Marriage is good and good for us, the design of a Creator who actually has our best interests at heart. The decline of marriage in modern America is a tragedy because we weren’t made to live in a marriage-arid society, and that means improving what Wilcox calls “the state of our unions.” Thankfully, if these researchers and organizations are correct, the main thing many wandering in “marriage deserts” need in order to say “I do” is someone to tell and show them, “you can.”

For years, the term “food desert” was a way experts described areas of the country where fresh, unprocessed groceries are difficult to find. The key insight captured by this term is that obesity and other diet-related health problems aren’t solely a matter of individual choice, especially for children. They are at least partly determined by access—or lack thereof—to quality food where people live.  
What if a similar pattern applies to marriage? What if there are sections of the country best characterized as “marriage deserts,” where lasting unions aren’t just rare but virtually non-existent? That’s the argument sociologist Brad Wilcox and writer Chris Bullivant made recently in Deseret News.  
They suggested that “marriage deserts” are found across demographics, from inner-city minority neighborhoods to poor, rural white towns. In such places, stable marriages have essentially disappeared, and along with them, households that model what such unions look like. 
This is a relatively recent development. Wilcox and Bullivant explained that in the late 1960s, marriage was the norm across classes. Just 13% of American children lived with an unmarried parent. But fast-forward fifty years, and that number has climbed to a staggering third of all children—mostly comprising the lowest income brackets.  
It’s almost like a cultural bomb went off. Such high rates of single or cohabiting parenthood results in blocks on end with no married role models. And this makes the very thought of marriage seem implausible, unrealistic, or just silly for millions of American youths. Just ask them.  
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Despite the race’s fallen condition, Christians view human life as a blessing to be preserved, multiplied, and redeemed; and the human mind and spirit as resources more inexhaustible than any material we consume. We bear a certain resemblance to our Maker in that we can, in our limited and creaturely way, also create. Which is why a lack of new humans is not good news, and why I’m happy to see that some mainstream publications are starting to realize this.

For a long time, if you encountered a writer warning about declining global birth rates, it was a safe bet you were reading a right-leaning or Christian publication. But that appears to be changing. In the last couple of years, mainstream news outlets seem to have caught on that the problem civilization now faces is not too many but too few babies, and some are sounding the alarm. Recent stories in The Spectator, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all clearly describe why a shrinking and aging society is a bad thing and try to identify the causes behind this population “bust.” 
The fear of a population “bomb” haunts mainstream psyche greatly due to Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb, where he famously declared in the opening line that, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” and predicted mass starvation due to overpopulation.  
This of course never happened, and in fact, global food production vastly outpaced population growth, making it easier than ever to feed everyone. Facts aside, the baby-banning ideology persists. 
Earlier this month, The Washington Post editorial board ran a response to the surge of critical comments they’ve received on stories about declining birth rates. As anyone familiar with the comments section under controversial (or really any) articles can imagine, a litany of bad arguments had been unfolding. One commenter wrote that, “Endless growth—whether that’s of the population or the economy—is an unachievable fantasy.” Another declared, “Now is the time to reject growthist ideology for good.” Many cited climate change, overcrowding and, of course, running out of food as reasons to encourage lower birth rates.  
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As Pride Month and its demands increasingly invade all of life, Christians must understand the semireligious nature of the culture war we’re fighting. Homosexual behavior and cross-dressing are nothing new, but as Scrivener, Holland, and (I suspect) Chesterton would argue, the way these things are sold today—as a matter of oppressed and outcast minorities in need of compassion and deserving of equality—is new. And that’s because of Christianity.

