There are a few trends that seem universally associated with a modernizing society. Wealth increases, for example, and standards of living rise. Meanwhile, marriage and fertility rates decline. So too does the average age of marriage. Over the past few decades, marriage in many Western countries has transformed from a rite-of-passage into adulthood to something more like an optional add-on to middle-age.<\/p>\n
Contra the culture both within and outside of the church, I remain an advocate of marrying young. That\u2019s not to say that there is anything wrong with waiting to marry until you are older or that you should<\/em> marry young. However, I do I suggest you at least be open to the possibility of it. It\u2019s not to say you should plow recklessly ahead with your first crush, but that you should move forward only with the guidance and wisdom of parents and Christian community. And it\u2019s definitely not to say you should marry when you are still a child\u2014so perhaps we can define \u201cyoung\u201d as being something like twentyish to twenty-sixish\u2014ages that are within the bounds of adulthood but still significantly younger than the contemporary average.<\/p>\n With that in mind,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are a few trends that seem universally associated with a modernizing society. Wealth increases, for example, and standards of living rise. Meanwhile, marriage and fertility rates decline. So too does the average age of marriage. Over the past few decades, marriage in many Western countries has transformed from a rite-of-passage into adulthood to something more like an optional add-on to middle-age.See AlsoHappy 487th Anniversary, Luthers!Marry Well: A Better Path to MarriageThe \u201cTwixters\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":101202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-101191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tim-challies","tag-articles","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/lightstock_283892_medium_tim_challies-1-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101191"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101204,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101191\/revisions\/101204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/101202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}