[Epaphras]

The Case for Early Marriage | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

I agree with the main thesis of the article:

"While our sexual ideals have remained biblical and thus rooted in marriage, our ideas about marriage have changed significantly."

We keep harping on Christian teens and young adults about sexual purity, but do nothing to resist the trend of marrying in one's late 20s -- it really is unreasonable to expect someone to wait for sex until age 28. Honestly.

There are some legit reasons to wait, but honestly I think that's the exception. Especially when it comes to economic or maturity issues: you are supposed to start at the bottom of the economic ladder, and the whole point is to grow up together.

I really liked the "Objections" section.

"(1) Economic insecurity:...the mentality that we need to shield young adults from the usual struggles of life by encouraging them to delay marriage until they are financially secure usually rests on an unrealistic standard of living. Good marriages grow through struggles, including economic ones."

100% agreed. We will always cherish our first year of having to sit down and budget, paying cash for my wife's technical school, having to manage with one vehicle, eating lots of spaghetti, watching Judge Alex because we don't have cable and nothing else is on TV in the afternoon, all of it.

We understand/understood that even though we both came from middle-class backgrounds, we had to go back and start at "the bottom". We see so many of our peers trying to catch up in 3-5 years what it took their parents 25 years to accumulate. It takes 25 years!

"(2) Immaturity:...While unlearning self-centeredness and acquiring a sacrificial side aren't easy at any age, naïveté may actually benefit youth, since preferences and habits ingrained over years of single life often are not set aside easily."

Never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Part of our motivation to get married when we did (age 21) was so we could grow together, to mature together. I can't imagine how difficult it is to join households in one's late 20s after 10 years of singlehood and being very set in one's lifestyle.

"(3) A Poor Match:...Successful marriages are less about the right personalities than about the right practices, like persistent communication and conflict resolution, along with the ability to handle the cyclical nature of so much about marriage, and a bedrock commitment to its sacred unity."

Agreed. And even if it is a 'personality' or maturity issue, a solid commitment to the marriage means both people will mature through that stage and come out stronger. Like two trees growing side-by-side that eventually become enveloped in one another.

(4) Marrying For Sex:...we need to remind young adults that values like generosity, courage, dependability, compassion, and godliness live on far longer than do high testosterone and estrogen levels. Simply put, family and friends ought to do their best to help young couples discern whether there is more to their love than sexual desire."

Nailed it (no pun intended). The message "Don't have sex!" all the time means all we think about is sex. Preaching on things teens and young adults can channel their energies into will produce better results because they will actually be engaged in God's work instead of just avoiding the devil's work, so-to-speak.

(5) Unrealistic Expectations:...The abstinence industry perpetuates a blissful myth; too much is made of the explosively rewarding marital sex life awaiting abstainers...In reality, spouses learn marriage, just like they learn communication, child-rearing, or making love. Unfortunately, education about marriage is now sadly perceived as self-obvious, juvenile, or feminine, the domain of disparaged home economics courses.

Very true amongst Millenials who grew up getting a trophy just for playing. We have an enormous entitlement mentality. The lie of the abstinence movement is that if we wait to have sex, we'll never have sexual dysfunction in marriage.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

I agree and disagree on some points. I do think marriage is being put off too late. Period. However, I also think the greater issue is that growing up is being put off period. I say this as somewhat of a fringe member of American culture. When I was 14 I was helping put food on the table, and I have raided a few dumpsters to survive in college and late high school. Yeah, thats gross, but the simple fact as I see it is this.

1) It is realistic for someone to wait to have sex till they get married. Period. Be that at 18, or 38. Make no quarter for assumed failure.
2) Economic stability is never achieved. Economic maturity hits at different times and can wax and wane. I was very, very good at 16 at keeping a strict budget and spending in check, much more so than I am now, in all honesty. But you have to learn the value of a dollar before you get married. My wife really had not when we got married. I had. You have to be able to eat. You have to have basic money management skills to get by as a couple.That is not about stability, its more about resourcefulness. (I tend to operate on a needs based schema)
3) Immaturity is bad for relationships. Habits gained over a lifetime of singleness only matter if one is selfish, and thus immature.
4) Expectations are unrealistic. However, that is largely because as a culture we don't ever want to grow up.

