by ProfDave, ©2025
(Mar. 20, 2025) — So, here we are, living as creatures called human on a modest green planet among other humans. Some of us live happily. Some of us live miserably. Most of us think we have some choices in the matter. You may have noticed that those who try the hardest to be happy are the most miserable, while those who try to make others happy achieve the most for themselves. How should we live?
What is the gold standard of life and happiness? Things? Entertainment? Sensations? Or relationships? The ancient wisdom of the West says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.’” “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
The happiness of the “Garden of Eden” was in a three-fold relationship: a Creator and two sentient beings endowed with personhood – a quality derived from God Himself. Not saying that personhood is the image of God, but we can assume it is included. 1) They were invited into intimate companionship with divinity. 2) They were essentially equal though distinct. 3) They were invited to live as “one.” Men and Women were designed to find their happiness in union with their Maker, and with each other. In Holy Matrimony and the nuclear family, mankind is designed to fulfill the mandate to reproduce human offspring.
Is the gold standard only a myth? Or is it a framework embedded in the nature of reality and of the human species? We do not automatically see the gold standard in practice every day (something has gone badly wrong), but we certainly can see the dysfunction that results from alternatives.
How is our alienation from our Creator working for us? Too big a topic to address at this late date. If you and I are persons, our Maker is profoundly a person. Treating Him as a thing or an object – a god on a shelf or an impersonal force – would be profoundly disrespectful: blasphemous. And yet that is what we do every day.
How about the alienation of male and female? A human being is not a thing, but a person. Objectification is profoundly insulting. We use things, but we must not use people. Rejecting the equal dignity of the sexes has led us to a society of mutual exploitation. How much joy is there in being exploited? Exploiting others leaves us burned out and lonely. Whoever heard of a dignified porn star? Shame, degradation and addiction stalk our sexual expression and identity. We mutilate ourselves to escape our destiny. We kill our offspring – our fruit.
How are we doing without marriage as defined by our Maker? What kind of a home does hook-up and co-habitation produce? Where is the unity and security – the unilateral, unconditional commitment that lasts a lifetime? Who is going to raise the children to productive adulthood? To show boys how to be men and treat women? To show girls how to be women and find a husband who will treat them right? Who is going to care for us in our old age? A male using a female can accidentally create a fetus overnight, but it takes a father, a mother, and a home 18 years to produce a citizen.
Same-sex couples and single parents may do the best they can to make healthy homes, and charities to care for orphans, but the gold standard is the family image of God.
The gold standard becomes three-dimensional in brotherhood, sisterhood, and parenthood. The strong personal relationships of brothers and sisters (biological and otherwise) in mutual support and companionships, caring for and respecting one another, keep us strong, steady, and accountable. Iron Sharpens Iron™. And there is nothing like the bonds of parent and child. All three together continue the species and uphold civilization from one generation to another. When they are lacking, the nation and the neighborhood disintegrate inexorably, generation by generation.
Will you build? Or will you tear down?
Image credit: joseweslley899, Pixabay, License