Single parenthood may be a heroic struggle, but it’s not ideal and shouldn’t be promoted
- Dr. Harry Reeder: The sexual revolution an ‘all-out assault’ on our culture
- British government resignations signal problems
- What Alan Dershowitz’ shunning says about snowflake culture and intolerance for debate
- Why the Supreme Court’s labor union decision is a win for freedom and education
- Parents denied access to public school sex education materials is shocking government overreach
- Leadership crucial in the church, life
- Reflecting on Independence Day and its meaning
- Justice Kennedy’s retirement and what it could mean for the direction of the country
- How the church and strong families can help adolescents deal with depression
- Should sex offenders be able to adopt?
- What the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly prayer gets wrong
- Is it just? Farm Bill requires able-bodied on food stamps to work part-time or get job-training
- Is Alabama-founded PCA church encouraging gay people to identify by sin?
- Alabama pastor to the suicidal: ‘Banish the thought of destruction. It’s not the answer’, ‘Many’ of us want to help
- How to think about ‘human rights council’ and elitist concept of abortion as ‘human right’
- Alabama pastor’s analysis of immigrant parent-child border separation controversy
- James Comey echo of J. Edgar Hoover — amassing power, declaring himself moral authority in FBI
- Historic North Korea Summit explainer and backstory
- News Fatigue? How to think about abundance of 24-hr ‘news’
- Where do you turn when your church strays from your faith?
- Unreal — Medical how-to book for counseling ‘religious’ women that abortion is okay
- Remembering RFK
- It’s inexcusable Clinton didn’t personally apologize to Lewinsky
- Planned Parenthood ignores crime in singular pursuit of death culture
- Do we really want a society that says ANY sexual behavior is fine?
- Reflections from Israel — and how it has changed in the past 30 years
- How to think about ‘aging pastors’ and ‘scarcity’ of millennials in ministry
- What does Christian liberty mean?
- Oh boy … Americans don’t think they sin very often
- How ‘church growth at all costs’ mentality weakens worship
- Should Facebook be the ‘new church’ and ultimate hate speech judge?
- How to think about Memorial Day
- When did marriage, parenthood become about self-fulfillment?
- Government branches must hold each other accountable, not circumvent each other
- Why Christians should visit holy lands
- Making sense of Trump’s negotiations
- Why Trump was right to move embassy to Jerusalem
- Stay married through ‘hurricane’ years, struggles — it’s worth it
- Insanity: NYC mayor wants to enable drug use
- Why it’s crucial that parents examine college faculties
- Why Marxism is cool again — with people who don’t know of its horrors
- A pastor’s perspective on Alabama Attorney General’s ‘Faith Forum’ at Briarwood
- Does archaeology prove or disprove the Bible?
- Don’t get hung up on church numbers — focus on church health, not size
- In the U.K., you only have value if you are wanted
- Startling number of Christians are persecuted around the world
- What is North Korea’s motivation?
- PARENTS: Who is teaching your child, the iPad, the teacher you disagree with, or you?
- Alfie Evans and the ever-encroaching overreach of the state, diminishment of parental rights
- Randa Jarrar and free speech
- Proposed California law will lead to persecution of Christians, possible outlawing of Bible sales
- How should Christians think about Trump’s North Korea stance?
- Barbara Bush and the unique legacies First Ladies leave
- Paul Ryan is understandably ‘bone-tired’ — but I do wish he could stay
- Why the Syrian strike was justified
- Christian colleges: Will you fold under cultural pressures or actually BE what you say you are?
- Transgender chaos playing out as predicted
- Does Facebook smoosh conservative posts? YES. But regulation is not the answer
- What Toys ‘R Us, colleges, and social security have in common
- College class gets it terribly wrong. Christians aren’t privileged — Christianity produces privileges for everyone
- Gender chaos leads to societal chaos
- Cultural Marxism: Do you know what it is and how to fight it?
- How parents can combat Planned Parenthood’s shocking deviant sex education
- Sorry and all, but yes there is a Heaven and Hell
- When elected officials campaign on promises they don’t keep
- Does archeology prove the Bible is true?
