President Kimball once stated, “ …only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.”
For as long as I can remember, I can recall hearing at home, in church, and amongst family and friends that there’s an “attack on marriage”. I didn’t fully comprehend what this meant at the time, nor do I think many of the people talking about this “attack” understood what was really happening either.
While many religious organizations and individuals have focused on the definition of marriage, and the implications same-sex marriage have to their beliefs, I believe the issue of marriage goes much deeper than these areas.
Having been married for over 5 years now, I can start to see more vividly that marriage isn’t just being attacked, it’s at WAR.
I believe this battle is being waged mostly at home, and sadly, it’s dangerously imperceptible. If you’re reading this as someone who believes strongly in the social, economic, psychological, emotional, and spiritual benefits of marriage then you’ll most likely agree with my following perspective.
I believe that this entire marriage war is driven by two main weapons: distraction and contention.
Our homes and marriages are FILLED with opportunities to become both distracted and contentious. Whether it’s social media addictions, Netflix binging, or any other phone-based activities, these distractions will degrade the love, trust, closeness, and integrity of marriages worldwide if we continue to let them dominate our time and replace our family & spousal connections with a WIFI connection.
To combat these distractions in our family, we’ve set limits to TV and phone-usage to ensure we spend quality time together with each other and our kids. We also try to better control the content we view. We strive to make sure that our media is not overly-distracting and that it doesn’t bring contention into our home
When you look at this “marriage war” objectively, it’s easy to see how Satan uses technology to make us more distracted and contentious. Distraction distances us from close relationships by replacing quality time with personal time. Also, this technology causes a variety of negative psychological and emotional effects on ourselves that end up bleeding into our relationship.
A few things we’ve done to help protect against contention is to always be quick to apologize and to fill our home with hymns or quiet music, rather than loud cartoons.
Making these simple changes to our daily lives has provided a lot of peace and happiness in our marriage and family. Not only has it improved our relationships with each other, but our home feels brighter and safer.
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