On It Goes...

An USA Today article published Friday September 13, 2013 titled Remarriage in an age of cohabitation, discussed at length the current trends demonstrating the erosion of any Christian understanding of what marriage is.

“Cohabitation has opened up options for people that weren’t there 20 years ago.  It affords the benefits of marriage without the legal constraints.”  (Susan Brown, Sociologist and lead author of an analysis of federal data by the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, as quoted by Sharon Jayson, USA Today)

A generation ago, cohabitation was often called ‘living in sin,” but that taboo has faded.  Unmarried couples of all ages are moving in together – 7.8 million, according to 2012 Census data… Between 1990 and 2012, the percentage of unmarried couples living together more than doubled, from 5.1% to 11.3% (Sharon Jayson, USA Today)

This is not progress and it is not good news.  What, exactly, are the “legal constraints” that it seems good to avoid; the promise of fidelity, the promise of support no matter what life throws out, the promise to help raise the children?  This attitude demonstrates the game changing effects of universal acceptance for contraception.  Would all of these couples, especially the women, be so cavalier if they knew that a significant part of the matrix would be children?  No!  They are calculating their future happiness on the premise that contraception will keep children, and the attendant responsibilities, at bay.

Even more grave is their failure to discern their responsibility to the natural law.  More specifically, they no longer believe in accountability to God’s authority; to the fact that while we do not call it “living in sin” anymore, it still is just that, living in sin and obstinate sin brings death.

I know that most people in the western world no longer believe in hell and damnation anymore, but that doesn't make it go away.  Truth doesn't change with the times and popular belief.  God gave us His teachings in Christ.  Christ declared what sexual morality required.  If we are to find happiness in this world and, more importantly, the next, we need to follow those teachings to the letter because they comply with the two greatest commandments, to love God with our whole heart, our whole soul and our whole mind; and to love our neighbor as our self.