The New Eve - Lewis Robert [78]
So where do you start? The women in this chapter did a smart thing. They started their New Eve journeys by asking two questions to give them both a focus and a first step: What is life's biggest challenge for me right now? and What should be my first bold move? If you deeply desire a life that pleases God, that's a good starting place for you too. It's always better to start small and build on a few successes than it is to try too much all at once and then give up.
So what is your biggest challenge as a woman?
And what will be your first bold move as a New Eve?
Bold Femininity
Live from the Inside Out
Adopt a Biblical Definition of Womanhood
Embrace a Big-Picture Perspective on Life
Live with the End in Mind
Use Wisdom with a Man
The New Eve
Postscript
How You and Your Family Shape the Future
I originally intended for this material to be included as a chapter in The New Eve. However, it soon became apparent that it did not fit the more practical nature of the book, and so it was dropped. I choose to include it here for those of you who may be interested in venturing out into the “deeper” sociological waters of the role family plays in how people and cultures rise and fall.
Marriage and family matter for a lot of reasons: personal fulfillment, loving companionship, raising children, redeeming society, preserving culture, saving civilization, and altering history.
Say what?
You heard me right. The reach of marriage and family extends well beyond our personal needs and wants. It was designed to do far more than merely make us happy. Look back at Genesis, which outlines the blueprints for marriage. Certainly God intended marriage to meet our aloneness needs (Gen. 2:18), but He also intended it to be a tightly knit, peaceful “battle group” that goes forth to subdue the earth with godly order (Gen. 1:28). Every time a family succeeds in that mission, society is empowered and social order is advanced. Conversely, every time one fails, society is wounded and social order, in one way or another, breaks down.
Marriage and family are that important.
A New Eve knows that. It's a conviction that runs deep within her. She understands that what goes on in her home has a wide range of impacts. By expressing godly values and releasing healthy children, she can change a neighborhood, a city, a state, a nation, or even the world. This is the great, inspiring vision that Genesis casts for marriage and that a New Eve embraces for herself on a personal level. She is right in believing that her home represents nothing less than the future of the world.
What History Has to Say
History proves that marriage is a social and spiritual mega-force that shapes whole nations one couple at a time. Nations rise and fall, excel and decline, and wax and wane based on the state of their marriages.
In 1947, long before marriage was a controversial subject, Dr. Carle Zimmerman of Harvard University wrote an insightful book called Family and Civilization. The goal of his exhaustive research was to discover the impact of different marriage and family models on the state of a civilization. Was there any specific correlation between a nation's fitness—its economic and social well-being—and its family patterns? That was the question at the heart of Zimmerman's study. To find the answer, he examined the institution of marriage across time and culture. He discovered that civilized nations all begin by manifesting one type of family structure, thrive as a second type dominates, and then inevitably decline under a third model. In other words, he demonstrated a direct correlation between specific family types and the rise and fall of cultures. Some marriage and family models help build empires and nations; others help kill them.
Here, then, are the three family patterns Zimmerman found that marked the life cycle of a civilization.
The Trustee Family
The trustee model predominates in the early