Y’all Want a Divorce?

August 31, 2011 By Nancy French

I met a man when I was twenty years old and fell in love immediately.  By the second date, I knew I’d marry him if he asked me.  And, within a few short weeks, he did just that… so spontaneously he didn’t even wait until he had a ring.  Three months later, we were in France, buying flowers off the street from a vendor and getting married in the upstairs room of a restaurant.  We barely knew each other, and some of the ceremony was in French.  We either got married or agreed to be Amway sales reps.

Our spontaneity, of course, was a recipe for disaster.  And, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau, I fit the mold.  Southerners tend to get married – and divorced – more than their Northeastern counterparts.  I even dropped out of college after getting married, which pretty much makes me a walking stereotype (though I am currently wearing shoes and am not pregnant).

Why are Southerners getting divorced so frequently?  Some blame — wait for it — the Church.

Read why.

 

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A Personal Guide to Fighting Poverty

July 8, 2011 By David French

Today is a bad day.  Unemployment is back up to 9.2 percent despite jobseekers leaving the workforce in droves and previous job gains have been revised to reflect job losses.  The poverty rate is climbing, and now more than 43 million Americans are poor.

What can we do?  What can Christians do, as a practical matter, to fight poverty?

There’s no doubt that the causes of poverty are complex, but we do know a few things with a high degree of certainty.  First, on a macroeconomic level, greater economic freedom leads to greater prosperity.  Second, on a cultural level, family status is perhaps the single-best predictor of family outcome.  Third, as Christians we are repeatedly called and commanded to aid the poor.

What can you do about macroeconomics?  Not much, actually.  It’s a simple reality that any given American’s impact on our national economy or our economic policies can’t be measured with an electron microscope.  Our voices should be heard, but individually they don’t have much impact.  In fact, I’d suggest there exists an iron law of service:

You can have a tiny amount of influence over a large number of people or a large amount of influence over a tiny number of people.

In other words, you can’t “change the world,” but you do have a chance at impacting your own home and the lives of people around you.  Give to World Vision, and volunteer for political campaigns, but don’t think that by doing so you’ve discharged your duty to the “least of these.”

I’d suggest that the key to your influence over poverty rests not in macroeconomics but in marriage and family.  It’s around the hearth and home where the real impact is made, and it’s there that the work is hardest, most exhausting, and — ultimately — most powerful.

So, how can we fight poverty?  How can we serve the poor?  Here’s my best shot at a personal guide:

First, be faithful to your own marriage and family relationships.  This sounds simple and self-regarding, but it’s also foundational.  If marriage stands as a firewall against poverty and want, then remaining married helps ensure that you and yours don’t fall victim to the prevailing economic trends; remaining married gives your own children a chance; and a healthy marital relationship is itself a tremendous platform for service as your efforts are multiplied through your spouse and older kids.  You can’t save a drowning man if you’re drowning yourself.

Second, don’t just live within your means, live below them.  I know from bitter personal experience that following the all-too-typical American pattern of living exactly as prosperously as your paycheck allows not only places your family in peril in the event of job loss but also dramatically impacts our ability to be generous to those in need.  We have to understand — to the very core of our being — that our money and assets ultimately belong not to us but to God.  I have seen friends in need and been unable to help because of my own (very silly) financial choices.

Third, enable marriage, not divorce.  One of the worst developments in modern evangelical culture is our increasing acceptance of divorce.  (To be clear, God’s grace of course extends to the divorced; I’m speaking instead of the willingness to sanction and accept divorce as it’s unfolding).  Friends would rather help spouses nurse grievances, or offer a shoulder to cry on, than have tough conversation about fidelity and selflessness.  Divorce is so traumatic, so painful, that it can launch even middle-class couples into downward spirals of increased household costs, substance abuse, and depression.  Amongst your circle of friends, make a vow: You will do all you can to preserve, protect, and defend their marriages and families.

