I just stumbled across an interesting article from the Washington Post:
Learn to be Nice to Your Wife or Pay the Price
For quite some time now divorce has been tragically high among retired people in Japan. The reason is largely due to corporate culture, in which men work long hours in the city, and then spend time drinking with collegues until late at night. This is the accepted norm for the “Salary men” in Japan, to leave work earlier or to skip out hanging out with ones collegues could jeopordize advancement opportunities. So often a man will leave for work early in the morning and not arrive home until after 10:00pm at night, every night.
The consequence is that after decades of marriage during which time husband and wife essentially never see each other, when it comes time to retire it is as if they are living with a complete stranger. Quite frequently such a marriage will end in divorce. A new law taking effect this year has for the moment worsened this situation. Wives are now entitled to half of their husbands pensions should they get divorced. Since the law took effect divroce has gone up 6%. A potential positive side effect of this is that husbands will now work harder to preserve their marriages as they also seek to preserve their cash flow.
However, the root cause of this, as I see it, is idolatry. These men are trapped by a culture that encourages them to dedicate their lives, heart and soul, to a company. The company becomes the central focus of life. Their social circle consists of co-workers and supervisors; they live to advance and be promoted and at the end they are left with nothing but shattered marriage and their pensions. The company tosses them aside, and recruits new, young lives to dominate, luring them with the empty promises of success and fullfillment. These men are worshipping the wrong thing. They need to hear about Christ.
Christ alone can heal their marriages, and restore a right balance to their living. Christ alone can give them peace and satisfaction; not in financial security or pride in their own accomplishments, but in knowing Him, and hoping in His promises and blessings, which are so much better than merely hoping that their wives won’t divorce them and that they won’t lose half or their pension.