What a sexist and horrible ad right? The eyes of Feminists are rolling. This classic ad is one that is often used to attack our supposed backward and sexist past as a nation. But if we believe the Bible is the Word of God – is this really a wrong ad?
Is wrong for a man to want his wife to be pretty,pregnant and to be happy about her duties in the home according to God’s Word? Maybe according to our modern norms it is – but maybe, just maybe, our modern norms are completely out of line with God’s design for man and woman.
When I bought a new washer and dryer for my wife 5 years ago with our new house I proudly said that I bought a new washer and dryer for her.
Now my wife was raised in a moderately feminist home, so she did not take too kindly to my statement, but it was a learning experience for her. I pointed out to her, than in no way was I saying that all she could do was laundry, as my wife is a very intelligent woman. But said to her that while I have no problem helping around the house I believe that God’s Word shows the home and the domestic work of the home is the woman’s domain, and instead of her being insulted by such a comment, she ought to be proud that I wanted her to have the best equipment to do what God had tasked her with.
Five years later, my wife knows that I have made good on my word. There have been many weeks and months that my wife was sick or had health problems, or surgeries where I took care of 100% of the laundry, dishes and cooking, and it was my honor to do so in her time of need.
I still help with some loads of laundry here and there as I see the need arise, but at the end of the day I believe my wife is fulfilling one the purposes for which God created her each and every time she does a simple load of laundry. It is not an insult, it is an honor, and more if more women were accept God’s will, and God’s design for their lives, they would happily take pride in their task of taking care of their families clothing needs.
Biblical Gender Roles 
God didn’t create gender roles–society did. Perpetuating the rigid gender roles and expecting women to be a certain way has nothing to do with God; it’s just showing a resistance to change. If a couple gets married, they should split up chores the way they want. Chores are not dictated to a specific gender. A husband and wife could split up chores equally if they want. It’s up to the couple. But a husband telling his wife she should be happy to do most of the housework the majority of the time? That’s just unfair and unequal. Probably, yes, verging towards sexist. A man should not just assume a woman will be doing all of his housework because she is a woman. That’s just lazy on the part of the man. Women have jobs, too, and so it makes more sense for a couple to split up chores more equally.
Rebecca,
Thanks for your comments. You rightly describe the way that many modern Americans(and others from western nations) feel about gender roles, that they are silly and unnecessary. But for those of us who believe that God created the world, and specifically created man and woman to play out certain roles in his creation, the situation is very different.
I encourage you to look at my first article in these series for the Scripture passages that allude to God’s purpose for women.
I believe that since the Bible was written thousands of years before society created gender roles, I don’t think gender roles have much to do with the Bible. People can be Christian and be equal. A woman doing things within her society’s gender roles doesn’t make her any more of a good Christian than a woman who believes that her husband can pitch in and do chores, too. I believe that in today’s world, equality is more important than gender roles. Gender roles are only still around because society wants to keep men and women separate.
Rebecca,
The Bible was not written before Gender Roles were made – it made gender roles. Have you read Genesis chapters 1,2 & 3? Have you read Proverbs 31? Have you read the New Testament books? There are not only examples of gender roles, but commands regarding gender roles. Respectfully, society did not create Gender Roles, God did, and they were written in his Word, the Bible.
I can understand that different people have different views on this, but how do you explain passages that say Eve was created as Adam’s helpmeet, and passages that call women to care for their homes and their children and to obedience to their husbands?
Were the people living in those times not a part of society? I take the passage of Adam and Eve as the Bible’s understanding of the first man and woman. It does not mean that it should dictate a woman’s role in society today. Just because the Bible claims that the woman was created “second” does not mean she is “second” today, or that she should only perform certain tasks in order to be a good Christian. A woman doesn’t have to obey a man. That’s slavery, not marriage. Marriage is supposed to be about love, not a man’s ownership of a woman.
Rebecca,
Please give me your interpretation of each of these passages of Scripture:
Passage #1:
Verse 23 says the husband is “the head of the wife”, and then in verse 24 it describes what the headship looks like – as the church is subject to Christ, so wives are to be to their husbands in everything. How do you interpret this passage from Ephesians?
Passage #2:
Rebecca in Ephesians 5 – we see that the churches submission(obedience) to Christ is the model given to wives for their relationship with their husbands, and here in I Peter 3 women are given are another example to model their behavior off of – Sarah, Abraham’s wife. Sarah was not a perfect woman, but the pattern of her life was one of submission and obedience to her husband. This passage tells us that she is an example for Christian wives when she obeyed her husband and called him Lord(kurios) – which literally means “master or owner”.
What is your interpretation of this passage from I Peter 3?
Passage #3
In many passages of Scripture, including of the most famous passages on what it means to be a Godly a wife, the word we translate as “husband” in English is literally the Hebrew word for “owner/master”:
“An excellent wife, who can find?
For her worth is far above jewels.
The heart of her husband [BAAL (Master/Owner)] trusts in her..” – Proverbs 31:10-11(NASB)
What is your interpretation of this wording choice the Bible uses? This same word “BAAL” is used of a master with his servants and slaves in other Biblical passages.
Passage #4
“That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
Titus 2:4-6(KJV)
The phrase here for “keepers at home” is a translation of the Greek word “oikourous” – which literally means a “house keeper” or “one who watches over the affairs of the house”. In Biblical times – it was well understood that this was a primary duty of every woman, to watch over the affairs of her home as her husband was outside the home about his work.
How do you interpret this passage?
And lastly – let me address your comments on the Genesis account. It is not just that God created Adam first, or that God gave Adam dominion over the garden and asked him to name the animals before Eve was ever made, it is the fact that God literally created Eve as Adam’s “helper”. She was created to help him, he was not created to help her.
Here is the final Bible passage I would like your interpretation of:
What is your interpretation of the above passage?
So do these passages say a woman does in fact have to obey a man? Or do they say something different in your view? I agree that love is a central part of marriage, but it is not the only part. Another essential ingredient of marriage is duty. The husband and wife were made to have distinct and different roles toward each other, with each being called to exercise their roles in love. Then you must remember that the Bible word for Love in marriage(as in Ephesians 5) is not the “gooy, emotional” type of love modern folks think it is. Agape(with is the greek word for love used there), is an love based on commitment, duty, and not based in emotion. There is another word for love that is emotional(phileo), which is not used in Ephesians 5.
