Our lessons today, both morning and evening, are on the Christian Home. I used the Russian family as a background for our emphasis upon the Christian family. Tonight, I want to use primarily the Chinese family. We are so accustomed to our own that it becomes difficult for us to use our homes in contrast to what they should be. It may be helpful to see that contrast and likeness when referring to other traditions in their marriages and homes. There are two very obvious statements that we can make as we continue as our study tonight: all homes have some good qualities and all homes are less than the ideal presented in Scripture. We can and should give attention to changing things that should be changed and doing the things that we are taught to do.

The marriage laws for the Chinese changed on May 1, 1950 giving greater equality to women than before. Therefore, what is said about the Chinese home should acknowledge this important date and change in their culture. Many changes have likewise occurred in America.

In most cultures, especially agricultural ones, the emphasis was primarily upon the family unit or the group. In many eastern countries they are taught that the group is more important than the individual. In the West, we have championed the rights of the individual. Which is best, to be single or married? Liang Shu-ming wrote,

"The life of a single individual is an incomplete life. A single man or woman can be counted only as half of a human being. There must be sexual relationships before a complete life starts. Following this come parents and children, elder brother, and younger brother. This is the so-called family." (The Chinese Family, "The Shifting Center of Loyalty," 166.)

The Bible teaches the following. "The Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." (Gen. 2:18.) "A father of the fatherless and a judge of the widows is God in his holy habitation. God sets the solitary in families." (Psalm 68:5-6.) However, Paul wrote, "For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that." (1 Cor. 7:7.) God made us male and female. There is a desire to be joined together in marriage and in the home. This does not mean that one is only half a human being if he or she is single. Paul and Jesus lived a single life. There is nothing wrong with that. In many ancient cultures, marriage was forced upon everyone and marriages were arranged without the consent of the girls. Perhaps, in America we have gone too far with individual rights in the balance between the group and the individual, but clearly the ancient cultures went too far in devaluing the role and importance of the individual. The reasons were primarily custom and financial. Marriage may not be best for everyone.

The high cost of the traditional marriage is a well-known story in China. It was common to see parents sell or mortgage their property to pay for the marriage of their sons, and some of them sank so deeply into debt for this that they could hardly get out of it for the rest of their lives. Whatever other significance such sumptuous marriage ceremonies might have, the effect on the minds of the young couple could not be ignored, for it visibly demonstrated to them the dominant role of the parents and the family in their marriage. The more costly the marriage, the more deeply the parents went into debt, the greater indebtedness the young couple felt toward their parents. When the parents strained their final savings and their last bit of credit in order to give the son a wedding feast, the couple could not escape the pressure caused by the parents instead of an affair of the couple themselves motivated by love or personal attraction. Besides the feast and other ceremonial expenses, a leading item in the cost of the traditional marriage was the amount to be paid the girl’s family.

Americans are not the only ones who spend large sums for their marriages. It seems to be a general custom of many cultures. Jesus said that where your treasure is, there will be your heart also. (Matt. 6:21.) Perhaps, what people spend on weddings indicates the importance of the event in their lives. What is troubling about this and other occasions, like the Christmas holidays, is that we are so bound by traditions and pressure of the society that we do things that we cannot afford. We feel for the Chinese families who go into debt so deeply that they struggle the rest of their lives to pay the debt. Would it not be better to break with tradition and have a wedding and feast that you could afford?

What does the cost of a wedding have to do with a Christian home? It indicates something early about the pressures of society, and even sometimes the Christian community, upon us and how we respond to it. It indicates the distorted role of money in our lives. Our materialistic society makes us think that our lives do consist in the abundance of the things that we possess. Jesus said that it was not so. (Luke 12:15.)

In almost every culture, there are both strange and sinful practices concerning marriage. Here are some among the Chinese:

At the marriage ceremony and celebration for the young couple, it is interesting to note that the bride’s family and relatives were not invited. The young bride was now under the authority of her husband’s family. Excluding the bride’s family indicated that they were not to interfere in the marriage. There was no part of the celebration where both the bride and groom’s families gathered together.

Families that could not afford an elaborate wedding as required by custom commonly resorted to the practice of taking a child bride. A very young girl, sometimes even an infant, was purchased by a poor family which would raise her along with the young son. When they reached the marriageable age, they were married with a simple ceremony. The subordination of the child bride was even greater than that of brides normally married into the family, for she owed directly to the parents-in-law the efforts and expense of bringing her up. The treatment of a child bride was often more tyrannical than normally.

