What are True Family Values?

By Clifford W. Yank
Eurasia President-International Educational Foundation

In our seminars we present character education within the context of "True Family Values". The reason for this will be presented briefly in this article. Through future editions of our journal True Family Values will expounded upon for clarity and better comprehensibility.

What exactly are "family values"? According to Webster's Dictionary, a value is "something, as a principle or quality, intrinsically valuable or desirable." The common expression, family values, then, would mean those principles or qualities associated with the family that are intrinsically valuable or desirable.

The obvious family value, then, would be love. Others might include care, acceptance, intimacy, commitment, shared responsibility, and so forth. To call these family values would be to say that all people find love, care, acceptance, etc., "Intrinsically valuable or desirable." Of course, all people do desire these things; this is what makes us human. Everyone seems to affirm that something called family values will help our society. Thus everyone from Catholic bishops to homosexual activists endorses something called family values.

However, the term "True family Values" is used in our character education seminars. This term is used because there is something missing from the consideration of values alone. What is missing is a sense of good and evil, of what is healthy and what is unhealthy, or of what leads to prosperity and what leads to misery. By itself the term is so general that it is meaningless.

For instance, we can be sure that both saints and murderers desire care and acceptance. Both virgins and adulterers surely desire love and commitment. Espousing family values alone has no relationship with what people actually do. The cry for family values does nothing to improve the safety of the streets or the sanctity of society. It does not even answer the question, "What is a family?" This is why we must examine the question of true family values.

To accomplish this, we are developing the notion of values beyond simple reverence of love, care and acceptance. It is the view of the author, as well as IEF's view, that in order to have meaning, our values must define both norms and goals. Our values should enlighten us as to the behaviors or actions that lead to the accomplishment of those norms and goals. Therefore, we need more than "values"; we need principles for the growth of love, through which we can achieve our shared goals, such as freedom, peace, unification and happiness.

Listed are eight principles, which cause the growth of love and lead to the creation of a true family.

1. Live for the greater whole.
2. Learn true love in the school of the family.
3. Make a commitment to your family and hometown
4. Dedicate your own family to the global family of mankind.
5. Strive daily for the mind to guide the body and their unity.
6. Mobilize good fortune by centering on true love and share it with your community.
7. Be sexually pure to create the true culture.
8. Absolute attendance to true love.

These eight principles are based on Dr. Sun Myung Moon's guidance for the family. Even these eight principles can be summed into one all embracing principle which is living for the greater good.

These principles clarify the essence of family values. Their study reveals why the family is a subject of universal interest, is so controversial, and is of crucial importance to the future of our world. More than that, these principles are stepping stones for our families and communities to achieve that which we most value: the growth of love.

All social problems begin with family problems Family life is breaking down in most nations of the world. Civilizations fall as a result of family breakdown. Rome fell as a result of this problem. One well-known American educator noted, "The family is the basic unit of our society, and it has a cancer. And yet the components of the cancer -- illegitimacy, promiscuity, adultery, increased divorce, homosexuality -- are accepted as 'lifestyles' and even exalted" (Cited in William F. Buckley, "Family breakdown is a crime," Washington Times Weekly Edition, Feb. 19-25, 1996).

The Consequences of Family Breakdown

Why does family breakdown have such devastating consequences? It is because the family is the foundation of civilization.

1. The family is the most important school for our lives.
a. The family is the school of love (Reverend Moon) and school of peace (Pope John Paul II).
2. The first school of ethics and morality.
3. The basic structure of human existence.
4. The family is the model and microcosm of society.
5. The family is intended to operate in accordance with natural law.
Therefore, we can solve social problems when we establish true family life.

Family Restoration: Necessary

Let us examine a few examples of how rebuilding the home brings the natural solution to larger problems.

