‘Marry Younger To Avoid Premarital Sex’

[sdersch]

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.

I believe you are likely correct as to the target audience and target reasoning. And lest we border on the absurd in our “how young are we talking about” scenarios (and I’m with you that 14 is too young) let us remember that the very first criteria for marriage readiness is “leave his father and his mother.” While still somewhat ambiguous I’m sure we can all agree that it is substantially less ambiguous than “should a hot and bothered 14 year old get married?”

Point being, when a young person, particularly male, is ready to move out from under dad and mom, biblically speaking marriage is a greater priority than is the current societal financial/educational obsession which permeates many churches. Scripture no where implies that “he that findeth a stable career with good benefits findeth a good thing.”

I work with a fairly large number of Karen refugees from Burma. Some of them get married pretty early compare to their American counterparts. I don’t see them living on particularly different wage and lifestyle scale than their elder counterparts, and more often than not live slightly better.
We were young when we were married (Jennifer was 19 and I was 23). We celebrated our 20th anniversary this past February. It wasn’t conventional, but the reality is that each of us would have worked ourselves through school each on our own if we hadn’t been married. As it was, we helped each other (I worked her through to get her bachelor’s before I completed mine), and we had been married 3 years before we had our first child (though we had two by the time I had my undergrad completed… :) ). We focused our Bible college years on volunteer church ministry together and far less on school and social activities, and I think we were better for it. It might not be the course everyone should take, but I think it’s more doable than a lot of people assume it will be. I’m not sure how either of us would have been any further ahead financially or career-wise had we gone it alone.

[Jim]

“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)

THIS ^^^^^^^^^^^

As the father of two college daughters, I can tell you that my criteria for marriageable young men include the quoted reference, and (sorry Lee) do not include “can’t control themselves.” Of course, my daughters are old enough to make their own choices now, but I very much hope I’ve been enough of an influence on them that they choose good reasons for getting married and not just “it’s better to marry than to burn!” And yes, it is better to marry than to commit fornication, but if that is the only reason my daughters would choose to marry, then I would believe I had failed in my responsibility to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and in the whole counsel of God.

….we ought to parse out exactly what we mean by having a degree of financial stability. I don’t think anyone referencing 1 Timothy 5:8 is saying that a man needs to have a three bedroom ranch paid for with a bimmer in the driveway and a quarter million in one’s 401k before proposing. However, I think that the clear witness of Scripture is that a man ought to be able to pay for a basic apartment, basic transportation, and basic insurance before marrying—really things that in many areas can be had for about $1000-$1500/month. To draw a comparison, 160 hours@month at $8/hour, just a touch above minimum wage in most areas, gets you this amount.

I would agree in part with both sides. I’ve seen too many young people going on Medicaid because they married before they had any semblance of gainful employment going, and people waiting to earn “their first million” before marrying. Both end up badly.

I’m in favor of marrying young for a couple reasons. First, I married young and, while she divorced me 29 years later, marrying young obviously wasn’t the reason. We were both 21; we married two days after graduating from BJU, having known each other/dated/been engaged for most of our four years there. We rented a furnished apartment in Greenville for $90/month and I had a summer job to tide us over until I started law school in the fall. We drove an old car gifted from my parents. We lived off her $600 (gross) monthly salary as a Christian school teacher (paying $200/month to rent a one-bedroom basement apartment in a friend’s house). All our furniture consisted of gifts or loaners. We ate a lot of generic canned vegetables from Aldi’s (bleh); having my dad visit on some of his business trips and providing orange juice and cereal for his breakfasts was a budget buster. We knew it wasn’t always going to be like that, and it wasn’t (my summer job for a public interest legal foundation after my first year of law school paid $250/week; we felt rich, even though my peers were making $900/week at their big firm summer jobs). But we had nothing like the financial means that couples (young women? their fathers?) treat as mandatory today.

Second, if you know you want to live a married life rather than a permanently single life, the best time to do it is when you’re young. You have significantly more exposure to other singles of your age and station in life than you ever will again. And yes, sex is a significant factor. Christian young men have both Christian and non-Christian girls practically (and often actually) throwing themselves at them. (The federal judge I worked for told me this about his two college-age sons years ago; years later when my own sons were in high school, college, and after, it’s even worse.) You can talk about self-control all you want, but why torture yourself and subject yourself to constant (and strong) temptation if you don’t have to? Unless a Christian young woman has somehow faced an actual desert of eligible Christian young men her entire high school and college years, it’s unwise and ultimately counterproductive to insist on having several years after college to get “established” in her career before she marries. By the time she looks around and decides it’s getting a little late and she really needs to get married so she can get started on having kids, she’s past her peak in both her physical attractiveness and her fertility. Plus, she’s spent years communicating to the Christian young men around her that she’s more interested in herself, her girlfriends, and her career than in getting married. In the meantime, if the young men are smart and have the opportunity with another woman who’s less career oriented, they’ll have already gotten married. Or, if they’re not married, they are highly likely to have succumbed to the temptations heaped upon them, in which case the career Christian woman will rightly think less of them (assuming she hasn’t succumbed herself). This is when you start hearing the complaining about the absence of “good men.” She didn’t want them when there were more of them available, but now she’s surprised that there are fewer available. And she probably still insists on a level of attractiveness, leadership, money, etc. that isn’t realistic given whatever level her own characteristics are (and she probably is carrying student loan debt that she’ll want him to absorb). Of course, unrealistic expectations can and do go both ways, but women are actually encouraged to aim high while guys are frequently exhorted to man up and marry those girls. Also in the meantime, the young men may well have figured out that marriage under our legal system, even to a “good Christian girl,” presents them with significant risk — she can leave anytime she wants for virtually any reason she wants and, completely contrary to the treatment he could expect if he did the same thing, she’ll still have the kids and a significant percentage of his resources for alimony and child support. It’s a legitimate question for him to ask whether the risk is worth it, at least until he meets a woman who can persuade him otherwise. Incentives and disincentives matter.

As other commenters have indicated, character and work ethic are much more important than current resources. If you have those things plus attraction, don’t put it off chasing establishment in your career or more resources — pull the trigger and make it work. But for God’s sake, do a prenup that voids any property division or alimony if she files for divorce for anything other than specified biblical reasons. (You can’t limit child support in a prenup.)