SOLVING PROBLEMS THAT FACE

CHRISTIAN HOMES TODAY

By Venerable Dr Ifechukwu Ibeme
Websites: http://www.scribd.com/ifeogo ; http://priscaquila.6te.net ;
Comment on The Chapel of Grace Blog: http://thechapelofgrace.wordpress.com

“The ordinance upon which a home is built determines the order that could obtains in such home.”

Today, local CUSTOMARY beliefs and cultures (of superstitious fears, fallacies and fables) intertwine with
global POSTMODERN philosophy and culture (of “me first” individualism, hedonism and materialism,
angry atheistic irreligion, and amoral anti-Christianity) taunt and tug against our heavenly CHRISTIAN
belief and the Scripture (of godly purity, selfless service and sacrificial love).

These worldly tugs and taunts impact negatively on our personal mindsets and behaviours, as well as our
family and wider relationships as Christians. This is a big challenge which needs prayerful watchfulness,
great wisdom and powerful grace to deal with in a way that our joy shall be full and our Lord shall be
pleased and glorified.

TRUTH and the TENSIONS of TRENDS and TENDENCIES.

The basic problem facing Christian Homes today has to do with INSIGHT into the far reaching impact of
cultural standards (derived from human THOUGHTS, popular TRENDS and personal TENDENCIES) which
pulls away from or pushes against Divine standard (derived from Scriptural TRUTH). Many Christians are
unaware of this fact and so stumble and tussle in the midst of confused bases and double standards.
2Tim 3:1-5
(1) You must realize, however, that in the last days difficult times will come.
(2) People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive,
disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
(3) unfeeling, uncooperative, slanderous, degenerate, brutal, hateful of what is good,
(4) traitors, reckless, conceited, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
(5) They will hold to an outward form of godliness but deny its power. Stay away from such
people.

Tit 1:16
(16) They claim to know God, but they deny him by their actions. They are detestable,
disobedient, and disqualified to do anything good.

The common concepts and practice of marriage, family and homes is in conflict against the LIFELONG
COVENANT standards God has revealed through Christ, the Apostles and the Prophets. We cannot get it
better than the world so long as we do it like the world and learn from the world and pursue goals set by
the world.

The surest way to retain Christian values and morals is first, TO UNDERSTAND the darkness and
unrighteousness in the world’s ways (through the flux of ERROR and force of TERROR, also with the fire
of EROS and folly of EGO, Eph 4:17-21; 1Joh 2:115-17) against godliness. Secondly, is TO DEPEND on the

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power of Divine Grace through Christ and help of the Holy Spirit, to enable us deliberately SEPARATE from
the world (1John 2:15-16) and deliberately SALT the world (Mat 5:13-14) by fervent commitment to
diligently learn and follow God’s ways (of GODLINESS, GOODNESS, HOLINESS and RIGHTEOUSNESS, 2Tim
3:14-17).

Home and family usually come about through marriage leading to childbearing and childrearing. But the
basis (customary, civil, casual, cultic contracts 1Cor 7:12-14, or Christian covenant 1Cor 7:10-11) upon
which the particular Home or Family is founded vary widely depending on the cultural CONCEPTS and
STANDARDS, or religious ORDINANCES and SPIRITS these are built upon. Every standard is based on its
concept and every ordinance is ruled by its spirit. Any marriage ordinance on which you choose to base
the validation for your sleeping and living together as husband and wife, inescapably determines which
spirit would rule your marriage union! The rest or other types of marriage ordinances could only be
preparatory or supplementary to the validating ordinance.

Therefore, it is important for those who are already Christians to understand that if they want to marry,
they should not live or sleep together until they have been covenanted according to Christ’s Marriage
Ordinance through the Church’s Wedding Solemnization. Or if this has been missed for any reason, to
renounce the authority of all other ordinances and be covenanted as husband and wife according to
Christ’s Marriage Ordinance through the Church’s Marriage Blessing. This also means that their marriage
relations and family life should begin to be submitted to the Lordship of Christ and follow the truth of
Christ’s Gospel. CHRIST’S MARRIAGE ORDINANCE IS ESPECIALLY TAUGHT IN MATT 19 AND 1COR 7. Gospel
standards on the Christian family – service in love – is taught especially in Eph 5:21-6:9; Col 3:17-4:6.

TRUST and TEAMWORK

Husband and wife should sleep together in love. As Executive President and Vice President of the home,
they must learn to work together with trust and team spirit. Their goal must be compassionate
relationship and godly care in the family.

TIME and TRADE

Money making for livelihood must be done in a way the family could still cohere together. Breadwinning
and Homemaking roles have fused in modern times, but should not be confused.

