The Disintegration Of American Home-Life
There has been a break-down in the homes of America. Our homes have become dressing rooms, filling stations, and beer parlors. Moral corruption has flooded the land.
Juvenile Delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is one of our major problems. The FBI reported recently a steady increase in crime, year by year, with teen-agers responsible for a very substantial portion of it. In 1945, for example, there was an increase of 12.4% in crime over 1944; the upsurge in crime this year being the biggest since 1930.
A survey of 543,892 arrest records showed that 17 year-olds lead all others in the number of arrests, with 18 year-olds following a close second. Arrests of girls under 21 more than doubled in 1945 over 1941. A rape, felonious assault, or killing occurred in our country every 6.4 seconds. Youths under 21 years of age accounted for 51% of all automobile thefts, 42% of all burglaries, and 28% of all robberies.
Parental Delinquency
What is the cause of all these increases? There has been a catastrophic break-down in the homes of our country. For the most part, delinquent parents can be said to be the cause of delinquent children. Juvenile delinquency is only the symptom of a disease which is eating away the very foundations of our country, and is threatening to destroy the church of the Lord. That disease is a lack, a dearth of truly Christian homes.
Roger Babson says any hunt for a solution to the problem of juvenile delinquency must start with the reconstructing of parenthood and its untransferable duties. A wayward youngster and an erring parent are usually but the opposite sides of the same bad coin. Child hoodlumism will end only when legal and financial responsibility is acknowledged not only in the realm of feeding, housing, and clothing, but in the much more important realm of training and teaching.
Judge Sam Davis Tatum, judge of the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Davidson County, Tennessee, reported recently that of the 9,500 boys under 17 who had come into the courts of Davidson County, there was not one whose parents went to Bible classes and church services regularly. He further stated that there were only 44 boys out of the 9,500 who themselves went to Sunday school and church services regularly.
Where Our Money Goes
It is clear that we have over-emphasized material things to the neglect of spiritual things. The United States of America in 1942 spent in all religious enterprises the sum of $721,000,000.00; this was less than 1% of our national income. In that same year the American people spent $5,200,000,000.00 for alcoholic drinks and an additional $2,400,000,000.00 for tobacco. Thus, for whiskey and tobacco the American people spent in that year more than ten times the sum spent on all religious endeavors of every description. And the awful contrast continues to grow even more shameful and disgraceful in the years following the war. In 1946 approximately $10,800,000,000.00 was spent by Americans for whiskey and tobacco; while only about $4,000,000,000.00 was spent in all our educational institutions, from kindergartens through universities.
There are over 437,000 saloons in America—one for every 300 people. To each five church buildings in the nation, there are seven saloons. There are 27,000,000 young people in America who are receiving no religious instruction of any kind whatsoever. And of this number approximately 16,000,000 have never been inside any kind of church building __even one time! There are 60,000,000 Americans who profess no religion of any kind.
Declining Morals
Anyone curious about the evident decline in national morals, including all the problems of delinquency both juvenile and adult need look no further. The figures denoting comparative interests and evaluations tell the story; they speak for themselves. When whiskey and tobacco are more important to a nation than all her churches and schools, the fall of that nation surely cannot be long postponed.
There has been an alarming decline in the moral character of the womanhood of our nation. We are witnessing the disgusting sight of cigarette smoking, paint-smearing, cocktail drinking women, reeling drunkenly in the streets of our cities and towns. In 1920 one woman was arrested for drunkenness to every five men arrested for that cause. In 1946 the ratio had risen to one woman for each two men. In 1949 the proportion is approximately even.
Women have left the homes, where God ordained they should be, and have gone out into the world to compete with men in the store the factory and the office. They have left their children in the hands of maids and "baby-sitters" instead of caring for them themselves. Divorce and immorality on an unprecedented scale have come in the wake of such behavior.
The Home And The Church
It is inevitable that these conditions in the home life should reflect themselves in the church. The church in many places has been filled up with worldly-minded people, irreverent, and flippant in their attitudes. The word of God has been disregarded and lightly set aside.
The home is the training center for the church. It is nearly impossible for one reared' in a home filled with irreverence and disregard for God's law to grow up to become the kind of Christian and the kind of citizen he ought to be. We must build homes in which piety, reverence for God and spiritual things are stressed and impressed. Then we'll have better communities in which to live, and better churches with which to sound out the gospel of Jesus Christ into all the earth.
—O—
Seventh Day Adventists claim there is a difference between the "law of the Lord" which they identify with the ten commandments and the "ceremonial law"; they say this "ceremonial law" was the one taken away by Christ on Calvary, and that the "law of the Lord" is still binding on people today. But observe that when Jesus was born, his parents came to "offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. (Luke 2:24) Thus the so-called "ceremonial law" is distinctly called "the law of the Lord". Let some Adventist explain it for us!