Rebecca – I am not trying to attack you or your beliefs, but only to see if maybe you might consider that what God says about love and marriage is very different than the culture you have been brought up in. I hope that even if you don’t respond to these passages, that you will privately mediate upon them, and ask God what they mean. I know it is hard to look beyond our cultural norms and values, but as Christians that is what we are called to do.
I believe that not only is it unrealistic to interpret the Bible literally, but it can also be dangerous. God also commanded mass killings of non believers. What about that? Or the people in biblical times who stoned to death anyone they had a problem with?
Interesting these passages as “women should do this!” are only helping to perpetuate abuse and oppression against women. Women, according to people who like to take these passages literally, believe women should be virginal, quiet, and submissive to all men. Not only does that show their belief that men are somehow superior, but it also allows these people that they can treat women however they want because they don’t believe women should be able to stand up for themselves because they believe women should “submit” to men.
Think about it: these are the exact same arguments that cultures have in which women are regularly raped, abused, married off to older men, and sold into sex trafficking. How is it in any way healthy to teach women that they should be submissive and allow a man to have control over them? It’s horrifically dangerous. It’s my belief that God would not have wanted men to perpetuate this twisted idea that women should be controlled by men.
It’s just interesting to me that men have far less expectations, yet they harp on women constantly about what they believe women should do for them to make men’s lives easier. Hm.
Rebecca,
I believe that while there are symbolic parts of Scripture(like in some prophetic passages) that unless the context is symbolism, we need to take the Scriptures literally. If as a Christian I can pick and choose what parts of the Bible are literal and apply, and what does not then I have no foundation – I can literally make my own religion.
Now I when we come to the Bible, we have to realize that the Bible interprets itself, and there were different eras(or dispensations, covenants). The Bible tells us when we pass from set of rules to another. For instance, now that we are under the new covenant, we are no longer under all the laws of the Books of Moses, because those were given to nation as a theocracy. But we can still learn a lot of principles from the Old Testament.
As far as God ordering the killing of unbelievers, these were wicked nations with wicked practices. There are many things in the Old and New Testament that is hard for us to understand in our modern time. But we have a choice – we can reject the Bible, or reject certain parts of the Bible, or accept the whole Bible as God’s Word. I and many Bible believing Christians around the world choose to accept the whole Bible.
And Yes Rebecca – I fully admit – there are some consequences to accepting the whole Bible, and not just the parts we like. It means that we accept the fact that what we may think is moral or right, or what we think is immoral or wrong may be different than what God thinks. It means we accept that whatever God does or commands in the Bible is moral and just, despite our feelings.
As far as stoning people to death, God commanded people to be stoned to death for sin, not just because people had some problem with them.
If we take the Bible literally, then we see that yes God created woman for man, and that a wife is to be obedient and submissive to her husband. However, the Bible does not say women cannot speak. In fact in Proverbs it says the virtuous wife speaks in wisdom(Proverbs 26), but she always speaks her wisdom in a loving way. When you combine all the passages that talk about a woman’s speech, it is not that she cannot speak, it is how and when. In the Bible a woman is not usurp authority over men, but if she has an issue she can respectfully give her opinion and speak it with her husband. Older women are also commanded in Scripture to teach wisdom to younger women, and mothers are commanded to teach their children. So to say a woman can never speak, would be unbiblical. Its all about time and place, and method.
The Bible does not condone the abuse of women, and actually if a man did not provide food clothing and sex to his wife he had to free her. If he caused her bodily harm like knocking her tooth out or breaking a bone he had to free her.
Men are commanded to in Ephesians 5 to love their wives as their own body, and to care for their needs and protect them.
In I Peter men are commanded to honor their wives, and Proverbs 31 shows a husband praising his wife for all she does for his household in the course of her domestic duties.
So teaching that women need to be submissive and obedient to their husbands, and see themselves as made for their husbands – does not mean they can be treated in disrespectful and abusive ways. Have some Christian men, under the guise of Biblical headship, abused their wives, dishonored and disrespected their wives? Absolutely! And they were and are wrong for that, and they will answer to God for that abuse.
You seem to think that submission of women automatically leads to abuse, but there are millions of men around that world where they and their wives believe in God’s design for marriage and they have peaceful and loving marriages.
So let me turn this around for you. Since modern society has embraced the concept that women no longer need to submit to their husbands, marriage has crumbled over the last century. We now have have more than 50 percent divorce rate for first marriages, and 70 percent of those are filed by women. Marriage is no longer seen as life long commitment, but is more like high school fling, when you don’t feel it anymore, you move on. We have children being split between homes, and it also affects the economy because now a child has to be provided for in two homes. And the 50 percent divorce rate in this country is actually higher, when you consider that more people are choosing to live together than get married.
Western society has embraced your idea of marriage – that is completely based on feelings(romantic love) and not based on roles, duty and commitment. We have been able to view the results over the last half century, and I can confidently say that women not submitting to their husbands, and their role in the home as mothers, and wives has lead to the breakdown of the family, higher crime rates and society more dependent on government because the family unit has crumbled.
Yes, you can make your own religion. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of religions that exist in the world. Religions are created, after all. So you are in fact correct in saying that you can create your own religion. Anyone can.
The Bible’s rules for women suppresses them. It dictates, like you said, “how and when” they speak. That is oppression, plain and simple. Men can speak freely, as often as they like, but women have rules of when and how? That’s oppression of the female gender. It’s allowing men to have power over women.
In the Bible, divorce is a sin in nearly all forms. So in this day and age, would it be “sinful” for a woman to divorce her emotionally or verbally abusive husband? Or to divorce him if he cheated? Or was gambling away all of their money? If you take the Bible literally, it causes dangerous rules and expectations for women. Teaching women that they cannot divorce their husbands in these circumstances is dangerous, unrealistic, and just plain outrageous.
Divorce is not a sin. Divorce is a sin of a couple having problems and getting out of their marriages. Some divorce because of examples I listed above. Some people get divorced because of physical abuse. Even because of debt. The majority of fights within a marriage are because of finances.
Who cares if women divorce their husbands? If a woman is abusive towards her husband, the husband can divorce his wife. It’s the EXACT same situation if a husband is abusing his wife. The wife can get a divorce if she chooses. There is no double standard, which is what these religious gender roles imply.
Why do people choose to live together before marriage? Because of the economy. Marriage is expensive. People are staying in school longer, have more student loan debts, and it may take longer for couples to have stable careers. So no, people don’t always go to high school, find a suitable partner, and get married straight out of high school and live happily ever after. That’s just not how life works, and it would be naive to think so.
