Family, Society, and Saving the World

Have you noticed that most activism takes place in the spotlight? To end global warming, activists hold a huge concert (ironically leaving an environmental footprint the size of Massachusetts in their wake); politicians love to declare war on any and every social ill: poverty, drugs, terror. They propose sweeping reforms to end crime, touching small-arms, prisons, the courts, and public education.
Maybe good will come of all the above, but I doubt it. I think change gathers quietly, like the dew’s billion drops collecting to soak the ground. I think change is individuals learning to spend well, consume less, to care about one another, and the earth.
With that frightening truth in mind, I would like to offer you a quiet, even ponderous, yet crucial role to play in the redemption of all creation: get married, have kids, and teach them a better way to live.
No, Pat Robertson has not commandeered my keyboard—I mean this. The sociological data favoring the sacrament of marriage is staggering. I offer you a smattering of the more startling examples from the reams of facts I waded through…
A survey of 108 rapists undertaken by Raymond A. Knight and Robert A. Prentky revealed that…70 percent of those describable as 'violent' came from female-headed homes.

Children of divorce were six times more likely than children in
intact families to strongly agree "I was alone a lot as child." : Elizabeth Marquardt
"Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce."
Crown Books (September 27, 2005)

Students from intact families maintained grade point averages (GPAs) 11% higher than those of peers from divorced families. Source: Barry D. Ham, "The Effects of Divorce on the Academic Achievement of High School Seniors," Journal of Divorce & Remarriage 38.3/4 [2003]: 167-185.)

Children of divorce (whose parents divorced while they were children) are 62% more likely than children of non-divorced parents to no longer identify with the faith of their parents when they grow up.
Lawton, L. E., & Bures, R. (2001). Parental Divorce and the "Switching" of Religious Identity. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40, 99-111.

Among long-term prison inmates, 70 percent grew up without fathers, as did 60 percent of rapists and 75 percent of adolescents charged with murder.
Source: Wade Horn and Andrew Bush, "Fathers, Marriage, and Welfare Reform,

The divorce rate is just absurd (sitting somewhere between 41% and 52% in 2003, depending on who did the math). More chilling than mere numbers, children of divorced parents are far more likely to commit violent crimes, suffer mental illness, resent their parents as adults, fall away from faith, perform more poorly in school, earn less as adults, and, finally, to experience divorce in their own marriages.
Divorce even affects the environment: in a married family, two adults and two children easily live in one house. A divorcee who leaves his former home immediately finds a new place to live: now the same four people have two houses between them. That’s two electric and utility bills; two TV’s running instead of one; two trips to the grocery store (if my experience serves, divorce does not guarantee that a family will spend less on food); along with the reliance on lower-quality products that comes from a reduction in income, and an increase in stress (during my middle school years, my family ate out as often as three times a week—between work and running around, my mom had no time to cook).
I do not write as a pundit; I have experienced the pain of divorce, lived through the painful dilemma, the tragic necessity, and the brutal consequences. My parents had a terrible marriage: I will not judge whether they should have married, or whether they should have stuck it out. My mom will always remain a symbol of strength and unshakeable resolve to me: she has borne more in silence, sacrificed more quiet pleasures, and committed more love and determination to running her practice, raising my sister and me, and rebuilding our house, than I suspect I could ever know.
Still, I will say this—their divorce damaged something in my nine year-old heart. About six months after the divorce, my dad disappeared, to remain hidden for nearly six years. I don’t remember ever crying after he left: I bottled up the anguish, the fear, the anger. However, these things force their way to the surface—within a few months, I developed a severe case of anxiety, often suffering near-panic attacks if my mom were late to pick me up (this problem was severely exacerbated by her belief that 45 minutes late was just “running a few minutes behind.”). I dealt with these fears by channeling them into obsessive-compulsive habits. Eventually, I went to counseling to work through these issues, but to this day I struggle against a lingering fear of rejection, a persistent sense of unworthiness. Every good thing in my life always seems on the verge of walking out the door. I was the consummate outsider for much of my adolescence, resenting families more whole than my own, and friends better-adjusted than myself.
Now, few of these facts would show up in statistics that would otherwise plot me as a typical bright, upper-middle-class undergrad. I have a girlfriend, great friends, a good relationship with my mom and sister—and I constantly fight to protect them against lies I embraced when I was ten.
I began to think about all this while driving, listening to the song “Teach Your Young,” by Zach Williams. If you want to change the world, tell your kids every day that you love them. Teach your young to love Jesus and follow in his way, to delight in growing things, to suffer and sacrifice for something beautiful. Teach them to recycle, to care for the poor and broken-heated, to love peace. Teach them to spend their money well, to live generously, to yearn for the shalom of the coming Kingdom.