02 August 2009
The Case for Early Marriage
This The Case for Early Marriage | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction is a very intriguing and provocative article and worth reading for that. I'm still thinking about it and very happy to hear others' reactions. I did find this bit very much ringing bells for me. I think it names what, if I'm honest, I've always in my heart of hearts believed about marriage (I seem to recall formulating it as a hypothesis as a child, I think) and which seems still to be broadly right even now I've been married for some 23 years: "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. Nothing could be further from the truth.In sum, Christians need to get real about marriage: it's a covenant helpmate thing that suffers from too much idealism and too little realism.Weddings may be beautiful, but marriages become beautiful." I fear this is true and yet I also find it hopeful that it may be.
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1 comment:
I think a lot of it does ring bells for me. It chimes in with an excellent Hauerwas piece I read on marriage, the central argument of which was that we always marry the wrong person, because it's never what we had imagined or hoped for, yet we always marry the right person, because marriage is about growing closer to someone over time.
My only real reservation is that I think he concedes too much in arguing that we should simply accept that people will have sex before marriage and so not worry about it because it is unreasonable to expect people to abstain when they are waiting later than earlier generations. It is unquestionably hard to counsel people to act contrary to their natural inclinations, but isn't this part and parcel of Christian discipleship in many other areas? Certainly saving yourself for a wonderfully fulfilling marriage is not a sufficient reason to ask someone to do this, but obedience to the calling to be a faithful disciple is. And obedience expressed in abstinence is its own reward, helping in our formation as responsible and self-aware disciples.
Very good and thought-provoking article, however.
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