| Marriage Statistics | Divorce Statistics |
Our culture is in very serious jeopardy. This is not a case of patriotism. Although the nation will suffer. It's worse than that. Yes, it involves everyone. There is no escape from this one. This is a problem that strikes at the very heart and soul of our culture; and not just America's because other nations also have the problem.
When divorce rips apart a marriage, it is like pulling a tooth that has roots that go all the way down to the big toe! This is the reason for the strong Biblical mandate by the Lord Jesus Christ:
Divorce breaks apart the seeds of society: Life and Love. It leaves a caustic wound where once lived plant that grew from the seeds of Life and Love. It breaks apart the most important human relationship in this life.
The generation from 1960-1980 set all records for steady rising divorces. Their marriages ended in the divorce courts. This was the generation women entered the work place. Adultery (mental and overt) were the result. Women rejected the authority of their husbands. Unlike their parents who just quarreled, they divorced the men.
The generation from 1980 to present is hardened and insensitive. They are the children of divorce. Their scars will never heal. They have grandparents with traditional (authoritarian) values and parents who were adulterers. They tend to be stubborn, hardened, insensitive. They are antimarriage (as evidence by the 2 to 1 marriage to divorce ratio).
The man who fails to fulfill his obligation to be the leader in marriage generally lacks capacity for life and love. He rejects God's authority first; without which it is impossible to lead anyone. He fails to develop spiritual integrity; without which he doesn't have a clue about virtue. He fails to understand women because he is without the tools and training. Now, how can such a man lead a woman on the basis of virtue love when he has no virtue?
Now the woman fell for the man on the basis of personal love; but, in marriage, she must respond to him under authority. The man rejected God's authority; now the woman rejects the husband's authority. This is logical. But why would the woman want to destroy the man in the divorce? First, the woman is not a rational creature. She represents Love. Love is not logic. The man uses logic; the woman responds or reacts, but logic is not in her vocabulary. The woman uses the heart (the right lobe of the soul). When she has love, that is good; but when she fills her heart with venom, she reacts most viciously. That is not good. So it is the nature of the woman to love or hate, and her capacity for both is quite powerful since she uses her right lobe to express them.
Desire for Life, deliverance in all forms, motivates human behavior. Life, then, is one of the seeds of behavior. From the seed may grow higher values as the branches and fruit of the tree. One may seek love to fill the basic fear of loneliness or rejection. One may seek knowledge to become efficient in another role. But the higher values all stem from the basic survival instinct, the motivation for life.
The need for Love, however, is so fundamental to mankind that it must also be classified as one of the basic seeds of behavior. Loss of love is a fundamental fear. The fear of rejection is strong in a baby, but it is also strong in the adult. Life without love is not worth living. The one who loses love is as good as dead in his soul. But love also reaches out to seek more love, to build relationships that have love, to enjoy life. Love seeks a higher meaning in life than just the preservation of the species (or saving one's skin). Love seeks fulfillment.
Life seeks to preserve life; Love seeks to enjoy it. Life wants to keep living, to remain alive, to keep from dying. Love seeks more love. Love expresses love and responds to love. Thus a good relationship is formed. But life steps in and fears dying because in death one cannot live or love. Then love takes over and lays down its life for the one it loves. So we are left with the obvious principle:
| Soul Model |
Values are beliefs that are anchored into the subconscious. One's values motivate behavior. Some values are good and others are bad. An example of a value is the love of money. That is a learned value, however. It was not present at birth. Respect for authority is a learned value. Values are developed through parental training and discipline. They are painfully learned and believed. To alter values is a difficult and laborious process. It is like stopping a bad habit.
Now, in order for a marriage to work, the fundamental values of authority and virtue-love must be operational. Otherwise, the marriage is doomed. Respect for authority is learned from the parents and reinforced by teachers. In some cases when both fail, military service can provide the discipline and training to produce them. Virtue-love is an expression of the soul that can be developed through the proper spiritual training. Values motivate love; but love results from developing integrity, which requires a multitude of values.
Marriages function when the husband and wife have good values, especially authority and virtue-love. However, there are additional values, Life and Love, which are divine design. These values are not learned; nor can they be altered by training. They are inherent identity given to the soul at creation. The Right Woman is made for the Right Man. This is divine design. The soul is created with some values: The love motivation of Right Man for Right Woman and Right Woman for Right Man. This is seen in the sentence that the Lord pronounced on Eve after the fall: "Your desire shall be for your husband" (Genesis 3:16). This "desire" is the Love motivation.
