Can Athens Restore Marriage?
“What goes around comes around.” There are many aspects of life that tend to display circularity. Fashion is one. Last year's fad is dead and gone―but, chances are, it will be revived and re-presented in a few short years time. If double breasted suits are out of fashion, just wait. Leave them in the wardrobe, and shortly they will come back into fashion.
Maybe marriage and stable families are like this. For the past three decades marital breakdown in Athens has increased markedly. The one man-one woman lifelong nuclear family looks like it is disappearing like the land-line phone system. It is tempting to think that this will be just another fashion, however. In time, the nuclear family will make a come-back. The pendulum will swing again.
Such optimism is pollyannerish. Athens cannot restore the institution of marriage and family. It simply cannot do it.
In the first place, consider the religious fundament of Athens―the foundation upon which all its life and culture is built. The principle of human autonomy, of man as god, of man as the master of his fate is the essence of Athens. Historically, this has worked out into two basic political and sociological constructs: either Athenian society has tended towards individualistic or collectivist organisation. In the case of the former, the autonomy of the individual against the collective or the corporate predominates. In the case of the latter, it is collective man, usually manifesting itself as the government, which predominates.
The twentieth century manifested both poles of human autonomy. It produced some of the worst collectivist tyrannies in all recorded human history, resulting in the most bloody, deadly century ever. Fascism and communism (together with their variants) was a twentieth century phenomenon. But as the century drew to a close, collectivist options disappeared from the world. Francis Fukuyama expressed this develoment as “The End of History and the Last Man.” (New York: Avon Books, 1992) He has often been misquoted―but he was arguing that the Hegelian dialectical rationalistic view of history had produced its last synthesis: democratic, liberal, free, individualistic man was taking over. The whole world, implied Fukuyama, would become democratic―that is, would embrace western liberal democracy. This would mean the end of history as we knew it. The final synthesis had been reached. The dialectic of history was over—or so he believed and argued.
Fukuyama was right at least in this: the end of the twentieth century had seen Athens, in the West, and increasingly in the East move to organise societies around the rights and autonomies of individuals. What is new (in terms of historical development) is the predominance of autonomist, individualistic, rights based nations and societies, on the one hand, at the same time as those societies were successful in casting away the vestiges of Christian influence, on the other. Since we are in uncharted territory, historically speaking, we do not know what lengths of devastation and destruction this will lead to.
But, at least one result is clear: monogamous, life-long marriage and the nuclear family has broken down―and the change is irrevocable as long as the two conditions stipulated above co-incide. Not only does Athens not want to fix the problem―it could not, even it tried. You cannot build the institution of marriage upon a foundation of asserting one's individual rights. The fundamental religious dogma of Athens―that I am the captain of my soul, the master of my fate―once it becomes consistently reified into a society organised along atomistic, individualistic lines (which has now happened at the “end of history”)―cannot maintain the institution of marriage. It is spiritually incompetent and unable to do so. Modern Athens, can no more return now to marriage than it can give up on its most fundamental religious dogmas and prejudices.
Fukuyama is right. We now have seen the Last Man―and the Last Man is so devasted and corrupted that he simply does not have the religious and moral fibre to sustain marriage. Once the social supports for the institution of marriage have been stripped away through the attenuation of Jerusalem in liberal western democractic societies, marriage is collapsing on every side.
A second reason why Athens is unable to restore marriage is the psychological and spiritual damage wrought upon the children that are produced under Athenian social arrangements. If modern unbelieving adults cannot sustain marriage, their children are ten times less likely to be able to do so. “Living arrangements”―whether the biblical institution of marriage, or Athenian parodies―are the most powerful conditioning and socialising influences of all upon children. God created it to be so. It is part of the fabric of the world, which cannot be shaken, and which cannot be escaped. Either the socialising impact is positive or it is not. Either way, the impact―its depth and pervasiveness―is virtually inescapable. We are comprehensively conditioned while children by the living arrangements and experiences wrought upon us.
Young people are deeply and permanently affected by the marital breakups of their parents. They are affected in such a way that they have become incapable of entering into marriage as defined by the Scriptures (that is, lifelong, monogamous, leaving and cleaving of a man and a woman). Leon Kass, in a remarkable essay, captures the problem:
The ubiquitous experience of divorce is also deadly for courtship and marriage. Some people try to argue, wishfully against the empirical evidence, that children of divorce will marry better than their parents because they know how important it is to choose well. But the deck is stacked against them. Not only are many of them frightened of marriage, in whose likely permanence they simply do not believe, but they are often maimed for love and intimacy. They have had no successful models to imitate; worse, their capacity for trust and love has been severely crippled by the betrayal of the primal trust all children naturally repose in their parents, to provide that durable, reliable, and absolutely trustworthy haven of permanent and unconditional love in an otherwise often unloving and undependable world. Countless students at the University of Chicago have told me and my wife that the divorce of their parents has been the most devastating and life-shaping event of their lives. They are conscious of the fact that they enter into relationships guardedly and tentatively; for good reason, they believe that they must always be looking out for number one. Accordingly, they feel little sense of devotion to another and, their own needs unmet, they are not generally eager for or partial to children. They are not good bets for promise keeping, and they haven't enough margin for generous service. And many of the fatherless men are themselves unmanned for fatherhood, except in the purely biological sense. Even where they dream of meeting a true love, these children of divorce have a hard time finding, winning, and committing themselves to the right one.
