Broke

The cost of owning a home in the US has never been more unaffordable.

We see some version of the headline all the time. Since 2020, the average American has been priced out of being able to purchase a home as prices, and now interest rates, are behaving like cryptocurrency scam coins: “To the moon!”

But the truth is, a house does not a home make. Long before the housing market broke the average American family’s wallet, the average American family was already broken. More important than fixing housing prices is fixing the people and families who are dreaming of living in that home.

I’m not going to populate this with charts and graphs of housing prices and other “scientific” data points. You can research and read up on that on your own when you have time. Instead, I’ll speak to the reality of our society in general. I’m sure you will think of examples and experiences specific to your own life. Any data will just help you quantify what you and I already know to be true.

100 years ago, divorce was unheard of. Shoot, 50 years ago divorce was nearly unheard of. Today, it’s almost expected. 50 years ago, you were expected to get married in your 20s. Today, folks are afraid of getting married…ever! The result of those two combined: less marriages and more divorce.

Now consider mental illness. Suffice it to say mental illness is skyrocketing like housing prices. Even though we try to eliminate the stigma (which I support) by referring to it as poor mental health or mental health conditions, the reality is more and more people are suffering. This is not just a trendy, media-driven topic. Go talk to people. You will discover people go through and have gone through some pretty terrible things. The event has passed (usually), but the mental, emotional and physical consequences linger ever-presently.

So, I wonder how much of mental illness is due to the breakdown of marriage.

But no, it’s all about home prices. We gotta get that under control because it shows how much trouble our nation and economy is in.

Meanwhile, The Home Depot’s stock price keeps running. If you can’t build it, renovate it!

Housing, housing, housing!

Materialism

Materialism is our problem. From kindergarten on up, the lesson is: get an education so you can get a good job, so you can buy a home, so you can have a family. American dream this and American dream that.

Unfortunately, the “American dream” was hijacked decades ago, and we are all paying the ransom. We pay it, yes, with our money (unaffordable higher prices), but more so with our emotions, health and relationships. Children suffer when the parents behave in ways that lead to divorce, and they suffer more once the parents get divorced. Then they suffer because they now live in a single-parent home where mom or dad has to work even more, and thus spends less time with them. Then mom or dad finds a new boyfriend or girlfriend… and that often creates more tension and anxiety… and then “the village” has to raise them. But the village is made up of people all living the same experience. How does that work?

I wonder how much of mental illness is due to the breakdown of marriage.

Broken people break things. Hurt people hurt people. The Home Depot and the Federal Reserve and the President cannot fix this. Neither will complaining. The simple, yet very difficult thing to do is reject materialism and work on building families.

Stop valuing things over people. Stop caring so much about the spilled milk and care more about the one who spilled the milk. We must stop caring so much about the purchase and maintenance of physical houses, and instead invest our valuable and irreplaceable time, energy and emotion into LOVING the ones LIVING in that house.

Society teaches us to love things and use people, but the Bible teaches us to love people and use things. If you reject God, you will soon find yourself living in a world that does not respect the dignity of others. It becomes a society of broken, angry, and lonely people. That’s not the dream I want.

Get back to God, personally. Get back to Jesus or go to Him for the first time. Want to learn what love is? As the young folks say, “He is Him.”

Broken societies are made of broken families. Broken families are made of broken people. When broken people are healed (no matter how long it takes or hard it is), families and society improve as well. That is when mental illness truly becomes mental health.

And if we do that, prices and interest rates will take care of themselves.