When you claim that women should be “submitting” to their “roles” of mothers and wives, you’re forgetting a couple things. Not all women want to get married (just like not all men want to get married), and not everyone wants kids, either. Also, not all people are physically able to have children, anyway. So if you honestly think that a “woman’s role” boils down to if she wants to get married and if she is physically able to have kids and uses that capability, then that is a narrow belief of what women are. Those things should not be a woman’s worth. That is disrespectful to women everywhere.
Crime has absolutely no correlation to women not getting married or having kids. None whatsoever. That’s just making an illogical leap. Are you saying women are committing robberies, gang rape, shooting rampages, drug and sex trafficking crimes? Because I don’t know if you’ve watched the news, but the vast majority of people who commit those crimes are MEN.
Rebecca,
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, been a busy couple of days.
While it is true that men all over the world have invented their own religions, that does not mean they are all equally true.
These are the big questions of life:
1. Is there a God
2. If there is a God, does he have rules for us to live by, or does he not care what we do?
3. If there is a God, and he did tell us about himself, and his design for our lives, then whom did he tell it to?(Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus…)
4. If there is a God, and he does have rules for us to live by, then is there any punishment in some afterlife for breaking these rules?
Now many parts of the Bible, from a historical perspective, can be corroborated by other historical sources of those times, while the miracles and some other things one would have to take on faith. But this would be no different than the historical parts of the Koran or other holy books, as far history goes.
I know from History that Moses did in fact live, that the Jews really were slaves in Egypt, the wars that took place and Israel’s captivity from various nations. I know from Roman historians that a man named Jesus who had a great following(and claimed to be King of the Jews), and was crucified by his own people did exist. This things are historical fact, by any measure of how we establish ancient history.
So then that brings me to issue of faith. I choose to believe by faith, that the miracles of the Bible are real, that God spoke through the prophets of the Bible, and Jesus was not just a man, and prophet, but that he was indeed God in the flesh. I choose to believe by faith everything written by the writers of the Bible(the spiritual, as well the historical).
If I believe those things, then I believe that God had a plan for each and everyone one us, how he wanted us to live – according to his Word. Now I might be wrong, maybe all miracles of the Bible are made up. Maybe Moses did not really part the Red Sea, and maybe the plaques never came on Egypt. Maybe Jesus was just a man, and not God in the flesh. Maybe he never rose from the dead.
Maybe the 66 books of the Bible, written by 40 different men, over a 1500 year period was just some grand conspiracy by some men to deceive us all into believing there was a God, and that he had a plan for our lives. Maybe these same men conspired over this 1500 year period, to enslave and dominate women – so they made all these rules to suppress women, or maybe they knew we all had our part to play in God’s grand design.
One day I will die, and one day Rebecca you will die. In that moment we will find out if there is an afterlife, if there is a God and if he did truly speak through the 40 authors of the Bible over a 1500 year period. Can a person be saved and reject certain doctrines of Scripture such as Gender Roles and other things? Of course they can. If we believe the Bible, then the only thing we must do to be ushered into heaven is place our faith in trust in one true God, and his Jesus Christ, that he died for us and paid the penalty for our sins. We can be wrong on everything else, but that fundamental truth(if the Bible truly is God’s Word).
But if we have rejected certain truths of God’s Word, and chosen to live our lives our own way, instead of his way he has designed for us, then we will be ashamed at his coming, and we will get no reward in heaven. We will literally get in by the skin of our teeth, and nothing more(if the Bible is true Word of God).
So yes we can all make up our own religions, but that does not make all religions equally right, when we die, if the Christian faith is right, we will face the judgment.
Rebecca,
You said the Bible suppresses women by telling them where, when and how they can speak. But we all live under authority, even men do. When I am at my job they may have rules about how I can speak,and where I can speak. If I have a disagreement with my boss, the policy may be that I do not voice that in meetings where customers or others can hear, but I should do it in private. Even when I do voice my disagreement, or ideas with my boss, I need to do so in respectful manner. It is not a matter of me being suppressed by boss, but of knowing my place in the great organization.
When I am at church, my Pastor sets the policies and direction for the church. If I have some disagreement, I must take it to him privately and voice my concerns in a respectful and reverent matter – I am not being “suppressed” by my Pastor, but I am simply recognizing my place as a church member and his authority as the Pastor of that Church.
When an adult college student has a disagreement with a professor, he should take it to him privately and in a respectful manner, and know his place as a student, and the professors authority as the teacher.
These are all examples, and there are many more, where adults have authority over other adults and we do not think of it as “suppression”. In fact, to do anything else in these areas I just mentioned would create chaos and turmoil, instead of order and peace.
Is there a time to rebel against authority Biblically speaking? Yes – when that authority violates God’s law. For instance if solider were commanded to execute innocent people, he can lawfully, and Biblically disobey those orders and rebel against his authorities.
If a husband were to cause some traumatic injury to his wife, like knocking her tooth out or breaking a bone, he must free her Biblically speaking. If a husband does not provide food, clothing and sex to his wife, he must free her(this is in the Old Testament). If a husband abandons his wife, she is free to divorce him and move on with her life.
But when it comes to “suppression”, a woman has to choices.
Choice #1
She can either choose to view her life through the lenses of God’s Word, and appreciate the beauty in how he created her so different than man. She can choose to accept that God made her, her mind and body, for her husband. She can embrace the role of helper, and give her husband godly wisdom, lifting him up in prayer and being thankful for the protection, leading and provision her husband gives her. She can fully embrace her role as a wife, mother and homemaker. She can see all those precious firsts that each one of her children have, and she can be there when they get hurt and need her. She can save energy for her husband, to love him and give him what he needs.
Choice #2
A woman can reject God’s design for her life in the Bible, and make up her own views of men and women. She can insist on equality in all areas and especially with her husband. Instead of marriage being based on God’s designed roles for man and woman, she and her husband can do whatever they feel like doing. In fact they can make the whole foundation of their marriage, based on feelings, instead of roles or duties. She can go out and pursue a career and when she does have children give them to strangers to take care of them while she gone in her various pursuits. She can pick up her kids each day, to find out what she missed they did for the first time with their daycare people. She can choose to suppress the gut wrenching feeling she has every time she is there, in way only a mother can be, to truly comfort her children when they need her. When she and her husband have a disagreement, she can talk to him for hours until she wears him down to follow her way, all the while convincing herself that she and her husband are “true and equal partners”. In fact she might throw him a bone every now and then and let him have his way on some issue here and there(just to convince herself their marriage is a partnership of equals).
