How do you explain the divorce rate in the U.S.? | Big Think

How do you explain the divorce rate in the U.S.?

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We are the most self-centered generation in history.

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Rick Warren:

Rick Warren is an evangelical leader, best-selling author, and founding and senior pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California. Along with his wife, Kay, Warren founded Saddleback in 1980 with just a single family to fill the pews. Today the church has a 120-acre campus, 22,000 weekly attendees, and has provided spiritual guidance and source material to over 400,000 ministers worldwide.

He also leads the Purpose Driven Network of churches, a global coalition of congregations in 162 countries. More than 400,000 ministers and priests have been trained worldwide, and almost 157,000 church leaders subscribe to the Ministry ToolBox, his weekly newsletter. His previous book, The Purpose Driven Church is listed in “100 Christian Books That Changed the 20th Century.” Forbes magazine called it "the best book on entrepreneurship, management, and leadership in print.”

Warren received his BA from California Baptist College, his MA from the Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary, and his Doctor of Ministry from the Fuller Theological Seminary. Warren has recently taken on several issues previously ignore by the evangelical community; he is the most prominent signatory of the "Evangelical Climate Initiative," and is the co-founder and co-director (with his wife) of The Global PEACE Fund, which fights poverty, disease, and illiteracy. Warren has spoken at the United Nations, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the African Union, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

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TRANSCRIPT

Question: How do you explain the divorce rate in the U.S.?

Rick Warren: We are the most self-centered generation in history. Not just the generation that exists, but the baby boom generation before it was brought up in the “me” generation. And everything in society teaches, “It’s all about me”. Every commercial says, “It’s all about you. We do it all for you. Have it your way. You deserve it. I got to think of me first.” And we are taught selfishness.

And that’s why when I wrote “Purpose Driven Life”, it’s really a counter-cultural book because the very first sentence is the exact opposite of our culture. It says, “It’s not about you.” And that’s almost like a slap in the face. No I’m sorry, it’s not about you. There are a lot of things bigger in the world than simply your own happiness, your own fulfillment, your own little selfish clod of a life, as George Bernard Shaw called it.

And the reason we have high divorce is people haven’t been given good models. Their parents often weren’t a good model of unselfishness.

Second, I think it takes three to make a marriage work. I think it takes you. I think it takes your spouse. And I think it takes God. You can’t have a two-legged stool. It’ll fall over. A one-legged stool will fall over, a two-legged stool. But when you have you yourself, your partner and God in it, it makes a triangle. And as you’re growing closer to God and your spouse is growing closer to God, it automatically brings you together.

My wife and I, as I said, are extremely different from each other in practically every single way. But as we grow closer to God, we grow closer to each other, and it is the glue that has held us together when every bone in my body wanted to give up – or in her body. Now we actually made a commitment when; it was ‘til death do us part. So we said, “We’re going to lock this gate patch, close it, and throw away the key.”

Now in those first two years, when it was hell on earth; I mean really. We started fighting on the honeymoon. And we were going, “Wait a minute. I saved myself for this?” It was like, “What a disappointment!” you know?

And we were fighting from the first day on because we were immature, and we didn’t know how to share and how to learn. But as you grow through life, if you stay with a commitment it really will get better. It’s being willing to learn; being willing to reconcile; don’t fix the blame. Fix the problem.