When the Right Man marries the Right Woman, these values of divine design are a blessing from God. However, when the wrong people marry, these same inherent values of divine design are a detriment. This is no excuse for getting out of the marriage, but it does mean loss of blessing. Marriage of the wrong man to the wrong woman will lead to its own brand of misery.
Life and Love are inherent values of divine design. The motivation to live and love function immediately after soul activation. The human soul inherently desires to live and love. It is these inherent values that come into play in the Right Man - Right Woman relationship.
Now, at the point of birth, we were given two fundamental values, Life and Love, the seeds of behavior. These values have roots that go down into the very core of our being. Even when we are asleep the involuntary reflexes keep our vital processes functioning (breathing, heart beat, digestion). When a baby is born, it wants to live and to love. It doesn't refuse to eat; and it doesn't come out a wild animal. It has some measure of basic love.
But, a person is also born with the seeds of life and love for Right Man/Right Woman. The "desire" of the woman for her husband (Genesis 3:16) is that seed. These seeds in the soul become more active later in life when Right Man and Right Woman meet. The seeds in the soul mean that Right Man and Right Woman have a destiny. The seed in the soul is like a homing device that goes off at the right time to help the soul recognize it's other half. But the seed was there from birth and motivated the individual to follow his destiny.
This sounds like a fairy tale doesn't it? Then why do most people (Christian or non-Christian) believe it? It is probably the widest held belief on earth. It is not just for Christians. It is for the preservation of the human race. The seeds of this belief are so deep they are basically instinctive; and the world believes it. Even divorcees believe it because after suffering the agony of a marriage failure, they go right out and try it again.
Now, whereas, the basic seeds of Life and Love are given to everyone, they are no guarantee of happiness. Just because one has love doesn't mean that person has capacity for love. The love may be selfish, greedy, egocentric. Love must have maturity to have value. A person must have capacity for love. Only maturity brings about virtue in love. Immaturity can destroy any marriage - even one with Right Man/Right Woman!
An example of how immaturity destroys a marriage is adultery. The immature person seeks gratification of personal love and lacks the strength of impersonal love. The immature person thinks the grass is greener in the other pasture (a physical perception from lack of mentality). The adulterous person pursues gratification of lust (not love) outside of marriage. This one changes his mind about why he got married in the first place.
But, even immaturity and adultery, cannot explain the vicious
antagonism
of divorce and the epidemic in our culture! The question remains:
How can
two people who loved each other hate each other with such
vengeance? The
answer requires understanding the basic seeds of Life and Love
that
are ingrained in Right Man/Right Woman. The soul model will be
used to
illustrate:
| Soul Model |
The Right Man or Right Woman has a home in the soul. The Right Man has a home in the soul of Right Woman, and vice versa. The soul requires thoughts on the cerebral cortex for stability. The absence of thought leaves a void (an empty room). So, in the case of the Right Woman, if the Right Man is not at home in her soul, she has void into which another man may enter. He is the wrong man - not the Right Man. Only Right Man will fit. Why? Because that room is linked to a value, the seed of love. The wrong man contradicts the value. And when a value is contradicted, the person will fight to the death.
So, what happens when wrong man is placed in the Right Man's room in the soul is the soul splits. The subconscious rises to fill the void as a volcano erupting. The emotion flows through the rift as lava. The attraction to wrong man may be lust or jealous desire or a mixture of lascivious emotions. The attraction may be passionate, but it is not true love. True love is always under control. Passion is out of control. The inborn value of Right Man when violated causes soul trauma. The perpetrator literally blows his top.
When Right Man or Right Woman go for the paramour, the volcano erupts and that person becomes victim of their most base desires from the Old Sin Nature. This attraction for the wrong person is a violation of the most basic seed values (Life and Love) in the soul. The person literally erupts and the monster emerges. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde8 are the personality models for marriage. On the one hand the person is civilized and respectable; on the other hand the monster emerges. Or perhaps, Frankenstein is a better illustration. When Right Woman is at home in the soul, then the man is the Knight in Shining Armor; but when the paramour is substituted, the soul splits and out comes Frankenstein.
Romance brings out the best and the worst in mankind. The seeds of Life and Love may produce the fruit of maturity or the strife of jealousy and hate. When the seeds of Life and Love are nurtured and protected, marriage can be the expression of great love and happiness; but when the paramour is pursued, the monster emerges to stress and frustrate. Why do lovers quarrel? The monsters have emerged.
