September 25, 2014
Marriage is disappearing. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried.” Sybil Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote that startling comment in the Sunday New York Times for Sept. 14. She also wrote, “If we could turn back the marriage clock to 1970, before the sharp rise in divorce and single parenthood began, the child poverty rate would be 20 percent lower than it is now.”
Where Ms. Sawhill and I grow apart is that she is convinced there is no way to turn that clock back or to work toward a better world in which marriage would become as important as it once was. I believe that if we educate our kids and model good marriages for them, we will not have to turn back the clock because those children will want to be married themselves in relationships that will give a lie to the shibboleth that people who are married are unhappy. And the reality of unwed mothers and increasing poverty among their kids would turn around.
In the past few months I have noticed a large increase in the number of weddings that I am witnessing for couples here at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s great. Young people (and some not so young) are committing themselves to covenant relationships in marriage that they expect will last a lifetime.
Within those marriages, couples intend, with God’s grace, to have children whom they intend to raise as God fearing, thoughtful and loving children who will mature into adults who will care for their fellow human beings and more than likely follow the path in marriage that their parents exampled for them.
Am I just looking at marriage through rose-colored glasses? No. I know many couples who fill the bill of being happy, hardworking married couples. And I don’t mean they are hard working at their careers and parenting tasks. I mean they work hard at making sure their marriage works.
Most of the successfully married couples whom I know usually will say “very,” when I ask about how hard they work to make their marriages successful, and I believe them because I see them doing just that day by day in their daily lives. They are sure to care about and for one another. They are sure that being a couple is their first reality. They are sure that they do not focus all of their love on their children, but while lavishing love on their kids, remember the importance of their love and life for one another. Kids have great sensors for how things are going for their parents. When they see a couple that loves one another, they know it. The opposite is true, too.
Today as we celebrate many different couples who have been married for many, many years here at the cathedral, we are standing up for the reality of marriages that can be happy and fulfilling. Are all of them perfect? Of course not. But they are very much worthwhile for the couples who live within those marriages. And they are a wonderful example to all of us that the marriage covenant can be just that – a faithful and loving covenant which is the same covenant that our God.