Volume 6 - Issue 100 November, 2010
Dear Friend,
Part III, What will the future be like?
With fathers on the run and the family in disarray what does the future hold for our children? Does the mindset of the Church need to be radically altered to come into line with what is central to the heart of our Father? What are Satan’s plans to further destroy the family? What can we do as Christians to change the course we are presently on?
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again’
there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9
History does repeat itself!
A contributor to the Boston Quarterly Review in 1859 wrote the following; “The family, in its old sense, is disappearing from our land, and not only our free institutions are threatened but the very existence of our society is endangered.” Though written in response to the breakdown of the traditional morality that began in England and America in the mid-1700’s it could easily be applicable today.
What was the state of our country at that time that would warrant such a response? We would be surprised to see that prostitution and pornography flourished, divorce rates rose steadily and the percentage of children born out of wedlock soared, while saloons and taverns outnumbered churches in most cities. By 1830 the consumption of alcohol was three times higher that it is today. Even more startling was by 1860 20% of all pregnancies ended in abortion.
It was during this time that poets like Shelley declared, “love is free,” Darwin, declared, “Man was an ape,” Nietzsche pronounced, “God is dead.” Because of the silence of men, descent women responded in unison by rising up in what we now term, “The Victorian Age,” in response to the collapse of the family by crusading outside the home for the moral betterment of society. Crusading against brothels, saloons, overcrowding tenements, and other threats to decency. They believed that the home was not contained within the four walls of an individual house but the home encompassed the entire community.
Could it be that an old solution may become a new solution?
By the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century another trend began to re-emerge. The birthrate in the United States had fallen to 40% from what it had been a hundred years previously. What was even more alarming was how pronounced the fallen birthrate had become in the white, Protestant middle class. It was so drastic that colleges became very concerned over the low fertility rates of its graduating students. In Bryn Mawr College between 1888 and 1906 the birthrate was just .037 children per graduate well below the 2.1 needed for replacement fertility levels.
One would wonder if the population was even aware of this trend? Surprisingly yes! It led President Theodore Roosevelt to proceed on a campaign to convince the middle and upper class couples to have more children. He used his “State of the Union Address” to chastise well-born women for practicing “willful sterility---the one sin for which the penalty is national death or race suicide.”
But there were other views being expounded in what should be done to offset the falling birthrate. A differing strategy for avoiding ‘race suicide’ came into vogue. Since the well bred were falling behind in the number of children they produced, over those whom the progressives of the day called the ‘unfit,’ a new plan for dealing with the problem emerged.
The leader of this group was Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Sanger did not agree with President Roosevelt in his plan to convince the upper class to have more children, she decided it best to keep other people from reproducing. After all why make it a burden for those who are obviously superior when one could limit the over-fertility of the mentally, physically defective and those who didn’t contribute significantly to society as a whole.
Sanger wrote, “There are some who deplore this condition and would remedy it by abusive epithets hurled at this conscientious group of decent and responsible citizens, who would rather have only the number of children they can decently rear, than to enter a cradle competition with the irresponsible. There is only one reply to a request for a higher birth rate among the intelligent, and that is to first take off the burdens of the insane and the blemished from your backs. Sterilization for these is a remedy.”
Sanger and her group called for the sterilization of the ‘feeble-minded, insane, criminals, epileptic, inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependent” which included orphans, bums, the homeless and the poor. As incredible as this seems in just one state alone, Virginia — 8,300 individuals were sterilized.
But there was another political movement who sent representatives over to study and eventually embrace Sanger’s views taking them to monstrous extremes. Out of Germany and Italy came fascism which embraced breeding farms for the superior and concentration “death camps” for the unfit. Though Sanger was not as openly monstrous she was strategic in placing her centers in poor and mostly black neighborhoods to exterminate what she deemed, the unfit.
“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” Martin Luther King, Jr
What is happening today?
Along with abortion another alarming trend has emerged within the past 50 years. It is a trend called, “Gendercide” which is the extermination of over 100 million baby girls, and the toll is rising! When we think of societies like China that promote a “one child policy” one would wonder why this would be a problem. China, parts of India, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Caucasus, the western Balkans even subsets of America’s population have a high number of male births. Many of these countries believe it is the responsibility of the male child to take care of the elderly parents. So it is imperative that the one child be a male child! Few realize that the desire for more males come with a very high price tag!
These baby girls are the victims of a combination of ancient prejudice and modern preferences for smaller families. An interesting result of a nation, which practices “gendercide,” is the growing number of frustrated single men. In China alone during the past twenty years the crimes rate has almost doubled. The cases of bride abduction, the trafficking of women, rape and prostitution are rapidly on the rise. The result of “one child policy” is that 20% of all males will face life without the chance to ever marry and have a family. The term used to describe them is, “barren branches.”
Can we turn the tide?
From the evidence presented it would look like the future looks bleak for children. But if the church begins to “focus in on the family” as being the central issue on the heart of God we can dramatically turn the tide. Satan has not slowed down in his desire to destroy the family. We must continually seek God for his heart in all of our decisions concerning our present and future members of our families. We must make sure our decisions are not based on the “god of personal convenience” but on what God’s will for our life is.
Will the church/society return to more Victorian era values as we have done in the past? Perhaps, but even more importantly we should not forget what ‘Our Father” said to us in Genesis 1:28, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Happy families who hold to the principles of ‘Our Father in heaven’ and impart that lifestyle to others through a life lived for Christ, do more good than all the laws that have and will be passed.
May God continue to bless and surround you with His love.
The Empty Cradle by Peter Longman
The Economist, March, 2010 Edition
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