1. Solution to crime: Research shows that criminals are bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. 75% of juveniles in youth correction facilities are from single-parent families. Happy families breed law-abiding citizens. (1)

2. Solution to mental illness: Similarly, mental illness is bred by broken homes, in particular where grandparents are not present. Genetic and biological predisposition to mental illness determines only 30% of whether it will occur. The actual expression of mental illness depends mainly upon human factors. Happy families breed sane, balanced people. Divorces breed children likely to divorce. (2)

3. Solution to drug abuse, alcoholism: 75% of adolescents from single-parent families are in drug rehabilitation centers. Drug abuse and alcoholism are used as love substitutes when our desire for love is not adequately satisfied. As in the case of mental illness, healthy family life ends drug and alcohol abuse.(3)

4. Solution to the economy: Two-parent families do better economically than one-parent families and divorced people. The extended family is the best environment for small-scale entrepreneurship. Small-scale entrepreneurship leads to large scale creation of wealth. (4)

5. Solution to cultural decay: Good families create their own culture of family love. True parents do not enjoy decadent cultural products, nor do their children.(5)

6. Solution to bloated and conflict-ridden government: Strong families do not require welfare. A society without welfare requires less government. A society without criminals and adulterers requires less government. Strong families create healthy communities that voluntarily care for the less fortunate, reducing the need for state intervention.(6)

7. Solution to foreign affairs: As the family lives for the community, and community for the nation, the national leaders will guide the nation to live for the world, bringing world peace.(7)

8. Solution to religious and racial strife: Good families live for the sake of other families, regardless of race or religion. This is because true family values transcend race and religion and culture. We have long known that children everywhere are the same. We should realize that spouses, parents and grandparents are the same everywhere in the world.(8)

9. Solution to environmental destruction: Good families consume wisely products that are good for children. Good families value the environment above financial profit. Good families create good homes and gardens, creating a park-like environment in their community. Good families do not litter; they respect cleanliness as next to godliness.(9)

10. Solution to AIDS: Good families practice sexual purity. The practice of sexual purity naturally solves the problem of AIDS and other STDs. Abortion and illegitimacy are also solved.(10)

Unfortunately, today, many young people view the wreckage of the family and reject marriage and family as desirable goals. "'Our culture has become skeptical about marriage. One of the unintended side effects of our high divorce rate is that many of our young people are avoiding marriage.'" Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts (Houghton Mifflin, cited in Trudy Bush, "Happily Married With Children," The Christian Century, Jan. 21, 1996, p. 109)

Sociologists can identify the external conditions that have caused family breakdown, but cannot explain the internal cause. From various views we can observe a modern day dilemma between the family and modern society:

1. Economically, traditional society rewarded strong families, but modern urban society discourages them through various laws which increase financial burden on complete families.

2. Systematic governmental attempts to restore traditional, agrarian culture have led to horrors of social engineering, both Marxist (Cambodia, Stalinist Soviet Union, North Korea) and religious (Iran, Bosnia).

3. Problems have worsened by disastrous proportions even during government attempts to create a "Great Society" in the United States.

Yet, few want to abandon the comforts and possibilities which modern industrial society provides.

A Model for Family Restoration

A. Lacking is a family model that meets the challenge of modernity, a universal theory and practice revealing how the healthy family should function.
- To approach this problem, we first must understand the purpose of the family.
- Second, we must understand the root cause of family problems. That is, what we did, and continue to do, in violation of the purpose of the family.

Briefly listed are main points of concern. Future articles will inquire into these concerns further.

1. The purpose of the family is to learn to love, truly. True love is the life for the sake of the other.
2. Self-centeredness destroys the purpose of love and cripples the family, creating contradictions (problems) in society as well as in the individual.
3. As the result of this inability to create true families, all attempts to create a good society have fallen short.
4. This repeats in history because of the incompleteness of the man-woman love, which prevents the family from realizing its purpose.
5. The restoration of the true family means to establish true love between husband and wife.

B. In conclusion, true families live by true family values.
1. The basic standpoint of true family values is that of living for the whole.
2. The goal of true family values is the perfection of love.
3. True family values are our character building checklist.