I see most of this as stemming from softness and not enough adversity in a lot of kids lives. Because when you know you can survive, you know you can adapt, you know you need to compromise to maintain relationships, you know life is not going to go your way, then you are ready to deal with life as it happens. I also think sexual abstinence in a lot of ways is good practice for dealing with when life tries to kick your butt. I think the overall assumption that you can't wait is a symptom of how we got here, expecting life to be easy when it is a freaking battle.

[Epaphras]

I appreciate your perspective Bill, especially knowing your background. I agree that money management is a key for young newlyweds, of any age. But in a way, learning to live on nothing can be better for a marriage than trying to merge two estates or otherwise balance two ingrained lifestyles. I know a young couple can come from different lifestyle backgrounds, but it's not the same when it's you who has been living a certain way for 8-10 years before marriage.

And I totally agree on the "perpetual adolescence" thing you brought up and the article mentioned. I forgot to bring it up in the OP. Most "teen" or young adult movies and shows out there today perpetuate this archetype/"ideal" (Knocked Up, Failure To Launch, How I Met Your Mother, etc.). Whether the art reflects the culture or culture influence art, is hard to say. But even scholarly research shows that people are taking more and more time to "grow up", even though the hormones and urges have not changed since the beginning of time. You are literally fighting against nature to wait on sex until late 20s. Yet to have any measure of economic success in this world, you (by and large) need a master's degree, which puts you at about 25 before finishing your education, but then you want to "do your own thing" and "find yourself" for a few years, hence not settling down until 30. But then we now have the problem of birth defects and autism and ADD, and I can't say in good faith that some of it is not caused by women delaying childbirth until their 30s. Yes, teen pregnancy is risky, but biologically the best time for a woman to have a baby is early- to mid-20s.

[Nate]

Hmmm. I can see his point, but I'm not sure that early marriage is what the church or society have been inadvertently fighting against.

I think it's marriage in general.

I think his "objections" section missed the biggest objection of all, that seems to overwhelm all the others: Individual life freedom.

The labor force is now almost equally 50-50 in terms of men vs women in the workforce. The single-worker family is nearly extinct.

The problem isn't financial expectations.

No, the problem is familial expectations.

People are not working two jobs now just to support their families: the percentage of dual-income families with kids hasn't changed.

People also aren't working two jobs now just to support themselves: the percentage of dual-income married couples with no kids is the same.

The difference in "traditional families" then and now has been made up for by divorced, unmarried, never married, separated, etc households.

People simply do not expect to be married, I don't think. They plan to live their lives individually, not under the support of anyone else. Not "tied down."

This is why single worker married families [one spouse depends on the other] have shrunk, proportionally, while dual worker marriages have not.

This is why colleges are full of both men and women, instead of primarily men ("bread winners"). Students are planning for lives of self-sufficiency.

I don't think the women in traditional marriages today who choose to work do so primarily for financial reasons, but probably because they expect their family situation not to last and do not want to lose their personal independence (the term itself is almost an affront to marriage).

I think if men and women expected to be married, to stay married, and to die married, they would not be rushing to college, rushing to the workforce, and rushing to the divorce lawyers. I don't think marriage in general is the social norm that it used to be, and that's the problem.

I don't think either the church or society are pressuring people to "wait to marry" so much as they are pressuring people simply not to marry.

The church does it through singles ministries, isolated men's vs women's ministries. Society does it through casual sex, cohabitation, etc.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by Epaphras

You are literally fighting against nature to wait on sex until late 20s.

Yeah, but you are for a lot of kids, (who are hitting puberty sooner as well) at age 11. Its a simple matter of one step at a time. Whether you fight this 7 years or 27, it doesn't matter. You still have to fight, and having to fight is good for you.

