Tag Archives: Marriage

Commentary

MUST-READ: Has the decline of chastity and courtship hurt young people?

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Here’s an article by Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. (H/T The American Thinker via ECM)

Excerpt:

The casual sex promoted in advertising and entertainment often leads, in the real world of fragile hearts and STDs, to emotional and physical wreckage.

[…]…having a series of low-commitment relationships does not bode well for later marital commitment. Some of this expresses preexisting traits — people who already have a “nontraditional” view of commitment are less likely to be committed in marriage. But there is also evidence, according to Wilcox, that multiple failed relationships can “poison one’s view of the opposite sex.” Serial cohabitation trains people for divorce.

I actually think that a series of sexual experiences outside of marriage poison’s one’s view of the opposite sex and trains people for divorce. I’ve put a lot of thought into the things that should be done during friendships and courtships in order to train the couple for marriage, and pre-marital sex is not one of those things!

There are a lot of people out there today who think that they can get the end goal of a fairy tale wedding, a long, stable marriage, and well-behaved children, by making moral decisions significantly different than their grandparents made. The blessings that our grandparents enjoyed were causally connected to many moral realities that young people seem to have rejected as old-fashioned and outmoded.

I think one of the major reasons why I value chastity so much is because I have come to realize that sex outside of a commitment really affects people, especially women. There is a real difference in the way that I am treated by women who are chaste – they are a lot more vulnerable and susceptible. They are also a lot more open, interested and engaged in our platonic friendships as well.

I think there is an awful lot of sex going on out there, but not a lot of chivalry and romance. I think one of the problems we need to face is that we need to be more cautious about tearing down the morality that was been in place for centuries in the Christian West. Before destroying the foundations, we should first ask ourselves what the consequences will be on other people’s incentives.

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Commentary

Twenty-one reasons why marriage matters

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From the National Marriage Coalition in New Zealand. (H/T Jennifer Roback Morse)

Summary:

FAMILY

1. Marriage increases the likelihood that fathers have good relationships with their children
2. Cohabitation is not the functional equivalent of marriage
3. Growing up outside an intact marriage increases the likelihood that children themselves divorce or become unwed parents
4. Marriage is a virtually universal human institution.

ECONOMICS

5. Divorce and unmarried childbearing increase poverty for both children and mothers
6. Married couples seem to build more wealth on average than singles or cohabiting couples
7. Married men earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories
8. Parental divorce (or failure to marry) appears to increase children’s risk of school failure
9. Parental divorce reduces the likelihood that children will graduate from college and achieve high-status jobs

PHYSICAL HEALTH AND LONGEVITY

10.Children who live with their own two married parents enjoy better physical health, on average, than do children in other family forms
11.Parental marriage is associated with a sharply lower risk of infant mortality
12.Marriage is associated with reduced rates of alcohol and substance abuse for both adults and teens
13.Married people, especially married men, have longer life expectancies than do otherwise similar singles
14.Marriage is associated with better health and lower rates of injury, illness, and disability for both men and women

MENTAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING

15.Children whose parents divorce have higher rates of psychological distress and mental illness
16.Divorce appears significantly to increase the risk of suicide
17.Married mothers have lower rates of depression than do single or cohabiting mothers

CRIME AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

18.Boys raised in single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behaviour
19.Marriage appear to reduce the risk that adults will be either perpetrators or victims of crime
20.Married women appear to have a lower risk of experiencing domestic violence than do cohabiting or dating women
21.A child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse

This is fun to read! You can learn to defend marriage, even if you favor lifelong chastity over marriage like I do.

The full PDF is here.

Commentary

Should fundamentalists encourage pro-abortion, pro-public-school and anti-marriage policies?

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Here’s a post from Newsbusters about a group of “patriarchal” Christians that opposed the nomination of Sarah Palin for the post of vice presidency based on their interpretation of the Bible.

Excerpt:

The Los Angeles Times seems to have taken a sudden new interest in biblical study. No, they haven’t become religious or anything close to that. Instead, they are microanalyzing the Bible for passages that they think they can use to slam Sarah Palin for running for vice-president. They are also searching the countryside to dig up the very few strongly religious Christians they can find who think Palin is wrong to run for public office.

Should fundamentalists directly or indirectly support the election of Barack Obama, which caused disastrous effects in society, (increasing abortion, enabling a stronger influence for public schools, and potentially legalizing same-sex marriage, for starters)?

Does Scripture actually justify any of these radically left-wing positions? Won’t these fundamentalist Christians be judged based on the fruits of their opposition to Sarah Palin? Don’t Christians have a responsibility to be educated about the consequences of their positions? Isn’t it important to interpret the Bible correctly?

See my previous post on the need to have an influence in the public square in the most effective ways possible.

Another point of view

A mother of 12 writes:

It is a continual source of amazement to me that some Evangelicals/Protestants raise such a ruckus about Catholics believing in the spiritual authority of the Pope, even while setting up little mini-Popes of their own – and that these leaders disobey God’s imperative to servant leadership in order to revel in their pedestal status.

Often these begin as well-intentioned people seeking righteousness, but then giving into the temptation of spiritual pride. Like the Pharisees Jesus condemned, they become white-washed sepulchers.

Our family’s experience in a legalistic church (mercifully brief 1989-1990) was filled with people bossing us around, telling us that they had a Word for us from God. How dared they presume that God would speak to a stranger rather than guiding us Himself?

And how dare the Vision Forum crowd presume to become the Pope to Sarah Palin?

The truth is that these well-meaning people have become isolated and insulated, building an alternative universe and then judging the outside world by their self-imposed standards rather than by the historical truth of a heavenly Father who throughout the Bible has chosen unlikely leaders and who has warned us about making our own.

Found here.