Teenage Marriage – Introduction

As I enter my late teens, a question that has been on the forefront of my mind is how young one must be to start courting/dating.  Obviously, it cannot be much (if any) earlier than the age at which one should consider marriage, since that, ultimately, is the purpose of a courting/dating relationship – marriage.  The average marrying age these days is in the mid twenties for both men and women (27 for men, 25 for women, according to the 2007 U.S. Community Survey). However, as Christians we must look at everything in a biblical light, and bring all cultural standards to the Bible to see whether or not we should embrace them.  Especially standards that originated in the secular culture.  The culture, both Christian and secular, screams at us teenagers to not take marriage seriously in our dating relationships until we’re over 18 or so and have been dating for at least a year or two.  Dating is, as one of my non-christian friends defined for me, like a circus.  You try out all the different forms of entertainment the circus has to offer until eventually you find one that you are satisfied with.  We are told to date people based on their attractiveness or popularity, not their suitability to be a life-long partner.  This is why the age of marriage is so high – people go through dozens of “girlfriends” and “boyfriends” before they find someone that they’d be willing to spend their life with.  And for every single one of these, they give a piece of their heart away. When they eventually find someone they want to marry, they have nothing special to give to them; they’ve given it all away in their numerous past relationships.  And I’m not talking about purity here, I’m talking about everything that can be given away in a dating relationship – first kiss, the unique pleasure of holding hands while walking through a park, falling hopelessly in “love”, getting to spend time alone with the most important person in your life (a date),  all of these have been experienced so many times with so many people that by the time you get married, the husband-wife relationship isn’t that much more special than that of a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

…But what if this didn’t happen?  What if our goal in life were to only have one such relationship?  Only one girlfriend/boyfriend.  The same person that you gave your first kiss to would be the same, the only person you’d fall hopelessly in love with, the same person you’d walk through the park with, holding hands.  Your heart would never be broken, your trust never thrown away as if it was garbage, your purity never even threatened, your hopes never dashed to the ground from a break-up.  More on topic, you’d be married much earlier in life. Of course, if I left it there, I’d be sure to have dozens of people protesting: “Sure, you’d get all the benefits of only having one such relationship, but you would still marry at the same age.  It’s a maturity level issue, not a how-many-people-you’ve-dated issue.” Agreed, it’s a matter of maturity, both mentally and spiritually.  But if you weren’t involved in the whole dating scene, not constantly worried about whether that cute girl/guy in the corner “likes” you, not constantly worried about looking nice so that you can impress a possible future romantic interest, and were instead focused on becoming a man/woman of God, imagine what would happen. The hours every day that you’d spend with your girlfriend or boyfriend would instead be spent in learning how to become a godly wife or husband.  The time you’d spend worrying about what a certain person thought of you would instead be spent on what God thought of you.  With this mindset, you’d become mature enough to get married much, much quicker than if you wasted your time dating.  If you were concerned at 13 and 14 about becoming a good wife or husband, then you would be ready for it far, far before your mid-twenties.  I’ve come to realize that there is also something sadly wrong about what the culture thinks is required for marriage.  The more I go to the scriptures for answers instead of the culture, the more I see that the culture, and yes, I’m talking about the christian culture, has got it wrong.  I’m not saying that we need to just completely reject everything the culture does, but we need to take what they do and measure it up against the Word Of God.  And we shouldn’t go to the Bible looking for justification of what we are already doing, we must instead go to it with an open mind, trying to find out what we need to do, without even taking into consideration what we and those around us are already doing.

In this series, what I hope to accomplish is to show you from the Bible how the cultural standards for teenage boy/girl relationships are wrong. Teenagers can and should be mature enough to be married.  Dating, as the culture defines and practices it, is unbiblical (aka: a sin). And that includes the way most Christians use it.  A lot of Christians attempt to justify dating by saying that they will only date Christians. This too, is wrong.  Any such relationship, no matter what method you use, must be done with the aim to only do so once. That is what is wrong with dating – having multiple relationships.  Dating and courting (or whatever method you choose) are the processes used to find a spouse. When you date someone, you must approach the relationship with that in mind.  And that is what makes dating wrong, because all it is is culturally glorified adultury.  It is just as much of a sin to break up a dating/courting relationship as it is to divorce your spouse.  I know these ideas are radical, but I am confident that I can prove to you through the sacred scriptures that they are right. This is what the evangelical leaders of last generation have been telling us for some time, but we’ve been so self-sufficient and prideful that we think that we, as teenagers, are smarter than the 50 and 60-year old pastors out there telling us that we’re doing it wrong.  `