It is common knowledge that the family is the foundation of every society, and is the bedrock on which every nation stands. Show me a weak, immoral, unprincipled, unprogressive, and carefree society, community, or nation, and I will point to you the dysfunctional families, weak marriages, depraved sexual morals, greed, selfishness, and unhappy homes that dictate the lifestyle of the people, and form all the fragile components of that aggregation of humans. It is said that a nation is defined by the kind of heroes it praises and adores. I believe also that the real state of every nation, community, or organization is clearly shown by the kinds of leaders the people vote for and put into offices and responsible positions. I have been pondering recently on the importance of drawing our attention to these truths, especially in terms of the election of leaders for our communities, organizations, and nations, and how our homes, families, marriages, and romantic relationships can tremendously impact national development across the globe. I can tell you that such impact can be “humongous” (beyond gargantuan). During a radio program a few years ago as guest for an important topic on family life in a particular nation, another prominent man was invited along with me for the discussion. He had been in a very responsible position in his country, and as we emphasized the need for married persons to become morally and dutifully committed to their partners, he gave the testimony on air as to how he had a good wife and children, but spent the family savings on a girlfriend she was in adultery with, and paid all of her expenses for her to have a great vacation in the UK, while he (the man) had never even travelled overseas before. This is an example of how some women (and some men) can lose self-control, and can unwisely market their sexual commodities to wreck homes and derail national, organizational, and national development. Some leaders that we have elected into office would have been excellent leaders that God had originally planned to use to bless our societies, IF ONLY they had not allowed their unbridled sex passion and greed for money and fame to enslave them and shatter their sense of true love, wise management of resources, commitment to duty, and fulfillment of their responsibilities. A leader, for example, who would not settle in his mind to date and court one woman, and marry that woman properly, but keeps hopping from one woman to another like a bee pollinating flowers, CAN NEVER be a very responsible, unbiased, and good steward who truly serves the people who elected or appointed him into office. Such a person will find it hard to work for the best interest of his people. In the same way that it is rampant to find Managers, CEO’s, Directors of companies and organizations, and businesses owners harassing ladies to sexually exploit them before offering them jobs or processing their applications, it is a common practice to find sponsors, promoters, supporters, and chairs of political committees bringing themselves very low to play every trick they can manufacture (including blackmails) in order to sexually exploit female candidates or co-workers in the political field. This is common knowledge, isn’t it? But what are we actively doing about these in our time? Are we going to leave these maladies as they are, for our children to build upon such shaky, ungodly and destructive foundations in some vital sectors of our nations? “When the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). The subject of the influence of romantic relationships, marriages, homes, and families on leadership and national development is undoubtedly a very broad one with numerous tentacles and profound ramifications. To avoid launching into a discourse that would grind on interminably and create ramblings ad nauseam, I thought it best to express the salient points in an epitomized form for easier consumption and facilitation of the digestive process of the nutritional contents. My expatiation is by no means exhaustive, and I only want to initiate a national and international conversation for progress. You are therefore encouraged to peruse and refine my points; it is up for grabs, especially when I just took a few hours to quickly write this piece to stir up our conscience: YOUR CULTURE We often define culture as a set of values that define or characterize a person. But quite often, I wish to go a step further and define culture as the values you were taught in your home, and by your family or the people who raised you from childhood. Your food preferences, clothing, language, fundamental beliefs, and values etc. can be traced to the foundations of your home training. The kind of cultural practices, understanding, tolerance, and bias or prejudices in you, have their roots in your exposure from childhood. Our minds are molded by our temperaments, specific environment where we spent most of our time, religious or scientific and other forms of beliefs, and the regular practices we engaged in or constantly saw our parents and elders or guardians adhering to. THE POWER OF WORDS AT HOME Death and life will always be in the power of the tongue. Words become actions, then the actions form habits that become your lifestyle after a while, which ultimately directs you towards your destiny. The way of thinking that you possess now, and the entrenched mindset you have acquired that forms the basis of your opinions, are largely due to the words, expressed ideas, and examples you have received from parents, guardians, elders, family members, and friends that you have closely associated with since your childhood. Most of the tribal, racial, social, intellectual, political, professional, ministerial, or religious prejudices and bigotry that we harbor, have been welded into our minds and personalities by our homes