Asking the wrong questions will invariably lead to getting the wrong answers

CNN asks the question, What's fueling Bible Belt divorces. Why in areas where people are more “religious”, less educated and married younger are divorce rates higher than the Northeast where people are more likely to have a college degree, more likely to get married much later if at all and far less likely to be religious? CNN thinks it knows the answer....

Youth and lack of education can lead to higher divorce rates, said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center, who wrote a report on "The States of Marriage and Divorce." There's also an interactive map on the website.

"There tend to be higher divorce rates in states where women marry young," Cohn said. "Education also may play a role. In general, less educated women marry at younger ages than college-educated women, and less educated couples have higher divorce rates."

Values about premarital sex associated with the Bible Belt and rural America may be encouraging people to marry early, at ages when they are likely to have less education and less income to support a long-lasting marriage, according to Naomi Cahn, law professor at The George Washington University Law School and co-author of "Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture."

"There's a moral crisis in red states that's produced by higher divorce rates and the disparity between parental values and behavior of young adults," said Cahn. "There is enormous tension between moral values and actual practices."

All well and good. Except that in days gone by, people married at a much younger age, abstained from pre-marital sex at a much higher rate, had lower rates of education than today’s “everyone gets a BA” culture and yet divorce rates were much lower. Even compared to current Bible belt culture this was true. So what has changed?

Perhaps the problem is not getting married young and not going to college but rather a culture that devalues marriage? By almost any measure marriage is far less important as a cultural institution today than it was in prior generations. Today marriage is seen as an impediment to happiness rather than a means, something that traps you rather than fulfills you, an archaic institution that you enter into after you have lived your life and done your thing rather than the best institution for growing up. People see marriage as something to do once you are “mature”, which is ironic. I don’t think it is debatable that getting married in your early twenties is more likely to lead to maturity than going to college for five or more years. The confused masses of twenty-somethings living in their parents basements while wandering through life is not exactly a solid argument for waiting for marriage. Maybe if these kids would get married and have families they would get a clue and shape up?

Compounding this is the general muddled understanding of what marriage is, who should/should not get married and the separation of sex and children from the bounds of marriage. When no one in this country, including people in the halls of secular power and far too many “ministers” in mainline denominations, seems to understand what marriage is and what it is not and cannot be, is it any wonder that marriage is in such poor shape?

Furthermore, CNN makes the classic error of assuming that living in the Bible Belt, going to church and affirming some vague religious identifiers is the same thing as being a Christian. If you look at the divorce rate among people who are markedly more serious about their faith, the divorce rate changes dramatically for the better. Those inconvenient facts never seem to make into reports like this. There is more going on here than a dispassionate report.

Here is the no so subtle message of the article:

"The very fact that people feel less pressure to get married (in the Northeast) means they can be more selective about who they marry and take their time, " Coontz said. "They don't have to rush into it to please parents or avoid stigma of premarital sex."

So the message here is that you can do whatever you want and sleep around as much as you like until you find the “right” person to marry because that will lead to a healthier marriage. Again, that was not the case until fairly recently so what has changed? In spite of advances in contraception and our generally “enlightened” attitudes toward extra-marital sex , unintended pregnancies are still common, abortion is decimating entire populations and sexually transmitted diseases that common contraceptives don’t protect against are rampant. This is the new and brighter future we have been promised if we cast off the shackles of religion and repression?

If I were a conspiratorial fellow, I might wonder if there is not an agenda to these reports. Perhaps putting off marriage and delaying children is not as healthy as we are led to believe? Or perhaps just as likely this is a subtle shot at people in regions of the country that are more overtly religious. Sure people in the Northeast have lower divorce rates, they are getting married at a much lower rate in the first place and you can’t get divorced if you never got married! When you look at the cultural landscape of America littered with shattered families, promiscuity, institutionalized children, desperate couples who waited until they were too old to have children seeking ever more radical and moral bankrupt ways of turning back the natural biological clock, I hardly think that a rational answer is to further devalue marriage.

As the church, we musty be discerning when faced with reports like this. Our response is not to discourage marriage or follow the lead of the world in adjusting our priorities. Our response must be to embrace and encourage marriage in the church, especially among our young people and without apology. I hope my kids find suitable Christian spouses early in life and grow together as a couple through education, work and children and I make no apology for that. Nothing is more important for my children who have professed Christ than a God honoring marriage that is fruitful as God provides. Not a “good” job, not academic achievement. Nothing is more precious and nothing should garner more prayer for our believing children than their future marriage, spouse and children.