In our contemporary world, in many dimensions, the family is in crisis. The crisis is both internal to many families and it is external or societal in the sense that many of society's leaders and opinion-makers increasingly seem to have lost their bearings when it comes to understanding the vital importance of the family.
This crisis was foreseen and foretold by ancient prophets who saw our day in vision. Their words of sober prophecy and warning are coming to pass before our very eyes. Here are a few such prophecies from ancient scripture:
The Apostle Paul: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
"For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy …
"Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God …
"Led away with divers lusts,
"Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 3:1–2, 4, 6–7).
The Lord Jesus Christ: "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matthew 24:12).
Isaiah: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).
abortion, who fight all attempts to limit pornography, and who seek to redefine the very essence of what a family is, are praised and upheld as champions of tolerance. Truly, the world has turned upside down.
In 1920 the divorce rate in the United States was 8 per 1,000 married women; by 1979, it had reached nearly 23, a nearly threefold increase.2 It has since dropped slightly,3 but this is likely due to a large increase in cohabitating couples, now an estimated 6.6 million,4 whose separations, including from children, are not recorded in official statistics. By many measurements, the United States has the highest divorce rate in the world. Evidence of the toll is that today in America a heartbreaking 40 percent of all births are out of wedlock.5
One consequence of family disintegration has been a rising generation among whom many no longer seek to perpetuate the cycle of family formation that is at the heart of human existence, and for that matter, at the heart of eternal life. Many young people across our nation, who in the natural course of life should grow up, marry, and rear children, are instead trapped in a world where sexual intimacy is casual, responsibility and long-term commitments are denigrated, and children are viewed as a burden, a distraction from the pursuit of happiness and personal fulfillment. They have lost connection with the divine purpose of mortal life, arriving instead at the sterile apex of the me generation.
At least one secular scholar, James Lincoln Collier, recognized the danger of these trends 20 years ago. Collier traces how in the course of the 20th century, selfishness, sexual immorality, and the deterioration of community values damaged America's social fabric. His foremost concern is for the family:
"We have abandoned our children. Between a soaring divorce rate and an equally soaring rate of children born to unwed mothers, it is now the case that the majority of our children will spend at least a portion of their childhoods in single parent homes—in effect being raised without fathers. A large minority will spend their entire childhoods essentially without fathers, and a considerable number will not even know who their fathers are.
"This is an extremely unusual circumstance—perhaps unique in human experience. In no known human society, past or present, have children generally been raised outside of an intact nuclear family. The nuclear family is one of the most basic of all human institutions, a system of doing things so fundamental that until this century it occurred to very few people that life could exist without it."6
The disintegration of millions of families has taken place in part because popular media and culture have glorified the pursuit of self: of the wholly autonomous individual unconnected with social or moral obligations, free to pursue whatever ends he or she chooses so long as it does not cause direct physical harm to other aggrandizing selves.
In the mad pursuit of self that prevails in the world today, many believe that they may make up their own rules as they go along, putting on their personal concept of morality or "lifestyle" like a change of clothing. Such is a violation of divine law and as such is doomed to failure. This is what the Lord said of those who seek to become their own law:
"That which breaketh a law, and abideth not by law, but seeketh to become a law unto itself, and willeth to abide in sin, and altogether abideth in sin, cannot be sanctified by law, neither by mercy, justice, nor judgment. Therefore, they must remain filthy still" (D&C 88:35).
Yet the messages we constantly hear in media, entertainment, and advertising sound like this:
"You're number one."
"Do your own thing."
"You're special."
"Find yourself."
Such messages are so pervasive that we unconsciously absorb them and sometimes repeat them. Yet they are diametrically opposite from the message of the Savior, as recorded in similar language in every one of the four gospels: "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 10:39).