I’m now watching the son of my close friend going through that same thing that you describe. It is so terribly wicked how these vengeful parents seem to get the upper hand from judges who spend ten minutes reading the case file, make an arbitrary decision, then refuse to alter their point of view based on new information. Meanwhile, the parent who cared more and is more devastated at the loss of contact with the spouse and kids can barely think straight to defend himself/ herself until the wicked one has driven several spikes into their heart, fully backed by the judge.
God hates divorce. Churches have fallen down on their job of preparing young people for lasting marriage.
Agreed. I say that as someone who's been a devout Christian since I was 14, and has volunteered a lot with kids, both elementary age and youth.
Too many churches have taken one of two approaches with youth: they either embrace worldly ways (bad), or the stick to ways that are ultra traditional but not necessarily Biblical. The first approach is obvious how it's wrong.
The 2nd approach is with things like music. Are we really supposed to believe the early church had music at all, much less what we call "traditional music", so why insist it be "traditional"? I say it can be of different styles as long as it's authentic, bonus points if the style changes based on what's being sung about (songs about God's power has a different sound than songs about being humble before God). Another way we can be too traditional is by expecting all of the teaching be from sermons instead of sitting around reading and discussing the Bible together. Every church I've been in has a handful of Bible geeks who could lead small discussions and make it more personal than a sermon style setting. That setting unfortunately gives too many young people the impression that there's too wide a chasm between them and being devout.
Another thing is us churches don't talk about sex enough, especially given the world's obsession with it. When I volunteer with youth, I ask the youth leaders and parents if I'm allowed to not talk about sex, but talk about attraction. They always give me permission to say things like every now and then pointing to my wife on the other side of the room and say that I'm taking that gorgeous thing home with me. Since the kids all think I'm smart (the gamer generation always thinks us programmers are smart LOL), it's letting them know that even smart and devout people have attraction like they do, and they can get what we all want doing things God's way, without me having to say it directly. Things like that are so simple, yet so few people in church leadership (including us volunteers) do it.