all of this by way of introduction for I wish that we had several broadcasts on this subject. (Perhaps we will if you friends so indicate.) We want this report to be given in the spirit of Chris tian love, and I trust received in the same manner with a heart opened to ward God. With one out of every three or four families heading for the divorce court, depending on the area in which you live, I know that there are many people who are listening who have had this problem as a part of their lives. Many of you are faithful in church service, perhaps you have been gen erous in helping to maintain such ra dio testimonies as these. We do not bring this message to aggravate you or to upset you, because we feel that it is a part of the moral crisis which faces us today, and because we believe God would have us so speak. Invari ably, someone will write, “I have been divorced, but do you think that I should divorce my present wife and go back to my first one?” Let us remember again two things. First of all, two wrongs do not make a right. And secondly, the Scriptural promise, “The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from a ll sin!” And that means all, my friend, whether murder, divorce, adultery, lying, steal ing, cheating, gossiping (and I put that last in, for it is just as bad in the sight of God as the others). Superior Judge Lewis Drucker, here in Los Angeles, has sounded an alarm we would do well to consider. He says, “America has become the most divorced nation in the world today. More than 10,000,000 families have been involved in divorce.” Think how many lives that involves, when the average family of four is a basic figure. It takes simple arithmetic to see how really big the problem is. And incidentally, while this is nothing to be proud of, Jerry Hulse, editorial researcher for the Los Angeles Times reports that of all the states, California leads the number of decrees handed down annually. As to be expected, Los Angeles County leads in this terrible race of human destruc tion. What is even more appalling is that the gap has almost closed here in
Los Angeles between the number of applications for marriage compared with the number of applications for di vorce. “Divorce granted”—these words of desperate tragedy, ring out more than a hundred times a day in Los Angeles alone. Of course, it is true that many people migrate to Los Angeles from all parts of the nation, and that the marital trouble began back home, but our town has become the graveyard for domestic bliss. People do not realize that divorce no more cures an unhappy life than does death cure leprosy. In fact, Meyer Elkin of the Los Angeles Conciliation Court says that such a de cree is to be compared with a “death certificate” with the real wounds never healing but only being compounded. Superior Judge Louis Burke has stated that “two-thirds of the people appear ing in Los Angeles in our psychiatric court come from broken or divorced homes; seventy-five percent of the juve nile delinquents are turned out of such homes; and a substantial amount of un wed. mothers likewise. How big is your city? Consider its population with the understanding that each year nearly 50,000 children in Los Angeles received the never-healing scars of these acci dents which eventually result in all sorts of calamities. This is not to men tion, as Judge Roger Alton Pfaff points out, the millions and millions of dollars the taxpayer must put out to pay for the end results in medical care, sup port as a result of abandonment, crime prevention and detention, and so forth. Howard Witman, an outstanding writer on the subject of the Crisis in Morality has succinctly pointed out that not all of our wars put together have broken so many homes, nor has the aftermath of any of our wars brought so staggering a toll of dis placed persons. He calls divorce the “D Bomb.” So frequently, the idea has gained momentum that “If it doesn’t work out, we can try again.” Anthro pologist Margaret Mead has observed, “The most serious thing that is hap pening in the United States is that peo ple enter marriage now with the idea that it is terminable.” The old saying 34
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker