Obviously I'm being sarcastic.  You know, during the 20th Century, we have had the opportunity to see so many human predicaments that so perplex mankind, yet to the devout Christian with Bible knowledge, the predicament seems simply intuitively obvious.  Yes, the Christian has a distinct advantage over the secular unbeliever, because the Christian has the book with all the answers!

It never ceases to amaze me how mankind can continually refute and dismiss Biblical teaching, only to realize so long after making such a mistake, that the Bible was right all along.

Looks like we've done it again!  DIVORCE.

You've heard the statistics about divorce--here are a few:  1) More than half of all marriages that take place this year will end in divorce; 2) the large numbers of children who are raised without their own mother and father; and most particularly, 3) the fact that the two-parent, intact household with children is more and more becoming a phenomenon of the past, and not of the present.

If only mankind could have accepted God's Word at face value, and not have questioned the wisdom of the Bible.  God made clear the definition and the meaning of family, but mankind couldn't accept this message, and was determined to show that it was wrong, or at least simply outdated.

Who among us can stand up today and say that the world is better because of this questioning of the family structure by the people of this world?  In contrast, who among us can stand up today and say that the world is being traumatized by the destruction of the family?  Here are a few examples in the latter category, and amazingly, it comes through the mainstream media--Time Magazine: 

Should You Stay Together For The Kids? 
by Walter Kirn

Time Magazine
SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 13

For America's children of divorce--a million new ones every year--unfinished business is a way of life. For adults, divorce is a conclusion, but for children it's the beginning of uncertainty. Where will I live? Will I see my friends again? Will my mom's new boyfriend leave her too? Going back to the early '70s--the years that demographers mark as the beginning of a divorce boom that has receded only slightly despite three decades of hand wringing and worry--society has debated these children's predicament in much the same way that angry parents do: by arguing over the little ones' heads or quarreling out of earshot, behind closed doors. Whenever concerned adults talk seriously about what's best for the children of divorce, they seem to hold the discussion in a setting--a courtroom or legislature or university--where young folks aren't allowed.

That's changing. The children are grown now, and a number are speaking up, telling stories of pain that didn't go away the moment they turned 18 or even 40. A cluster of new books is fueling a backlash, not against divorce itself but against the notion that kids somehow coast through it. Stephanie Staal's The Love They Lost (Delacorte Press), written by a child of divorce, is part memoir and part generational survey, a melancholy volume about the search for love by kids who remember the loss of love too vividly. The Case for Marriage by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher (Doubleday) emphasizes the positive, arguing that even rocky marriages nourish children emotionally and practically. The most controversial book, comes from Judith Wallerstein, 78, a therapist and retired lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. In The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (Hyperion) she argues that the harm caused by divorce is graver and longer lasting than we suspected. Her work raises a question that some folks felt was settled back in the days of Love, American Style: Should parents stay together for the kids?

Listening to children from broken families is Wallerstein's lifework. For nearly three decades, in her current book and two previous ones, she has compiled and reflected on the stories of 131 children of divorce. Based on lengthy, in-depth interviews, the stories are seldom happy. Some are tragic. Almost all of them are as moving as good fiction. There's the story of Paula, who as a girl told Wallerstein, "I'm going to find a new mommy," and as a young woman--too young, it turned out--impulsively married a man she hardly knew. There's Billy, born with a heart defect, whose parents parted coolly and amicably but failed to provide for his pressing medical needs.

It's the rare academic who can make a reader cry. Maybe that's why, with each new installment, Wallerstein's study has created shock waves, shaping public opinion and even the law. Her attention-getting style has proved divisive. For experts in the field of family studies (who tend to quarrel at least as bitterly as the dysfunctional clans they analyze), she's a polarizing figure. To her admirers, this mother of three and grandmother of five, who has been married to the same man for 53 years, is a brave, compassionate voice in the wilderness. To her detractors, she's a melodramatic doomsayer, a crank.