When Right Man/Right Woman are at home in the soul, then RIGHT MAN DOES NOT FIGHT WITH RIGHT WOMAN! AND RIGHT WOMAN DOES NOT REACT TO RIGHT MAN! When the soul is occupied with Right Man/Right Woman, there is true love. And where their is true love, there is no strife. The basic values of the seeds of Life and Love must not be violated or the marriage will suffer and the culture will suffer.
| Seeds of Society |
The fundamental value of love is a part of civilized relationships in society. A business cannot succeed unless the customer is treated with courtesy. This is actually an expression of love from the soul. So all our human relationships involve some degree of love.
Culture develops around the fundamental values of Life and Love. These are the seeds of society, the roots of behavior. These fundamental values motivate marriage, the most basic building block of society. As a culture matures, roles and responsibilities are dispersed, just as the branches of a tree that grows from a single seed. People choose professions to meet their most basic needs, the needs of Life and Love.
The Arts are the part of a culture that arise from the fundamental value of Love. Music, literature, art, are all expressions of the seed of Love. They reflect the values of a culture. As with human values, these expressions may be bad values (e.g. the painting of Chagall) or good values (e.g. the music of Haydn). Cultural values may be as corrupt and evil as the monster in the soul reacting to Right Man/Right Woman.
In a culture, the roles associated with Life are generally assumed by the men while the roles associated with Love are best fulfilled by the women. Men become the bread winners and protectors of life while women become loving companions and mothers. The woman is happiest when she is under the protection of authority. This is not demeaning but honorable. Under authority, she is free to respond in love.
Marriage is the biggest issue in the life of a person; and for the unmarried, it is still the biggest issue! So where does that leave the business? Whereas business is necessary, it simply adds another set of stresses and false hopes to marriages that are at the breaking point. And when the marriages break, the business is a loser as well as the divorcees because the business will still have these slaughtered souls on its payroll. This may appear to be a very pessimistic view, but the statistics clearly show this. Those who shout about the success of business better look into the eyes of the tired, stressed employees.
Business success can only be measured in terms of people success because both make up the Culture. There is a business establishment, military establishment, government, and free press - not to mention the things that keep these going, i.e. the Church and marriage. The Cultural perspective of success is very different from the metrics of the establishment. It shouldn't be, but it is. Two voices are ringing in our ears:
In terms of the Divorce Statistics, these are some of the things that happened. After War II, the business boom led to bureaucratic empires and illusions about materialistic wealth. The Baby Boomers were given poor parental training because the marriages were overly burdened by big business. The Baby Boomers along with women in the workplace brought down those empires, and that was not a victory for anyone. Everyone suffered. The divorce rate skyrocketed for the Baby Boomers, and business was the loser. The next generation (1980 to present) has rejected both grandparents and parents. They have inherited a mess. Their lives are the issue - not the business.
The Gross National Product is not the issue. The gross national divorce rate is! That divorce rate will sap the strength of the business as well as the next generation; and at the rate we're going, the next generation may be a nightmare! When all this begins to snowball, it is like compound interest all coming due. Someone will pay, and it won't be the husband who was already taken to the cleaners by the divorce court.
The effects of divorce on a business exist. They must, since the divorce rate is now an epidemic! But the symptoms may not be attributed to the culprit. Some of the lurking effects that are easily camouflaged are as follows. In the case of men, since men and women have different problems from divorce, divorced men have a tendency to be demoralized. They feel worthless. They lose their self-esteem and their confidence. They tend to hesitate, be more cautious, too conservative, afraid to take risks. They also tend to notice injustices in the system, and react bitterly. But overall they are quiet and withdrawn. They tend to be more feminine.
The women divorcees, on the other hand, tend to be more aggressive, contentious, and reactionary. They will stand their ground and fight like a man; whereas, before they were often sweet, thoughtful, courteous, kindhearted. But now, they tend to be more hardened. They learned during the divorce (which are mostly filed by women) that the system will listen to their gripes. They don't understand the difference between being used and being abused. They soon discover that someone (often another man in a position of power) will listen to them, and they wind up being used. They are willing to trade favors to get what they want.
A divorce is a trauma for both men and women; but it is also a trauma for others in the business as well as the customer. The divorce rips the human soul apart. The closest relationship has been severed, and that is like being cut in half. The soul is severely wounded, and near death. Coping with stress becomes a major problem for both the divorced man and the woman. Those who had problems before will find themselves with new physical problems - more headaches, backaches, viruses, colds.
