Three days ago, I became a proud employee of Best Buy. After filling out a good 16 tons of paperwork and jotting my signature no less than 84 times, I was finally informed that I should arrive at 2 p.m. for “staff orientation.” Upon arriving, the operations manager stood up in front of us, his newly employed kids, each one complete in our starch white attire and khaki pants. He then proceeded to go over a list of regulations longer than Michael Phelps’ achievements and throughout the entire speech kept regularly repeating, “Best Buy is like a family.” The rest of the talk was littered with familial references like “family values” and “employees are like relatives” and things of the like.

Sitting in my seat absorbing this spiel, it struck me that there is a disconnect between the ideal family to which the manager was referring and an everyday concept of a family. After all, each person brings a certain connotation to the table when hearing a term like “family.” Unfortunately, for some, it is not a pretty picture. Absent parents, domestic abuse and overall dysfunction are common and often the home is one of the least safe places a child can live. With these preconceived notions, the term “just like a family,” though it intends to refer to the ideal family, falters as image of the ideal family becomes dimmer and dimmer.

However, the purpose of this article is not to give a doom and gloom report on the sad state of families in America. The purpose is to show how we, as Christians, can avoid this problem of dysfunctional families. As the culture seeks to separate itself from Christianity and religion, it veers away from the standards that were originally instituted to keep it stable. In the midst of this instability, it clutches at any remnant of standards and decency it can find, including the standard of the family. But what is to be done? Well, two things:

1. Get married.

2. Be normal.

As the culture moves away from the family values upon which the nation was founded, it begins to become unstable. However, solid Christians becoming excellent human beings can steady this instability. The reason is, normal people comprise a solid base of society. The more excellent a person is at being normal, the more solid the culture becomes. So if marriage is a definite possibility at this point in your life, reach toward it and embrace it, it will continue to provide the basis for a stable society. If marriage is not on your horizon, strive to be a normal person who seeks to be excellent in everything. Those who achieve this excellence will not only succeed in steadying the culture, they will eventually be asked to lead the culture for it is only in excellence, excellence directed towards the Excellent One who created us, that we can hope to save the culture in which we live.