However, through the preaching of the Gospel, we have learned what the home and family should be. It should always be held up as the goal and example for us in our lives. Our homes will always fall short of that image and ideal because we are weak humans, but our shortcomings should never be excused. We should embrace the home as described in Scripture as the goal for our homes. The real home is always less than the ideal. One poet wrote, "If a man’s reach does not exceed his grasp, then what’s a heaven for?"

In any study of the home and family, the purpose should be to see again God’s plan for us and then to seek to make your home more like the one God desires. Being less than the ideal does not mean that your home will fail. All homes are less than the ideal. But the home must be built upon a solid foundation or it will fail. As we study, we should have a willingness to change what we are doing and how we are behaving to make our homes more what they should be. It means that each member of the family will resolve to behave as a Christian in his life. If each family member seeks to please Christ, then that home will succeed. If the principles of Christianity are rejected, the home will fail.

A good way to highlight the Christian home is to see it against the background of real homes in various cultures. All homes have good points and strengths as well as weaknesses. What we must avoid are those things that will destroy the home. There is a tremendous difference between a bruise and fatal wound.

The Psalmist wrote, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman wakes in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he gives his beloved sleep." (Psalm 127:1-2.)

The chief difference between a Christian home and any other home is Christ. If the home is not built upon Jesus Christ, those who build it labor in vain. It is not possible to build a home by your own effort and design that equals one built by Jesus Christ.

As a means of comparison this morning, I have selected the Russian home to help us see more clearly what a Christian home should be. (I am indebted to William Howard Searcy for his guided research paper, "History of the Russian Family and its Effect Upon Russian National Character," 1980, Harding Graduate School of Religion.)

As with any culture and country, there has been change over the years in the way the home and family functioned in Russia. During most of the twentieth century, the Russian family has been under the dominion of the Marxist, communist philosophy regarding the family. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the communists tried to destroy the family unit and replace it with state kindergartens and government control of the family. The extended family arrangement had been giving way to the nuclear family unit before the Revolution.

In a play performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in January 1904, this effort to change the home was graphically portrayed. The play was titled, "The Cherry Orchard." It was about a woman who came to take charge of her house after a prolonged stay in Western Europe. Typical of the land-owning class, the house and land had been owned by the family for many successive generations. The story depicts the struggle of the old life having to give way to the new. The house had to be sold to pay expenses. The cherry orchard represented the old order of society. When it was cut down, the old passed away but not without struggle and longing for what used to be. Firs, the old butler, is another symbol of the old. He speaks about the confusion of the new way of life and the desire for the old. At the end of the play, the family had left the house, the orchard was being cut down, and Firs lay dying on the sofa. The message is that the old order does not want to change. It is precisely this resistance to change that all totalitarian regimes fear and attempt to eradicate.

Any study of the Russian home must include the environment in which it existed. Our homes are also affected by the larger society and political ideology of our government. This play can also serve to remind us of the struggle within each of us to change for the better. Change, even when we know that is for our good and the good of our homes, is difficult. Perhaps, we should cut down our Cherry Orchard as well.

Marriage by capture. Marriage was a serious economic necessity, especially among the peasants. The common way of selecting a mate was through a hired matchmaker who negotiated the deal between the groom’s parents and the bride’s parents. The matchmaker was given expensive gifts as well as the bride’s family. A dowry, which was goods or money from the bride’s family, was transferred from the bride’s family to the married couple. Quite often the dowry was especially designated for the bride.

Sometimes marriage was accomplished by capture. If the girl’s family did not like the suitor, and he had the support of his kinsman, he rode into the village and abducted the girl. Sometimes the girl consented to being abducted. Afterwards something had to be worked out with the bride’s family. Under Soviet rule bride capture is kidnapping, yet it still takes place occasionally. There were four types of bride captures: 1) involuntary, 2) planned by the lovers, 3) planned by the lovers’ families, and 4) for show as a part of the marriage ceremony.

If done involuntarily, capture and elopement were as bad as murder. If the young man was caught before he got very far with the girl, he was knifed to death by the girl’s father and brothers. They killed him because it was an offense to the bride’s relatives, both living and dead. Capture degraded womanly dignity and usurped the father's rule. Fortunately, it was the custom of all mountain tribes to give shelter and protection to the fugitive couple. Usually some price was paid to the offended family, and they were given a feast.