first, and then by your various personal interactions and other components of our society. HABITS AND LIFESTYLE Habits of corruption or righteousness in leadership and the populace in a nation are not formed overnight. What you feed will always grow, and what you starve will always die. If parents, guardians, family elders, and adults in our homes and families continually feed us with either their toxic or healthy ways of life, that is what we will finally emulate and primarily develop as habits. Some lifestyles of bribery and corruption, robbery, deception, sexual immorality, irresponsible behavior in courtship or marriage, marital separation or divorce, delinquency in parenting, lack of care for family welfare, wasting or destruction of resources, and wicked practices, are actually handed down in some families from generation to generation. In the same way, family excellence and wealth, educational pursuits, aspirations for accomplishments, or diligence and decency are inherited in many families as a spirit and as a legacy that is passed on from grandparents and parents to children and grandchildren. TRAITS AND VALUES All of us are the product of male-female intimate interactions. As spiritual beings, each of us has a spirit, in addition to traits, and other characteristics that are imparted to us. These traits largely determine our personalities. This finally enables us to develop and become leaders, or become people who wisely and responsibly choose others to lead us. The values, that all of us cherish for progress, success, and victory in our communities and nations, will always have their foundations in homes, marriages, and families. If you trace the background of a good leader in any organization, community, church, business, political set-up, or nation, you will by all means credit his or her remarkable traits and values to the person’s background training. In many cases, men and women of integrity are elected into responsible positions, and surprisingly become transformed into dishonest and corrupt leaders due to toxic influences, nefariously-motivated pressure, and destructive counsel from greedy and opportunistic family members who pressure and convince their relative (leader) to use every trick in the book to amass illegal wealth and employ unorthodox means to butter every piece of their bread. INFLUENCE OF FAMILY ZEAL Many people support specific political parties, certain politicians, or some forms of national and political dialogue because that is what their parents, majority of family members, and spouse or romantic partners adhere to. In a certain country, a lady commented the other day to her friend at work during a political discussion: “Well, I have to by all means vote for that candidate, because since the 1940’s my family has always belonged to that particular political party. I can’t do anything to change that.” Sadly enough, the urgent national issues at stake were not even considered by this highly educated woman. In some instances it even becomes a taboo to deviate from a particular trend of support for a candidate or leader when your loved ones are ardent supporters of a candidate or leader to whom you are not lending your support or not admiring. Some parents and adults in our families can even threaten us and virtually force us to support the groups or people they admire and support, or face the consequences. Once upon a time in a certain state, during a political argument at home between a husband and his mother-in-law regarding the support for two opposing political parties, the woman (mother of his wife) angrily retorted to the man (son-in-law): “If I knew that you supported that political party, I would not have given my daughter to you for marriage!” Wow! It shows how deep the ravine of political differences can sink the unity ship at home and produce its deep wounds plus accompanied scars on family members. INFLUENCE OF LOVE, ROMANCE, PASSION, AND DEPENDENCE Parents, respected adults, other family members, and fiancés of courting individuals can exercise tremendous control over other family members and those in their homes, especially younger ones, and those that are dependent upon them. This can significantly influence decisions and choices for people in our homes. Many of us seek for our first opinions from those nearest to us in our closest (especially romantic) relationships and homes, and those we depend on for our livelihood and financial sustenance. Deep romantic love and sex passion are tremendous and formidable forces that can captivate the mind, melt the heart, and mesmerize even the most prominent, most learned, or strongest man or woman to listen, adhere, and become glued to their lovers, causing them to follow the inclinations of the lover or sexual partner in all directions. People have been driven by emotional attachments to even wrongly follow their lovers and sexual partners precipitously to their untimely death. SEEDS SOWN FROM CHILDHOOD, AND THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION We have to honestly face the fact that the people we seek to elect into office, and the people who vote them into office, are all products of marriages, homes, families, and other sexual activities (legal or illegal), which finally become the fruits of good or bad parenting and guidance, love, care, and nurturing. When things go wrong, and especially when we do something wrong or unacceptable (or someone else does it), it is very interesting how we often say: “Whaaat! He (or she) was not like that at all! I am surprised how he (or she) has changed. I can’t believe he (or she) did or said that”. Sometimes the perpetrator goes: “Men! I can’t understand how I could do (or say) that! I don’t know why I did (or said) that.” Well, are you really surprised? You mean that you don’t sincerely know why and how you did (or said) that? Should