What drew someone from such a stable background to the study of marital distress? At the end of the 1960s, Wallerstein, whose Ph.D. is in clinical psychology, moved from Topeka, Kans., in the ho-hum heartland, to swinging California.

"Divorce was almost unheard of in the Midwest," she recalls. Not so on the Gold Coast, the state had just passed its pioneering no-fault divorce law. Wallerstein took a job consulting at a large community mental-health center in Marin County just as the social dam began to crack. "We started to get complaints," she says, "from nursery school teachers and parents: 'Our children are having a very hard time. What should we do?'"

The prevailing view at the time, she says, was that divorce was no big deal for kids. So much for the power of positive thinking. "We began to get all these questions," Wallerstein remembers. "The children were sleepless. The children in the nursery school were aggressive. They were out of control." When Wallerstein hit the library for answers, she discovered there were none. The research hardly existed, so she decided to do her own. She had a hunch about what she would learn. "I saw a lot of children very upset," she says, "but I fully expected that it would be fleeting."

Her hunch was wrong. Paradise for kids from ruptured families wasn't easily regained. Once cast out of the domestic garden, kids dreamed of getting back in. The result more often than not was frustration and anxiety. Children of divorce suffer depression, learning difficulties and other psychological problems more frequently than those of intact families. Some of Wallerstein's colleagues, not to mention countless divorced parents, felt they were being guilt-tripped by a square. They didn't want to hear this somber news.

Now, decades later, some still don't want to hear her. For parents, her book's chief finding, to be sure, is hardly upbeat or very reassuring: children take a long time to get over divorce. Indeed, its most harmful and profound effects tend to show up as the children reach maturity and struggle to form their own adult relationships. They're gun-shy. The slightest conflict sends them running. Expecting disaster, they create disaster. "They look for love in strange places," Wallerstein says. "They make terrible errors of judgment in whom they choose."

Marcie Schwalm, 26, a Bloomington, Ill., legal secretary whose parents split when she was four, illustrates Wallerstein's thesis well. As a young woman she couldn't seem to stick with the same boyfriend. "I thought guys were for dating and for breaking up with a few weeks later," she says. "I would go into a relationship wondering how it was going to end." Finally, Marcie says, a college beau told her she had a problem. She's married now, and her feelings about divorce have a hard-line, 1950s tone: "Divorce is not something I am going to go through. I would do whatever it takes to keep the marriage together."

Kristina Herrndobler, 17, isn't so sure that harmony can be willed. Now a high school student in Benton, Ill., she too was four when her parents called it quits. She says she has no memories of the trauma, just an abiding skepticism about marriage and a resolve to settle for nothing less than the ideal man. "I don't want my kids to wind up in a single-parent situation," she says. "And I don't want to have kids with a man I don't want to be married to forever. I don't believe in the fairy tale. I hope it exists, but I really don't believe it does."

And therein lies another problem, according to Wallerstein: the belief, quite common in children of divorce, that marriage is either a fairy tale or nothing. These jittery, idealistic children tend to hold out for the perfect mate--only to find they have a very long wait. Worse, once they're convinced they've found him, they're often let down. High romantic expectations tend to give way, Wallerstein reports, to bitter disillusionments. Children from broken families tend to marry later, yet divorce more often than those from intact homes.

And what about children raised from the start by single moms? Last month, TIME ran a story about the challenges faced by single women having children of their own. But in all the coverage about how those women are coping, the impact on the kids is sometimes underplayed--and their issues are not that different from those of kids from divorced households. "Some studies have directly compared children who were raised by mothers who are continuously single with mothers who went through a divorce," says Amato. "In general, the outcomes for children seem to be pretty similar. It appears to increase the risk for some types of problems: in conduct, in school, in social relations. Neither one appears to be optimal for children."  Besides her conclusions on children's long-term prospects following divorce, Wallerstein makes another major point in her book--one that may result in talk-show fistfights. Here it is: children don't need their parents to like each other. They don't even need them to be especially civil. They need them to stay together, for better or worse. (Paging Dr. Laura!) This imperative comes with asterisks, of course, but fewer than one might think. Physical abuse, substance addiction and other severe pathologies cannot be tolerated in any home. Absent these, however, Wallerstein stands firm: a lousy marriage, at least where the children's welfare is concerned, beats a great divorce.

