— Russell Moore (@drmoore) September 18, 2018
I haven’t read Moore’s book, but this is probably no more than a dramatic way of making the entirely humdrum observation that much of ‘the [wicked, evil, sin-filled] world’ sends unwholesome messages to children. Since Dr. Moore is the adoptive father of several children, he should be applauded for being alert to that.
Even so, this would not be a bad time to remember that Southern Baptists don’t actually believe in marriage and ‘family values,’ that they’ve degenerated into just another cult as screwed-up and decadent as the Scientologists. Albert the Pious, for instance, is relentless on the point that Our Invisible Friend comes first and your family gets the leftovers.
The third theological fact about the family is the continued affirmation of the family within the redeemed people of God – the church. As the Gospels make clear, loyalty to Christ exceeds that of any family commitment, even as the church becomes the family of faith, embracing within its life all who come to faith in Christ and into the life of the church.
This is the kind of thinking that justifies putting a gay child out of the house and on the street.
Your family, your spouse, your friends … those are the people you count on to have your back — not people you need to protect yourself from; the latter are merely people you happen to somehow be related to, and you have no family when the cult has the upper-hand.
This should surprise nobody: Healthy marriages and families undermine the cult’s ownership and control of people, and so they preach against it. It’s as rotten and cynical as that.