I agree with Nate to an extent as well, that marriage is simply unexpected and is viewed as a bad thing. But I think it is largely because we are immature kids as a culture who want their own room, their own toys, and do not know how to share because they never got over themselves.

I think that is in turn a problem of the entitlement mentality caused by being given, far, far too much for too little.

[slap_j]

Originally Posted by Epaphras

You are literally fighting against nature to wait on sex until late 20s.

Since (most) Christians aren't naturalistic what you're saying is that those who don't have sex are fighting God. But we know that sex isn't for the unmarried and that marriage isn't for everyone. So...? Maybe I'm missing your point.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

I fail to see how God and nature in that sentence directly fit in a 1 to 1 way.

I think we can agree that by God given nature, most people have a sex drive. Most people to live a godly life have to fight this to live by God's commands for some length of time, be it a month or ninety years.

[slap_j]

Originally Posted by Billgamesh

I fail to see how God and nature in that sentence directly fit in a 1 to 1 way.

To be against nature implies something aberrant. I think that is a mischaracterization. At least that's how I interpreted it.

[Epaphras]

Originally Posted by slap_j

Since (most) Christians aren't naturalistic what you're saying is that those who don't have sex are fighting God. But we know that sex isn't for the unmarried and that marriage isn't for everyone. So...? Maybe I'm missing your point.

All I'm saying is that our God-designed biology has not kept up with our man-made economies and social structures, that's all. Not that it should. I think our biology is a reminder from God how things are supposed to be, that for a couple in their early 20s who have been dating for three years, living together for 2, sleeping together since the third date, they are basically living a married life and so there is no good reason for them not to marry (yet they find one).

Hormones kick in for girls at age 11 now, and for boys 12 or 13, and are fully raging by 14/15 for both. Marriage use to be within ten years of puberty (even less in some cases, especially for women), now it's pushing twenty. In today's economy one basically needs a graduate degree to make it, and so that's 13-14 years from puberty. Even a bachelor degree is 10 years from puberty. Add to that a few years abroad to "find yourself" and you are no longer putting off sex for 6-8 years while you are still a "kid" (comparatively), you are putting it off for almost 20 years, which is why most people put out rather that put off.

[Rainer.]

1 Corinthians 7
1 Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. 2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

Should a man take a wife because of his inclination towards immorality? Wouldn't this suggest an early marriage?

[Epaphras]

Originally Posted by Rainer.

1 Corinthians 7
1 Now for the matters you wrote about: It is good for a man not to marry. 2 But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. 3The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.

Should a man take a wife because of his inclination towards immorality? Wouldn't this suggest an early marriage?

I think in this context (correct me if I'm wrong), Paul was addressing their concern, which was that they were wondering if they should even bother getting married because the return of Christ was imminent -- most Christians then took Jesus' words literally when he said he'd be back within a generation, within the lifetime of the apostles, etc.. Or, they were wondering what the point of marriage is when there is so much sexual immorality around them -- would it mean anything? Paul is affirming that yes it does. Marriage is a lighthouse in the sexually immoral world (ideally).

All that to say, I don't get out of that passage, the notion that a man should marry a wife because of his own tendency toward sexual immorality.

[Skeeter]

Interesting. I had a conversation with some friends of mine based around the idea that the church overemphasises early marriage; maybe that's a local issue rather than a national one.

[BillSPrestonEsq]

Originally Posted by Epaphras

All that to say, I don't get out of that passage, the notion that a man should marry a wife because of his own tendency toward sexual immorality.

As ugly as it might sound, the passage is saying that men and women, should get married for such a reason. However, not those verses.

If you want to really get the sense of the passage reread those verses with an emphasis on the word have. Without getting crass, one of the early problems in Christianity was marriages giving up sex to "be more holy".

Vs 9 is the real crux of marriage to prevent sexual immorality, and it is in the context of a relationship.

I also think that the difference between say, 7 years of waiting and 17 with raging hormones is not as big as most people think because, when you are 14-15 something 5 years off might as well be forever. I mean, think of how freshmen look at Senior year. High schoolers view high school as a place they will be in perpetuity really for the most part. Putting out is not a result of a societal push towards later marriage. It is sin, and is and has been human nature.