Watching the music video for the new song “Boys Will Be Girls” by former Caedmon’s Call lead singer Derek Webb, I experienced a strange mixture of disgust, pity, and clarity about the appeal of his message. That message, part of Webb’s new album, The Jesus Hypothesis, is anything but subtle: it’s a celebration of gender transition and drag, written in response to the coming out of a close friend. In the chorus, Webb sings,
Where sometimes boys will be girlsSometimes armor will be pearlsWhat you put on, oh, it shows the worldHow hard you’re fightingBrother, sometimes boys will be girls
Appealing to Jesus
The video is, if possible, even more in-your-face. Webb goes under the brush for his own drag makeover by (self-described) “shame-slaying, hip-swaying heathen” singer-songwriter Flamy Grant (real name: Matthew Blake). It opens with a quotation by progressive pastor Stan Mitchell that reveals something of Webb’s evolved thinking on the church and LGBT+ issues: “If you claim to be someone’s ally, but aren’t getting hit by the stones thrown at them, you’re not standing close enough.”
So Webb shows us how close he’s standing. After Blake plasters him with a wig and layers of flamboyant makeup, both appear on the stage of what looks like an empty church and sing the on-the-nose final verse:
I heard Jesus loved and spent his life with those whoWere abandoned by proud and fearful menSo if a church won’t celebrate and love youThey’re believing lies that can’t save you or them‘Cause you’re so beautiful by any name
For a guy who grew up hearing Caedmon’s Call hits like “We Delight” on the radio and loved the band’s collaborations with and tributes to the late Rich Mullins, gut punches like this can tarnish what felt like purer years. Webb’s moral deconstruction is neither the highest profile nor the most unexpected in recent memory. But in many ways, it’s one of the most revealing for those who want to understand why LGBT+ ideology has made inroads within evangelicalism.
Musically and instinctively, there’s an appeal to Webb’s message. As he looks you in the eye and sings of love and compassion, as the instrumentals suggest the struggle of a tender soul against cruel and repressive social demands, you feel what he’s saying. The lyrics—in spite of a conspicuous f-bomb—pointedly invoke the listener’s nurturing impulses. It’s not “sometimes men will be women” but “sometimes boys will be girls.” To laugh this off, to ridicule or inwardly gag at this spectacle, feels like attacking something childlike and even pure. Webb may be the one caked in makeup, but his song and music video are a calculated dare to critics: Go ahead. Paint yourself as the churchy villain I’m talking about. Be the “proud and fearful” Pharisee who abandons people like me. Jesus won’t. 
And yet, stop and remember what we’re talking about. This song is a celebration of an impossible delusion that has turned society upside down and led to the physical and mental devastation of countless souls, young and old.
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Peterson’s message is not sufficient to rescue anyone–including him–from God’s righteous judgment. But it has proven a strikingly effective antidote to the spiritual chaos men face in today’s world. The church should take notes, even as we pray Peterson follows the meaning he preaches to its true source.

I recently wrote something on Facebook to the effect that I would rather my boys (ages seven and five) listen to Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson’s lectures on The Lion King than many sermons and small group lessons I’ve heard addressed to men in church. Given that I am a Christian and Jordan Peterson is not, this may seem like an odd thing to say. But I don’t think it is. Peterson’s ongoing appeal, especially among young men, is a loud reminder that our spiritual needs are not limited to salvation, and that sometimes a thoughtful unbeliever can have a better grasp of those needs than most Christians do.
Since he rose to fame in 2017, Peterson has been an enigma for religious readers. On the one hand, he gives moral counsel it would be tough for anyone to disagree with: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” “Do not allow yourself to become resentful, deceitful, or arrogant.” “Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.” Proffering this and similar advice in his bestselling books, Twelve Rules for Life and Beyond Order, he has become what one writer called “a societal father figure.” In a time of growing aimlessness, despair, nihilism—and yes, fatherlessness—his message centers on finding meaning, taking on responsibility, and overcoming adversity. These are all themes that appeal on a visceral level to disaffected men.
Yet Peterson’s ambiguity about religion understandably troubles some Christians. He quotes Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung more readily than Jesus Christ. He says he’s not willing to place himself “in a box” by professing orthodox faith. He certainly doesn’t give altar calls. Even so, people regularly say his work saved their lives or gave them new purpose. For those accustomed to proclaiming the gospel as the solution to human sin and misery, this apparently redemptive effect of Peterson’s message can seem odd or even threatening. After all, we Christians have the answer to the world’s deepest problem! If Peterson is offering something different and apparently quenching people’s spiritual thirst, doesn’t that make him a false teacher—a peddler of a self-help gospel?
The answer really lies in whether Peterson is, in fact, peddling a gospel. He doesn’t seem to think he is. Rather, he is teaching readers and audiences what he has taught patients as a clinical psychologist for decades: how to be a human well, how to create order out of relational chaos, how to aim one’s passions toward a purpose, and how to navigate difficult and confusing lives without falling prey to despair. In doing so he is offering all who pick up his work a life-giving alternative to the anything-goes mentality of our age, and is teaching a truth all too rarely acknowledged in Christian churches: that conversion is not the answer to every problem we face, and that pursuing this-worldly meaning is core to how we are created.
Learning from Nature
Peterson teaches people (especially men) how to be human well because he doesn’t believe our nature is malleable. He believes it can be understood, and that thriving comes from following the “maps of meaning” laid down deep in our subconsciousness and even our bodies. This is why he famously begins Twelve Rules for Life by explaining what the endocrine systems of lobsters can teach us about our own minds. Though it’s easy to crack jokes about this or get lost in his evolutionary jargon, we shouldn’t miss Peterson’s point: human beings have a hardwired nature, and living in accordance with that nature—even through acts as simple as standing up straight with your shoulders back—can reduce misery and improve our characters. You will not learn any of this at an altar call, nor in simplistic admonitions to be “Christlike.” Young men in particular, searching as they are for the blueprints to the good life in a world that tells them to draw their own, need more detail than that.
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