- Are the millions of lives lost to abortion less important than lives lost to gun violence?
- We must not sacrifice consistent morality for political pragmatism
- Why do Christians call Christ’s death ‘Good Friday’?
- Single parenthood may be a heroic struggle, but it’s not ideal and shouldn’t be promoted
- Freedoms of speech, religion go hand in hand and are being threatened — even in Christian college classes
- States are trying to criminalize the free speech of those seeking to protect unborn life
- Christian movie revenue shocks Hollywood, blows past estimates — here’s why you need to see it
- Care about free speech? Keep your eyes on Supreme Court dealing with California abortion law
- Why pornography is far from ‘victimless’ and how to quit using it
- Cultural Marxists are using schools, courts to target Christianity
- No, Joy Behar, it’s not a ‘mental illness’ when the Lord speaks to us through his Word
- Despite what Washington Post writer says, Down Syndrome children are only undesirable to selfish, arrogant people
- Facebook’s ‘fact checker’ says the killing of unborn babies in abortion is a ‘disputed fact’
- Be sure your (Twitter) sins will find you out
- Reasons for pro-lifers to rejoice — and double-down — on abortion issues
- How to debate with decorum … and why profane, vulgar arguments reveal weak arguments & minds
- WAKE UP: Pornography is not victimless — it destroys lives and kills people
- Persecution, violence against Christians significantly increased world-wide in 2017
- 3 things contributing to the U.S. drop in life expectancy
- Gov’t attempted to silence this Christian who’s bringing Martin Luther King’s fight to modern times
- Iranian Christians fleeing persecution should get U.S. care and refuge
- What we can learn from the Alabama & Georgia quarterbacks’ post-game responses
- What does academic intolerance of real debate mean for free speech?
- Do you know the frivolous programs your tax dollars fund?
- Blaring Bannon coverage begs question: What’s happened to journalism?
- Call to Christians: Engage in politics & evangelism out of love for neighbor
- New York City votes to fine Biblical counselors for gender dysphoria therapy
- 10 campaign promises Donald Trump kept — or attempted to keep — in his first year
- Is it pointless to make New Year’s resolutions?
- The top 11 news, faith and culture headlines of 2017
- American attitudes about children contribute to our shrinking birth rate
- Here’s what Trump got right (and wrong) in his national security speech
- Tax reform explained: How it helps our culture, our families, our economics
- Advent and Christmas, ever wondered what’s the difference?
- Reformed Christians have lost one of their great theologians, pastors
- The 2 ungodly reactions to politics, current events that Christians must avoid
- Want our trust? The 7 things an elected official MUST do to gain it
- Christian voters faced 4 options in Senate race … only 1 is inexcusable, says Evangelical pastor
- Where the death culture leads: Lawsuits over disabled children who ‘should’ have been aborted
- What’s at stake in the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision
- How to put Trump’s U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem in historical and biblical perspective
- Pastor Harry Reeder: There is hope and a way forward for the Matt Lauers in our lives
- Pastor Harry Reeder: If Supreme Court gets Colorado cake baker, same-sex marriage case wrong, it will be culture tipping point
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Liberal ‘Christianity’ is antithetical to Christianity
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Abortion industry ‘doulas’ try to normalize killing of unborn, but we know abortion is not normal
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Trump’s judicial nominee list shows his commitment to originalists and constitutionalists
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Some evangelicals disagree, but here’s why it’s good to emphasize church celebrations during Christmas
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Our military is weakening and here’s why we need it strong
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Why would we be surprised when culture lives out sexual sin it has promoted for years?
