Daniel Juster, Th. D. Restoration from Zion of Tikkun International
One of the astonishing aspects of modern culture is the inability to really empathetically evaluate cultures. Despite all the protestations for multi-culturalism, the truth is that never has there been such shallowness in evaluating cultures and such little empathetic evaluation. This is in part due to the loss of norms to evaluate. Evaluating the past with some degree of fairness is just impossible to so many today. No where is this more apparent than in how the lives of women before the feminist equality movement have been devalued. These women are looked at as slaves to their husbands and families because they did not have an outside life. Life is now evaluated in being able to get ahead in the world of business and the professions.
It is a good thing that women who have the desire for getting ahead in business and the professions have the freedom to do so. We respect a Condoleezza Rice who came to the top in her field. However, the lives of women who were or are today homemakers should be respected and valued. These women joined themselves to the important truth that the meaning of life is in personal relationships and not status and money. Two great books, Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, and Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart. Both these Jewish psychiatrists noted that those who survived psychologically in the brutality of the concentration camps of Hitler, were primarily those who found their meaning in relationships, relationship with God, the transcendent and/or other people. Those who defined their meaning in external attainment, mentally disintegrated. But radical feminists tell us that their meaning is their attainment of status and money like men. And for years we tried to change men to base their lives on relationships.
Women in those by gone years in homes that had decent income did not just stay at home and care for children. I would add that nothing is more fulfilling than raising children and bonding to them. Today many choose to not have children. The birth rates are dangerously low. These women sell their meaning in life for something so much less. But again, these women of the past did not just raise children and care for their husbands. They were the glue of those mediating community institutions, the clubs, the charities, the churches and more. These institutions make life humane. Much of this has been lost. These women were given to literary and artistic endeavours. They were patrons of the arts. They had time for reading, poetry, and painting. They read books that were enriching. Some developed a deep connection to God.
Only if we recover the truth that for most people the will of God is found in lasting marriages and raising children can we overcome the shallow evaluations of today. I can also say that as a man I am glad that I chose the relational. Marriage and family were and continue to be the sources of great fulfilment.