But, in spite of all this, it is amazing how a worker can go through the motions; and, on the surface, carry on. However, at best, the divorcee is wounded for a long time; and the recovery process will be long and painful (perhaps two to five years). During this time the business culture suffers. The roots of life and love have been severed, and the results can have long term consequences rather than immediate impact for a business. For example, the divorcee is going to suffer in activities that require soul integration and creativity. Planning for the future will be mostly impossible as will judgment about complex issues. Creative solutions will be lacking. There may be creativity but it will often be flawed - not a solution.
Without a clear vision of the future, the business these days will soon be in serious trouble. That is why even a year of loss of creative skills can devastate a business. If divorce were only scattered, the impact could be absorbed; but today the impact will be felt. The problems created by men and women divorcees are also different. The men may cease to pull their weight, especially as they did before; while the women may become more cunning in forming power relationships that can benefit themselves while sapping the strength of the organization. The men tend to become more self-centered and cautious and the women more hardened and insensitive.
These forces of the men going down and the women going up then create a set of stresses in the organization. Since these stresses are beyond the capability of the average personnel department to comprehend (and since they have the same problem), the pressure may build as people try to take advantage of the new situation. As more divorces occur or a new trauma arises (e.g. the threat of downsizing or a RIF (Reduction in Force)), fault lines may develop. Such an organization is ripe for a catastrophe (analogous to an earthquake) when the next minor pressure pops up. It's only the last little bit that pushes it to the breaking point.
So that's where NASA and the military are today, and many other companies, who have been victimized by their inflexibility in a mounting crisis. Rather than contribute to the relief of stress, the inflexible and insensitive organization sets itself up for the inevitable earthquake (just as the Air National Guard before the recognition of their cultural problems). Business has always been a cold, harsh game; but when those who have been dragged through the divorce court are responsible for running it, then it becomes more intractable still.
The culture begins with the seeds of Life and Love in the marriage. The business prospers because the employees bring to it their life, their love, and their vigor. Divorce kills that life, love, and vigor. Recovery may take a while. In the meantime, the business foots the bill, pays the overhead in terms of lost productivity, and suffers as a part of the culture of the times. Divorce has played a much bigger part in dragging down our culture than most people want to believe. Marriage is the beginning of the most precious assets of our culture: Life and Love.
A business is part of the culture. The Quality of Life of everyone is a measure of success or failure. Quality of Life goes back to the original seeds of society, Life and Love. Quality of Life is not measured in terms of short term profits or long term debt. It has to be measured in terms of its relationship to the fundamental issues of a culture, Life and Love.
The skeptic may challenge the notion of Love in a business; but that is exactly what relationships are all about. The customer who is satisfied, the employee who is happy, the family who is honored to have someone working for a particular business: These are all issues of love. The love is not personal but impersonal. It is based on objectivity and integrity. Who would have it otherwise?
One more point. The business is a part of the culture. As such it may rise or fall because of the culture - not the business. Those who would hold business management or labor responsible for their own destiny have missed the point. Business is a part of culture. Business does not create a culture; nor change it. Business is merely a part of the larger culture. As such it may be a contributor or detractor, a help or a hindrance. It may be a responder, and it may be responsible; but it will never be a leader. The culture makes the business; business does not make the culture.
Life is the most precious thing we have; it would be a shame to lose it. Love is the only thing that makes life worth living; it would be a shame to abuse it. With life so dear and love so profound, who can deny anyone a chance to have them? The seeds that are given to every soul at birth from our Creator must be nurtured so they will grow to maturity, coalesce in marriage, and bear fruit. The trees that are able to rise above the underbrush and reach the light hold the keys to our destiny as individuals and a culture. Ours is not the first culture to rise, and it may not be the last; but up until now, it is the greatest. Let us not in the dark hour when our life chords are being torn from us by the pressures of life, forget who we are and what great accomplishments have been ours. Those who gave their lives and shed their blood to give us birth must not be rejected. Let us not bow to bullies or retreat in the face of death. We have lived and loved and others deserve the chance.
Let us not close our hearts and our borders to those who have never tasted the blessings of liberty; and let us resolve to defend our values and our culture with the last fiber of sinew and marrow so that others can have the opportunity to taste the fruit of life and love that have grown from our branches.
Thank you for taking the time to give this a hearing. I hope that it will awaken new perspectives. May your seeds of Life and Love bear the fruit that destiny decreed.
| What | History | Why | Current Result |
| Culture? | Needs | Source | Life & Love |
| Mankind | Beginning | Seed | Marriage |
| Marriage | Eden | Seed | Divorce |
| Behavior | Values | Seed | Relationships |
| Society | Roles | Values | Professions |
| Business | Marriage | Culture | Success/Failure |
Revised August 12, 2022
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