. . . In observing what goes wrong for kids when their folks decide to split, Wallerstein is nothing if not practical. It's not just the absence of positive role models that bothers her; it's the depleted bank accounts, the disrupted play- group schedules, the frozen dinners. Parents simply parent better, she's found, when there are two of them. Do kids want peace and harmony at home? Of course. Still, they'll settle for hot meals.

. . . [From] David Blankenhorn, Affiliate president of the Institute for Program American Values. "There was a sense in the '70s especially, and even into the '80s, that the impact of divorce on children was like catching a cold: they would suffer for a while and then bounce back," he says. "More than anyone else in the country, Judith Wallerstein has shown that that's not what happens." Fine, but does this oblige couples to muddle through misery so that Johnny won't fire up a joint someday or dump his girlfriend out of insecurity? Blankenhorn answers with the sort of certainty one expects from a man with his imposing title. "If the question is, If unhappily married parents stay together for the sake of their kids, will that decision benefit their children?, the answer is yes."

Does Wallerstein's work offer any hope or guidance to parents who are already divorced? Quite a bit, actually. For such parents, Wallerstein offers the following advice; First, stay strong. The child should be assured that she is not suddenly responsible for her parents' emotional well-being. Two, provide continuity for the child, maintaining her usual schedule of activities. Try to keep her in the same playgroup, the same milieu, among familiar faces and accustomed scenes. Lastly, don't let your own search for new love preoccupy you at the child's expense.

COPYRIGHT © 2000 TIME INC.

If you've never experienced the parlor game that demonstrates the power of exponential growth, here's the exercise:  All I ask of you is to loan a penny to me tomorrow, and each day thereafter I'd ask that you double the previous day's loan to me.  So, on day 1 you give me a penny, on day 2 you give me two cents, and so on.  All I ask is that you continue this process for just one month.  Guess what, after thirty-one days, you will have loaned me exactly $10,737,418  Hard to believe, uh?  Just do the math (the easy way is 2 cents raised to the 30th power).

Yes, that's the significance of exponential growth.  And in the case of divorce, it is absolutely devastating. 

Fear Of Falling
by Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis and Sandra Blakeslee

A sense that love is doomed often haunts the offspring of divorce as they grow up and try to build relationships of their own, says a controversial new book based on a 25-year study of 131 children.

Time Magazine
SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 13

When most people hear the word divorce, they think it means one failed marriage. The child of divorce is thought to experience one huge loss of the intact family, after which stability and a second, happier marriage comes along. But this is not what happens to most children of divorce. They experience not one, not two, but many more losses as their parents go in search of new lovers or partners. Each of these throws the child's life into turmoil and brings back painful reminders of the first loss.

Children observe their parents' courtships with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. For adolescents, the erotic stimulation of seeing their parents with changing partners can be difficult to contain. Several young teenage girls in the study began their own sexual activity when they observed a parent's involvement in a passionate affair. Children watch their parents' lovers with everything from love to resentment, hoping for some clue about the future. They participate actively as helper, critic and audience. They are not afraid to intervene. One mother returning home from a date found her school-age children asleep in her bed. Since they'd told her earlier that they didn't like her boyfriend, she took the hint. Many new lovers are attentive to the children, regularly bringing little gifts. But even the most charming lovers can disappear overnight. Second marriages with children are much more likely to end in divorce than first marriages.

What prompts so many children of divorce to rush into a cohabitation or early marriage with as much forethought as buying a new pair of shoes? Answers lie in the ghosts that rise to haunt them as they enter young adulthood. They live in fear that they will repeat their parents' history, hardly daring to hope that they can do better. Dating and courtship raise their hopes of being loved sky-high--but also their fears of being hurt and rejected. This amalgam of fear and loneliness can lead to multiple affairs, hasty marriages, early divorce, and--if no take-home lessons are gleaned from it all--a second and third round of the same.

