The terrible cost of broken families

There are a lot of kids paying a terrible price for all the broken families in America. Just among my kids' friends I know several who bounce back and forth between two parents. At the emergency shelter where I work we see some of the worst casualties of how many divorces we have today in America.

Africans raise kids as a whole community or at the least an extended family all helping out. And there are just a lot more kids around, and the older ones learn early to look out for the younger ones. America with its mom & dad and kids alone against the world can’t handle its family breakdowns as well as African communities can.

I don't know how many young men I've gotten to know in the time I worked at the mission who ended up homeless because mom might have accepted them but stepdad wouldn't have them. Other times it's mom who wants a better life and teenage boys, especially if they have any issues, don't fit into the picture. Many time these young men aren't very nice. Some of them are absolute jerks all the time and most all of them are jerks some of the time. Lots of times they're lazy and hope to find the easy life at the mission that they couldn't find at home. I wonder, though, how I'd have turned out if I had lived through even part of what so many of these guys have had to endure. Give glory to God if you had parents you could respect for how they lived and how they treated you.

I don't see the girls much. I wonder if it's easier for a boy to turn into an absolute jerk that mom and stepdad put out. Of course, I work in the men's shelter and wouldn't have much contact with such girls anyway. I know there's girls with real tragic stories, too.

I pray for these kids and these families. At the mission I try to call the guys I meet there to seek God and to live right even if people aren't doing right by them. I call them to a high standard as best I can. I have some who hate me for trying this or even suggesting it.

I wonder about what church outreach programs there are for these kids. There are some church programs for young people today call Christian young people to righteousness. It seems to me, though, that in what programs there are for young people outside the church, we're usually trying to reach out to young men like those I deal with at the mission with programs focusing on acceptance and not righteousness. We try to attract them with music like theirs and an accept-anything attitude and then hope they realize there's more to Christianity once they're "inside the church". I suspect that their mom and stepdad often tried the acceptance route as well and that's part of what turned so many of them into people who expect to always get their way.