Teenage Marriage – Part 2 – A Marrying Mindset

In my previous posts, I haven’t done as good a job at relating the content of the individual posts to the series title as I would have liked, I’ll try to do that more efficiently in this post.

How focused should we as teenagers be on the topic of marriage? In order to answer that question, we must first decide how important marriage should be to us. Only then can we decide how that applies to a certain people-group or age group. To do that, I’m going to go to two main sources — the Bible, God’s innerant, all-sufficient Word, and Chapter #2 of What He Must Be (If He Wants To Marry My Daughter), by Voddie Baucham, titled ”The Ministry Of Marriage.” As Mr. Baucham does, I would like to open by answering some common objections on this subject.

Objection 1: Singleness is superior to marriage. Answer: Not so. In the passage usually used to defend singleness, 1^st Corinthians 7, Paul is talking about singleness as a life-long state. I agree that, taking Paul’s statement at face value, it might seem to mean that all singleness is superior. However, he calls upon the widows and virgins to ”remain” in their state, not allowing for the possibility that he is including in this passage the time of singleness before one is capable of marriage. The rest of scripture proves that he is, indeed, talking about lifetime celibacy. Take 1^st Timothy 5:11-14 for example. How could he say that if he considered singleness to be superior to marriage? Also, in Matthew 19, when Jesus is talking about divorce, the disciples say to him, ‘’such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry”(v.10). He, answering this question about the superiority of singleness, says this: ”Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been made eunics by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”(emphasis added)(v11,12) The ESV Study Bible has this comment on the use of the word ”eunuchs:” ”…this would include those without the capacity for sexual relations, either through a birth defect, castration, or a voluntary life of abstinence. Celibacy is an acceptable alternative to marriage (cf 1 Cor 7:6-9; and note on 1 Cor 7:6-7)” (emphasis added). What Paul is talking about here is celibacy, not a pre-marital state. Additionally, the superiority of singleness defies all God-given logic and wisdom. After all, if singleness is more holy than marriage and we are to strive to be holy, then shouldn’t we all be single? That concept will very rapidly lead to the downfall of the entire human race, since children cannot be biblically conceived outside of marriage (and we are commanded to ”be fruitful and multiply,” Gen 1:28)

Objection 2: I’ll just wait until God brings the ”right” guy/girl along. After all, He has prepared someone just for me from the beginning of time, and it would be a sin for me to marry anyone else. I run into this objection more often than I run into the superiority-of-singleness objection. However it too is wrong. True, God has known from the beginning of time who you will marry. But there isn’t this one girl/guy out there that you HAVE to marry or you’ll be unhappy and living in sin for the rest of your life. That’s the premise behind dating — you are looking for Mr or Ms Right and you’ll keep searching and rejecting until you have found him/her. (For the sake of clarity, I’ll write primarily from a guy’s perspective from here on out so I don’t have to keep mentioning both genders). Well, let me ask you this: What biblical support do you have for that? There is none. The entire concept of ”The One” is a modern invention. Throughout all history, the choice of whom to marry has been a relatively minor decision. Arranged marriages were commonplace and warring families would often inter-marry simply to solve conflicts. In some cases, wifes would even be taken as prizes of war (I am not supporting that). The first command given to man was ”be fruitful and multiply.” This did not change after the Fall, for an enormous amount of space is given in the Bible to the issue of marriage including large portions of Proverbs and the entire book of Song of Songs. The option of singleness wasn’t even considered by Christians until the New Testament, and even then the only ones who should pursue it are those whom God has granted the supernatural ability to resist temptation (see Objection 1, above). God puts a high emphasis on marriage throughout the entire Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New, but the only passages where He speaks on the issue of WHO to marry talk about the qualities one should look for in a wife (see Proverbs 31, 1^st Peter 3:4vv). Also, if your wife dies and you remarry, what is she, The Two? Any godly young man and any godly young woman should be able to live together harmoniously and happily in marriage for their entire lives.