Fourth, invest yourself fully in individual lives.  Remember the rule: You can have a tiny amount of influence over a large number of people or a large amount of influence over a tiny amount of people.  What does that mean in the real world?  That means adoption.  That means foster parenting.  That means taking families under your wing and helping them (with gifts, not loans) as they struggle through hard times.  That means serving as a big brother or a big sister.  Invest in lives, don’t drive by them.  And when you invest, know this — your investment will be risky.  You’ll risk your family, your heart, and your money with no certain outcome, no guaranteed happy ending.

Fifth (and finally), do the rest.  In this category are all the things you do when a person typically thinks of “fighting poverty.”  Serve in a soup kitchen.  Donate canned goods.  Sponsor a child.  Fight for the right candidates and public policies.  Volunteer at a homeless shelter.  Do all that “change the world” stuff you see lionized on television and movies.  But be humble about it . . . because you won’t be making much of a difference to anyone.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”  (James 1:27)  Those words imply personal engagement, not mere advocacy, not drive-by service, and certainly not mere compassionate thoughts (or prayers).

We can argue all day long about politics, about progressivism or conservatism, and spew vitriol in comment boards (all in good fun, of course), but none of that is of the slightest real-world significance compared to the distress of the family in the pew behind you, the fatherless child you’re called to love, or the troubled kid you take the risk to mentor.

And one final note . . . I have far from perfectly walked the walk.  But as I see the unemployment figures — and as my own community has experienced factory closures and job losses — I repent of my failings and resolve to do better.

We simply don’t have a choice.

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Social Justice Begins at Home

July 1, 2011 By David French

Dear Christian parents,

I’ve got a deal for you. It’s simple: If you sign up for my program, there’s a roughly 80 percent chance that the man’s happiness will increase substantially. And women, there’s about a 50 percent chance you’ll be happier as well. Sounds good, right? After all, happiness can be tough to come by. How about a few less sleepless nights? A few more smiles? And what about some joy? I bet you could really go for some joy.

The cost? Oh yes, the cost. Nothing’s free, after all. Here’s the thing. If you join my program, your kids will likely become more depressed and anxious. They’ll have a much greater chance of being abused, living in poverty, and becoming addicts. That’s the cost. In short, I’m asking you to purchase your own happiness at the cost of your children’s happiness, not to mention their safety and mental health.

Deal?

Almost any self-respecting Christian parent would throw me out of their house. Could there be anything more obviously selfish? Can you imagine something that more perfectly contradicts Christ’s call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him?

Yet that’s the deal millions of Christian parents willingly choose every year and then defend zealously. That deal is called divorce.

For more than three decades, the American Christian Church has participated fully and completely in the institution of no-fault divorce. Sacred bonds formed before God — bonds that take two to form and two to live — can be severed at the whim of one. Even worse, they’re often severed even when Christian spouses are living fully immersed in the church culture. I’ve been in “accountability groups” that offer more empathy than accountability. I’ve seen counselors become puppet-masters for their emotionally vulnerable clients, marching them out of marriages the counselor subjectively views as dysfunctional. And I’ve read fashionable Christian bestsellers that offer such sweeping indictments of “judgment” in the church that they blur the distinction between judgment and mere reading comprehension.

After all, it was God who said He hates divorce. It’s His word that limits divorce to very narrow and explicit circumstances.

And yet, sadly, when Christians make this point (even lovingly and with full acknowledgment of our fallen natures), when they merely echo God’s condemnation of a practice that we know — beyond a shadow of a doubt — takes a fearful toll on children’s lives, they often face pure vitriol in response. We’re told to mind our own business, that we don’t understand the complexities of the situation, that we can’t possibly want the husband or wife to face the “hell” of life with their spouse.

But aren’t we otherwise very eager to proclaim truth when lives are being destroyed? Does anyone doubt the evils of drug addiction despite the complexities of its origin? Don’t we intervene dramatically to save friends who are alcoholics or addicts? We certainly and rightly condemn racism, knowing its horrific toll on our culture and on the individual human heart. But aren’t the roots of racism also complex? Is it really the case that within every racist is the beating heart of pure evil?

