And yet, it is God all along who is working in the family, bringing a man and a woman together and calling them into marriage, creating new life in the mother's womb, providentially caring for children through the sometimes fumbling ministrations of mom and dad. The family is God's invention. He protects it in the Ten Commandments-"Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Honor thy father and thy mother"-and His Word uses the family as a way to talk about God Himself. Since our dependence on Him is that of a helpless baby to a loving parent, we are told to address Him as "our Father." Since His relationship to us in Christ is as loving and intimate as that between a groom and his bride, the church is called "the Bride of Christ." Husbands and wives are told to emulate the relationship between Christ and the church in their relationship with each other. The church is for believers, but God blesses even those who do not know Him with families, which become the foundation for every other social and cultural institution. This is what the family is, by God's design. Its center is marriage, God's way. But today many people think there is a better idea: marriage, our way. We live at a time when husbands and wives routinely divorce each other, even though Jesus warns human beings not to break asunder what God Himself has joined. Even when marriages stay together, they are often torn by marital discord, even though it is a violation of God's calling to make each other miserable. We live in an era of child abuse. Although the popular culture pretends to consider child abuse a terrible thing, the worst form of child abuse is legally and socially acceptable, namely, abortion. It is the vocation of parents to care for their children, not to kill them. Although the family is the basis of culture, as any anthropologist will say, today parents often find themselves having to protect their children from their own culture. Instead of helping parents teach their children to control themselves, to act morally, and to mature into adults, our society-in its entertainment industry, its schools, and its government-often seems to undermine parents and to be at war against children. And now we are presuming to re-engineer the family itself. Why should marriage be just for a man and a woman? That isn't fair. Why shouldn't men be allowed to marry men, and women be allowed to marry women, if that is their choice for sex? Vermont has now passed a law allowing homosexuals to form civil unions, and many churches and theologians-whose liberal theology encourages them to throw out Scripture in favor of whatever the dominant culture dictates-are clamoring for same-sex marriage. People ask, What business is it of the state to regulate people's sexual practices and living arrangements? And if two people love each other, why shouldn't they have the legal benefits of marriage? The answer is that sex-by God's design for all of His creation-is a family value. That is, sex is designed to engender children. The institution of marriage and the family is about having and raising children. (While it is true that some married couples cannot have children, the structures and the legalities of marriage are still designed around this purpose.) The state's interest in marriage has nothing to do with people's sex lives, but with the primal social function of bringing children into the world. A family is not just a set of individuals who have sex with each other, nor is it a set of individuals who love each other. Rather, it is a