The Minority is Married!

The news has been coming for sometime, but I was still shocked when I heard it. "Married couples hav finally slipped into the minority." So said our pastor yesterday during the morning sermon. He pulled this information from a recent edition of the New York Times which relayed the declining statistics of married couples in America.

This distrubing decline in Biblical homelife has been the case already for other parts of the world, most notably Scandinavia. In 2004 Stanley Kurtz revealed research showing that in Denmark a full 60% of first-born children were born out of wedlock. The same year a piece by Harvard UP revealed that a number of young married couples in Scandanavian countries were timid about displaying their marriage to others. Al Mohler has asked, time and again, is America next? Well according to an analysis of new census figures by the Times it is the case for America.

This is a most dreadful and sad thought. The culture we live in today is breeding a generation of selfish and self-concerned young men and women. Men who are content to buy their i-pods, new computers, cars, and other toys instead of looking for a wife. Women who are content to date around, "play the field," instead of making commitments. I have met a number of people who are having children together but refuse to get married, because it is "too big a commitment." Here we have found ourselves in a country that finds no lasting value in marriage. But the world is not solely to blame.

Where has the church been in all of this? It has been fighting over whether or not to permit homosexual pastors. It has been advocating feminism to such a level that motherhood is belittled, even if not intentionally. The church has largely embraced the cultural value of a human autononmy that is incompatible with a high view of marraige. Add to all this that the divorce rate and the adultery rate is as equally high within the church as it is without and you've got real issues to deal with.

God has created marriage to be a representation of Christ's love for the church. It is the church's responsibility then to encourage marriage, build up marriages, provide helps to marraiges, and educate the congregation and the world on its value and role. Marriage matters and over the next few days I want to explore further and more specifically how the church can do their part in saving marriage from dissapearance. It is a fight we cannot lose friends!