Historical Memory Lane……

Dangerous social environments are automatically disadvantageous to women and children. To ensure the
survival of the home and the race, women and children had to be protected from exposure to these
dangers.

For this reason, rural societies in ancient times were well organized for family or community safety and
effectiveness, such that the provision from external sources was seen as BREADWINNING while the
management of household resources was known as HOMEMAKING.

Such rural societies lived mainly on resources earned from BREADWINNING roles that are too dangerous
to be done with baby in the womb or on the back. These roles are therefore mostly done by men, such
as: clearing and tilling the ground for farming, hunting animals for meat, cargo and distance trading and
war looting. Even in ancient urban societies, families lived on money earned from engagement in trading

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and employment in artisan workshops, the military, security units, government offices, but in recent time
have included schools, churches, banks and businesses. These BREADWINNING jobs were mainly done by
men because they exposed to hazards and rigors which are not safe or convenient for pregnant women
and suckling babies.

Conversely, since HOMEMAKING roles are safer and more gradual to be done while nursing infants,
women who needed to be mostly at home for childbearing and nursing had to take up most of
homemaking roles. Traditionally, homemaking roles included: housekeeping, cuisine, cleaning, fabric and
clothes making, fetching of water, care of household gardens and feeding of household animals, gathering
of grains, fruits and vegetables, foodstuff trading, and dispensing of rations from household resources.

Over the years, instances abound that even when these dangers had become mitigated by impact of
civilizing law and order or Christianizing morals and harmony or urbanization and technology, women still
remain bared from exposure and involvement in many aspect of life’s endeavours and society. This has
made women, especially gregarious and ambitious ones, to rightly feel marginalised rather than feel being
protected. Recent globalisation and advancements also provide further civilising safety and opportunity
advantageous for women and children, but these new developments pose new challenges which are more
moral and mental than the usual physical or brutal dangers.

TRAINING of Children
Training of Children in godliness and resourcefulness is paramount and should be done without
outsourcing all things to schools, churches and nurses (Heb 12:7-11).
Home making roles have been so altered by urbanization, technology and globalization such that parental
informal on-the-job education of their children has been overtaken by urban advanced formal education
systems outsourced to civil agencies and private businesses such as crèches, schools and colleges. Long
hours of urban employment without allowing parents take their children along to learn their trade
informally destroys direct informal education by parents which would have provided children with
parental care, control, and supervision.

Even while staying with their parents (whether in urban or rural dwellings), telecommunication gadgets
now distract parents and hijack children’s attention by means of both vile and virtuous videos,
programmes and advertisements as well as short messaging and social media chats. The result is that
children are starved of parental contact and home training. Today’s poorly parented generation has
turned out to be angry, immoral, rebellious, irresponsible, and prone to revelry, gangsterism and drug
addiction.

TALK and TEMPERANCE

Communicate in order to be understood and for concord. This requires skill and sensitivity, patience with
one another and sense of order. Communication is not only exchange as equals but also order as head
and tail, as in attendance and in charge, as leader and follower, as elder and younger. Communication
done with skill breeds intimacy but without skill breeds wrangle.

TREASURE
Work to care, work to earn, earn to use, and use to save. He who does not work should not eat (2Thes
3:8-12). Laziness that prefers to live on charity rather than to work and earn one’s own living is
unproductive, uncharitable and unchristian (Act 20:33-35; 1Thes 4:11-12)

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TRIALS
Trials and temptations must surely come with all manner of difficulties (needs, lusts, deceits, disease,
demands, dangers, sorrows, conflicts) so we must prepare for worst case scenarios which Satan, self, sin
and systems of the world can bring up against us (Mat 18:7; 1Cor 10:13).

TRUTHFULNESS
Lies are ways of window-dressing our actions and ego to appear to fit expectations when we do not fit, or
self-deceit to make yourself fell you are what you are not. We must decide to be true to ourselves and to
others, however unsatisfactory things may seem. This makes room for true improvement.

TECHNOLOGY
Technological Mass Media could be useful but largely a means of invasion by false and evil communication
that corrupts good morals.
Corruption is by far easier than purification.
Depravity is by far easier than sanctity.
Parents should not be IT-illiterates, else they won’t be able to parent their children in that aspect – which
gives room for other persons or publics to take over and prey on the family.

TENACITY
Tenacity of love without contemplating divorce on any grounds whatsoever, tenacity of purpose, tenacity
of unity and harmony, tenacity of purity, and every godly tenacity must be tightly held unto against all
tides and troubles.

Updated September 10, 2019

by Ven. Dr. I. U. Ibeme
Copyright © PriscAquila Publishing, Maiduguri, Nigeria.
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