Throughout my Christian life, I’ve heard much talk of “social justice,” often defined as the desire to create a society that is more compassionate, helps the hurting, and lifts up the impoverished. Putting aside my serious qualms with the very concept of social justice (that’s the a subject for another column), I find it interesting that in most discussions of poverty and cultural decay, one rarely hears of the simplest and most obvious solution: marriage.

As I’ve noted before, 36.5 percent of single-parent, female-led households live in poverty. The poverty rate for married couples? A mere 6.4 percent. Want to protect children from abuse? An intact, mother-father family isthe safest place for a child to live. Want children to be better educated? Again, the intact family is the best place for a kid to be.

It turns out that social justice begins at home.

We can do better. We have done better. But it takes something more than giving your wounded friend a shoulder to cry on. It takes something more than counseling. It takes something more than acceptance and assurances of forgiveness. We’ve been trying those methods, and yet we press forward, selfishly, toward our own happiness — refusing to lay down our lives in that space that is most precious to us.

Church discipline might help. Peers and pastors with backbones might help. But at the end of the day the answer lies within the heart of the spouse, with awareness of his or her own brokenness and openness to the eternal truth of the Word. Fallen people living in a fallen world are often desperate for relief from their own choices and the anguish of their broken relationships. They cry out to God and to those closest to them for permission to leave, to break their covenant and seek the joy they feel they deserve.

Except in the narrowest of circumstances, God has already said “No.” Do we have the courage to hear that compassionate answer?

 

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Gay Marriage and the Triumph of Self Indulgence

July 1, 2011 By David French

n a way, it was far more discouraging to see the New York legislature pass a gay-marriage bill than it was to see the now-familiar rogue judicial declarations, like those in Massachusetts, California, and Iowa. While constitutionally preferable to judicial imposition, New York’s statute is far more culturally distressing, a symbol not of a judicial overreach but of a more fundamental cultural change. The democratic process (yes, I know there was horse-trading and money involved) worked, and the elected legislature of New York performed its constitutional function. And in so doing, they struck yet another blow for self-indulgence and for adult-focused self-actualization.

Gay marriage is the child of no-fault divorce, which was itself born of the sexual revolution. In a time when the hard-earned experience of two full generations of sexual experimentation have taught us unequivocally that the two-parent, mother-father household is our nation’s best bulwark against abuse, poverty, addiction, and criminality, we should be moving away from the notion that our culture and our lives are best-served by legally protecting sexual experimentation and tinkering with the institution of marriage. Instead, we have scrutinized the cultural toll and said, “More, please.” After all, the heart wants what it wants, and we shouldn’t be unfair in doling out the sexual goodies.

Gay marriage proponents speak the language of liberty, but so often one form of liberty (sexual liberty) is granted while other forms (free speech, religious freedom) are taken away. In the liberal definition of “diversity” there is room for many sexual practices but only one way of thinking. Thus, we now live in a world where the state attempts to force Catholic charities to place children in same-sex families, college students are punished for speaking against same-sex parenting, graduate students are thrown out of college for refusing to morally affirm homosexual sex, tax exemptions are denied when churches don’t make their property available for gay weddings, and social work licenses threatened merely because a school counselor supported a state marriage amendment. In each of these cases, enumerated constitutional liberties were threatened for the sake of protecting a state-approved idea — the idea that there should be no moral distinctions drawn between homosexual and heterosexual relationships.

When it comes to marriage, we know the institution that predates the state itself — the two-parent, mother-father household — is an enduring bulwark and building block of civilization of itself. We also know that experimentation with and deviation from that form has caused an enormous amount of national suffering. And yet millions of Americans celebrated New York’s latest marriage experiment. I fear that we’ll continue to reap the cultural whirlwind of our own selfishness.

(Originally posted in The Corner).

 

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