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I have a friend whose parents escaped the genocide of Christians in Persia (now Iran) almost a hundred years ago. He was born and grew up in Chicago in a community of others who escaped. So while he is American, he grew up with a very different culture.
Recently, he told me that when he was young, he often heard, “What will man say?” (He said it in Arabic, and translated it for me.) This was what was said when anyone did anything bad or unusual. In his culture, everything you did made your family look either good or bad. And everyone was watching everyone to see if they got out of line.
If you grew up in a typical American community, you experienced something very different. We are all about personal freedom, and it’s rare that people put your actions onto your family. That’s how I grew up, and I like it. But I can see the downside to it, and the upside to what my friend experienced. In a culture that doesn’t allow you to get too far away from the norm, there is less “bad behaviour”. There are fewer problems, and there is less divorce.
That doesn’t mean I want to live like that. My friend is glad he’s not living that way any more. But the Bible does say we are our brother’s keeper, and that means some degree of setting and trying to maintain standards. As much as I like the freedom to be and do what I want, I see how we have paid a high price for that. Perhaps there is some middle ground that lets us be ourselves, but also protects us and others from taking that too far. I think it would benefit our marriages and our children if we could find a balance between the two extremes.
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The church is supposed to be that balance. It has failed miserably over the last 60 years.