Now, exactly how important is marriage in general? Well, as I said in Objection 2, an enormous amount of space is used up in the Bible talking about marriage. A few examples, as per Nave’s Topical Bible: Gen 2:23, Ex. 22:16, Lev 21:1, Num 36:8, Pro 18:22, 21:9, Jer 29:6, Matt 5:31, and on and on and on. But we need look no further than the second chapter of the first book in the Bible (the very first thing that the very first man said): ”Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen 2:23-24) It is a simple fact that the reason there are two genders is for their union. Woman was created so man would not be alone. The very first thing that the very first man said was that man should leave his parents to be married to his wife. In the OT, God’s people never even considered celibacy as an option, they simply assumed that they would get married. It wasn’t until the NT with the introduction of the New Covenant that God allowed for lifetime singleness. And even then, there is no passage in the Bible that supports prolonging the time before marriage for any reason whatsoever. Men and women, throughout all of history, have been married as soon as possible and it is only within the past couple hundred years that we have started trying to find reasons to put off marriage as long as possible. Some common excuses are that singleness is more ”holy” than marriage, we need to have a college education before marriage, and, my all-time favorite, we are going to wait for God to bring us ”The One” to marry. The concept of ”The One” is demolished simply by the fact that it is a recent invention. God hasn’t brought people ”The One” at any other time in history, it would be arrogant for us to assume that He would do so now. So to answer my question, how important is marriage? It is of the utmost importance. It is to be desired more than singleness and thus should be reached as soon as possible, taking practical considerations like legal age limits into account, of course.

So now how important should marriage be to us teenagers? We’ve already determined that it’s of the utmost importance in life in general, but should we, as young as we are, really be considering it? Well, consider this simple fact: Only in the past 100-200 years have people started marrying in their twenties. For 3000 years before that, men started marrying as young as 14 and women as young as 12. The obvious question is: why has such a radical culture-changing shift occured? Well, some of it is legitamite, like the fact that you can’t really lead a life outside of your parent’s authority unless you are over 18. But if that was the only factor, then you would see people getting married at 18-22, not 22-30. The more inflential factor in this phenomenon of late marriage is the fact that America and every culturally-similar country has become obsessed with Number 1, ourselves. We want to wait until the perfect guy or girl comes along for us instead of trying to become the perfect guy or girl for someone else. We want to ”live life while we still have it” and just use the teen years for fun. For the sake of your brain which is probably starting to melt from the length of this article, I’m going to assume that you know that the teen years aren’t for goofing off and having fun and should be used to prepare for our lives ahead of us and that teenagers can and should be just as responsible as adults. I have plenty of articles in this blog on that subject if you want to know more, or you can check out The Rebelution, a movement I am a part of. Anyway, back on topic. The reasons that we teenagers tend to not marry are based almost entirely on modern secular cultural standards and have absolutely no biblical basis. We are caught up in romantic ideas such as ”The One” which are misleading and prevent true happiness and biblical searching for a spouse. There are obvious things keeping us from marrying as young as has traditionally happened in history, a 14 year old isn’t even allowed to marry in America, but the majority of excuses presented for prologing premarital singleness are completely secular in origin and lack any backing by biblical truth. An 18 year old should be able to marry. A 16 year old should be able to marry. A 14 year old should be able to marry. Sadly, though, because of the culture around us that tells us teenagers that we need not worry about life until we are ”adults,” we have neglected our preparation for marriage and biblical maturity so that the average teen isn’t capable of marriage mentally and spiritually until at least 18. So the question of how important marriage should be for teens is difficult to answer. The average teen should not take place a high importance on it in the regard that they do not need to be looking for a spouse, but it does need to be a priority in the sense that they need to think about it and prepare for it by becoming a responsible Christian adult. Marriage should always be an important issue, and if it was, i’m sure we’d see young men ready for marriage at age 14, but it isn’t in our culture and we can’t just ignore the fact that we haven’t been brought up with a marrying mindset and go out and start marrying at 14. We need to make marriage a priority in our life and simply pursue a spouse when we and our spiritual leaders think that we are ready.