Most probably you have never heard of Quanah Parker. He was a native American Indian chief. The son of a Comanche Indian chief and a captured English girl, Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah was fluent in English and studied American laws so he could help his people with property and water rights laws with white people. He became a lead spokesman for Indians in the early 1900s.
He became friends with President Teddy Roosevelt and went on hunting trips with him. Quanah was summoned to the White House to meet with the President. Roosevelt informed Quanah that having five wives was against the law of the land. He looked into Quanah’s face as if wanting an answer to the dilemma and wanting Quanah to commit to one wife only.
Quanah paused and, with a sly grin, he said, “You tell ‘um which one.”
Obviously, the President couldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.
Missionaries in Africa today have the same dilemma. Most missionaries just leave the issue alone and expect the problem to clear itself up in the next generation as Christ is taught in the culture.
How would you answer the question?
Tags: divorce, Indians, marriage
- The poverty rate for children living in single-parent homes is five times the rate for children living with two parents.
- Divorced men experience an average 42% rise in their standard of living in the first year after divorce, while divorced women (and their children) experience a 73% decline.
- School-age children living with a parent and stepparent, or divorced mother only, are 40% to 75% more likely to repeat a grade and 70% more likely to be expelled from school.
- Children who grow up in fractured families are less likely to graduate from high school than children from intact families.
- A disproportionate number of runaway teens come from step-parent households.
- Young sons often experience nightmares and a “father hunger” soon after the dad leaves home. In their teens, they are more likely to have increased levels of aggression, gang membership and other emotions and behavioral problems.
- Young daughters of divorce often experience anxiety and guilt. In their teens, they are more likely to be sexually involved, marry younger, be pregnant more often before marriage, and become divorced or separated from their eventual husbands.
- Children of divorce typically experience depression, drug and alcohol experimentation and a diminished ability to form lasting relationships.
Source: Free to Be Family, published by the Family Research Council, a division of Focus on the Family.
Tags: children, divorce, family, marriage
In a UPI article printed in The Evening Star back in 1987, Neil Bennett, an assistant professor of sociology at Yale University, reported that a study had identified that people living together before they get married are much more likely to get divorced than those who do not cohabitate first, according to the study.
When the researchers compared the women who had lived with their spouse before getting married to those who had not, they found the divorce rate was 80% higher among those that had cohabitated, he said.
When the researchers compared those who had lived with their spouse for three years or more before getting married to those who had lived together for a shorter period, the divorce rate was 50% higher among the longest cohabitators, he said.
Should this surprise us? If we do not value the institution of marriage before we marry, why should anyone expect us to value the institution after we marry. What’s your take on this?
Tags: divorce, marriage
A newspaper in Redland, California told about a man that had died. He was in the Guiness Book of World Records for being married and divorced the most of any person in the world. He had been married 29 times and divorced 29 times.
One of his sons said that his father was picky and stubborn. He divorced one wife for eating sunflower seeds in bed and another because she used his toothbrush. When he died, of all the wives that he had, not one came to claim his body and no one wanted to pay for his funeral expenses.
For some people, marriage is all about them. And if they don’t get what they want in the relationship, they end it! My question is, what was wife number 29 thinking when she married him? I’ll bet she was thinking that she could change him for the better.
What do you think about Mr. Divorce?
Tags: divorce, Guiness, marriage
Following is a letter written by a real person: “I found my husband with another woman. Although he begged me for forgiveness I wanted my pound of flesh, so I filed for divorce, even though our kids asked me not to. Two years later my husband was still trying to get me back, but I wanted none of it. He’d hurt me and I wanted revenge. Finally, he gave up, married a young widow with 2 children and rebuilt his life without me. They’re all so happy, and I’m just a lonely, miserable woman who let bitterness ruin her life.”
There is no question that infidelity is wrong. But without forgiveness,bitterness is all that’s left! There comes a point at which anger is no longer just an emotion – its a driving force. Like cocaine, you need larger and more frequent doses. Once that happens, you move even further from forgiveness, because without your anger you’ve no source of energy at all. It’s what drives hate groups like the KKK and the Skinheads.
God says, “Forgive anyone who does you wrong…as Christ has forgiven you” (Colossians 3:13), because bitterness is fatal.
Tags: bitterness, divorce, forgiveness