The Chinese also practiced "marrying the spirit" of a deceased person. When a woman was betrothed to a man and the man died before the wedding, the woman was married to his spirit in full wedding ceremony. The Chinese also practiced "taking a daughter-in-law in anticipation." A family, presently without a son, might take a daughter-in-law in anticipation of having a son. When the new law went into effect in 1950, women who were much older than their husbands went into court to divorce them. One woman, who was twenty eight from the Hupeh Province, went into court with her eight year old husband in her arms and asked for a divorce.

Remarriage of widows posed a problem. The traditional restrictions against the remarriage of widows was an important devise in enforcing the solidarity of the family group. If a wife died, there was little institutional problem involved. Tradition allowed the widowed husband to take another wife or a concubine, whichever he desired. The membership vacancy in the family was thus filled. But it was entirely different for the widowed woman. She seldom remarried as long as the husband’s family could support her. In effect, the death of the husband did not dissolve the bond of marriage or change the widow’s status and obligations as a daughter-in-law. Should a widow remarry against the objection of the family, the whole clan had the right to interfere, even the right to kill her.

The following sad story comes from 1949 in Honan Province:

"A woman whose family name was Ch’en was married to a man named Hsu. The husband died eight years after the marriage, and both the woman’s and the husband’s families did not permit her to remarry. In 1949 the widow took the matter into her own hands and married the head of a neighboring village. Two months after this, the woman’s uncle, a local bully, and her own brother, ordered her to hang herself. She begged for mercy from her own brother, saying, Brother, I have worked for you for years, won’t you have mercy on me as my brother? She turned to her uncle saying, Uncle, won’t you do some talking for me? Both turned a deaf ear to her pleas. She then requested to see her children and to put on her good clothes before dying, but this was denied. She adamantly refused to hang herself; so her own brother strangled her to death, then hung her body up below the roof."

It is obvious that preventing the remarriage of widows was an institutional device to strengthen the family organization at the expense of the widow’s interest.

In China, so far as the woman was concerned the bond to a new home was meant for life, not to be broken even upon the death of the husband. Hence there was no institutional ground upon which a woman could obtain a divorce. Should she become dissatisfied with the marriage, even on justifiable grounds such as extremely cruel treatment, she was advised to tolerate the situation and preserve family unity by exercising forbearance. The folk adage, "When you marry a chicken, stick with a chicken; when you marry a dog, stick with a dog," was a constant reminder to her in moments of despair and depression. It is not surprising that a large number of woman committed suicide when foregoing unbearable situations.

The Chinese are not the only ones who have both strange and immoral practices relating to marriage. In the Old Testament, kings like Solomon often contracted hundreds of marriages. They were more alliances between Israel and foreign nations than real marriages, but it showed the low value placed upon women to be so treated and traded. Muslims men can divorce their wives by simply saying three times, I divorce you. In America, we have one state, Utah, controlled by a religious group that practices polygamy. Their wives are often living below the poverty level and their only income is Social Security. There is widespread mistreatment of women and daughters. There is an ever increasing effort to legalized homosexual unions as marriages. In bold contrast stands the Christian home as described in the Bible.

In the traditional social order, the sacred character of the family institution imposed a deterministic view toward it, admitted no discussion of its soundness as an institution, and tolerated no suggestion of alternatives. The primary factor in lending a sacred character to the traditional family was the cult of ancestor worship. The constant reminder of the relationship between the living and the dead, between the existing family and the spirits of its creators, constituted a major function of ancestor worship which imposed a sense of sacredness on the family as an institution.

Worship in the Bible is intended to do, at least, these two things: express praise and devotion to God, and to lift the worshipper to higher level in his life. But how can worshipping the spirits of one’s ancestors lift one to a higher level of spirituality and God-likeness? Religion, whatever its form, will directly affect the home and marriage. If a couple is Muslim, that marriage and home will be very different from any other. If the members of a family are Christian, they will see life, other human beings, their very existence, and their vows on a higher level. Christians honor Christ and seek to live as He did.

Christianity seeks to turn us away from sin in our lives. James wrote, "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." (James 1:27.) Peter wrote, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." (1 Peter 2:11.) Fleshly lusts not only war against the soul, but they also war against the home as well. In the final assessment of any failed home, it will be the failure to turn from sin. Sin is at the heart of the problems of any home. This is why Christianity is so valuable and practical. It blesses us individually and in our homes. The only way to safeguard your home against destruction is to earnestly live by faith in Jesus Christ.