The world in which we live...

I'm at the mall, shopping.

Actually not really shopping, I'm with my wife and she's shopping. Most of the time, I'm sitting, waiting. Anyway, I wander into Borders and start browsing.

I pick up a book by Po Branson.

Po Branson, seems like a nice guy. He wrote a best-selling book recently on finding your career, following your dreams or something like that.

Now he's out with a book on the family.

He asks, I think it is in the first chapter, an interesting question. Can we say one kind of family is better than another?

Here's what I think is amazing. We're living in a world where it almost instinctively in the gut seems wrong to say yes. I mean, here I am, a pastor. I know there's a kind of family that is better than another kind of family and yet, I'm so influenced by my culture that I read that sentence and I'm like, wow, he's really stepping out on a limb.

A limb?

Come on. A family that doesn't abuse it's children is better than a family that does. That's obvious and it's o.k. to say that.

But I digress.

Po admits there is a kind of family that is better than others. And he goes on to give illustrations, like the one I just gave or, two a family that educates is better than a family that doesn't, or three a family that feeds its children is better than a family that doesn't.

All right, but check it out, here's his fourth. (And it may not have been exactly the fourth one he mentions, but give me a break...)

A family that embraces religious diversity is better than a family that doesn't.

I'm going to offer my definition of what he means by embracing religious diversity. I may be exaggerating, after all I don't know Po, and I was in Borders for just a minute, but still, I doubt it.

I don't think he's talking about merely giving your children the opportunity to think things through, or being loving to them and graciously calling on them to turn from error to truth. I don't think he's talking about allowing your children to express their doubts and helping them learn to think things through on their own.

I think bottom line, what he means is that a family that doesn't plead with its children that there is only one way to God, pray for it's children to repent and put their faith in Christ, call on its children to follow Jesus is better than a family that does.

And what strikes me is that here is a guy who seems like a nice, you know, ordinary unbeliever, and in his mind, he equates abusing your children with actually believing the truth enough to not embrace the fact that your child is turning from the truth to an error which will in the end, ruin him.