These are the choices a woman has, and it has nothing to do with suppression.
Rebecca,
You stated:
I encourage you to look up multiple studies that have shown that crime rates amongst single parents homes are far higher than in homes with married father and mother present raising children together.
Here is one study(but there are many more):
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1995/03/bg1026nbsp-the-real-root-causes-of-violent-crime
The decline in marriage and the increase in divorce and cohabitation can be directly correlated to more poverty and higher crime – this is a statistical fact.
You are right, women are NOT doing the robberies, gang rape shooting rampages and majority of the drug and sex trafficking – you are right the majority of people in these cases are men. But why are these men doing these things in greater numbers? Because they did not have a mother and father raising them at home, teaching them what was right. Men have abandoned the role of husband and father in large part because women have abandoned the roles of wife and mother. If a women won’t follow men, if they won’t care for their children and their homes, and if they will have sex with men outside of marriage – why would any man want to get married?
So yes maybe women are not robbing banks and killing people, but they are producing and raising sons that will because as women they have rejected God’s design for them in the family.
I understand what you mean about the history of Christianity are your beliefs. However, I don’t think that gives someone the right to claim that one religion is more right than another. Many religions have similarities, and to claim that one is better than all the others is just biased to your religion of choice. That may be your opinion that Christianity is more right than other religions, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a fact for everyone in the world. It’s just what you believe.
To me, I think that to think of one religion as superior to another brings about dangerous motives in which people may feel they themselves are superior based on their religion. Wars have been fought for centuries over religious oppression or forcing other cultures to accept a specific religion (often Christianity). I think that it’s the same as when people tear down others for their race and discriminate against people for other reasons (sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic class).
While I understand that you believe your religion is right, I think we have to be careful about not tearing others down who don’t practice that same religion.
You’re right that as people, we cannot say what we want all the time. That is just a part of being a citizen of the world, and trying to be a respectful citizen.
The problem with your beliefs of gender roles as they relate to women is that you believe women should resist their urge to speak with as much liberty as a man BECAUSE they are women. That is suppression. That is sexism. If a woman should be told when to speak and how, then so should a man, right? But your beliefs are in place to keep women beneath men for the sole purpose of control. That’s the only reason. There is no logical reason for controlling women besides the fact that these beliefs make a man’s life easier. Simple as that.
You think that as a woman, she has only TWO choices for how to live her life? That is so narrow. A woman has hundreds, maybe thousands, of choices she can make about every aspect of her life.
College.
Kids.
No kids.
IVF.
Adoption.
Marriage.
No marriage.
Travel.
Career.
Stay at home mom.
Religion.
No religion.
Volunteer work.
Work part time.
Work while husband is stay-at-home dad.
I could go on, but you get the idea. A woman does not have to just fit into one of two boxes:
1. Saintly, stay-at-home mom
or
2. Anti-God career woman.
Life doesn’t work like that, and you’d be naive to think that we can fit women (or men) into one of two categories. There are hundreds of choices people make in life. You can’t boil down a woman’s choices to “be a good Christian and don’t work while you take care of the kids” or “be an evil woman and work while you let someone else raise your kids.” That’s just silly to make it seem like women can only have one or the other. I live in America, where I have so many more choices than many other countries, and more choices than our ancestors did.
And I’m proud of that.
I don’t know if you realize, but when I went to the link you sent, it was from The Heritage Foundation. When I Googled what the Heritage Foundation was, one of the first sites I found explained that it’s an extremely conservatively-biased website.
I don’t see why I would trust “research” done by a biased website. I would trust an article from a more reputable source. But the link you sent has no research or reliable findings.
Here is a link from The Atlantic that outlines the rise and fall of The Heritage Foundation:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/the-fall-of-the-heritage-foundation-and-the-death-of-republican-ideas/279955/
You have to understand that poverty and high crime are complex issues. You have to factor in economics, politics, geography, socioeconomic standing, and history.
Do you honestly think that divorce (which occurs in nearly half of all marriages in the United States) has anything to do with a man robbing a bank? Raping a woman? Killing ten people in a drive-by shooting?
The cops would never say, “This 50-year-old man killed ten people/robbed a bank/raped this woman because his parents lived together before marriage and divorced when he was five.”
That makes zero sense.
Does divorce have a negative impact on some people’s lives? Sure. Of course.
Does that have anything to do with crime? No. A criminal will commit crimes whether or not he or she has parents who were divorced.
Are you saying that people who are divorced are in poverty? Again, that does not make any sense whatsoever. As I said already, nearly half of marriages end in divorce. Are nearly 50% of Americans living in poverty? No.
Do some people who divorce live in poverty? Sure. Do all of them? Of course not.
The problem with your arguments is that you are making wide assumptions and vast generalizations that aren’t based on economic facts or research.
Your worries about people getting married or not has nothing to do with crime or poverty. People who are married commit crimes. Married couples live in poverty. You cannot use blanket statements to explain away poverty and divorce.
Women don’t have to follow men. They should follow the laws, yes. Other than that, women can (shocker) make their own decisions, just like men can. The only people who claim women should be beneath men is people who want to control women’s decisions.
If a woman doesn’t want to get married, how does that affect your life? It doesn’t. If a woman has sex outside of marriage, does it affect your life? No. If a woman doesn’t have kids, does that affect your life? No.
The problem with you telling women what to do is that you’re trying to have control over their lives. Their decisions don’t affect your life directly. When people try to gain control over a group of people (women, for example) all in the name of “religion” or “The Bible,” that becomes dangerous.
Rebecca,
Any person has the right to claim that they believe something is better than another thing. I have the right to say I think GM cars are better than Ford cars. I have the right to say I think the Detroit Tigers are a better baseball team than the New York Yankees.
When it comes to religion, I understand that is a more sensitive subject, and the reason is that to most people who are true believers in their faith(or their lack of faith, such as Agnostics and Atheists), their faith defines how they live. It cuts to the core of their being. But even in these sensitive arenas, I have the right to say I think Christianity is a better religion than Islam, Judaism or any other religion. I have the right to say I think Christianity, the God of the Bible, is the one true faith, and one true God. That is a core freedom that our founding fathers fought for, the right to preach our faith, even if standing on the street corners to do so.
But these beliefs that I have are based on my own studies, and my own faith in what I found, so you are correct in asserting that not everyone will except what I believe about Christianity.
