By Tom Wacaster
Sociologists have been warning us for more than six decades now of the collapsing family structure in the western world, and especially the United States. Those warnings seem to have either been discounted as nothing more than alarmists hollering doom and gloom for no legitimate reason, or the warnings were ignored altogether. I have been preaching for a little more than four of those decades and even with my limited involvement in family counseling I can affirm that those warnings were not from a chicken-little, “sky is falling” mind set. When I was living in Decatur, Texas in the mid 1980’s the divorce rate in America officially hit 50%, and a little research in the Wise County library confirmed that in that county for the year 1988 there were 2 divorces for every marriage. That does not mean that the rate had reached 66%; it was more a reflection on the shrinking desire on the part of couples to wed for one reason or another. When the United States Census Bureau released its figures for 1990 the number of people cohabitating had surpassed those actually getting married for the first time in American history. I think that was also the first year the Census Bureau no longer had a box in their census form for someone to check “head of family.”
Now let me back up five decades to May 22, 1964. Six months earlier John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and Lyndon Johnson was now serving out the last year or so of Kennedy’s presidency. In a commencement at the University of Michigan, President Johnson set forth a grandiose dream of a “Great Society.” He had only four months earlier declared the “war on poverty” in his first State of the Union address, perhaps the first leg in his journey toward his dream of a utopian state where poverty, racial injustice, and equality for all would become a part of the American dream with the assistance of a growing and more powerful government. In his own words, that “was just the beginning.” Nicholas Eberstadt summed up Johnson’s dream of a Great Society in a recent article in the Weekly Standard:
The Great Society proposed to bring about wholesale renewal of our cities, beautification of our natural surroundings, vitalization of our educational system. All this, and much more—and the solutions to the many obstacles encountered in this great endeavor, we were told, would assuredly be found, since this undertaking would “assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America” [quoting Johnson, TW].
Gradually America would turn more toward human wisdom and turn less to God’s word for their guidance in matters pertaining to morals and family responsibility. It was not long before a steady stream soon developed out of which social programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, poverty assistance, et al soon became the norm, and the entitlement mentality soon captured the imagination of this generation. That trickle became a title wave with the introduction of a national health care program in the form of the Affordable Healthcare Act. It seems that there is no end to the utopian state that our politicians now envision.
I would be tempted to write several articles on the complete failure of such a mentality as seen in the past five decades, but I will refrain from that at least for now. The declared “war on poverty” that cracked open the door for the Great Society concept has only made matters worse. Percentage wise, and in a hard cold numbers as well, there are more people living in poverty today than in 1966. Other statistics in various areas demonstrate the complete and utter failure of this attempt, or any attempt, to build a utopia here on earth. But nowhere is the damage of such thinking more evident than in the harm it has done to our families here in America. I want to share some statistics with you from that same Weekly Standard issue. Over the past couple of decades I have come across little bits of information as to what is happening to our families in America, but these figures are staggering. In the 1950’s the norm for childbearing and child rearing was the married, two-parent household. As late as 1963 more than 93% of American’ babies were from that two-parent arrangement. During the last five decades, after the implementation of the Great Society, out of wedlock births have skyrocketed. Divorce and separation soared, and the “single mom” and “single dad” family arrangement has become a way of life in many areas. From 1965 to 1990 out of wedlock births jumped from 7.7% to 28%. Among African Americans it stood at 40%, and in some areas of our country it was a staggering 60%. But it would get worse. From 1990 to 2012 the percentage of out of wedlock births among African Americans jumped to 72% - that’s 7 out of ten children born out of wedlock. A 1990 Census Bureau study reported that only 57% of children were living with both of their biological parents—that’s almost half of all the children in the U.S. Among Hispanics the rate of out of wedlock births now stands at more than 30%. Among whites the rate hit an all time high in 2013 of 29% - that’s ten times the figures in the mid 1960’s when the Great Society was instituted.
The last few years has seen a broad acceptance of homosexuality in America and around the world, and an increase in states legitimizing homosexual marriages. This will only make matters worse. Yesterday (Monday, May 12th) it was reported that Defense Secretary Hagel is now entertaining allowing transsexuals into our military, just another step toward the complete destruction of God’s desired arrangement for an orderly and godly society. Indeed, the trickle gave way to a steady stream, then to a title wave of ungodliness. We are now in a free fall into the abyss of absolute social chaos.
When we were doing mission work in Ukraine in the late 90’s we had the opportunity to travel to Odessa on the Black Sea. A good sister in Christ had invited us to come visit her. I asked her on that occasion why the Russian people were so open to the gospel. Her response was: “When you are flat on your back, there is no way to look but up.” Perhaps it will take the complete collapse of our society before this generation will start looking “up” for the solution to their problems. A better life will not be found in a Great Society, or any other kind of utopia on earth. The only utopia God ever promised us is that which awaits those souls who are willing to submit to His divine will in this life. Anything else is a pipe dream that will result in failure and disappointment.
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