- Pastor Harry Reeder: Churches must stay on-mission as evangelists, not cultural acceptance-seekers
- Pastor Harry Reeder: The Museum of the Bible is a great idea…provided we don’t worship the Bible
- Harry Reeder on sexual reckoning: Our conscience tells us ‘something’s wrong here’ even while our culture promotes sin
- Reeder: We have to be honest despite history rewrites– Pilgrims gave thanks to God
- Reeder: It is ‘absolutely ludicrous’ to think a mother’s absence in crucial first 3 years has no effect
- Reeder: Australian same-sex marriage survey a ‘profile in cowardice’ not courage
- Reeder: Believers ‘speaking up’ made real difference in adoption tax credit provision
- Reeder: Secular culture wants more than ‘tolerance’, insists upon abortion and sexual anarchy ‘celebration’
- Reeder on Roy Moore chaos: ‘Do the next right thing’
- Reeder: Here’s what Christians should say when traditional marriage views are labeled ‘bigotry’
- Reeder on church leaders not meeting privately with the other sex: ‘I’ll take the criticism….I learned it from Billy Graham’
- Reeder on LGBTQ campus activists: ‘They don’t want to debate what a marriage actually is. They want to silence those they cannot answer.’
- Yes, it’s ridiculous there’s a new religion dedicated to AI….but here’s why it matters
- Feeling any Christmas guilt? Here’s the type you should ignore and the type you should face
- Reeder on Tuesday’s elections: ‘To see this as a referendum on Trump is overstating it’
- Two terminally-ill patients who refused assisted suicide to help others & show life’s sanctity
- Lots of older pastors, not many young ones — what’s going on?
- Commercial Surrogacy: The objectification of child-bearing
- Elitist ‘gender-isn’t-real’ culture has descended into sophisticated imbecility
- Chaplain who refused marriage retreat to same-sex couple is up against elite culture enforcers
- Sen. Booker’s grilling of Pompeo prime example of ‘religious test’ to exclude evangelical Christians from office
- GENDER ABSURDITY: A nation, led by pop culture, descends into chaos
- How culture rot happens: Unthinkable –> Laughable –> Thinkable –> Accepted
- How Christians should submit to the government’s law
- How to avoid going ‘wobbly’ on the truth
Listen to the 10 min audio:
Read the transcript:
WHAT DOES CELEBRATION OF NATIONAL SINGLE PARENT DAY SAY ABOUT OUR COUNTRY?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, first there was Mother’s Day, then there was Father’s Day, and now we have Grandparent’s Day. Interestingly, another day has popped up, which I wasn’t aware of until recently, March 21st is National Single Parent Day. That caused somewhat of a debate between The New York Times syndicated columnist, Robert Samuelson, and Tucker Carlson. Harry, the bottom line on this debate is being a single parent — is that a detriment to a family and to a society?
DR. REEDER: Single parenting, in many cases, is heroic. Single parenting is something to be avoided if possible. Here’s the reality: We live in a broken world, so what happens? A spouse dies or a marriage gets broken because someone is unfaithful. And then what happens to the children? Well, they’re in a single-parent home. Then the single parents who remain in that home and faithful to those children are engaged in a heroic struggle.
SINGLE PARENTHOOD IS HEROIC, BUT NOT IDEAL
But why would we say it’s a heroic struggle? Because it is not the created order. The created order is it takes a man and a woman to have a child and God designed that to take place within the covenant of marriage because it takes a man and a woman to raise a child rightly. The child needs a father and mother to be created by the hand of God. We need both a father’s love and direction and a mother’s love and nurture: the teaching of kindness upon the mother’s tongue as Proverbs says, and the direction and empowerment that a father’s exhortation gives to their child.
So now what we’re being told we ought to be celebrating is single parenting and the answer is no. We celebrate the faithfulness and heroic efforts of a single parent and the reason they’re heroic is it is not the best possible solution. They are trying to overcome something that would be better and the better would be for the child to have two parents. While we want to obliterate single parenting, we want to assist and honor single parents unless they are single parents just simply out of rebellion. We need to recognize the consequences of a culture that attempts to normalize and celebrate single parenting and that’s what the article attempted to do.
WHO IS PROMOTING IT AND WHY?
One of my father’s — I’m sure he borrowed it from somebody — “Figures don’t lie, but liars sure do figure,” and that’s what The New York Times opinion piece attempted to do but Mr. Samuelson responds to it and he just points out that this was purely fabrication in an attempt to normalize single parenting and we know that poverty, lack of education, a lack of employment — all of those things skyrocket in the children’s lives that are raised in a single-parent home.
