‘Marry Younger To Avoid Premarital Sex’
“Southern Baptist leaders … have identified a cure to both the marriage problem of less people tying the knot and the drive toward sexual temptation. Get married young.” Marry Younger
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How about just practice some self-control!
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/10/388948950/southern-baptist-leaders-highli…
Comment: Haven’t found the SBC link.
My own views on marrying young:
- Me: Married at 25½ to a woman 23½: 1974 … now 40 years into the marriage journey
- I personally was not settled in life to have married earlier. At 25½ I was able to buy a home and had a steady job.
- Many young adults today seem to be not ready for the financial responsibilities until much later in life
- Anecdote 1: a young woman (early 30s) in our church asked my advice about a potential suitor. I asked the woman this question: if you got pregnant on your wedding night, would he be able to provide for you and the child. She passed on that guy and about 2 years later married another. They are new parents. He works. She cares for the child at home.
- Anecdote 2: a young couple in the church were wedding planning. I asked the young man: Are you able to provide for your intended wife? It was clear to me that he was not. Less than 6 months later the woman’s father asked the man the tough questions about his inability to barely provide for himself. The woman broke off the relationship. Today nearly 3 years later, he is still floundering in his career. She made the right choice.
The article almost certainly has the facts wrong on several points.
You know a piece has bias problems when it has sentences like…
“Much of the justification for avoiding premarital sex comes from the Bible, particularly …”
Justification?! The writer is clearly not aware of where western culture stood on this for dozens of centuries until the 60’s and 70’s… practically last week.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Jim’s comment suggests to me that the real problem confronting the young is not when they consider getting married, but rather when they are ready in terms of economics, character, and the like. One pastor I know—Tim Bayly in Bloomington IN—actually has a boot camp for young men in the church he pastors where a key point is to wean young men off an over-addiction to sports, video games, and the like. We might consider something similar.
Personally, I married at 27, and would have loved to have gotten married earlier, but quite frankly must admit that I was pretty immature earlier. God spared my wife some misery (not all misery, sigh) by making me wait a bit.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Isn’t this general principle of 1 Corinthians 7:2? It seems like some people are so focused on getting their life together before marriage, but courting, then marrying, a good spouse would go a long way toward getting one’s life together. Maybe I’m oversimplifying this, but God brought a wonderful, godly woman into my life and we married when I was only 21 and about to start my senior year of Bible college. We’re about to celebrate our tenth anniversary and I wouldn’t change a thing about the timing of our relationship or marriage.
IOW how much income is truly necessary to support a family? We married young and although we never had much money we were never poor. A hard worker with a decent job and some good prospects should be able to support a wife IMO.
I was engaged at 17, married at 18, and we’re still married. Everybody told me I was “too young.” Well, we survived, we’re still surviving, and I got married young enough so that I’ll still be under 40 when my oldest son heads off to college.
My sister, on the other hand, waited until 31 to get married and just had her first child this year.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[josh p]IOW how much income is truly necessary to support a family? We married young and although we never had much money we were never poor. A hard worker with a decent job and some good prospects should be able to support a wife IMO.
Josh, it occurs to me that the highlighted portion of your comment is why you & Tyler (and a lot of others) were able to marry young, and others really should not. Most of the guys that really ought not marry that I can think of show it in their work ethic, which shows itself in their career prospects. Losing a job isn’t a big issue, but long term unemployment, credit issues, and the like may be.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
It is beyond me what appears to be a dominant thinking being presented on this thread. It probably wouldn’t have struck such a cord except that In my own personal experience dealing with literally scores of marriage age young people I find the same perspective from the youth, parents, and churches in most cases. That perspective is that marriage is a less important factor in life or in the cause of Christ than is financial stability, education, career, goals, etc.
As important as all those may be I find no biblical justification for making those the priorities for determining when to marry.
I do find lots of biblical reasons for marriage. This article was about one of them—immorality. I cannot over-emphasize how important it is since Scripture puts the emphasis on it for us.
“…Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body….to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband (I Cor. 6:18-7:2).”
“Flee” is not a word that the New Testament uses flippantly (there are only 4 elements that are commanded such flight); the danger of immorality is too great; and the answer is as plain as the nose on your face—get married.
When should a person get married? A primary, if not the primary, factor is when not to would result in no longer fleeing immorality. It is not a matter of self-control, or financial stability, or finished education. Immorality is the problem and marriage is the biblical solution.
I’m not even sure why it is a matter for discussion.
Lee
I never considered my job prospects when I got married at age 18. It never entered my mind. It wasn’t a factor. Whatever I ended up doing, I knew we’d make it work. It just simply wasn’t a factor that entered into the decision to get married. I suppose it is a factor for many people, but I’m not sure why, really.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
you to marry them, but my main reason for not getting married until I was the ripe old age of 25 was that I hadn’t found a woman who would!
I was saved right around my 19th birthday. Before that I had many female friends, but I was the classic “friend but not boyfriend”. Once I was saved EVERY CHURCH I attended had plenty of single guys but no single women (or at least very few). The single women that were there already had a child… Not what I was looking for. So, it wasn’t until later that the Lord brought my wife into the picture… supernaturally in my opinion (but hey, I wouldn’t want to disagree with most of you all who simply chose your wife from the many options you had) :-)
If you are ready to sleep with her, you are ready to marry her.
All the pathetic excuses such as - I am not in the best financial position, or I need to establish a career first etc etc are tricks of the devil.
[JC]If you are ready to sleep with her, you are ready to marry her.
All the pathetic excuses such as - I am not in the best financial position, or I need to establish a career first etc etc are tricks of the devil.
“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” (1 Timothy 5:8)
Seems to me we’re caught in a false dichotomy, and over-generalizing the issue. Paul’s commands and advice regarding this issue (esp in 1 Cor 7) makes clear that one of the functions of marriage is to prevent immorality.
Nonetheless, prudence would dictate most 14 year-olds are not ready to be married, regardless the struggles they may be having with sexual urges.
Both marriage & self-control are the answers. After all, the need for sexual self-control does not end once one gets married, as I suspect nearly all married men will attest.
In defense of the authors of this article, I suspect their target audience (always an important thing to keep in mind when communicating, or interpreting someone else’s communication) has been delaying marriage out of economic concern, perhaps out of a misplaced emphasis on financial comfort, both on their & their parents part. That is to say, we as Americans tend to consider many comforts to be “needs” & therefore “I can’t marry until I am able to meet our needs.”
So perhaps what is needed is a re-alignment of American Christian thinking to Biblical priorities. Perhaps that what these authors were trying to get at.
Discussion