we tell you why? The answer is this: The seed of that word or deed has been in you all along. The primary seeds are sown in you during your childhood in your home, or were sown a long time ago. Other additional or secondary seeds are later sown as you mingle with friends at school or in your neighborhood, and as you watch varieties of movies, engage in all kinds of relationships, and get your mind and emotions bombarded by the media and conversation, plus tantalizing lifestyles of the day. The opportunity had not arrived for the rains to fall on your seed to cause them to germinate. My humble suggestion is this: Simply admit that the seed of that evil or misdeed or omission or willful disobedience resides in your mind, heart, and soul. Ask the Lord to forgive you, cleanse you of your misdeed and its consequences, and create a new spirit of goodness, righteousness, obedience, kindness, humility, diligence, love, and the fear of God within you. That is the only way to become the good leader that all of us expect you to be, and that is how to obtain the wisdom, as a good citizen, to vote wisely and responsibly during elections of any kind for good leadership. No organization, community, or nation can have excellent leadership that diligently works for the genuine welfare of its people, if the fundamental values and seeds of responsible and righteous leadership are not sown in them by responsible and righteous courtships, romantic relationships, marriages, homes, parents, and families. If your motives are wrong, and your ambitions are rooted in greed or selfishness or the lust to dominate the scene with your particular group in order to simply control people and control resources to your whims and caprices, then the people who elect you will never benefit from real good leadership, and your community, organization or nation will never make any meaningful progress. If, on the other hand, you also vote someone into office with similar mindless and emotionally-driven or prejudice-imbued motivation, along with the inclinations of greed, vengeance, and selfishness, then you will definitely reap the fruits of your leadership choices. When romantic relationships, courtships, marriages, morality, and sexual orientations are in disarray, diffusely defined, irresponsibly handled, imported from depraved communities overseas and unwisely allowed to dilute good traditional values, then both the leaders and their people whom they lead, or the people who elect them into office, would lose focus on the right direction for the community or nation in accordance with the true needs and trends of the times. The fear of God will always be the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom means our ability to effectively apply the knowledge we have obtained, and knowing what to do under all circumstances, including how to become good leaders, and how to elect the best people to lead us. But, are we diligently and sincerely learning our lessons in order to apply them and gain the wisdom that God desires to grant to us for good decisions and wise choices? Let us work very hard on ourselves to impart the necessary knowledge and values in our homes, families, and relationships. Be proud to use your love, assistance, marriage, family relations and support, parenting, dating, courtship, sex and romance to produce good and progressive influence in your society. When a person is not properly trained and positively influenced at home by parents and adults in the family, it becomes very difficult to produce any important future changes in any adult whose character is already firmly fixed. Let us start early. If you don’t hurry up to shovel your powdered snow as soon as it falls, you will have to pay a higher price of hammering and chiseling out the hard ice later on. It happened to me in 1995 in New York City when the city experienced one of the heaviest snowfalls in its history. I had to pay some young boys a few dollars to hammer away and chisel out my car that I had left for some days outside after it was covered completely with snow. The sun had started to shine, but the weather was still freezing. The sun wouldn’t do it for me as I thought; I had to find a way to do it myself because I needed to use my car. Start doing your job of training and education at home yourself. Please don’t be like me and wait too long to act. Arise and be doing NOW! “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin (beginning from our homes, marriages, romantic relationships, and families) is a reproach for any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Tune in to JOY 99.7 FM in Accra, Ghana on Saturdays at 5:30 am – 6:00 am (Ghana Time) or US Eastern ST 12:30am – 1:00am and listen to Dr. Kisseadoo's broadcast "Hope For Your Family". Access anywhere in the world on the Internet using MYJOYONLINE.COM, and click on “Live Radio”. Obtain 9 of Dr. Kisseadoo’s books online from: RedLeadBooks.com or Amazon.com using his name, or ontact him in the USA (1-757-7289330) for copies of his 15 books, free counseling and prayer. Visit his website: www.fruitfulministriesint.com for essentials that will enrich your relationships and ministry. Get copies of his books from Challenge Bookstore & other bookstores in Ghana, or call 233-20-8209567 or 233-276-322982 in Accra or 233-275-353802 in Kumasi for message CD’s, books, free counseling, prayer, and seminars. Use DrSamuel Kisseadoo to access his Wall on Facebook. Copyright November 2012. Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Kisseadoo (Professor of Biology, USA. International Evangelist. Ordained & Licensed Minister. Teacher, Author, Prayer Minister, Conference Speaker). Founder and President, Fruitful Ministries International Inc. (Evangelistic & Teaching Ministry). 6 Red Robin Turn, Hampton, Virginia 23669, USA. Tel.1- 757-728933 E-mail: kisseadoo@msn.com