Yesterday I came across this video from Honey Maid, a company that is known for its Graham Crackers and whose tag line is “This Is Wholesome!”
The video shows “wholesome” scenes of a boy named Issac with his family at home, praying at the table and playing with his siblings. Beautifully captured clips of children running and enjoying moments with their family at the beach are infused with glimmers of filtered sunlight and backdropped by uplifting strains of music.
The entire video feels like it’s giving you a warm heartfelt hug! You just feel good after watching it!
But there’s a problem!
Early on Isaac describes his family saying “I have two moms and I’ve got two dads.” It turns out that Isaac’s birth parents broke their wedding vows, left each other and started separate families! It’s clear that Isaac struggled with this at first but now he seems to be doing OK.
As the video comes to a close there is a long shot of Isaac with his four parents and his siblings. The text reads:
“No matter how families change, what makes them wholesome never will.”
“This is wholesome.”
While I hope that Isaac grows up to be a fine young man and I believe that in God’s grace that can happen. There are several things about this video that disturb me!
Who is defining wholesome?
It seems that Honey Maid is trying to redefine the term wholesome.
Miriam-Webster defines wholesome as:
“Morally good or suggesting good health or behavior”
So what is wholesome about breaking vows, tearing a family apart and then expecting the child caught between the tug-a-war of selfishness to thrive because he’s loved?
Maybe Honey Maid wants to redefine wholesome because they’ve built their graham cracker snacks around the slogan “This is wholesome.” However, a quick look at the ingredients reveals a snack that mainly consists of white flour and refined sugar. That doesn’t suggest health to me!
What makes a family wholesome?
Honey Maid claims that no matter how family changes, what makes it wholesome never will. So what is that thing that makes a family wholesome? They fail to identify it, leaving it up to the individual to decide for himself. The conclusion is simple, build a family however you want, throw the rule book out, as long as you’re more or less nice to each other, then your family will be wholesome!
I submit to you that it is exactly the changes in a family that will determine if it is wholesome or not! Divorce is not wholesome, neither is abuse, polygamy, sodomy, homosexuality, living together outside the bonds of marriage, or any other such “change” people might desire to make in their family structure!
What makes a family wholesome isn’t just their attitude, it’s also their actions and their decisions.
What is a blended family?
The tag in the title for this video is #NotBroken. Their doing their best to show you that divorce doesn’t mean a family is broken but rather that it’s “blended!”
Is this what we should call a family where mother and father, husband and wife have separated and gone their own way? Logically the terms separation and divorce are polar opposites of the term blended! When I blend things I take separate ingredients and put them together to make one product!
Divorce doesn’t blend a family, it breaks it!
A blended family is not a family where mother and father live in separate homes, raise someone else’s kids and sleep with someone other than the parent of their own children!
A truly blended family is one that doesn’t break vows, one that stays the course, one that is an example of faithfulness and self-sacrificial love. One that stays together despite the difficulties!
Will the kids really understand?
In the video Isaac’s mother or step-mother, I’m not sure whose voice it was, states,
“As long as he felt loved and like he wasn’t pulled between two places, he would understand.”
I admit, in God’s grace kids who are unfortunate enough to grow up in a broken home can and do thrive and learn not to make the foolish mistakes of their parents!
However, it is naive for parents to think that any child in any divorce will not feel pulled between two places!
It is naive to think that any child in any broken home will ever fully recover from the pain of seeing his parents stop loving each other!
It is naive to think that a child’s young mind can grasp and understand why the fabric of his family has been pulled out from underneath him!
Does family really come first?
Isaac’s dad states,
“As you blend together, the family comes first.”
This is a nice cliché that pretty much anyone would agree with! However, Isaac’s father is forgetting one basic fact. The first thing in any family is the marriage vow! All families began with it and many families end when it is broken!
For family to really come first, the marriage must be guarded and protected above all! It seems like this guy really does love his kid, unfortunately what he doesn’t realize is that leaving his son’s mother is one of the most destructive things he can do to his family!
By nature a divorce always indicates that family did not come first! Something else came before family. Maybe it was selfish desires, maybe it was lack of commitment, maybe it was another woman or another man, maybe it was alcohol, maybe it was a job. Whatever it was it wasn’t family, because when family comes first, marriage comes first!
How perfect is perfect enough?
Isaac’s mom later states,
“It’s who we are, as perfect as we’re supposed to be.”
No sooner than she says the words above, the following text pops up on the screen;
“More than 40% of Americans are part of a blended family”
The message here is clear, everyone’s doing and it’s not really that bad so why should we try to live any different? Watching the video it’s tempting to agree. After all Isaac’s entire family, including step-parents and step-siblings are playing and laughing together at the beach. It appears that they’re all best friends and that they regularly get together for family events!
Maybe this is how it works in Isaac’s family, which makes you wonder why his parents ever got divorced in the first place! However, this situation is not true for 99% of broken families!
Divorced spouses don’t usually spend their free time together, they don’t usually relax on the beach together, they don’t usually throw parties together. And when they do, it’s often not a peaceful, lovey dovey, everyone being kind to each other type of event!
