The question that Rushdoony tackles in this chapter is, "what is a family and where does it come from?" Now, when Rushdoony was delivering the radio addresses that led to this book, many of his ideas would have seemed wildly out of the mainstream of understanding. In the same prescient way that he has made many of his observations, this chapter ends up being critically important today.
So where does the modern conception of the foundation of family and marriage come from? Rushdoony answers, "when the intellectuals with their shallow thinking offer us love and the foundation of marriage, they are not talking about love, but attraction." Thus, the logical outcome is that, "in romantic love, the family is started when romantic feelings draw a man and woman together, and it ends with the death of those feelings." And is this not the society that has been developing over the time period since Rushdoony penned these words with divorce rampant, the breakdown of the family accelerating and even unpredicted by Rushdoony in this chapter, the homosexual utilization of these same arguments of "love" as the basis of their "families."
While love is important to a family, it is not the end and be all of what defines a family. "while the bible clearly recognizes it[love], it does not permit love to become so basic to the family or life. More than love, a family needs a godly law structure, an order discipline, and security that comes from knowing that God's word is paramount in all things...The cocoon in which the child grows and flourishes is a stable home, in which the child's need for food clothing, shelter, discipline, teaching, faith, and motivation are conscientiously and faithfully met. It is this that spells love to a child...the family is a God-given institution and it is the basic social institution of society. No decision concerning the family therefore can be purely person. At all times the family is under God's law."
The family, that bedrock of our society, is not merely a result of evolutionary changes in man as he moved from barbarism to civility thrust to and fro with changes wrought by the whims of each society, but is grounded in the word of God. The family is brought together when two individuals, a man and a woman, are brought together into one through marriage and from that inseparable bond produce children. Both parents and children have responsibilities inside the family government and it is in this most primal stage of education, both familial, educational and religious, that the family is both strengthened as an internal unit and simultaneously readies itself to interact in those others spheres of life such as church, employment, civil government, etc. When the basics of either what constitutes a family or what the responsibilities of the family are, the results will be catastrophic such as what we see in the rapidly decaying American culture today. Rushdoony writes, "contempt of the family goes hand in hand with contempt for religion and morality. The breakdown of faith is also the breakdown of the family. The relationship of religion, morality, and the family is a vital one. Whenever statism attacks religion, morality, and the family, it unleashes against them the forces of anarchism."
Is the civil government attacking the family? Absolutely. But do not be fooled, the attack is in concert with the media, corporations, advertising, and even the church in some quarters. In all of these areas, the broadness of the attack is so openly flagrant only because we, as Christians, have failed in our duty to uphold our own responsibilities in the family and to adequately articulate how opposing viewpoints lead to cultural collapse instead of the "freedom and liberty" that is so often proclaimed. The family is the basis of our society because God deemed it to be so, and to our own detriment, society as a whole wants to not only abandon God, but the family. And that my friends, can only have the most dire of consequences.
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