Here's how it works: at the threshold of young adulthood, relationships move center stage. But for many that stage is barren of good memories of how an adult man and woman can live together in a loving relationship. The psychological scaffolding they need to construct a happy marriage has been badly damaged by the two people they depended on while growing up. Children learn all kinds of lessons at their parents' knees from the time they are born to the time they leave home. There is no more exciting image to the child than the frame that includes Mom and Dad kissing, fighting, conferring, frowning, crying, yelling or hugging. These thousand-and-one images are internalized, and they form the template for the child's view of how men and women treat each other, how parents and children communicate, how brothers and sisters get along.

Unlike children from intact families, children of divorce in our study spoke very little about their parents' interaction. Parents who divorce may think of their decision to end the marriage as wise, courageous and the best remedy for their unhappiness--indeed, it may be so--but for the child the divorce carries one meaning: the parents have failed at one of the central tasks of adulthood. Together and separately, they failed to maintain the marriage. This failure shapes the child's inner template of self and family. If they failed, I can fail too. And if, as happens so frequently, the child observes more failed relationships in the years after divorce, the conclusion is simple. I have never seen a man and a woman together on the same beam. Failure is inevitable.

. . . compared with children from intact families, children of divorce follow a different trajectory for growing up. It takes them longer. Their adolescence is protracted and their entry into adulthood is delayed. Children of divorce need more time to grow up because they have to accomplish more: they must simultaneously let go of the past and create mental models for where they are headed, carving their own way. Those who succeed deserve gold medals for integrity and perseverance. Having rejected their parents as role models, they have to invent who they want to be and what they want to achieve in adult life. This is far beyond what most adolescents are expected to achieve.

Children of divorce are held back from adulthood because the vision of it is so frightening. The fact that [some examples of children from divorce are] able to turn their lives around is very good news for all of us who have been worried about the long-term effects of divorce on children. It sometimes took many years and several failed relationships, but close to half of the women and over a third of the men in our study were finally able to create a new template with themselves in starring roles. They did it the hard way--by learning from their own experience. They got hurt, kept going, and tried again. Some had relatives, especially grandparents, who loved them and provided close-up role models. Some had childhood memories from before the divorce that gave them hope and self-confidence. Only a few had mentors, but when they came along they were greatly appreciated. One young man told me, "My boss has been like a father to me, the father that I always wanted and never had." Men and women alike were especially grateful to lovers who stood by them and insisted that they stick around for the long haul. Finally, a third of the men and women in our study sought professional help from therapists and found that they could establish a trusting relationship with another person and use it to get at the roots of their difficulties.

We now come to a final, critical question. What values does this generation hold regarding marriage and divorce? Their vote is clear. Despite their firsthand experience of seeing how marriages can fail, they sincerely want lasting, faithful relationships. No single adult in this study accepts the notion that marriage is going to wither away. They want stability and a different life for their children. They want to do things better than their parents.

COPYRIGHT © 2000 TIME INC.

Is Divorce Getting a Bum Rap?
by Katha Pollitt

Time Magazine
SEPTEMBER 25, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 13

Are Americans a nation of frivolous divorcers who selfishly pursue the bluebird of happiness, oblivious to their children's needs? Divorce opponents like Judith Wallerstein seem to think most parents see divorce as a marvelous opportunity for the whole family. How immature do they think people are? All over America, unhappy spouses lie awake at night wondering if they and their kids can afford divorce--financially, socially, emotionally. Where will they live, how will they pay the bills, will the kids fall apart, will there be a custody battle, what will their families say? The very fact that so many people leave their marriage for a future with so many pitfalls proves that divorce is anything but a whim.  Most people I know who split up (not to mention my ex and me) spent years working up to it.

