The divine family design 

Marriage and family did not "evolve," but families today are definitely very different from God's design. Understanding what your plan was from the beginning can help us build better families now and prepare us to enter your eternal and perfect family . 

The Bible says that marriage symbolizes a great and wonderful mystery (Ephesians 5:32). It also describes what the result of God's incredible love is in terms of family relationships:

"See what love the Father has given us, that we may be called children of God" (1 John 3: 1).

But these ideals contrast greatly with the reality of modern families. Due to the miseries that so many experience, marriage and family may seem like outdated institutions that evolution should eliminate.

Random or design?

How did marriage and family become the basic unit of almost all societies in the world and history? According to some, the family is the result of evolution, and monogamy, a mistake.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead, for example, states: "Parents are biological needs, but social accidents." She believes that evolution could easily have created other social structures where parents did not have a permanent role.

Evolutionary biologist David P. Barash also writes: “Monogamy is threatened by our very biology. Men are generally larger than women, have greater muscle mass, tend more to violence, and take longer to mature sexually. All of these factors are characteristic of an animal species where males compete with each other to mate with multiple females. ”(“ Is Monogamy Over ? ”[ Time, September 21, 2015, p. 64 ). However, Barash adds:  

“Although monogamy is not natural and therefore not easy, it does offer the benefit of two-parent care. It is rare to observe bi-parental care in a species unless the male is certain of its genetic relationship to offspring — a certainty that only monogamy can give. And since human babies need so much care, protection and investment from their parents, humans, probably more than any other species, benefit a lot from monogamy. ”

Other scientists have also talked about the advantages of marriage and family. The cover story of the June 13, 2016 issue of Time magazine outlined some of the benefits marriage has even in our ever-changing world:  

“At the same time, evidence continues to grow that few things are as good for life, body, and liquidity as staying married. "Couples who have stayed together into old age consider it a unique experience, a sublime experience to remain married," says Karl Pillemer , a gerontologist at Cornell University who conducted an intensive survey of 700 people for his book Lessons for Loving. [Lessons to love]. 'Everyone (100%) said at some point that their long marriage was the best thing in their lives.   

"'But everyone also said that marriage is difficult,' adds Pillemer , 'or, very, very difficult'" (p. 38).

But are marriage and family a simple evolutionary accident, institutions that evolution will sooner or later eliminate? Or is there a reason behind the benefits — and difficulties — of these intimate relationships?

From the beginning

God takes credit for creating marriage and family.

When Jesus Christ was asked about divorce, He put it in the following context:

"He answered and said to them, Have you not read that he who made them in the beginning made them male and female, and said," For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will be one single meat? So there are no longer two, but one flesh; therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate ”(Matthew 19: 4-6).

God designed the intimate relationship of marriage to be exclusive and enduring, as well as a symbol of the deep bond between Jesus Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). His desire was for couples to bear children who lived according to His Word, and for the family to reflect the eternal relationship He wants to have with us (Malachi 2:15; 2 Corinthians 6:18).

Family failures

Despite these divine purposes, human error soon tainted the beautiful relationship that God had in mind. Adam and Eve succumbed to temptations that led to much more difficult living conditions and to the battle of the sexes. Her first son gave in to envy and killed his own brother; And so the family has been falling downhill ever since.

Was there a mistake in God's design? No. We are the ones who have deviated from the design. Bad human decisions (like replacing love and commitment with lust and selfishness) and shortcuts (like premarital sex, lack of preparation, and lack of dedication) impede the development of the perfect relationship that God described in the Bible.

The design has held up long enough to benefit millions throughout history. But our family variations are deeply flawed and have produced too many tragic ills, from dysfunctional families to abuse. We should not confuse these human failures with the perfect institutions that God created.

Rediscovering divine design

The Bible gives us several keys to building the kind of relationships that God designed. Let's look at four of them.

Love and respect. The apostle Paul summarized the basis of the instructions for husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:33:

For the rest, each of you also love his wife as himself; and the wife respect her husband ”.

Love and respect are essential in all relationships, but what this passage (beginning in verse 22) seems to be saying is that, by loving his selfless wife as Christ loves the Church, the husband is supplying a deep need of her and makes it easier to respect and love him. In the same way, the respect of the wife supplies a deep need for her husband and makes it easier for him to love and respect her. All of this contributes to a healthy atmosphere of mutual submission and appreciation of God (vv. 20-21).

Educate and honor. Ephesians 6: 4 instructs parents to raise children "in discipline and admonition from the Lord," or as the Bible version of the Word says: "Educate them, rather instruct and correct them as the Lord would." Parents should teach their children how to live a responsible life and in line with the Word of God in a way that encourages them and does not "provoke" them. 

At the same time, children are reminded to "honor" their parents, as the Fifth Commandment teaches, the "first commandment with promise" (Ephesians 6: 2). Learning to honor and submit to authority from an early age will increase your chances of having a long and prosperous life (v. 3).

Again, education and honor can benefit many types of relationships, but they are especially beneficial in the parent-child relationship.