Being a Christian does not make me superior to anyone of any other faith(or no faith at all), anymore than me being a Detroit Tiger fan makes me superior to a Yankee fan. It just means I have examined the evidence, and found one thing to be better than the others in my view, and I have the right to express that belief and that opinion.
But just because I don’t think I am superior to anyone because I am Christian, does not mean that I don’t think Christianity is in fact superior to all other faiths. If I and millions of other believers who have ever lived are right, then we will be in a better position when we stand before God, than those who have rejected the God of the Bible, if he is indeed the true God.
One thing that is totally missed in this discussion is this. If I belief my faith is real, that what God says in the Bible has happened, and will really happen, and if I believe his command to go and tell others his Gospel and his truths are real, then I cannot help but tell others. I must tell my neighbors and friends, relatives and coworkers the good news of God’s Word.
Let me put this another way, if you knew that your friend was about to invest his entire life savings into a company you had researched, and found to be failing, and that he would loose his entire life savings and be poor and destitute – would you not tell him? Would you not try to warn him? Or would you not tell him because to do so might hurt his feelings, or maybe he really liked that company, or his parents told him it was a great company to invest in?
Our eternal destinies are so much more important than our retirement accounts, yet people today only care about retirement, and not was faces them on the other side of eternity.
I also believe we as Christians need to have “tact” to make “contact”. Whenever I have shared my faith over the years with various coworkers of different religions, I don’t act as if they are stupid for not believing in Christianity, I simply share why I believe it to be the truth about our world, and the world to come. They have the choice to take it or leave it.
I have even shared with my coworkers and others that are of different beliefs, that I respect their right to have their own beliefs, but respecting the right of others to have different beliefs, and me having to validate that all religions are the same as Christianity, or equally true in my view, are two very different things.
You are right from a historical perspective, that many wars have been fought in the name of religion. Sometimes in the Bible, God sanctioned wars and other times wars were not sanctioned. I believe there have been many a Christian king that have done horrible things in the name of Christianity, and God does not bless that. But just because people have abused the name of Christianity, or done horrible things in the name of Christianity, does not make it Christianity itself wrong, only the misuse of it’s name.
Discrimination is about choice. Sometimes people might make choices(discriminate) that our society thinks is OK. For instance, I might “discriminate” between pizza from pizza place and another. I simply prefer the taste of one over the other, so I don’t buy from the other. Even in Christianity, we as Christians “discriminate”, choose between different denominations. I choose to go to a Baptist Church over a Methodist, Lutheran or Catholic Church.
My Christian faith, as founded in the Bible, commands me to “discriminate”, or choose between right and wrong. It also calls on us a believers to speak out against things which God calls wicked in the Bible. That means as a believer, I have obligation not only to live my faith in private, but to speak out against those things which violate God’s design and his commands in Scripture. That is why Christians speak out against sex before marriage and people living together. That is why Christians speak out against the homosexual lifestyle and homosexual marriage.
That is why Christian believers who own Bakeries, or Photo places or anything else involved with Weddings have a moral and Biblical obligation to refuse to participate in gay weddings by supplying goods or services to these events. That is why the Catholic Church adoption agencies have a Biblical and moral obligation to “discriminate” against gay couples by refusing to adopt children to them.
We have a right to practice our faith, not only in our homes and churches, but also in our businesses. Some people may not agree with or like the choices that believers must make, and they are free to not frequent Christian homes, business or churches if they feel so led.
Even Jesus Christ said, that the truth of God does divide, it also has, and it always will:
Rebecca,
Really all of our choices in life to do fall under one of two categories – it really is that simple.
Will we follow God’s ways or some other way?
All of the choices you list out, and the many more thousands we face each day of our lives, will fall into one those two categories. God gave us a free will to choose his way, or choose our own way.
Rebecca,
Rumors of the demise of the Heritage foundation are greatly exaggerated. I almost had an opportunity to work for them at one point, but for other reasons it did not work out. I have a great amount of respect and admiration for what they are trying to do for this country. Does the Heritage foundation divide Republicans? Yes. But that division has existed since the 60’s when you had the Goldwater Republicans(of which Reagan was) who rejected the new deal and the encroachment of Government upon our freedoms and daily lives and the Rockefeller Republicans who embraced the new deal. While Barry Goldwater lost, one his greatest followers and admirers, won and helped to change this country for the better.
Since you want some more sources that show that divorce and broken homes do have an impact on society here are few more for you to look at:
70% Of Criminals Are From Broken Homes
http://articles.mcall.com/1991-11-15/news/2826825_1_inmates-psychology-professor-raymond-bell
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/hanover/mechanicsville-local/opinion/article_ba88da2c-6af8-11e2-9f38-0019bb30f31a.html
There are many more studies on these issues, but broken families not only affect crime, they also affect the mental health and well being of children and ultimately the economy and health of our nation.
If a women in general stopped getting married, that would greatly affect my life, because it would have adverse affects on the culture around me, which affects me. It is affecting me that my nation has higher crime rates, higher government dependency rates because of women either not marrying, or divorcing in droves and having broken families. It affects me, and it affects us all.
If women stopped having children, it would affect all of us as the human race. I invite you to read the book –
Native born American women are no longer having enough children to replace our population. The only reason we continue to experience population growth is because of immigration. Europe and Japan are facing the same crisis, where their native born women are not having enough children to replace their population. Japan sells more adult diapers now than infant diapers.
Yes women making choices does directly effect me, and it directly affects the world.
Rebecca said:
Please excuse me for butting in, but b-g-r is presenting the Biblical model for men and women. In today’s churches [and society in general] the trend is to reinvent the biblical models to fit an modern agenda. This might be popular but it isn’t the way its written.
Please consider that control [ownership] of women is the model presented in the scripture, this is for those believers that can see all humanity [men and women] as part of God’s plan for their future and want to work towards the kingdom of God in this present time, in their respective God given roles.
You can make your own choices concerning your future but you will only discover the blessing of God in His purpose for you.
Don Quixote,
The problem is that Biblical Gender Roles is just taking bits and pieces from the Bible out of context. Jesus was about equality, not oppression or control. People who believe in controlling women believe it because it benefits them. There is no commandment in the Bible stating that women are less than men.
Biblical Gender Roles,
Your assumptions that divorce and people living together before marriage has a direct correlation to poverty and crime is just misunderstood. The statistics don’t account for other factors. Keep in mind that roughly half of all marriages fail. More couples are living together before marriage, and research shows that this actually doesn’t have much affect on whether or not the couple will get divorced.
