We've closed the chapter on this Fellowship series on love, sex, marriage and relationships. In the series we presented the central Biblical teaching on what it means to be single, date, marry and have children -- all in the context of a relentless pursuit of Christ according to His Word. To this end, we referenced opposing worldviews, and the way that secular culture is unravelling traditional views and positing new lifestyles, which are increasingly gaining traction with young adults.
One of these is the now-entrenched idea that cohabitation for a couple is not just acceptable but advantageous because you can test for compatibility and phase in your commitments gradually. So folks do this in college or in the early working years, and marriage is seen as a relic of tradition.
A WSJ report on report reflects a contradictory view and presents research that affirms the Bible's teaching on honouring marriage and the marriage bed (Heb 13:4). The title of the article is: "Too Risky to Wed in Your 20s? Not if You Avoid Cohabiting First".
The reports reads,
"In analyzing reports of marriage and divorce from more than 50,000 women in the U.S. government’s National Survey of Family Growth (NFSG), we found that there is a group of women for whom marriage before 30 is not risky: women who married directly, without ever cohabiting prior to marriage. In fact, women who married between 22 and 30, without first living together, had some of the lowest rates of divorce in the NSFG."
In other words, based on this research, avoiding cohabitation seems to be a factor correlating to a lower rate of divorce. The research also affirms the converse, that cohabitation correlates to a higher rate of divorce:
"But a growing body of research indicates that Americans who live together before marriage are less likely to be happily married and more likely to land in divorce court. In looking at the marital histories of thousands of women across the U.S., we found that women who cohabited were 15% more likely to get divorced. Moreover, a Stanford study indicates that the risk is especially high for women who cohabited with someone besides their future husband. They were more than twice as likely to end up in divorce court."
The writers hedge and qualify the research findings - of course correlation does not indicate causality. But they do point to some other correlated factors as well:
"We don’t know precisely why young women who marry directly in their 20s without cohabiting have comparatively low divorce rates. Is it less experience breaking up, fewer previous partners for comparison, a greater sense that marriage is a different relationship status, or the fact that such women are disproportionately religious? It’s not clear."
What's the takeaway here? Friends, let us be confident to trust God and His true Word. We need not fear or worry that His good design for sex, love and marriage will fail. Faith is the antithesis to that fear. What we need is not a better partner or spouse - what we need is better faith to trust God with our todays and tomorrows.