Marriage Shouldn’t Be Controversial—But It Is

Last month, Erica Komisar, author of the book Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Political Correctness is Bad for Kids.”

In her first paragraph, Komisar writes:

Family life shouldn’t be politicized, but a new poll suggests that it is. Only 33% of U.S. liberals “agree that marriage is needed to create strong families,” according to the survey from the Institute for Family Studies. The figures are 80% of conservatives and 55% of moderates.

Despite her status as a liberal and self-declared feminist, Komisar goes on to write that,

“On this subject, the conservative majority is right. Marriage provides children both emotional and material security, and the ideal environment for children is a loving household with both a sensitive and empathic mother and a playful, engaged and protective father. It’s a shame that political correctness inhibits discussions of what’s best for children.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? We’ve come to the point in America when standing up for traditional views on marriage and motherhood is controversial. James Taranto, in a 2017 piece for The Wall Street Journal, quotes Komisar as saying that the publication of her book had made her “a bit of a pariah” on the left. She had been interviewed on Christian radio and Fox & Friends but couldn’t get on NPR. She had been “rejected wholesale” by the liberal press, and when she went on ABC’s Good Morning America, the interviewer told her right before they went on that, “I don’t believe in the premise of your book at all. I don’t like your book.” All of this presumably because she was challenging mothers to “prioritize motherhood” to the maximum extent they could, which, apparently, is perceived as a threat to the idea that a woman can have it all, all at the same time.

I don’t have any data on this, but I suspect we wouldn’t have to rewind history very far to find virtually universal support for both marriage and motherhood. But in today’s increasingly liberal society, traditional views on these matters are fading.

The Bible, of course, gives us the truth on these subjects. God created marriage, therefore we know it’s important. God placed children in families, therefore we know that parents matter.

It’s not just the Bible. The very nature of creation also points to the importance of traditional families.

Have you ever considered the possibility that God could have created human existence in any way he chose? He was under no constraints to create marriage and the nuclear family as the basis for bringing children into the world and raising them to adulthood. Remember, He was starting with a blank canvas—He could have done anything. Hey, He could have created the world in such a way that human babies spring into existence through spontaneous generation and raise themselves to adulthood in baby communes deep in the forest. Why not? Just because it sounds crazy to us doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be completely normal if that’s the way it had always been. God gets to decide reality, and if He had chosen to create reality in a different way, that’s His privilege as the all-powerful Creator.

The fact that He chose to create the world in a certain way gives us clues as to how He intends human life to work best. The fact that He created marriage, family, and both mothers and fathers tells us something important: this is the way God wants the world to work. This is the way He created us to flourish and experience the best of His plans for us as His creation. And what the created order tells us implicitly, the Word of God tells us explicitly: marriage and parents are vital.

The bottom line is, God is the Creator of reality, and we have the best chance of happiness, satisfaction, joy, and success when we conform our lives to God’s created reality. When we shun the created order that God established—by rejecting marriage, for instance—we put ourselves at odds not simply with a moral code, but with reality itself.

On the other hand, if we reject God as creator, we’re left to come up with our own ideas of reality and how human life should work. We’re seeing this daily with the redefinition of marriage, the concept of “gender fluidity,” the rise of intentionally single mothers, and so on. We’re remaking family in whatever shape and form we choose because we’ve rejected God’s created reality and the truth of His Word. We think we can flourish in whatever way we choose. But violating reality will never produce the best results.

The cultural trends may be discouraging, but take heart. If you’re following God’s plan as outlined in Scripture and His created reality, trust Him to bless you and your family. Live as a testimony to the superiority of God’s ways. And in the midst of a culture increasingly out of alignment with God’s plan for humanity, you and I have the opportunity to shine as bright lights. Who knows? Perhaps your happy marriage can be the very thing God uses to draw others to Himself.

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