. There are some workable models in developed nations so we are not starting from scratch.

    I don’t have any complete answers at this point, but I think change often begins with asking the best questions.  Maybe you have some questions to go along with mine.  Than after thinking about the questions we might start finding some steps towards a better approach to education, one that does not so thoroughly drive a wedge between parents and children.  We are suffering because of this separation which may not always be caused by education, but there is certainly an educational contribution to it.

    IT IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY

    If we continue to pray the prayer the Lord taught us, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done…” then perhaps He has some new ways for us to think about how His kingdom comes in the education and development of our children.

    Lynn Green.

  • Marriage Has No Future

    Marriage Has No Future

     

    **This is a personal website and reflects my thoughts and convictions. It does not represent any official position held by Youth With A Mission.**

    Australia was one of the few countries that took the question of same sex marriage to the voters and they voted over 60% in favour of same sex marriage. So what? Well, it demonstrates that the process of redefining the word is complete in the thinking of most people in Western societies. (We need to remember, though, that the great majority of people in the world do not live in Western societies and they have rarely adopted this view.)

    Some individuals in the nations that have authorised same-sex marriage have realised that it has opened a door to interpret the word as they wish. Some are seeking recognition of their right to marry a pet. One man in Arizona applied to marry his horse and an English millionaire woman married a dolphin. I have no idea what thinking lies behind these acts, but they serve to demonstrate that the word “marriage” can now have many interpretations.

    Some commentators have predicted that the doors are now open for “marriages” between three or more people. If there are any tax or inheritance advantages to being “married” then we will see more and more “marriages” that simply serve financial purposes. Others might get “married” to someone, or more than one, or to animals or things for the sake of publicity.

    We have set out on a road without thinking enough about its destination. Eventually, governments will admit that when they abandoned the long-held traditional definition of marriage (as being between a man and a woman), they abandoned any clear meaning of the word. From that point, there will be no reference to it in law.

    Will it continue to have social or cultural meaning? In a word, NO. Already nearly half of all marriages break up and the trend is increasing. As the percentages increase, the meaning of the word fades into no meaning at all.

    But, I’m a man who has been happily, joyfully, contentedly married to the same woman for 47 years; we have four children and eleven grandchildren together. Marriage is not meaningless to me! When we got married in 1970, marriage had a firm Christian meaning. Those who married, did so “in the sight of God and man” with the intention of keeping their vows with God’s

    help. And He has helped, and is helping us! Do I have to abandon the word? At this point, I think I do.

    Nearly six years ago Dr Patrick Dixon spoke to an international group of missionary workers here at Highfield Oval, Harpenden, where I live. He could see that governments were intent on taking authority over marriage and family and that it was very likely that they would redefine the word. He told us that if they did, Christians would have to come up with a new term. He was right (and he usually is)!

    So, now is the time. That word, “marriage”, which used to be so highly valied has no future.

    I recently had a conversation around this subject with a wise friend who is a Member of Parliament here in London. I asked him if he thought we needed to start using a different term and he said, “Yes, we will need to refer to it as Holy Matrimony.” So, in other words, we don’t want to invent a term, but we should go back to an old term that has fallen out of use except in formal marriage ceremonies.

    Holy Matrimony. I like it.

    You might think that it will never catch on, but that is not the point. Our favoured word has been drained of meaning, so we cannot continue to use it without losing our distinctive identity as followers of Jesus Christ. There might even be a real advantage to adopting the old term. If those who really do intend to make and keep holy covenant before God and man use that term, then we might see a telling statistical difference between those who “get married” and those who “enter into Holy Matrimony”. If we sincerely mean what the traditional service says—that we make these vows before God, our Helper, and that we need the support of the community of followers of Jesus—then we will surely have a much lower failure rate than those who “get married” without clear faith and without the Family of Believers supporting them.

    Holy Matrimony. I could get used to it. Could you?