In her new book, Wallerstein argues that children don't care if their parents are happy--they just want the stability of a two-parent household, without which they would later flail through adulthood and have a hard time forming good relationships. . . . What if she had spent as much time studying children whose parents had terrible marriages but stayed together for the kids? How many 35-year-old "children" would be blaming their problems on the nights they hid in their rooms while Mom and Dad screamed at each other in the kitchen? Wallerstein points out that many children of divorce feel overly responsible for their parents' happiness. But what about the burden of knowing that one or both of your parents endured years of misery--for you?

As a matter of fact, we know the answer to that question. The baby boomers, who helped divorce become mainstream, were the products of exactly the kind of marriages the anti-divorcers approve of--the child-centered unions of the 1950s, when parents, especially Mom, sacrificed themselves on the altar of family values and suburban respectability. To today's anti-divorcers those may seem like "good enough" marriages--husband and wife rubbing along for the sake of the children. The kids who lived with the silence and contempt said no thank you.

America doesn't need more "good enough" marriages full of depressed and bitter people. Nor does it need more pundits blaming women for destroying "the family" with what are, after all, reasonable demands for equality and self-development. We need to acknowledge that there are lots of different ways to raise competent and well-adjusted children, which--as, according to virtually every family researcher who has worked with larger and more representative samples than Wallerstein's tiny handful--the vast majority of kids of divorce turn out to be. We've learned a lot about how to divorce since 1971. When Mom has enough money and Dad stays connected, when parents stay civil and don't bad-mouth each other, kids do all right. The "good enough" divorce--why isn't that ever the cover story?

COPYRIGHT © 2000 TIME INC.

What is being preached in God's name?!  Well, I would say that it could reasonably be termed as The Religion of SELF:  self-justification, self-sanctification, self-glorification, self-preservation, and self-centeredness. 

1 Timothy 1:8-11 (from The New International Version)

⁸ We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.  ⁹ We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers,  ¹⁰ for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers--and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine  ¹¹ that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

¹ The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.  ² Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. ³ They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth.

¹² . . . set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. ¹³ Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.  ¹⁴ Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.  ¹⁵ Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. ¹⁶ Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

¹² In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,  ¹³ while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. ¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

¹ In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:  ² Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. ³ For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴ They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵ But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Sure, you may say that hindsight is 20/20 and that we have no cause for criticizing church leaders in the past for not recognizing that divorce would be so devastating to our society.  But come on, now.  Shouldn't we all take some responsibility for having dismissed the Bible? 

The Bible clearly teaches the sanctity of marriage, and God's intention for the permanence of the covenant between the man and the woman.  Even though The Word points toward exceptions that require interpretation, the interpretation is NOT one that is rendered by comparison to current culture, but rather it is an interpretation of Scripture in light of Scripture.

It's time we (the Church) take some responsibility for being the Bible believers that we are, and back away from the fallen human culture, and set our sights on God's Word, when it comes to divorce. 

Let me close this writing with God's Word from 1 Corinthians chapter 5 as preached this week in a church I attended that was not afraid to challenge the modern culture.

It is God's business, not ours, to judge those outside the church, but it is our responsibility to discipline disobedient believers who persist in sinful lifestyles.  God's Word demands of us to call out to our sinful brother and judge his behavior, but not for the purpose of trying to tear him or the church down, but rather for the purpose of building the church UP!  If, after the Biblical process for meeting with the sinful brother, he does not confess and repent of his sin, then we must care for him by grieving over his sin and by removing him from the church so that Satan can winnow him and so that God can win over him.  And what of us?  We must replace pride, malice, and wickedness with humility, sincerity and truth because Christ was sacrificed for us.

The central idea of this portion of Paul's letter to the Corinthians is that we must repent of our prideful tolerance of sinful lifestyles within the church by disassociating ourselves from worldly ones who claim to be Christians.  Paul tells us that we must remove ourselves from immoral people in the church, but NOT from being witnesses to immoral people in the world.