COMMENTARY: What’s Really Undermining the Modern American Family

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) For the good of the family, let’s bury the usual hatchets, step back from our accustomed religious barricades, and think about what would truly make a difference in family life. The modern family isn’t being undermined by liberal or conservative judges, by Roe v. Wade, by stem cell research, […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) For the good of the family, let’s bury the usual hatchets, step back from our accustomed religious barricades, and think about what would truly make a difference in family life.

The modern family isn’t being undermined by liberal or conservative judges, by Roe v. Wade, by stem cell research, women’s changing roles, lack of prayers in school, or movements to legalize or ban same-sex marriages. Those are smoke screens that turn us against one another, make us long for a time that never was and divert our attention from deeper issues.


What are those issues? Here is my take on what is undermining family life:

Issue 1: Excessive indebtedness

The average American family owes more than $20,000 in personal, non-mortgage debt. As interest rates soar past 20 percent, the debt load becomes a permanent member of the family. Financial problems are a critical factor in an estimated 83 percent of divorces.

Meanwhile, banks flood our mailboxes with more credit card and home equity loan offers, and consumer advertising pushes us to keep spending.

Faith’s role: Help people make better choices about money and property _ which are, after all, the two topics Jesus addressed more than any other.

Issue 2: Job stress

Our postindustrial, increasingly global economy is rapidly eliminating the former foundation of family well-being: a steady job, health benefits and a secure retirement. High-wage factory jobs are disappearing, health benefits are evaporating, retirement accounts are less secure. Say hello to service-industry jobs, lower wages, marginal benefits, declining disposable income, and two people working longer hours to make ends meet. Mounting layoffs touch all families but seem especially vexing for wage earners in their 50s, whose expenses are peaking and career options shrinking.

Faith’s role: Support families in distress, encourage open and compassionate responses to change, avoid blaming.

Issue 3: People as objects

Look beyond bare midriffs, mindless entertainment, garish malls, street gangs and vapid public schools. Those are symptoms of something deeper: a sense that people are objects, commodities, of little value as persons, of greater value as consumer-units to be played for someone else’s benefit. Hence, the focus on predictable, controllable behaviors, gathering mountains of data on us, minimizing privacy and discouraging uniqueness.

Faith’s role: Remind people that they matter, with every one a treasure to God.

Issue 4: Dishonesty

It seems quaint and refreshing nowadays when someone says exactly what he or she means, intends to do or did wrong. Normative behavior is to deny, shade, minimize, spin or simply lie. When leaders lie, a community’s fabric of trust unravels. People make up “facts,” guess at reality, lose trust in one another and become suspicious of outsiders. Families pull inward and isolate themselves.


Faith’s role: Set a godly standard of honesty in all doings, transparency within the faith community, respect for one another and trust in God.

Issue 5: Avoidance

Avoidance looks the other way as problems mount, opportunities arise, people evolve, situations change. Avoidance buys calm today at the expense of tension tomorrow. Avoidance pleases one person today at the expense of failing many people tomorrow. Avoidance loads today’s unmet needs onto tomorrow’s constituents and thereby guarantees frustration and failure.

Faith’s role: Encourage accountability, affirm mercy, be communities where people deal forthrightly with problems.

In my opinion, those five issues don’t bear a conservative or liberal label. We all care about them. They are the middle ground where a divided nation could meet to consider its way forward. On those issues, I think we will find less disagreement about Scripture, less distrust of other faith traditions.

In fact, if we could talk about things that really matter, I think we would find ourselves not fighting one another, but saying “no” to those powerful elites that keep us off-balance with minor wrangling while they go about amassing wealth.

MO/PH RNS END

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His forthcoming book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” will be published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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