[redbaron]

Originally Posted by Epaphras

The Case for Early Marriage | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

I agree with the main thesis of the article:We keep harping on Christian teens and young adults about sexual purity, but do nothing to resist the trend of marrying in one's late 20s -- it really is unreasonable to expect someone to wait for sex until age 28. Honestly.

There are some legit reasons to wait, but honestly I think that's the exception. Especially when it comes to economic or maturity issues: you are supposed to start at the bottom of the economic ladder, and the whole point is to grow up together.

It's unreasonable to wait to have sex until you're married even if you're gasp 28!?! Good grief, I wish I'd gotten the memo that it was ok, since I'm now 26 and apparently have been missing out on all the heartbreak sin has to offer. .

As for the growing up together, I agree, I'd like to spend the best years of my life with my wife and best friend when that happens. I've decided that the best years of my life haven't already happened, even though I'm less than five years from 30

I really liked the "Objections" section.

100% agreed. We will always cherish our first year of having to sit down and budget, paying cash for my wife's technical school, having to manage with one vehicle, eating lots of spaghetti, watching Judge Alex because we don't have cable and nothing else is on TV in the afternoon, all of it.

We understand/understood that even though we both came from middle-class backgrounds, we had to go back and start at "the bottom". We see so many of our peers trying to catch up in 3-5 years what it took their parents 25 years to accumulate. It takes 25 years!

Honestly I agree with you, but don't be fooled, us single people have to do this too, and I'm sure that if I get married I'll be doing it then. No matter how much you're making it seems like if you could only make a little more life would be "soooooo much easier", even though it isn't. I've made a better living than my parents did when they were starting out, spent a bit more wisely thanks to their experience and had some good turns come my way. So yeah, I'm way ahead of where they were at 26, but times are a lot different.

Never thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Part of our motivation to get married when we did (age 21) was so we could grow together, to mature together. I can't imagine how difficult it is to join households in one's late 20s after 10 years of singlehood and being very set in one's lifestyle.

If I'd found the person God had for me at 21, I might be married now too, but as it turns out the person I was back then, and the person I was dating were not a good match, and I wasn't grown up enough. It can work out I'm sure, but there is likely no way I would still be married. I'd rather wait, and marry one time, personally.

I think the reason you think it's so hard to deal with being "set in your ways" at the ridiculous age of your mid to late twenties is simply youth speaking I've been living on my own for ~8 years and had zero room-mates for the last 5. I've got a very happy lifestyle of living by myself and doing my own thing- As it turns out I just rented out a room to a friend who needed to move (and the extra cash for me doesn't hurt) and the transition has been no big deal. We're both mature adults who talked over our expectations and needs beforehand, and as a result it's been a fantastic arrangement.

Now, obviously there is more to the dynamic when you're talking about a husband or a wife in your personal space, but the assumption that old dogs can't learn new tricks and adjust to a situation is a bit funny. Not to mention that I am pretty sure if I got serious to the point of marrying a girl, we'd be pretty well hashed out on expectations of lifestyle and household and all that good stuff ahead of time. I may be spontaneous at times but I am a ruthlessly detail oriented planner

Agreed. And even if it is a 'personality' or maturity issue, a solid commitment to the marriage means both people will mature through that stage and come out stronger. Like two trees growing side-by-side that eventually become enveloped in one another.

I think this is pretty wise, since obviously if you don't have the same commitment to your faith, and the same core beliefs your foundation is already flawed. I wouldn't discount personality entirely though. I have some people that I know who are great brothers and sisters in Christ who I care about, but due to personality type conflicts don't spend a lot of "hang out time" with them.

Nailed it (no pun intended). The message "Don't have sex!" all the time means all we think about is sex. Preaching on things teens and young adults can channel their energies into will produce better results because they will actually be engaged in God's work instead of just avoiding the devil's work, so-to-speak.

