Restoration of the Culture of the Home

I wrote this (with help from my editor!) for our church newsletter. Thought I would share it here, too.

Wedding in Skagen by Anna Ancher (1914)

In Genesis 1:26-28, God gave a commandment to the man and woman together to rule the earth and take dominion. This family unit was the first institution created by God. The importance of family cannot be overstated.

However, in our culture today, the family is fractured. We have husbands and wives going in different directions. We have parents and children who do not interact well with one another. This isn’t the way it was supposed to be. We need to return to God’s ideal. I propose that a first step would be for women to return to the home.

1 Timothy 5:14 says, “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”

Titus 2:3-5 says, “The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

Not every woman will have the opportunity to marry and not every married woman will have the opportunity to bear children. Yet, Paul did not give any exception clauses in his admonitions above. In fact, he went as far as to clarify that even the young women were to behave with the same propriety and holiness as the aged women. The aged women were to actively instruct the younger women to do and be certain things. One of those things that is often glossed over is “keeper at home.” To ignore the admonitions is to choose the consequence that Paul lays out -- the word of God being blasphemed.

In order to see this Scriptural mandate carried out in our families and churches today, we need a restoration of the culture of home! This is an area that far too often we have submitted to the culture of the world. We need to remember the mandate given us in Genesis! Rather than acquiescence, we need to take dominion!

Women play a key role in creating and sustaining family stability. Rather than defining “keeper-at-home” by her to-do list of chores, we can adopt a Biblical understanding of that term. In the Greek, “keeper at home” is despot. It gives the connotation of one who has authority, a ruler of a domain. A woman who sees her position as a ruler of a small kingdom can model that domain after God’s Kingdom. Under her management, the home can be transformed from merely a place where we eat and sleep and pay a mortgage to a place that is a beacon of light to the world!