Divorce might be common now in the US, but that doesn’t mean we should just settle for it because it’s perfect enough! No, as with all sin we must continue to fight, to be examples of faithfulness and to teach our children that they should never settle for “perfect” enough in the moral arena of their life!
Why does a graham cracker company care?
I really don’t understand this, I mean they’re selling crackers, not marriage licenses! Why do they even care about the fabric of family life? Why are they trying to redefine family and tell us that everything is wholesome no matter how we choose to live?
I suspect they have an agenda!
Take a look at the video below. Their agenda goes beyond divorce!
Resources: I highly recommend that you listen to Alber Mohler’s comments in his podcast just a few days ago concerning the condition of the American family.
Displacement of any typical family structure in America reflects decline in marriage
Ngina Otiende
September 11, 2014oh yes there’s definitely an agenda, Caleb! The enemy of family, and everything that has the mark of God in it, is using all the tools and avenues he can to weave and propagate his agenda. but my, it’s so shocking to see it play out!
Caleb
September 11, 2014It’s just so strange to see it coming from a cracker company.
Micah
September 11, 2014This reminds me of a recent commercial here in the UK to do with buying furniture. Again they try to sell a ‘contemporary’ concept of family by basically depicting divorce as almost aspirational. The reality is the images and words that pervade the media – whether through commercials, music videos, TV shows or whatever – influence the culture. Jesus said we are to make ‘disciples of nations’, a disciple is a follower, we’re here to lead, i.e., influence the culture rather than be influenced by it. Arts, entertainment, literature, music – these things are more powerful than many think. It’s important for those God gifts in these areas to discover the grace given to them and use what He has allocated to lead change.
Caleb
September 11, 2014I think two words you said are very important “influence culture”. It’s so subtle but it’s also powerful!
Maureen Ray
September 11, 2014Satan goes around this world seeking whom he may devour and he will use anything and anyone to pervert God’s perfect plan for mankind. I hope you are all well and safe too in your little corner of our world.
Caleb
September 14, 2014Here sure does Maureen!
Maureen Ray
September 12, 2014I do hope you have written to the offending Cracker Company to explain how repugnant to you their endorsement, with pictures, is their blended family concept.
I do not know whether or not the people in the picture above are Christians. If they are still in the world, worldly people find it easier to agree together and this blended family concept is quite satisfactory.
Christians, on the other hand, can be uniquely cruel & lack understanding as to the agony of mind and suffering that most normal people who undergo divorce actually suffer. I don’t think I have met one single person who ever wanted to get divorced when they first married. On the other hand, I am sure there are people who enter marriage and have a cavalier attitude towards divorce.
As for myself, my husband went off to “enjoy the rich pageant of life” leaving behind four children. I never saw him again for 26 years and when I did see him again he admitted he never loved the children, he did not want them, and did not know what to do when he saw yet another one arrive – so he said. I divorced Stuart under the old marriage laws in the UK and going through a divorce where everything had to be proved in the London Courts of Justice, in a full court where every detail of my marriage was aired, discussed and proven before full benches was agony. My divorce was given on the grounds of cruelty to both me and the children.
Over the years I have worked very hard in every which way to provide for them and love them whatever the difficulties placed before me. I remarried his brother and this lasted 38 years – 17 of those years he was unwell and unable to work and he died in 2005 when I married my friend – Mark – we have been married for almost ten years – next year and have known each other for 23 years – I brought him to know Jesus.
It may surprise you but in any congregation 84% of people have engaged in extra-marital intercourse and these same people fall into this sin for many powerful reasons – desperate loneliness, mental cruelty, rape on a constant basis, physical cruelty, drug addiction and alcohol addiction and sexual abuse of children. Most of the time the only way out is to walk away and get help. I have been intimately connected with all of these sins and really I believe that any one of them makes God just as unhappy as divorce.
I also know of two people near and dear to me whose husbands are homosexuals and they have stuck by them even though one son has been involved in homosexuality.
You are very blessed for you have been brought up in a home where both parents loved the Lord. You have been protected from the ugliness of this world.
Based on gospel accounts, I believe that the same grounds for divorce or remarriage allowed for a man are also acceptable grounds for divorce or remarriage allowed for a woman. Such grounds were strictly limited (fornication and desertion on the part of the unbelieving spouse), because of the divine ideal of the permanency of marriage. Any and all other cases are simply not mentioned as acceptable grounds.
In cases like wife beating, I can and do strongly believe the answer to be separation, as a wife must not be put in physical danger by an abusive husband. The fact remains, as Malachi teaches, that God hates divorce; even the two grounds for divorce were by permission only, not by command. Certainly, the ideal remains forgiveness and reconciliation. However, this can more often be shallow and temporary and not a permanent solution.
I am grateful I am covered by God’s love. Everything, every tiny detail has been confessed to Jesus, demons connected with every event commanded to leave in Jesus name: I am washed and I am sanctified by His love and His grace.
Caleb
September 14, 2014Thanks for sharing your experiences Maureen. Certainly divorce causes much pain in many lives and in the church. How grateful we must be for God’s grace!
Celeste ✌
November 27, 2014why dont you love yourself?