While just about everyone in America seems to be talking about marriage and
the family being in trouble, every legislature in the country seems to be passing laws that weaken the very premise of marriage and therefore the family, and
make getting out of marriage easier.
While just about everyone in America seems to be talking about marriage and
the family being in trouble, every legislature in the country seems to be passing laws that weaken the very premise of marriage and therefore the family, and
make getting out of marriage easier.
Even Louisiana, with its covenant marriage possibility, just passed a law that
does away with a waiting period for the three-day waiting period between getting
a license and being married in the French Quarter so it can compete with the
wedding chapels of Las Vegas. We may be slow to catch up to other states and
cities in areas that matter most, but we seem to have no problem staying up
in the less desirable areas.
To be certain, in matters of the ultimate human interpersonal relationships
or marriages and families, laws cannot determine their quality. No law can make
a man be faithful to his wife or his wife faithful to him, nor is there a law
that can automatically improve the quality of that relationship.
Getting married requires the willingness of both parties, but a divorce requires
the desire of only one. But, laws can recognize certain realities of marital
relations that are also legal contracts. Louisianas covenant marriage
law recognizes this and at least gives people the opportunity to make the marriage
contract more significant than a contract to get a loan to buy a television
set.
The state and the nation have stakes in how each marriage fares. The costs
related to divorces and the children caught between the steamrollers of their
parents anger and bitterness would be incredible if they could be accurately
totaled. One could imagine that few other phenomenons cost the nation more.
While seldom mentioned in discussions about divorce, companies lose productivity
while an employee goes through a divorce, the children are usually less productive
in school and often turn to delinquency in response to the family stress, there
are more children raised in fatherless homes and on and on it goes. Without
a doubt, the local community, the state and the nation eventually pay a price
when families suffer the traumas of disturbed families and divorce.
While laws should recognize these factors and make getting a divorce much more
difficult than breaking a lease on a house or apartment, such laws should not
be seen as the significant cure. When emotions are high, making a divorce difficult
to obtain only slows the process. Certainly this slowing of the process may
be extremely beneficial at times, but legislatures should realize something
should be done on the other end of marriage – the beginning.
Determining what can be done is not easy or simple or legislatures would probably
have already enacted laws that could be helpful. Actually, legislatures should
spend some of their “research” money on discovering what society is
doing to marriage and the family and what can be done to change that.
As with most issues of the heart and soul, the local church and its ancillary
ministries must be at the forefront of the battle to strengthen marriages and
families. The church often speaks against the disintegration of marriage and
the family, but far too often the church does not speak to the causes of the
disintegration and present ways to strengthen the home.
Every Louisiana Baptist church should constantly stress the sanctity of marriage
and the preciousness of the family. Every church should provide ongoing opportunities
to benefit from seminars, studies, workshops and sermons based upon the principles
of Gods word that can strengthen marriage and the family. While we can
work with our legislatures to recognize the essential nature of marriage and
the family, we cannot wait for legislatures to deal with these matters when
they seem more committed to profiting from vice than recognizing the basic building
block of society.