My first post in months and it's a bit of a rant. I know not all of you will agree with my stance in this post, but I wanted to say this anyway.
What sparked the idea for the post was a few different encounters I've had about Kyle and I and our living situation. People are genuinely surprised that we wouldn't be living together. The very first came months before we were engaged, and it was less about Kyle and I and more about my profession. Teachers were living with their boyfriends or fiancés and it was okay. It was a little like "whoa" for me because I know teachers are setting examples. But then I remembered... oh yeah, in today's culture this is okay. The next time it came up was with the lady who was our consultant when we were registering. She didn't even ask - she just stated "Oh, so you two are living together then." We corrected her - no, we won't be living together until after the wedding. Though I can't say I was completely taken aback by her comment, I did start mulling it over. Since when did it become the assumption that couples, especially engaged couples, would live together? It came up a couple more times, including from a high school camper who I know to be an upright young woman; she was less assuming about it, more just questioning "Oh, so you're going to do the not-living-together thing?" So I again reflected - when did this become a "thing" that few people do? When did it become a surprise that a couple chooses not to live together until they're married? I have friends and colleagues who do live with their significant others prior to marriage, and it doesn't cause me to love them any less or to shower judgment on them. But it does raise an even bigger issue to my mind - that more and more things are becoming okay in the Christian faith.
Postmodernism is a term tossed around in many circles. I heard the term in high school but I'll be honest - it didn't become real for me until I learned about it again while working at camp and it was applied to real life examples. Essentially, it says that everything is okay, it all depends on your own perspective; what is okay for you is perfectly okay for you, and my okay is okay for me. We can all live in completely harmony being completely tolerant (sound familiar? It's a key term in today's lingo!) of every single person's belief.
This is apathy and being too "lukewarm" as Revelation puts it. Because everyone's beliefs are not the truth. There's only one truth, not a thousand. We're supposed to take a stand for what is that truth. Yet, more and more Christians are becoming tolerant of practices of the world and those practices are flowing into the church and its members. We are called to be in the world and reaching out to those who aren't living according to God's law; Jesus still loved the cheats, the adulterers, the "sinners"; but we aren't supposed to be of the world and participating in those practices. I don't stop loving people who are doing something that doesn't agree with me or, more importantly, God's Word. But I do have a stand and I do see certain things as wrong and can express that.
This is the first time I'm really voicing this next admission out loud (or, in writing I suppose) but teenage me wasn't always sure of this. I knew what the Bible said but I didn't want to be seen as narrow-minded, a bigot, or intolerant. I wanted to show Christianly love. But you know what? Showing God's love doesn't mean I should be okay with what's going on. It doesn't mean I just go with the flow and accept what others are doing as fine when I'm aware God's Word says it isn't.
Though I could discuss many hot issues of today, let's return to the issue that sparked this post - cohabitation prior to marriage. The problem I see with this is it's taking away from God's plan for marriage. A man leaves his father to cleave or unite to his wife, not girlfriend or fiancée, and the two become one. Doing so any earlier than marriage wrecks that plan and can cause a whole lot of hurt if it isn't right; I've seen that happen too. Furthermore, now, in my own interactions and experiences (without any statistics to back this up because I don't feel like researching it), fewer people are participating in that gift of marriage or are putting it off for longer because nothing changes all that much when you're already living together. I mean, I agree - at that point it's more just a formality and it can wait for a few years. But it shouldn't be this way!
Allowing ourselves to become fence-sitters about certain worldly practices is dangerous. God wants us to be hot or cold, to take a stand even if we end up stepping on a few toes. He doesn't want us completely attacking people, and some Christians go to that extreme. But he does want us to speak up for truth.
That's a big part of what is on my heart to teach to teens and young adults, because Christian teens nowadays are so tossed around by the different ideas of truth that they are a little bit like me in high school - they're scared to take a stand on one side - or perhaps they don't even know what is truth anymore. I'm thrilled to be marrying a man who is passionate about the same idea, raising the next generation to be leaders and taking a stand in their beliefs. And yes, I'm beyond excited to live with him... starting January 2nd and not a day before.
