Tag: values

FIVE REASONS TO CANCEL COHABITATION

FIVE REASONS TO CANCEL COHABITATION

Breakpoint, Christianity Today, and the Institute for Family Studies recently reported on a new Pew Research survey indicating that American evangelicals embrace premarital sex and cohabitation in increasing numbers. Writing for IFS, David J. Ayers says, “It is stunning that this has quietly come to pass among adherents to a form of Christianity that emphasizes radical obedience to an inerrant Bible, forbids all sex outside marriage, and emphasizes being distinct from “the world.”

You can read the research using the links above. But more is at stake than who is shacking up and who is not. As Ayers mentions, the first issue for Christians is obedience to Christ.  We want that to be enough, but experience tells us that it helps to have other reasons to support our choices. As a marriage counselor for 25 years, I can tell you that the most potent reasons have to do with negative relationship dynamics set in motion with premarital sex and cohabitation.

In his 2011 book, The Ring Makes All the Difference, Glenn Stanton cites five reasons everyone, not just Christians, should consider.

  1. Marriage matters, not just because it is preceded by a wedding that costs tens of thousands of dollars, but because the nature of the relationship itself makes a difference in ways you probably never imagined. Bottom line: A solemn vow made before a supportive community is a surer foundation than economic convenience and sexual passion any day.
  1. Even if (cohabiting) couples consider themselves essentially “married,” they know that they are freer to exit the relationship at any time without a marriage license. This lack of security in the mind of each partner affects how they deal with each other before the wedding and unconsciously carries over later.
  1. Marriage involves things the cohabiting couple–or at least one of them–would rather not address. Financial values, child-rearing values, and relational exclusivity—that part about “forsaking all others”—are among them.
  1. People with cohabiting experience who marry have a 50 to 80 percent higher likelihood of divorcing than married couples who never cohabited. Those conclusions are disputed but dig down in the data, and you will find enough reason to push pause on cohabitation.  
  1. All of those findings are important, but the one that stood out most, because it is the one that I deal with most often in counseling, is that cohabitation–even with someone you eventually wed– sets up unhealthy relationship patterns that carry over into the marriage. Cohabitors have fewer and weaker conflict resolution skills. They are less likely to be supportive and self-sacrificing. Most notably, “the lack of relational clarity is likely to foster more controlling and manipulative interactions to try to keep the relationship together and get the partner to do what the other desires. As a result, cohabitors are much more likely to report a sense of relational instability than their married peers.”[1]

No wonder the Apostle Paul warned us about wronging each other in these matters.

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. 7 For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. 8 Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. [2]

[1] Glenn T. Stanton’s The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (1 Th 4:2–8). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

VETERAN TEACHERS

I’ve never met a perfect soldier. Let’s get that out of the way up front. Veteran’s and Memorial Days tend to bring out the worst in those of us prone to purple prose about our heroes, so it’s important to be clear that the men (sorry, I don’t know any female soldiers) I’m about to recognize were regular guys with all of the problems and faults of all the regular guys you’ve ever known. What sets them apart are the values they espoused and aspired to, values they passed on to me and that I hope to pass on to you.

I was born fifteen years after the end of WW II. As I was growing up and going to technical school, college, and seminary, the men who fought that war and the ones that followed were living through mid-life and beyond, serving as leaders, teachers and mentors to those of us who were to inherit what The Greatest Generation had fought to preserve, nothing less than Western Civilization.

Their names won’t mean much to you, but the dross was burned off the values they held by the battles they fought. So here are their names and the things they taught me.

Lewis Askew, who flew Corsairs from the deck of the Benjamin Franklin in 1944 and shared his story about the bombing that took 750 of his shipmates, taught me that men can persevere through the deepest tragedies if they know why they fight. John Durden, who repaired tanks in General Patton’s Third Army and taught me transmissions and drivelines, showed me that honor lost was hard to reclaim. Phi McClain who drove a Jeep across booby-trapped roads in France and became my spiritual mentor taught me the importance of knowing and being who you are, and that fun can be found just about anywhere. Mark Walters, who built bridges and runways from Normandy to Berlin and on through Korea, taught me leadership under pressure and the value of listening. B. Gray Allison, who flew the B 24 bomber over Western Europe with the 8th Air Force and founded the seminary I attended, demonstrated the power of faith and a positive attitude as well as scholarship coupled to a passion for souls. L. R. Barnard, chaplain to his majesty’s armies and master of theology to me, taught me the value of history and the wisdom of a wider perspective. Master Chief Bob Bennett, whose friendship, loyalty and encouragement taught me to believe in others, even when they don’t believe in themselves. Paul Steube, who flew Huey gunships with the Sea Wolves in Vietnam, demonstrated duty, and the power of sheer determination. These and so many others who are passing from this earth, and many thousands more coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan and dozens of unnamed battlefields in the war against Islamo-facism, knew things about duty, and honor, and sacrifice, which can only be learned in combat.

It is a beautiful and majestic thing to see a man take up a commission, a role, a service, to become an agent of a higher, nobler purpose than self and persevere in that mission to the absolute end of endurance or even life itself, for the sake of others. That’s what men and women like these have done for us as they serve in our nation’s military. Let’s remember not just to honor them, but to honor the values for which they stand.

2 Timothy 2:1-4