Category: Family Breakdown

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Scripture Reading

    At the time of Creation, God created man and woman with the sexual organs as their emblem. As result, that which controls the sexual organs is connected to all structural elements of the human body. For this reason, a man and woman unite as one in the act of making love and give birth to a child. What would happen during childbirth? Whom would the baby take after? The baby becomes attached to the mother’s nervous system so its own develops in a similar way. Can branches grow if there are no roots? The logic in this cannot be denied.

    When a man and a woman become excited during love-making, it is a principle that the mind and body unite into one. That is logical. Then through which organ can love, life and lineage can be connected continually through the generations? It is the sexual organs. What comes first, love or life? In this question lies the problem. Similar to the problems of the world today, which are caused by materialistic philosophy, and the questioning of whether it is the mind or the body that comes first, we also need to ask ourselves: What is more precious, love or life? This is the problem. What comes first? The order of importance must be determined. The answer is that love comes first.

    When God first established the ideal of creation, He did not do so centering upon Himself. Instead, it was centered upon love, and that is why He created the world of reciprocal relationships. This is logically correct. (193-145, 1989.10.3)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1514  Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The most important problem facing society today is family breakdown.  This is directly related to the misuse of love and sex.  Let’s look at some of the statistics for how the family is breaking down.

According to the Census Bureau, since 1968 the number of children living with two parents has declined from 85 % to 70%, but the definition of a family was changed in 2007 to be two parents living together, whether they are married or not, which is not accurate.

Furthermore, in families were two unmarried parents are living together, we see that those with young children ages one to five comprise 50 percent of that category.  But those with children 12 to 17 comprise only 18 percent.  Why?  These families are unstable and tend to break up.  For married parents, as you would expect, the number of children living with both parents is steady across age groups.

The Pew Research Center study shows that in 1960, children lived with two parents in their first marriage 76% of the time, but only 46% of the time in 2014.  Children living with remarried parents held steady over the years at about 15 percent.  In summary,
90 percent of children lived with married parents in 1960, vs. 61 percent in 2014, a
29 percent drop.  Seven percent of couples were cohabiting in 2014.  Single parents increased from 9 percent to 26 percent.  In 2014, one in 20 children did not live with either parent. 

You are twice as likely to get divorced if you have children before marriage.

What should be done about family breakdown?

From a God-centered viewpoint; you cannot enter heaven without a family.
You need not just marriage but Blessed marriage.

You need children to enter heaven.  You need all the aspects of love, parental, brother-sister, conjugal and filial.  You cannot just enter heaven as a happy couple, only.

All the problems of society are linked to the decline of the family.  If children are not living with their married parents, all kinds of problems occur.  Children living with a mother and her boyfriend are much more likely to be sexually abused.  Even in high crime inner-city neighborhoods, those living with their married parents are much less likely to be involved in crime or delinquency.
What about our economy.  There is a worker shortage.  Why?  One reason is that fertility is declining.  In the 60’s and 70’s, 40 percent of women had four children.  Now it is reversed.  Forty percent of women only have two children.

What about the uncivility of society.  Many are mad or “pissed-off”.  Why?  A lot of it has to do with anger over not having a father, for both men and women.  This may not be acknowledged, but it is there, none the less.

What can be done about the problem of family breakdown? 

First, regardless of whether you grew up with both parents or not, and whether you practiced sexual abstinence before marriage or not, you can decide for your future or current children that you would like to make a stable environment for them.

What will you tell your future or current children?  Would you not like them to wait until marriage for sexual activity?  We need to break the generational cycle of out of wedlock birth.  Youth are happy to learn the message of pre-marital abstinence.   It is a no-brainer to teach this to our youth, especially in local schools.  See urbanlifetraining.org.  We have trainings quarterly.

Secondly, practice and teach Blessed marriage, the marriage Blessing instituted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, as True Parents.  We can change our lineage from the devil (John 8:44) to God’s lineage.  We can change our marriage from being outside the Garden of Eden to being in the state before the _{Fall of Man}.  See Blessed Marriage here.

Thirdly, read the Word of God every Day.  We are now in the Completed Testament era.  A convenient way to read the Completed Testament Scriptures is to subscribe to the Daily Inspiration.

Fourth, you need to share this good news with others.  Rev. Moon taught us the ministry of Home Church.  You minister to 360 homes in your neighborhood.  It is not just evangelizing, asking them if they have accepted Jesus or True Parents, Rev. and Mrs. Moon.  It is serving your neighbors in practical ways.  Know your neighbors, love your neighbors and help your neighbors.

What do you think? Share your comments below.