In his book, Norms and Nobility (University Press), David Hicks wrote, "The modern affectation [pretense] for pattern breaking is a bit of educational tomfoolery - a fashionable intellectual fatalism that denies all transcendent value in learning and plays into the hands of utilitarians and other ideologues whose positivism methodically excludes from any emerging patterns a great store of human wisdom and truth, while buying off man's freedom by excusing him from responsibility for what he knows" (p. 8).

In this statement the author puts his finger on one of the greatest problems facing western culture today. The pattern of pattern breaking. We are the recipients of history's wisdom. This wisdom has been inculcated in our civil, political, religious, and cultural institutions. But from the replacement of the ancient liturgies of the church (e.g., contemporary "worship"); to the use of the filibuster on capital hill to block the appointments of judges; to the forsaking of the division of powers (judicial activism); to the civil institution of marriage (e.g., gay marriage:); the people of the west are now engaged in nothing less than the wholesale abandonment of the storehouse of western wisdom and truth. This wisdom has been forged in the bloody battlefields of western history, fashioned in the courts of jurisprudence, debated in the classrooms of liberal arts and academic freedom, and practiced in the homes by parental authority. These are among the most recent patterns that have been victimized by our generation.

In the rush to license gays to marry or to grant to these relationships the status of ‘civil union’ (a rose by any other name is still a rose), we are witnessing the overthrow of a pattern handed down from old in favor of a selfish passion born in arrogance and immediate gratification. Western civilization has rendered a judgement.

The institution of marriage is between one man and one woman and has as its principle function the wholeness needed to bear and raise future citizens of the civilization. This received pattern does not deny that homosexuality was an accepted practice in ancient Athens and Rome (neither of which based their laws on the Christian religion). But in their collective wisdom, even pagan Athens and Rome did not institutionalize these homosexual relationships in the same way they did the marriage of one man and one woman. Nor does the received pattern deny the truth of countless occasions of adulteries and infidelity by married people in every time, generation, and culture. Even though many powerful emperors, kings, and queens were often well known for their infidelity, they knew better than to grant the activity the status of a legal institution on par with marriage. The received pattern in the west is not the pattern of polygamy, though it can be shown even biblical figures had more than one wife. We are not the civilization of harems, incest, or pedophilia, though these things have often been practiced throughout every generation.

We are the recipients of a better wisdom and a greater virtue. History has rendered a judgment on marriage that has withstood the test of time and produced a civilization rich in benefits. If we are going to preserve this union, indeed the best that western civilization has to offer, we must break from our pattern of pattern breaking and save ourselves from the ideologues and utilitarians. We will need to rediscover our history, both secular and sacred, and yield to their lessons. In the midst of this war on Islamic terrorism, we stand in the midst of a greater threat and a greater war. For the greatest threat to western civilization is not the isolated attacks on groups of people. The greatest threat is from the wholesale rejection of the patterns and judgements that have created all that is great about western civilization.

Rev. Craig Stanford

Pastor-Immanuel Ev. Lutheran Church

Headmaster-The Robert Preus Lutheran High School