Right-Wing Hypocrisy-Part Two
Saturday, June 28th, 2008As we continue this four-part series on right-wing hypocrisy, we’ll focus on the right-wing’s propensity to liberally dispense family and marriage advice in an effort to save our culture. Of course, leading the charge in this effort is James Dobson and his “Focus on the Family” organization.
Dobson and his Evangelical cohorts tell us that our American society is quickly degenerating. They point to the breakup of the traditional American family, divorce and increasing addiction rates to alcohol, drugs and pornography. And, I agree that these are troubling signs in our culture.
So, where’s the hypocrisy? Jesus said that we are to “remove the log from our own eye before we attempt to remove the logs from the eyes of others”. In other words, before we begin sharing our expert advice with others about any issue, we had better be sure that we have that issue under control ourselves.
Surveys done within the Evangelical Church over the past several years by the “Barna Research Group” have revealed some very troubling statistics. Barna discovered that addiction rates and other sins within the Church rival the same percentages as those within our secular culture. And, these surveys found that the divorce rate in the Church was just as high as among non-Christians. In fact, in some areas of our nation, the Church’s divorce rate was actually higher.
Based on Barna’s statistical results we appear to have a situation where Evangelicals are basically saying to our secular society: “Our plan is failing within the Church, but you need to try it anyway.” Wouldn’t it be wise for Evangelicals to get a working model in the Church before so freely dispensing their advice to others? Perhaps Dobson’s Focus on the Family organization should spend more time focusing on Evangelical families and less time focusing on our secular culture.