Fighting the Real Threat to Family Values

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

All rights reserved

About 10 years ago a prominent Evangelical leader made a statement that was long overdue. He told his audience that the biggest threat to the family today is not homosexuality but divorce. In the midst of our resistance to the growing acceptance of the gay lifestyle we have ignored a much greater danger. As the Evangelical divorce rate in America has soared in recent years many churches have failed to recognize the more urgent priority of reinforcing marriages.

According to the latest polls the percentage of Christian marriages ending in divorce is around 50%. It is important to note that these polls also include second marriages ending, so they are not indicative of the failure rate of first marriages alone. The numbers would be considerably lower Vis a Vis the secular statistics if only first marriages were included. The rate for Evangelicals would then be closer to 25%. But even these lower numbers leave us with the sobering realization that far too many Christian families are being torn apart.

The most tragic result of divorce is its effect on children. Studies have shown that children who come from broken homes are more likely to suffer depression, anxiety and learning disorders. They also tend to be more prone to engaging in drinking, drug use and illicit sex. The alienation and despair that is increasingly common among adolescents shadows the increase in divorces. The bottom line is that we are badly damaging our kids insuring, among other things, that their own attempts to bond in life-long unions will likely be even more problematic than our own.

With just the stark evidence of what failed marriages produce in our children alone one might think that churches would be doing everything in their power to insure that Christian unions survive. No doubt some are and for that they should be commended and emulated, but unfortunately what seems to be happening instead in too much of the Evangelical subculture is a growing tolerance of divorce. The stigma of a failed marriage is no longer as powerful a deterrent as it was in years past. These days’ marriages ending among Christians, is more often labeled “tragic” than sinful. Such a value-neutral term seems a bit dissembling for a people whose God clearly states that He hates divorce.

It should never be an easy thing for a believing couple to jointly dissolve a union whose foundation rests on vows they have made to one another before God. To start with the Church needs to support the few recent secular legal initiatives designed to make it more difficult to divorce. Pre-marital counseling should be vigorous, in depth, and occur over a longer period of time then is sometimes the case today. Divorce outside the scriptural guidelines regarding unrepentant adultery or abandonment by an unbelieving spouse should be strongly and unapologetically spoken against from the pulpit and not just occasionally. Finally husbands and wives who plan to ignore pastoral counsel and end their marriages for un-biblical reasons should know beforehand that their church will biblically discipline them if they choose to sin in this way.

If this sounds overly stern to some ears it should be remembered that for most of the history of Christianity divorce has been very strongly discouraged. Its one thing to single-out already divorced people for special censure and another to do every thing possible to discourage them from becoming divorcees in the first place. For centuries there was a healthy fear of both the spiritual and temporal consequences of ending a marriage. The fact is that the advent of a higher tolerance for divorce during recent years is not a sign of a progressive church but a regressive one. We might do well to remember that 2000 years ago Jesus Christ Himself roundly condemned a religion that had made divorce easy to justify and obtain. That fact alone should give pause to many a married believer considering his or her options.