Say Something Nice

There would be nothing for me to write about if not for drive time radio.

Yesterday morning the news flash was that France has passed legislation making it illegal to insult your spouse. Talk about the solution not addressing the actual problem. The marriage rate in France has fallen 30 percent in the last generation. There are only 50 marriages performed each year per 10,000 citizens. Currently 59 percent of children are born out of wedlock. Do they think it is because couples insult each other?

Healthy marriages has been a passion of mine for most of my adult life. Having married when we were too young to know better, my husband and I had no idea what "until death do us part" actually meant. Not being a Christian at the time, we settled on the plan that the only escape from our marriage would be in a "pine box." And, while I did commit to never divorce my husband, justifiable homicide has always been an option. Salvation and age have matured me a bit since our marriage. Even so, the image of Tiger Wood's wife with a golf club seems perfectly reasonable to me.

News reports indicate that the French law is intended to stop "psychological violence" in marriage relationships and it also applies to cohabitating couples. Prohibited actions include rude remarks about a person's appearance, false allegations of infidelity and threats of physical abuse. Does the person making the comment have to intend it to be rude? Or, is the offense committed because the person who hears it perceives it to be rude? Is it one person's word against another or does the offense need to be witnessed by a third party? Wouldn't you love to be the police officer responding to that call?

So, I guess my question for France is, "What are you trying to achieve with that legislation?" Is this supposed to strengthen marriages? Or, is this yet another indicator that France has surrendered any hope of being a civilized nation? When the lessons you should learn in kindergarten - be nice to others - has to be codified in order for people to treat their spouse with respect, you may be too far down the slippery slope to recover.

Meanwhile, back in America . . . don't start feeling too self-righteous. We have problems of our own and can't blame it on the fact that we are France. The good news is that our divorce rates are declining. The bad news is that the decline is due to a 50 percent reduction in the marriage rate since 1970. Thirty-eight percent of our children are born out of wedlock. Our divorce rate (like most statistics this is sort of a made up number), is around 50 percent.

So, why does it matter? It matters because marriage and healthy families are the model God intended as the building blocks of society. In-tact families offer love, protection, and instruction for children. It matters because children who are not raised in intact families have a higher rate of school drop-out, criminal activity, and drug use. Just about every negative societal marker has a correlation to whether or not a child was raised in an in-tact family.

It matters because the marriage relationship is reflective of the relationship between Christ and His church. Like the person who does not have a loving father on earth has difficulty relating to God as father, a society which does not understand the joy and benefit of marriage can never fully understand the relationship of Christ and the Church. I understand Christ's sacrifice for the church, in part because I have a husband who has laid down his life for me. I understand submission to God - even when I don't understand (or agree) - because I have tried the model of submission to my husband in my marriage and it works.

So, France, I have news for you. Passing a law making it illegal to insult your spouse is not going to help your marriages (or cohabitations). You might want to try what the writer of scripture suggested: Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous. Hebrews 13:5

Meanwhile, say something nice to your spouse today. They really like it when you do that.