{"id":1038,"date":"2018-04-20T11:06:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-20T15:06:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2019-03-24T07:17:11","modified_gmt":"2019-03-24T11:17:11","slug":"criticism-or-corroboration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewcochran.net\/blog\/criticism-or-corroboration\/","title":{"rendered":"Criticism or Corroboration?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having once been a regular reader there, I was happy to find that Dr. Gene Edward Veith shared my recent piece on churches’ contempt for men over on his blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

His last paragraph as he opened it up for discussion particularly caught my eye. The piece obviously attracted a fair amount of criticism, and Dr. Veith’s questions helpfully roll a number of the most common complaints into one place:<\/p>\n

And might men deserve to be criticized in this age of absent fathers and callous husbands? After all, if women are initiating most of the divorces, why is that? Shouldn\u2019t a man who is the spiritual head of his family, in whom by virtue of his vocation is hidden Christ in His relationship with the church, prevent that from happening?<\/p>\n

But even so, does he still have a point?<\/p>\n

Let’s take these questions one by one.<\/p>\n

“Might men deserve to be criticized in this age of absent fathers and callous husbands?”<\/p>\n

Are we in an age of callous husbands at all? Particularly in comparison to husbands in various cultures throughout recorded history (which, if we’re talking about “ages” is the only applicable standard)? I suspect the answer here is no, in which case men don’t deserve to be criticized for it. Accordingly, I will wait for someone to make a compelling case that contemporary American husbands are particularly callous before I consider adding to that criticism.<\/p>\n

Absent fathers, of course, are a different issue; this very much is an age of absent fathers. But before we heap the blame for that on men, we do need to consider why<\/strong> they’re absent. If you look at single-mother households (and exclude widows) there are two main categories:\u00a0 never married, and divorced\/separated.\u00a0 I can’t find the stats at the moment, but I believe it’s roughly a 50\/50 split between these two groups.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with fathers absent from a divorced\/separated household.\u00a0 Since a supermajority of divorces are a result of the the wife unilaterally throwing the father out of the house, it’s not as though he is typically choosing to leave.\u00a0 The more common circumstance is that the father is being forced out by the mother using the power of the state.\u00a0 Accordingly, it seems a stretch to say that men are broadly to blame for this half of fatherless households.<\/p>\n

The other half of fatherless households fall into the “never married” category. Here there is certainly room for blame and criticism towards men. However, the question remains whether this blame should be disproportionate to the blame that is due to women for the same circumstances. At the most basic level, it takes two people to create this kind of situation–a man who sired a child without securing a way to stay in his\/her life, and a woman who conceived a child without securing a father for him\/her. Men are to blame, but they’re not especially to blame in comparison to women.\u00a0 If churches are only holding men accountable for fornication, then they’re not doing their jobs properly, and it indeed reveals a problem of contempt for men.<\/p>\n

But there are deeper levels as well. Are we to assume that every never married mother actually wants the father in the home? Again, given the divorce situation, that hardly seems like a foregone conclusion. Among the never married single mothers I’ve known (at least the ones for whom I actually know the answer to the question) all but one of them didn’t want the father around. And as for the exception, she only wanted one of the fathers around–the rest she didn’t want around. (And that wanted father was in the household, though he would not get married.)<\/p>\n

There’s also the fact that the rampant growth of this category is a result of the sexual revolution, which is largely the fault of feminism.\u00a0 That’s another odd movement to lay squarely at the feet of men.<\/p>\n

So yes, obviously men who voluntarily abandon their children deserve criticism. However, that is not the primary reason we’re in an age of absent fathers. While such men certainly exist, statistics and experience suggest that paternal abandonment is not the norm for fatherless households. The fact that so many people try to present it as the norm actually underscores churches’ contempt for men rather than refuting it.<\/p>\n

“After all, if women are initiating most of the divorces, why is that?”<\/p>\n

In context with the previous line, the message I’m getting here is a contention that “women initiate most divorces because men are so callous and absent.” I’ll go ahead and answer Dr’ Veith’s question from an article<\/a>\u00a0he linked to in one of his earlier blog posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The majority of divorces today occur in marriages not characterized by serious conflict. The most common reasons cited for divorce are problems that affect most marriages, such as ‘growing apart’ and ‘not being able to talk together.'”<\/p>\n

This fact challenges the rhetorical question’s presumption in two ways.<\/p>\n

First of all, it’s hard to say the man is typically at fault for “growing apart” when the wife is typically the one using the law to enforce a separation, nor for being “unable to talk together” when the wife is typically the one who requires that they speak through lawyers. (You can say that no one is wholly innocent in a divorce–which is accurate\u00a0coram deo<\/em>–but that is true of literally every victim of every sin.\u00a0 Why is divorce the only sin where that fact excuses the perpetrator and dismisses the victim\u00a0coram mundo<\/em> in our churches?)<\/p>\n

More importantly, however, these majority reasons are by no means Biblical warrants for divorce. Considering what is at stake, that makes these divorces a grievous sin–typically committed against husbands (and their children) by their wives. In what other circumstances is it acceptable to look at the victims of grievous sin and assume that they must have done something to deserve it? If, for example, someone regards a victim of violent rape and assumes she must have been asking for it, it is rightly regarded by most as gross prejudice. I likewise see no reason to categorize the assumption that men usually deserve their divorces as anything other than gross prejudice.<\/p>\n

“Shouldn\u2019t a man who is the spiritual head of his family, in whom by virtue of his vocation is hidden Christ in His relationship with the church, prevent that from happening?”<\/p>\n

Shouldn’t Christ, who is head of the Church, prevent people from leaving him? And yet, it happens; people make shipwrecks of their faith.\u00a0 If our omnipotent and omniscient Lord does not always prevent that from happening in the Church, it seems a tall order to uniformly expect it from fallen and sinful mortals in their marriages.<\/p>\n

American no-fault divorce is unilateral divorce. It only takes one, and the targeted spouse has no legal recourse to prevent it. You might say he could prevent it by being a better husband, but again that’s a wholly prejudicial assumption. It’s not like Christ could prevent unbelief and heresy by being a better husband to his church, so why should we assume that husbands must always or even typically be able to prevent divorce in like manner?<\/p>\n

So do churches harbor contempt for men? At the end of his post, Dr. Veith asks whether I “still” have a point despite the questions he brought up. I would contend that I have a point because of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having once been a regular reader there, I was happy to find that Dr. Gene Edward Veith shared my recent piece on churches’ contempt for men over on his blog. 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