This is why, for instance, in our church whenever we have parents who are faced with single parenting, we try to step in and assist them because we know they’re facing an uphill struggle in what will happen in their children because of the single parenting. However, the answer is not to try to normalize single parenting.
Tom, here’s what’s really interesting: Because of the sexual revolution, in the African-American community, before 1970, the statistics for children born out of wedlock in a single-parent situation were less than 20 percent and now they are up to 72 percent, approaching 75 percent since 2010. And, in the Caucasian community, it was 6 percent and now it’s at 36 percent. The Hispanic community has faced pretty much the same situation.
Tom, what we are attempting to do because of the prevalence of single-parenting, which is promoted through the sexual revolution and which is promoted through the all-out assault upon the nuclear family of one man, one woman for one life — because of that, we have attempted to normalize it so, when an opinion piece comes out, they attempted to fabricate the statistics to lie about the unbelievable challenge of single parenting.
WHO IS REPORTING THE ACTUAL STATISTICS ON LONG-TERM EFFECTS?
Well, thankfully, Mr. Samuelson, who is no conservative at all, just says, “Listen. Let’s be honest about this. It is an undeniable fact that, out of single-parent homes, that the children by no means have the same record of engagement and gainful employment, finishing education, staying out of poverty, staying off of governmental support programs. It is an unbelievable challenge.”
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, indeed. Samuelson finishes his column on single-parenting by saying, “We are condemning more of our children to a precarious upbringing and that’s a problem.” Harry, is this a 21st century example of the sins of the father being visited upon the child?
DR. REEDER: That’s right. And you see what’s happening out of engagement of soft pornography, sexual revolution of the 1950s and the consequences have now arrived in the 21st century and now the attempt to socially approve what we ought to be disapproving of as a cultural value and what we ought to be responding to as a cultural challenge.
Single parenting is a cultural challenge with moral and spiritual implications and we ought to respond to it, not attempt to normalize it and say that it is not a problem and, in fact, ought to be embraced as a way of life. Not if we really have any senses.
AS CHRISTIANS, LET’S PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH AND PREACH WHAT WE PRACTICE
Let me finish this way, Tom, with two comments. Here’s what’s really interesting: the secular elite, who would celebrate not single parents, but single parenting, actually are the second largest demographic of consistency in marriage. The No. 1 demographic of those who get married and stay married are evangelical Christians. The No. 2 are college-educated, six-figure families.
In other words, college-educated, six-figure families, while in their secularism promote rebellion against God’s creation laws of sex within marriage and marriage between one man and one woman actually, in practice, are the second-largest demographic who embrace God’s creation laws — at least the notion that they get married and stay married more than the cultural norms that they are promoting in the sexual revolution and in their secularism.
In other words, they live differently than what they’re telling others to live and destroying the lives of others while, themselves, embracing God’s order of marriage. The only ones who do so more consistently are those who affirm marriage and staying in marriage as evangelical Christians and are engaged in the local church.
The second thing I would say is this to the church: Let’s respond to the challenge of single-parenting with grace, compassion, and resources in assisting single parents, but let’s not glorify single-parenting. Let’s work hard at pre-marital counseling, marital counseling, Gospel evangelism of men and women and the impact in their marriages. Let’s, in discipleship, reinstitute and burnish brightly the foundational value of marriages that begin in the Lord, that stay in the Lord. And let’s bring the value of marriage as a creation ordinance as we promote it in the ministry of common grace throughout society.
GOD CALLS US TO PROMOTE MARRIAGE FOR ALL PEOPLE’S GOOD
If we love people made in the image of God, we will promote the most foundational institution in society that God has created for the well-being of society, and that is a marriage of a man and a woman that is monogamous, covenantal, heterosexual marriage that makes every effort as the vow says, “for better or for worse,” to stay the course and raise children within the boundaries of a home where they have a father and a mother, both supplying what’s necessary physically, financially, morally, culturally and spiritually in the life of the next generation.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin, editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News, who has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and whose work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Android | Google Podcasts | RSS