The research actually shows that the AGE at which a couple gets married can help or hurt the marriage. The younger a couple is, the more likely they are to eventually divorce. This is because if a couple gets married while they’re in college, they go through many difficult life changes and it’s before they are “settled” in life. Couples who get married in their late 20’s and early 30’s have more success because they are “settled” into their lives and careers. These couples are thus more stable and ready for marriage.
Your thoughts about divorce and unmarried couples living together doesn’t take into account socioeconomic class of these people, where they live, and home life. You’re also assuming that married couples are “healthier” examples of parents for children, just because they are married.
That is not always the case. Tons of unhealthy relationships among married couples exist. There are abusive marriages, men and women who kill their spouses, rape within marriages, cheating, and constant fighting. Just because a couple is married does NOT mean the couple is happy or even healthy. All it means is that the couple signed a document to be legally joined. That’s it. Marriage has nothing to do with an individual’s overall health or happiness.
Rebecca,
On the contrary, I am taking the Bible as a whole, which you are not doing. Yes everything human being has equal worth to God as a person. But you assume that equal worth, means every person should have equal rights, privileges and responsibilities, something the Bible never teaches, in fact it teaches the opposite.
Name me one passage where Christ taught that men and women should have equal social status and rights? Oppression, Biblically speaking, is subjugation which God has not ordained. But has ordained that women are to be subject to men, you can find that from Old Testament to the New Testament.
You also ascribe motives to those of us who accept God’s Word as it is that are not true. I do not seek to have my wife and children in subjection to my leadership for my own benefit, but it it first and foremost because God commands it. Do I believe it will benefit them as well – to have a house that is order, instead of rebellion and chaos – Yes I do.
I can honestly say that if the Bible stated that God made man and woman as equal partners, and that we must agree and compromise on all decisions then I would do it. If God never said wives are to be subject to and obey their husbands, and I would never expect it from my wife. If God said I was made for my wife, and that I need to submit and follow her lead, then I would do it, just as I submit to my boss at work, or my Pastor at church.
In fact I could take the easy way out, as many Christian men have done today, and simply follow our trends of a “partnership marriage” – knowing full well it would actually be a farce.
I have yet to ever meet or speak to a couple that has a “partnership marriage”, where you don’t see after some time knowing them, that one is more dominant than the other, and usually it is the woman. It’s just usually more subtle in a “partnership marriage”.
Rebecca,
It is no coincidence that crime, poverty and Government dependency have increased over the last century with the rise of feminism, and then the destruction of traditional marriage. You can ignore studies, you can ignore what the Bible says about marriage, and you can ignore what is right in front of your face because it does not fit what you would like to the world to be, but the truth remains the truth.
What studies are you citing that even point to those being the supposed causes of crime, poverty, and “government dependency”? And wait a minute, I thought we were just talking about crime and poverty. Where did this “government dependency” come from? And what do you even mean by it? It’s an incredibly broad term, and you can’t link it to crime and poverty without specifying what you mean.
The only studies you cited were biased, unscientific, and not even conducted from an economic or sociological standpoint. The data didn’t make much sense. The article I found in The Atlantic states that the website you cited is not even a reputable website. You claim that people who say that are exaggerating? If the website you cited is reputable, why would people all over the place say that it’s not? People don’t just make that up. They say it’s not a trustworthy source because they have read it, studied it, and found it to be, in fact, not trustworthy.
And now you’re not only bringing up crime and poverty and linking it to divorce and people living together before marriage, but you’re randomly bringing up feminism and “government dependency” as well. Where did those come from? So you’re going to blame a bunch of random things that you don’t like for the country’s problems? That’s not how economics works.
So some people in the world believe in equal rights for women, and they caused the world’s poverty? Ha. Poverty has been around for centuries. The “rise” in feminism? Feminism has been around since at least the late 1800’s. So you think they helped cause poverty, crime, and the “destruction of marriage?” You have to be kidding me.
The problem is that all you’re doing is generalizing. Generalizing things is an unrealistic thought pattern. You cannot logically take a HUGE, complicated, problem like crime or poverty and link it to something completely unrelated (so far you’ve blamed divorce, “destruction of marriage,” “government dependency,” and feminism, but I’m sure you’ll find other things to blame it on.).
When looking at something complicated, historical, and ever-changing depending on the time, location, and culture of the situation like crime or poverty, you can’t blame it on one thing. That would be silly. You have to take psychology, culture, geography, family backgrounds, economics of the country/state/city being studied, and many other factors. You can’t just say, “Yup, it’s feminists who caused these people to commit crimes and be poor! It’s the divorced people who are the problem! Oh no, wait, it’s the government! Well, wait, it’s the destruction of traditional marriage! People who don’t believe in ‘traditional marriage’ are to blame!”
You see what I mean? Those arguments just don’t have any logical or factual basis. It sounds like you don’t believe in feminism, or divorce, or ‘non-traditional marriages’ or “government dependency (still very broad so I’m not sure what you mean by it), and so you blame those things for societal problems. That’s like me saying, “Republicans are the ones causing poverty and crime! I’m a Democrat, and so I think the people I don’t agree with are causing the country’s problems!” That’s a huge, sweeping generalization. Does it make any sense? No, of course not. Is it based on facts I have? No. It’s based on biased beliefs, and I’d be using my bias to make sweeping, unrealistic generalizations about the world.
You say “the truth remains the truth,” but the generalizations you made aren’t the truth. They are unscientific, misunderstood, and actually false claims. They are not true. Not in the least. There are no reputable, REAL studies that would back up any of your claims.
Rebecca,
I can see we will need to address these things one piece at a time.
Apparently you missed these statistics that came from places other than the evil and biased “Heritage Foundation”:
“70 percent of those in juvenile detention.
57 percent of all prison inmates.
63 percent of teen suicides.
71 percent of teen pregnancies.
90 percent of homeless juveniles and runaways.
71 percent of high school dropouts.
75 percent of all drug users.
85 percent of behavioral disorders.”
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/hanover/mechanicsville-local/opinion/article_ba88da2c-6af8-11e2-9f38-0019bb30f31a.html
http://www.mnpsych.org/mnpsychonline/industrynews/father-absent-homes-implications-for-criminal-justice-and-mental-health-professionals
Please give me your responses to these stats and the study presented.
