Divorce Rate Down

According to a recent AP story, the national divorce rate has reached it's lowest point since 1970. It reached its highest point in 1981, but has now dropped by a third to 3.6 divorces per one thousand people in the U.S. per year.

The big question asked in this article is "why?" and whether the numbers signal a healthy trend for the country. Some say yes, others not so much. Undoubtedly, part of what's going on is that more are waiting longer to get married -- or avoiding the altar altogether.

For Christians, the news is at least partly good. After all, we believe that although He may allow divorce in certain scenarios, God still "hates" it. (And nobody really likes it.) But it's not an improvement for people to live together as if they're married, have kids, and then break up anyway. Everyone still suffers. And surveys reveal that people who live together before getting married are more likely to end up divorced in the end, anyway.

That same Barna study shows the born again Christians are still just as likely to divorce as unbelievers. That's the saddest news of all. Why? Because if we take God at his word, we believe that marriage is meant to be a picture of the eternal relationship between Jesus and us -- and it's a testing ground for our ability to die to ourselves and serve Him by serving each other (even on the days when "each other" are selfish, stinky, and mean). Please don't write to tell me when and why divorce is okay; I'm just saying people who believe as we do should be less likely to get divorced than people who don't.

Believing that divorce is bad for kids and bad for the nation, in general, the Bush administration has spent more than $200 mil. in the past five years on the Healthy Marriage Initiative. Bill Coffin, one of the guys responsible for implementing that, makes a great point in the AP story:

"The word is getting out that marriage doesn't have to be a crap shoot — it's not the luck of the draw," Coffin said. "It's how you deal with the inevitable conflict and anger in marriage."

And while it's true that our culture often seems to be saying that falling in love and having a good marriage is all about finding "the one" or getting lucky, Christian culture too often seems to say that Christian marriages should always be easier (especially if you save sex for marriage). What we should say right out loud more often is that "your marriage will be difficult right from the start and you'll likely go through seasons when you don't want to do it anymore." We should help people to see marriage as a lifelong adventure, but then to remind each other that the best adventures are about sacrificing yourself for the mission and often include long, dark nights; moments when you don't think you'll make it; and unexpected victories. And we all need lots of God's help to make it through to the end. And we need a willingness to die before we'll give up the fight -- or to give up the fighting because we've already denied ourselves to follow Jesus together.