It is surely the fear of making a mistake in marriage, and the desire to avoid a later divorce, that leads some people to undertake cohabitation, sometimes understood by the couple to be a "trial marriage"--although they are often one or both of them self-deceived (or other-deceiving). It is far easier, so the argument goes, to get to know one another by cohabiting than by the artificial systems of courting or dating of yesteryear. But such arrangements, even when they eventuate in matrimony, are, precisely because they are a trial, not a trial of marriage. Marriage is not something one tries on for size, and then decides whether to keep; it is rather something one decides with a promise, and then bends every effort to keep.
Lacking the formalized and public ritual, and especially the vows or promises of permanence (or "commitment") that subtly but surely shape all aspects of genuine marital life, cohabitation is an arrangement of convenience, with each partner taken on approval and returnable at will. Many are, in fact, just playing house-sex and meals shared with the rent. When long-cohabiting couples do later marry, whether to legitimate prospective offspring, satisfy parental wishes, or just because "it now seems right," post-marital life is generally regarded and experienced as a continuation of the same, not as a true change of estate. The formal rite of passage that is the wedding ceremony is, however welcome and joyous, also something of a mockery: Everyone, not only the youngest child present, wonders, if only in embarrassed silence, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Given that they have more or less drifted into marriage, it should come as no great surprise that couples who have lived together before marriage have a higher, not lower, rate of divorce than those who have not. Too much familiarity? Disenchantment? Or is it rather the lack of wooing--that is, that marriage was not seen from the start as the sought--for relationship, as the goal that beckoned and guided the process of getting-to-know-you?
(Leon R. Kass, “The End of Courtship,” http://www.ldolphin.org/endcourtship,) p.4.
“Maimed for love and intimacy. . . . Their capacity for love and trust severely crippled. . . . They believe they must always be looking out for number one. . . . (N)ot generally eager or partial to children. . . . Many are, in fact, just playing house-sex and meals shared with the rent.” The children Kass is describing are now participating in modern Athenian “living arrangements” mark II—that is, second generation. Those children that are produced by the mark II generation―what will they be like. If their parents were maimed for love and intimacy, their capacity for love severely crippled, etc. what will they be like? What will modern Athenian “living arrangements” mark III exhibit?
Kass is giving his observations and experience of US college life. But what he describes is virtually universal in the western (post-christian) world. For example, a recent demographic survey in Australia underscores the point. Unmarried women now outnumber married women for the first time since World War One--when a large proportion of marriageable men were in the trenches in France. Moreover, the analysis revealed that 51.4% of women were opting for a "singles" life-style in a new phenemenon called "Bridget Jones meets Sex and the City." The survey estimates that 25% of Australian women will never have children, and that there has been a rapid rise in "Single Person Urban Dwellings"--that is, people living alone. This trend is expected to increase rapidly. (Sydney Morning Herald, March 12, 2008) Marriage is breaking down rapidly in Athenian society and Athens will not be able to stem the tsunami.
A third reason why Athens will not be able to restore marriage, the genie having been well and truly let out of the bottle, is found in the ordinary patters of God's government of human cultures and societies. When a society deliberately spurns the Living God, as ours has done, consequences follow―and those consequences usually last decades or longer. The Bible speaks a great deal of the curses of the Covenant. Just as God promises blessings to the people that fear Him and serve Him, He also threatens curses upon societies that deliberately and wilfully turn away from the light that He has given them. And western liberal democracies have had a great deal of scriptural light―centuries of it, in fact—but have deliberately turned away.
The curses of unbelief can fall upon a society from external factors―war, disease, or natural disasters such as earthquakes. But they often fall through the internally worked out consequences of disobedience to God. Thus when God warns repeatedly that He will “visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me” (Exodus 20:5) we should understand that the evil consequences of a generation fall upon their children―to their harm and hurt―such that they depart further from God, and so bring greater damage upon themselves and the next generation, and so forth.
The comforting thing in all of this is that this anger of God, His cursing of a people who have turned away from Him, does not last for ever. It normally is worked out by the third and fourth generations. But how does it end? It ends when a culture or a people become so devastated and broken that they have nothing left, no hope. All their idols have been shattered and lie around them, while they sit in the dust. In despair, they might remember God, and they may repent and turn back to Him. That is how the curse ends. But Athens cannot end the curse. Athens is the curse. It will end only as people flee the fallen and devastated city and hasten to Jerusalem.
There were those who dwelt in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Prisoners in misery and chains,
Because they had rebelled against the words of God,
And spurned the counsel of the Most High.
Therefore He humbled their hearts with labour
They stumbled and there was none to help.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble;
He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
And broke their bands apart.
Psalm 107:10―14
Can Athens restore the institution of marriage? No. It is impossible. The whirlwind has come and is coming. God alone can restore biblical marriage to us. And He will. In His time. As it pleases Him. As He pours out His Spirit upon a wretched and broken people. Maranatha. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus.
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