Sky Dive!

This is the acclamation of avid maniacs. When I was an undergrad, I went with some friends from Austin up to Georgetown to do some skydiving at the local airport. It was a fun time but since we jumped with static-lines the free fall time was only until the static line pulled the shoot open. Nevertheless, jumping out of the airplane was certainly exhilarating, and even more so when I tangled myself in the static-line and almost lost my head when it snapped taught. This experience came to mind as I read an article by David Popenoe for my dissertation, which he later published as a book entitled Life Without Father, on the problem of the absent father in the United States. He found that there was a direct correlation between the absent father and the decline of the nuclear family, which he describes as in “free fall” since the 1960s. Free fall may be fine if you’re sky diving and have a parachute to help break your fall. But it is not so clear that there is a parachute for authentic family life. While many sociologists like to pretend that this is just another step in the evolution of marriage and family, and that all will be fine—just different, the sociological evidence runs contrary. The “new” family is generally absent the father and the social ills directly attributable to this do not bode well for society’s survival. The first step to solving the problem is recognizing there is one and that something can be done to turn it around. The next step I suppose is to work in our own families to keep them focused on Christ and to give our children a healthy understanding of the anti-gospel message they will get from society.

By the way, we got home last night and I am off today to Champaign, IL. There is a good comment to a previous post on nurture v. nature by Huck Finn, a response to which will have to await my return. In short though, I will say that the more one writes the more trouble he can get himself into. I will probably not get any posts in for Wednesday until late.