Swaddling. One practice that has remained much the same for many Russian families is the practice of swaddling the children. This story is not to suggest that one child-rearing practice determines personality or national character, but it does emphasize the importance of how we treat our children and the effect of our national culture upon our families.

When a child is swaddled, he is bound with cloth very tightly. His arms are tied to his side so that he cannot startle or hurt himself. Children are swaddled from their first day until the age of nine months. The infant is unswaddled only for one half hour before its evening bath and while he is nursing. During this free time he is allowed to kick and exercise his limbs. In other words, the infant is totally inhibited from any free movement of the limbs except at intervals. These inhibition-free intervals are important because a major characteristic of the Russian people is that they have long periods of restraint and a lack of food, freedom and material benefits, followed by short periods of over-feasting and revelry.

It is interesting to note that the intelligentsia are the few in society who are not swaddled. Swaddling tends to reduce or retard sensory-motor development. If a child is restrained, he will not be able to explore and learn what is "me" and what is "not me." This lack of distinction causes Russians to have a fear of separateness. This creates a strong need for the collective approval of all.

A swaddled child can express emotion only through the eyes and face. The eyes are the most expressive part of a Russian because the eyes show the soul. Russians believe that they can communicate love, hate, passion, and disapproval through the eyes.

As a result of restraint in swaddling, the infant is frustrated and in pain. This frustration and pain tend to produce intense destructive rage. Yet the rage can be expressed only by the voice and the face. In the Russian soul there is fear of some nebulous dark forces. This fear seems to be related to the experience of depression as related to swaddling after moments of gleeful freedom. The Russian temperament breaks out at intervals with wild joy, drunkenness, violence, rape, and brawls; this is followed by prolonged restraint.

Just like this practice of swaddling among the Russians, we too communicate important concepts to our children from birth. We teach them the importance of faith and worship, or the lack of it. We should teach them discipline and moderation. From an infant, a child may learn from his parents that he can do whatever he wants. A child learns the role of materialism by the way his parents regard it. A child learns obedience and self-control if the parents demand it. We communicate important concepts to our children just as the Russians did by binding their children.

Drinking. Russians are among the heaviest alcoholic drinkers in the world. The average Soviet citizen drinks six quarts of pure alcohol per year compared with 4.5 quarts of the next highest drinkers, the French and Americans. The per capita consumption is rising 5% per year as opposed to 3% in fourteen other industrialized countries. Drunkenness is the leading cause of crimes, 53% of all crimes are committed when the offender is drunk. This includes 73% of all murders, 76% of all rapes, and 72% of all divorces result from a drunken husband beating his wife.

Like drunkenness among the Russians, any sin continued within a family works to destroy the home. Drunkenness may not be our besetting sin in the home; it may be anger, selfishness, desire to control the lives of others, misuse of the tongue, love for money, pride, or sexual immorality like fornication, pornography, incest, or adultery. Only through humble submission to God can one overcome these terrible sins that seek to destroy us individually and the home.

Husband-wife relationship. As it is with most cultures, marriage is one of the greatest events in life among the Russians. Strong traditions regulate how a bride is chosen and how the wedding is done and how the marriage is to function. The male was and still is the dominant member of the family. The wife has much fewer privileges than the husband.

Certain customs required gifts before the wedding ceremony. In some classes, the groom sent a present to the bride consisting of a headdress, boots, rings, powder, rouge, a mirror, needles, thread, figs, raisins, and a rod. The raisins and other gifts symbolized how she would be pampered if she acted right. The rod symbolized that she would be beaten if she misbehaved. In all urban classes it was the custom of the uncle of the groom, who dressed him before the ceremony, to give him a whip. The whip was most often placed above the marriage bed as a symbol of his authority. If the husband did not beat his wife, she began to think that he did not love her.

The mother developed a close emotional bond with the children because the wife and children felt rejected by the father. The mother was often over-indulgent with the children to compensate for the lack of affection between the father and mother.

There can be no greater goal for husbands and wives than the teaching of Paul to the Ephesians. In a series of comparisons, he set forth the kind of relationship that ought to exist between husbands and wives. He said that it should be like the relationship between Christ and the church.

"Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let everyone of you in particular so love his wife even as himself, and the wife see that she reverence her husband." (Eph. 5:22-33.)