SOCIETY BENEFITS FROM A STABLE FAMILY / Part 289 / For Love and For Justice / Zabeth and Paul Bayne/

Any Family

Life begins at home and wisdom should begin there too. Home and family is where so much time is spent and so much personal interaction occurs. The home is the primary and most vital factor in a child's development into a mature and stable member of society. The family is the basic building block or unit of society, thus the stability of the community depends on the stability of the families that comprise it. In most families the nurturing is genuine and healthy. Sadly in other families, parents have few parental resources or have personal troubles that disable them for parental responsibility.

The parents have been what the child has not yet been – both young and old. Parents should have accrued wisdom from situations that the child has not yet experienced. So it is the parents' responsibility to create an environment in which they can pass wisdom on for the child to readily learn life lessons. It is the parents' responsibility to treat the child with dignity and respect. It is the child's responsibility to honour parents and to listen and to obey and to learn. A child who learns these home life lessons becomes enrichingly wise for a life that can be genuine, wholesome, prosperous. This is the foundation of good family and community relationships.

Given my faith background you will understand why I consider it to be significant that the fifth of ten fundamental commandments given by God to a society of people is this one. Exodus 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you."
Parents are also given direction in Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

Society benefits from a stable family unit. A person's response to government derives from the parent-child relationship. The lessons and principles learned from honoring, respecting, and obeying parents will result in a society stable enough to promote development of the whole person. That's why forced removal of a child should be employed by social services as the last resort for child neglect or even child abuse, and seldom or never used to enforce any other parental compliance to regulations.