Okay, I don’t know if you understand “bias.” Bias means a significant slant in one OPINION or another.
Again, the link you sent me is biased and unscientific. It again is unaccredited OPINION article. The link you included is not facts, based on any research, or even unbiased information. It’s all blatant conservative agenda pushing.
If you want to convince me that you have actual facts or research to back up your claims, you would have to send a link that shops RESEARCH. Facts. Not some conservative article with fabricated statistics.
It’s not wise to blindly believe incorrect statistics that have no factual basis.
So you think the Minnesota Psychological Association is biased?
http://www.mnpsych.org/mnpsychonline/industrynews/father-absent-homes-implications-for-criminal-justice-and-mental-health-professionals
Please let me know why you think they are biased.
And also on the topic of biased – I believe the vast majority of newspapers, journals and other media are biased one way or the other. So yes it can be a challenge at times to sift through the data, I agree. But just because a report comes from a conservatively biased source, does not mean we can dismiss it wholesale, anymore than we dismiss everything said from a more liberally biased source. The challenge is to separate the conclusions, from the data itself.
Again please let me know why you dismiss data from the Minnesota Psychological Association?
Jesus’ teachings never involved power over other people or shaming people who are different. Jesus ate with the sinners, didn’t he? Jesus did not believe in shaming others or oppressing people who we’re different than he was.
The Bible has tons of passages that Christians don’t follow today. It said you cannot get your hair cut or shave your beard. That you can’t eat shellfish. That you can’t be around your wife when she has her period. Do you follow those passages? No? Then you obviously don’t take the Bible literally.
You are just picking and choosing the Bible passages you WANT to believe. You use passages that oppress women to justify your beliefs that women are somehow less than men. You may use passages to justify anti-gay beliefs. I’m not saying you personally are against gay marriage because I don’t know, but some Christians have used Bible verses to justify their homophobia.
You claim that you take the Bible literally, yet you don’t. You choose the verses you want to believe, and disregard the verses that don’t suit you. That doesn’t mean you are taking the Bible literally. It means you believe what you want and disregard the rest of what the Bible says.
I will be happy to answer you accusations here – when you answer my question for you about the Minnesota Psychological Association.
I was referring to the Richmond News link you sent. That article was an opinion article which offered nothing but conservative bias. I do not necessarily believe that the Minnesota Psychological Association is as inherently and overtly biased, and their research was a bit more in depth. However, you cannot use their research out of context to make the sweeping generalizations you’ve made.
You said that feminism, the government, divorce, and people living together before they’re married are all what causes crime and poverty. The Minnesota Psychological Association’s research doesn’t show that your claims are right because it doesn’t discuss the reasons you point to. So I don’t know where you’re coming up with your claims, but the research you linked to just proves my point more than yours. It shows, like the Minnesota Psychological Association’s research shows, that there are many complicated factors at okay.
I answered it. And I see that the research you linked to shows that your claims aren’t valid. The research proves my point that there are many factors at play. The research you linked to shows that crime and poverty are complicated issues that you can’t generalize.
OK – since you accept Minnesota Psychological Association as a source you will at least consider how do you respond this their correlation of the data between children who grow up with a father and relation to crime:
“Family structure and the lack of paternal involvement are predictive of juvenile delinquency. The more opportunities a child has to interact with his or her biological father, the less likely he or she is to commit a crime or have contact with the juvenile justice system (Coley and Medeiros, 2007)”
http://www.mnpsych.org/mnpsychonline/industrynews/father-absent-homes-implications-for-criminal-justice-and-mental-health-professionals
They are not saying, and neither am I, that just because a child does not grow up with father present, that they will automatically go into a life of crime. But what the study reveals is, statistically speaking, a child has higher chance of getting into criminal activity if there is no father present.
Do you dispute their findings? Do you dispute that a child not having a father present does have a significant impact on their social development?
Rebecca,
Since your answered my question about the MPA(at least partly that you consider them a valid source, I still have a second question for you on them though) I will answer your assertions here about what Jesus taught.
Jesus did not speak on every subject in detail, and he only briefly touched on marriage in two areas – he spoke about divorce, telling men they could not divorce their wives “for any and every reason”. He also talked about marriage no longer existing once we get to the eternal state, that marriage is for this world and this world only. Other than that he did not speak on the specific dynamics of the marital relationship.
However – when you understand that Christ’s Apostles Paul and Peter spoke the very Words of God(of Jesus Christ) then you realize that what they spoke was just as if he spoke it, to believe anything else, is to unravel all of Scripture.
Jesus said this of his Apostles:
Paul stated this regarding the Scriptures he wrote, as well those of the other Apostles:
So I have a choice, I can dismiss half the New Testament, all of Paul’s and Peter’s writings, as well as Christ words in the Gospels to his own Apostles giving them the authority to speak and write the very Word of God(his Word) – and then say as you do, since Christ never spoke in detail of the dynamics of marriage(the role of husband and wife in marriage) – that no roles exist, and no authority exists in marriage.
Or I can take the entirety of Scripture, and see that his Apostles did in fact speak with great detail about roles and authority in marriage, and his prophets before him in the Old Testament did as well.
You accuse me of picking and choosing what Bible passages I want to believe – when in fact you are doing the very thing you accuse me of doing. You are only looking at the Gospels(where Christ walked and spoke) and ignoring his Apostles writings – to who whom he granted authority in the Gospels.
As to your assertion that there are tons of Bible passages “that Christians don’t follow today”. The passages you allude to are in the Mosaic Law, otherwise known as the Pentateuch or Torah. What you fail to understand is, the New Testament law supersedes and replaces the Old Mosaic law.
“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord,
When I will effect a new covenant
With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah…
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.” – Hebrews 8:8 & 13
The dietary laws and other regulations of the Old Testament, that were made for Israel as a theocracy were removed by Christ, the law of Christ through his Apostles now replaces the old covenant, and the Old Law. That is not to say that there are not still principles we can learn from the Old Testament, and there is moral law in the Old Testament that is brought forward into the New Testament. For instance 9 of the 10 commandments are reinstated in the New Testament.
So yes it is entirely possible, as I and millions of Christians around the world do, to take the Bible literally, but understand that we are no longer under the Mosaic law, but under the new law of Christ.
So you are left in a bit of a problem. Christ never spoke on the internal dynamics of marriage, so it would be true to say that while he walked the earth he never said “the Husband if the head of the wife”. But here is your problem, his Apostles to whom he gave the authority to write and speak his word DID. What his Apostles said was spoken as if Christ himself said it, yet you claim that because he never said it then it must not be true.
