Bard Wilcox’s new book, “Get Married” has caused quite a discussion regarding the state of marriage in American culture. Wilcox points out the single best predictor of long-term happiness is marriage. “Americans,” notes Wilcox, “who are married with children are now leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless.” In fact, there is a, “startling 30-percentage-point happiness divide between married and unmarried Americans.”
In an interview given to “Public Discourse,” Wilcox listed five forces behind the diminution of marriage in American life. These factors, “have been championed by the elites who control the commanding heights of our culture, economy and government,” notes Wilcox. Here are the five dynamics identified by Wilcox.
First – Expressive individualism – living for the desires and ambitions of the self, rather than for family and community.
Second – Secularization – the decline of religious authority and practice, which has diminished the normative power of marriage and the social supports that sustain marriage.
Third – the rise of a post-industrial economy – making disadvantaged non-college-educated men, less “marriageable.’
Fourth – Statism – “the modern state’s tendency to supplant many of the functions and much of the authority once held by the family.”
Fifth – Electronic opiates – “Big Tech’s products have left too many young women anxious and depressed and too many men bereft of drive and ambition.”
He adds this observation, “Dominant elites have advanced ideas that devalue and demean marriage, cast aside the normative guardrails that forge strong families, passed laws that penalize marriage for the poor and working class, and superintended the rise of a new economy that benefits them but puts marriage and family out of reach for millions of their fellow Americans.” He worries that we are facing a “closing of the American Heart,” in a nation where a large number of young adults will never marry and-or never have children.
Demographer Lyman Stone projects that as many as one in three young adults will never marry and as many as one in four will never have kids. Wilcox declares, “That’s a lot of kinless Americans.” So where does this leave us as men who want to make a difference, as followers of Jesus? Here are some suggestions.
1) God’s view of reality. I strongly exhort men to view marriage and family as the foundation of our society. Don’t listen to the voice of the crowd, “the empty-headed, mindless crowd” (Eph. 4:17 MSG). Paul says, “They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God, but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion” (Eph. 4:18-19 MSG).
2) Commit yourself to be an exemplar in your marriage. Pope John Paul IV considered marriage to be prophetic in its expression of the body and sex, proclaiming “a profound mystery” of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:32). Visualize your marriage as a prophetic expression of God’s love expressed in Christ. Your marriage can stand as a light in a very dark world.
3) Know that you are in a fight with the enemy of our souls. The Pope noted, the union of the sexes, “is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.” As we commit to our marriages, we will be fighting a significant battle against the enemy
4) Be joined to and committed to a group of believers who will encourage, support and interceded for your marriage.
5) Commit to be available to younger men, who so desperately need exemplars in their lives.
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