(going to generalize a bit here, don't take it as a personal attack because it's not)

This is the one thing that concerns me, and I'm a bit torn. Frankly, telling kids not to have sex isn't the reason they constantly think about it. They think about it because hormones and the world around them glorifies and makes it something to strive for. While I certainly agree with Paul that it is better to marry than to burn, I think that as Christians sometimes people get married too soon because it's time to get bizzzzzay, and they're not ready for the commitment, or they really don't know the other person well enough. I have seen it in my own circles enough times, where a couple gets married so they can avoid having permarital sex, but they weren't ready for anything beyond the wedding night, and things end up being incredibly painful or ending in divorce. Frankly, that's a tragedy in its own right, and one of the reasons that I am a huge proponent of not rushing in.

Very true amongst Millenials who grew up getting a trophy just for playing. We have an enormous entitlement mentality. The lie of the abstinence movement is that if we wait to have sex, we'll never have sexual dysfunction in marriage.

[/quote]

I agree that the community definitely does a disservice to children/young adults when trying to convince them how great abstinence is. Like most other parts of the Christian walk, it's harder than the path of sin, less fun, and requires patience. The reward as I see it is to have a blank slate with your husband or wife, so there are no comparisons to past partners, and the ability to start as novices and learn it all together. It's really quite a beautiful concept, really.

---

Honestly, I think that if more people simply took the process of preparing themselves, and their own heart first, and then actually searching for the person God has for them, a lot of these problems become less relevant to them. I know people who have been married and don't really know themselves, much less the person they're marrying, and figure that 2-3 pre marital counseling sessions are enough to be sure that everything is going to be flowers, rainbows and kittens their whole lives. I think one of the advantages of being an adult is that I know how much of a giant pain in the rear life can be, and I have no preconceptions that a serious commitment like marriage won't have similar moments.

Back in high school my dad made me read the book he gives all the couples he does weddings for, and suggested that the concepts inside would help to not only find the right person, but to be the right person. "Finding the Love of your life" (Neil Clark Warren) and it has definitely given me some things to think about over the years.

Back to the age/sex thing, honestly there have been times that it's been harder than others, but it was probably much harder in high school and my early 20's than it is now, not to say that it magically becomes easy, because it doesn't, and there are things that happen in life that definitely cause you to need to rely on Christ all the more and remember what you believe in the first place. That being said, I look at it this way "I've made it this long, what's a little while longer..."

[Wondermeg]

I can talk about this from personal experience since I got married a month before I turned 19. My heart was in the right place- I knew that love was all about sacrifice and I chose to give up all of my dreams and marry my husband before he deployed to Iraq again, but my brain wasn't in the right place. I had wanted to pursue some of my dreams and aspirations and prior to meeting my husband, marriage had never been one of those. I also allowed myself to be deceived about some things that with my maturity level today would have been blatantly obvious. Though I love my husband and he is a wonderful man today, our rush to marriage landed me in a world of hurt that for years I survived only by the grace of God.

Redbaron had a great point. Planning is very important. So many first year fights would not be an issue if you discuss your expectations prior to marriage and actually take the time to get to know a person and seek the wisdom of others regarding their personality and character.

Abstinence prior to marriage is so much more important than many people think. Secular sex sets you mentally on a completely different path than God's design and you cannot get off of it once you are on it. When one person is a virgin and the other is not, there is a spiritual dimension of your relationship that you will not be together on. This can be a lonely predicament when you want to honor God in every area.

I know someone who is a big proponent of early marriage in order to avoid premarital sex because "through God you can learn to love anyone and make any marriage work". I disagree. Yes, it's true that you can love anyone sacrificially through Christ, but not being loved back can really hurt and most young people are too immature for that type of pain. Young adults are usually not ready for the complete death to self that marriage requires. First you have to sacrifice your way of living for your partner. Then you have to give up everything when you have kids and let me tell you, birth control is not foolproof.

Getting married young does have its benefits, but I do not think that the church today is preparing young people for the hardships that it will require, nor do I think that it is a good idea for everyone.