Social Repercussions

In the Tuesday Briefing this week (a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview), Al Mohler highlights several important and stunning social repercussions that are negatively impacting our American life and culture. He makes this comment about the findings he reports: “This development is entirely new in human history. Nothing like this has happened in the past. Nothing like this could have happened in the past.”
 
Here’s a few of the key data points he shares and comments on: 

• The more wealthy a man is, the more likely he is to be married. The more wealthy a woman is, the less likely she is to be married. 

• The more wealthy a man is, the more likely he is to be a father. The more wealthy a woman is, the less likely she is to be a mother. 

• Christians understand that the family is the center of human civilization and marriage and the family are the foundation of the entire culture. 

• The fall-off in marriage and the fall-off in the birthrate is a very significant development and not a good one morally and socially. 

Notice some of the factors in these significant and consequential changes that Mohler cites: the modern industrial age that encourages more and more men and women to be in the workforce, fewer stay-at-home mothers who are viewed as unproductive, falling birthrate which produces fewer future workers, a declining family wage as women entered the workforce that had historically been given to men as the primary breadwinners, the disruptions of the Depression, WWII, the vast expansion of the economy, the shifting job market related to the helping professions, the rise of the knowledge class (jobs that require a college education and the disparity of educated men and women).
 
There is a disparity in all this: Men are often ready to marry women who do not bring economic benefits to the marriage, but women tend to look for a man who does not have less of a socio-economic status than they do according to the census data.
 
The consequences of these changes could well doom human civilization itself and this is a very alarming pattern according to Dr. Mohler.
 
Are these trends toward the liberation from marriage and parenting good for our life and society? Of course not (unless God has called you to remain single), and it once again points to the wisdom of God who designed marriage and family as the foundation of human civilization.
 
I encourage you either to listen to or read The Briefing (November 28th).
 
Worldviews and our corresponding decisions have consequences.
 
Pastor Jeff