Isn’t adult life just age? It’s a success. Throughout human history, young people have aspired to adulthood and worked hard to achieve it. The three almost universal stages of adulthood in human society include marriage, financial independence and preparation for fatherhood.
Study after study, young people reach maturity much later than previous generations. Fifty years ago, young people were married, on average, in their twenties; now, this average tends to approach thirty.
- Why is this important to all of us? A stable and functional culture requires stable marriages and the care of families.
- Without a healthy marriage and a family life as a basis.
- No sustainable and healthy society can survive long.
Clearly, our own society reveals the postponement of marriage and its consequences, but we are not an exceptional case, several European countries have similar patterns of deferral of adulthood, with disastrous economic, political and social implications.
However, for Christians, this issue is never simply sociological or economic; the main issue is morality. When most of us think of morality, we first think of ethical rules and commandments, but does the Christian vision of the world remind us that the first moral concern is always what the Creator expects of us as human creatures?Image.
The Bible affirms the concept of marriage as a central expectation of humanity. Already in the second chapter of the Bible, we read: “As a result, man leaves his father and mother and joins his wife, forming two one flesh (Gen. . 2,24).
Today, this reality has become increasingly rare. In large societies, marriageless cohabitation is increasingly the norm, but even secular observers point out that cohabitation does not even lead, in most cases, to marriage, Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University recently told Time magazine. that most of the relationships of coexistence between young people in the United States are short-lived. It is not a coexistence before marriage, it is a coexistence more than a marriage.
Time’s story also highlighted another disturbing pattern: Generation Y, or Generation Y, has children out of wedlock at exorbitant levels.
In addition, a few years ago, Bradford Wilcox, based on an investigation by Robert Wuthnow, argued that the postponement of marriage is the main driver of secularization, which goes hand in hand with the fact that the prolongation of adolescence is wide and often unnoticed. Adult life is reserved for adults, and for the vast majority of young people, this will mean marriage and fatherhood. The extension of adolescence to the age of twenty (or even beyond the thirties) is strongly linked to the rise of secularism and fatherhood. low rates of church attendance.
Christians understand that we were created as men and women to demonstrate the glory of God, and that we receive the gift of marriage as the only context for which God planned the gift of sex and guaranteed us the privilege and commandment to have and create children. For all these and many other reasons, Christians should understand that, unless they have received the gift of celibacy, they must honor marriage and seek marriage and must evolve toward fatherhood and all the responsibilities of adulthood earlier in life rather than later.
The postponement of adulthood is not consistent with the biblical vision of life, and for most young Christians, marriage should be a central element in adulthood planning and fidelity to Christ. When they reach adulthood together, as husbands and wives, young Christians serve as witnesses to God’s plan and God’s gift to a confused world.
Christians understand that sex before and after marriage is simply not an option. Cohabitation is incompatible with obedience to Christ. Children are a gift from God to be received and welcome in the covenant of marriage.
It is revealing that those responsible for secular culture now express their concern about the postponement of youth marriage. When Time magazine is concerned that young people won’t get married, Christians should worry twice.
Young people, including young Christians, face very serious challenges as they move into adulthood, and there is no doubt that economic factors influence this, but even secular observers understand that a change in marriage indicates an underlying change in morality. The fact is that previous generations of young adults, despite the greatest economic challenges, have still found their way to adulthood and marriage.
The Christian Church should encourage young Christians towards the goal of marriage and be clear about the need for holiness and obedience to Christ at all stages and seasons of life. When the world around us scratches our heads and wonders what happened to marriage, Christians must show the glory of God in marriage and all that God gives us in the covenant of marriage.
And we should encourage young Christians not to postpone marriage or rush to marriage, but to make marriage a priority in critical years of early adulthood. In this case, we don’t have time to waste.