Should Theists Avoid Marriage Counseling?

suchandra · March 10, 2008

Widespread topic (see article by Krishna-kirti prabhu below) in the Vaishnava institutions - how to develop a stable base for good families.

Why Devotee Marriage Counseling is Unhealthy

Submitted by krishna-kirti, 02/24/2008 - 17:09.

Although there is statistical evidence that suggests that devotee marriages are more stable than their Western secular equivalents, abundant anecdotal evidence suggests that on average they are not sufficiently stable to impress outsiders. Devotee marriages are only marginally more stable than secular, non-devotee marriages in the West. While marital strife and divorce have dramatically increased in America and other Western countries, so has the demand for marriage counseling, and devotees have contributed to this demand.

Yet despite their popularity, none of these programs have reported anything more than marginal rates of success. Just as devotee marriages have been only marginally more successful than that of non-devotee Westerners, secular marriage counseling has similarly had only marginal successes--they have produced nothing which shows that the marriage counseling industry has grasped any significantly deep insight into what makes marriages work. Yet the irony is that despite the marriage counseling industry's reliably lack-luster results, devotees appear to have an ever increasing demand for such counseling.

This suggests two things: that faith is stronger than fact and that as a society our faith is split between theism and secularism. As regards to faith being stronger than fact, one of the best examples of this has been global communism. Everywhere the communists took over governments, almost everyone but the leaders of such societies have been miserable. Indeed, communist rule in the 20th century had been responsible for the deaths of between 85 million to 100 million victims. Although communism's death toll was staggering, communist elites did not question their own goals and values until faced with defeat, rebellion, or (as in the case of the Soviet Union) economic collapse. Only whenever communists cannot afford to pursue their agenda do they cease and desist. Communism's staggering cost in human misery and death has never deterred an aparatchik.

In the same way, devotee demand for marriage counseling reflects a surprisingly strong faith in the social sciences and the counseling programs they have generated. In their entire existence, the social sciences have not produced spectacular successes. There is no social science equivalent of spliting the atom or of medical science's performing a heart transplant. Instead, the social sciences on nearly every front have either not delivered as promised or have had spectacular failures. Since the lack of greater than marginal results and the existence of spectacular failures in the social sciences have not convinced otherwise, faith in secularism itself stands as the most likely primary cause for devotee interest in secular counseling.

The popularity of marriage counseling among devotees suggests that as a community, we who are ISKCON's devotees are quite a bit more secular and correspondingly not as religious, or pious, as we tend to think of ourselves. As it is currently manifest in ISKCON, devotee marriage counseling is fundamentally based on secular social science. Its growing popularity among devotees is a sign that as a society our faith has drifted away from theism toward secularism.

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