Mark Regnerus is a sociologist who found that American evangelical young adults who take purity pledges are actually more likely to engage in premarital sex than their secular peers (take that purity ring off now. Now!). In this CT article he says the solution is for us to marry earlier:
Over 90 percent of American adults experience sexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who do so is not much lower. In a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church- going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort. I’m certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I’m suggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don’t and won’t.
What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more? No. It won’t work. The message must change, because our preoccupation with sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that Americans—including evangelicals—are doing to the institution of marriage by discouraging it and delaying it. …
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. The data don’t lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in 2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give us away. Very few wait long for sex.
I got married pretty early (engaged at 20, married at 21), and not just for Mark’s rationale above. There are a few more reasons I tell young people to marry as soon as possible (assuming they’ve found a solid Christian mate, which isn’t always easy):
- Marriage is the primary tool God uses to rip away our sinful self-centeredness. Your time isn’t your own, your space isn’t your own, even your body isn’t your own – it all belongs to your spouse. As this slowly dawns on you in marriage, it shows you how selfish you’ve been with all the stuff you thought was yours, but never belonged to you in the first place – you were given stewardship of these things by the true owner, God. There are a few people who discover this all on their own, but the rest of us never see our ugly selfishness until our first few years of marriage (and then you start having children, and each child peels back another stinky layer). In most cases, the longer you stay single, the more layers of selfishness you build up that then have to be ripped away.
- Marriage is an incredible way to learn about God’s grace. As your spouse sees more and more of your stink, she has only one choice if the marriage is to survive: respond with grace. Receiving this grace is a brand new experience for many people. Boyfriends and girlfriends usually run away at the first sign of trouble. Even close friends drift apart when there’s conflict. But a spouse who continues to love you in spite of yourself offers you an unmistakeable picture of God’s undeserved grace in your life. The sooner you get married, the more of God’s grace you get to experience.
- Marriage is an essential means of expressing the gospel. God uses our marriages to show our neighbors, friends, family, and church how he wants to relate to them. Paul says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32). When a man loves his wife the way Christ loves the church (by dying to himself every day for her), the world gets a glimpse of Christ’s sacrificial love for them. When a woman submits to her husband as the church submits to Christ (by trusting him as he trusts the Father), the world gets to see how they should submit to Christ. The sooner you get married, the more opportunities you have to share the gospel with the world around you.