I am sorry, but Rebecca you are not rightly handling the Word of Truth.
This is not what you were originally arguing. You originally stated that divorce is what causes crime and poverty. Divorce is not equal to “absent fathers.” Children of divorce sometimes split time equally between the mother and father. Parents may get remarried. This research is for families who have no father present, NOT parents who are divorced. There is a difference. It sounds like you’re not really sure what your argument is. Are you saying families who have NO father in the home cause crime and poverty? Or are you saying divorce causes crime and poverty? Those are two completely different topics, so you seem to be lumping them together and confusing the two.
To Biblicalgenderroles,
May I enter the discussion?
Rebecca,
I was not arguing that divorce alone contributes to crime and poverty. I never even argued that divorce causes ALL crime and poverty, or that a child is destined for crime and poverty if they come from a divorced home. While divorce is no the sole source of “absent father” homes, it does significantly contribute to the number of “absent father” homes.
So no they are not two separate issues, but are actually related. The sources of fatherless homes are these:
1. Death of the father
2. Divorce
3. Casual sex between men and women, and man abandoning his responsibility to child
4. Purposeful choice by a woman to not have a father present
So as you can see, divorce and absent fathers homes are actually related subjects. My over all point is though, that homes with men and women committed in marriage, having children together and raising them together is what is best for society, and I stand firmly by that claim. And homes where you don’t have a mom and and Dad present raising the children together, have a higher percentage chance of their children getting in trouble either as teen or later in life, not just with with crime and poverty, but with issues of suicide and other problems.
Certainly PK – feel free to join the discussion.
Rebecca Meyer
APRIL 8, 2015 AT 5:26 PM
According to the Genesis account woman [Eve] was created by God to help man [Adam]. Men and women have different roles and therefore different rules. This is illustrated throughout the Bible:
A father or husband can annul a girl’s / wife’s vows.
Only female virgins were considered suitable for marriage.
Only men were able to serve in the Priesthood.
Jesus chose men to be His disciples.
The limited provision for divorce in the Bible is given only to men, not to women.
Women are commanded to be veiled when praying in public.
Examples from Scripture show that it is possible for a polygnyist to be in right standing with God, but the reverse is not true, IOWs Polyandry is condemned.
We must all accept our roles and serve God accordingly.
Don Quixote,
So are you saying that we should still have these “laws” in our society? You do realize we don’t anymore in America, correct? Are you saying that the American government is committing sins by abolishing these beliefs that the people of the Bible practiced?
The things you listed were not commandments. They were beliefs that the people of that time practiced. I’m sorry, but the commandments are the Ten Commandments, which list none of these laws that you just listed. So really, your argument is incorrect because according to the Bible, your argument is wrong.
These laws were written thousands of years ago. They’re not prevalent anymore. We allow women to make the decisions about their marriages. Women can serve in some priesthoods. Divorce is available for everyone, regardless of gender. Women can wear what they want as long as they are not “indecently exposed.” Polygamy is illegal in America.
Jesus himself did not state any of those laws to be what we should follow. That was stated by the people living in that time period, which was, again, thousands of years ago. While many of the Bible verses are indeed sexist, they do not condone outrageous sexism and claiming that women are less than men. They claim that man was created “first.” But human beings, not God or Jesus, have misunderstood this and have used this verse to discriminate against women, abuse, and control them.
biblicalgenderroles,
You in fact were claiming that divorce is the cause for crime and poverty. Well, you also claimed that feminism is the cause of all societal issues, too, but maybe you’ve realized that it was an unproven, baseless, and inaccurate claim.
Yes, having two parents is ideal. But like you pointed out, that’s not always possible. We cannot predict when a parent may die young, or when a marriage crumbles, or when one parent abandons the family (Women abandon their families, too, so you don’t have to just blame men. I know of many women in communities who have abandoned their children, and then the father takes over as the sole caretaker when the mother cannot be found.).
You’re misunderstanding that this alone determines whether or not a child from this situation becomes a criminal or not. It doesn’t. Will it shape the child’s life experiences? Yes. Is a child from a broken home destined to a life of crime? Of course not. There are plenty of people who come from rough home lives who grow up to be happy, healthy, and successful. You cannot blame divorce or homes where there is an “absent father” for the outcome of someone’s entire life. You’re forgetting that the child is an individual and will grow up to think for him/herself.
The problem is that you are taking one situation that you don’t agree with (divorce) and using it to blame all our societal issues on it. It’s not that simple. It doesn’t even make sense, honestly.
Divorce does not have much at all to do with a child committing suicide. Teenagers from healthy, two-parent homes commit suicide every day. But what is usually the factor that contributes the teens ending their lives? Bullying. That is something we can see does, in fact, contribute to teen suicide. Parents divorcing? Not so much. There is no research (real research, not unscientific, conservative “articles”) to back up your claims.
Rebecca,
Please give me a quote from my website, or any of my comments where I have said that divorce, or by extension feminism, is THE cause for ALL crime and poverty. I can save you time and tell you I have never said that. What I have said is, that feminism and divorce, the absent father problem(and yes by extension absent mother which is much more rare) are major contributors to crime and poverty. When you have intact families, with the biological mother and father raising the children this is the best for society. We ought to be encouraging as a society, at all levels of government, moms and dads to stay together, because it is not just about their happiness, it affects society as a whole.
Again I ask, are you reading what I have written, or are you just filling in what you want to and make a straw man that you can easily knock down?
Yes people make their own decisions whether they come from a divorced home, or a home with no father or no mother. But children who come divorced homes, and especially homes without a father, have a higher percentage chance of getting into trouble(crime, suicide, drugs) than those who come from unbroken homes.
Rebecca the real truth is, what you are trying to do is mask the real issue. You falsely claim that I believe divorce is the cause of ALL societies problems, so that you can mask the fact that while it is not the cause of ALL society’s problems, it has been a major contributor to increases in problems in society(teen suicide,teen drug use,crime, general lower marriage rates because young people have less faith in marriage because they saw their parents divorce).
It is interesting, that you simply refuse to see that divorce do have an impact on society, and yet conservatives and liberals can agree that it does:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/08/news/economy/census-bureau-marriage-divorce-questions/
Yes we can debate the causes, as well as the effects of divorce on our society, but the eggheads on both sides of the aisle agree, divorce does affect our society, our culture and decisions our government makes.