Weighing in on that Christianity Today article. 

Mark Regnerus recently posted an article in Christianity Today entitled The Case for Early Marriage.  Albert Mohler jumped on the bandwagon and praised Regenerus' work. 

While Regnerus makes some interesting points, I was shocked by this statement:

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs (emphasis mine).

As an advocate of sexual purity, I'm appalled.  I'm equally perplexed that Mohler would choose to quote something that directly contradicts the Bible.

Consider Paul's warning against sexual immorality:

It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
--1st Thessalonians 4:3-8

Apparently what God expects is "unreasonable."

There's a lot more I could say if I had time.  But I'd like to contribute to this discussion by asking three simple questions:

Question 1:  What if this article was written in 1890?

Regnerus noted the tendency to marry older since 1970.  Well, why don't we go back 80 years--the average age of marriage for men was 26.  What if a well-known Christian author/pastor said it wasn't "reasonable" to expect these young men to wait until they were married?  I imagine he'd be labeled as a hedonist and never taken seriously again.

Question 2:  What if we applied that same logic to divorce?

Rengerus follows the above quote with this statement: "Very few wait long for sex."  In other words, since so few are abstinent, it isn't "reasonable" to expect them to be abstinent.  But what about divorce?  We know the divorce rate is high, even among Christians.  Following this same warped logic, you'd end up with a statement like this:

"It isn't reasonable to expect two people to be faithfully committed to each other until death.  The data doesn't lie:  many will end up divorced."

See the problem?  Making assertions based on people's behavior instead of the Scripture is a slippery slope.


Question 3:  Is Anyone Thinking of the Positive Aspects of Marrying Beyond Age 25?

Speaking of divorce, there is a correlation between marital success and marrying beyond the mid-20's.  Consider this data from divorcerate.org:

 Those who marry at 25 and up have a significantly lower divorce rate than those who marry younger.  I'm not saying we should encourage all singles to wait until they are 25, but there does seem to be some advantages to it.  Marrying later does have its problems, but it may be one reason the divorce rate in America is falling.

I hope these three questions will give us some food for thought.