I Do

A couple of young whippersnappers have pushed my button. Again. Newsweek has revisited the subject in their article “The Case Against Marriage.” This time two journalists are a bit tired of receiving wedding invitations, as they state:

“With every spring, our sighs get a little deeper as we anticipate another summer of rote ceremony, cocktail hour, and, finally, awkward dancing. Sure, some weddings are fun, but too often they’re a formulaic, overpriced, fraught rite of passage, marking entry into an institution that sociologists describe as ‘broken.’”

I won’t repeat my “Marriages Can Last” done last June in response to another such article. The last phrase makes it more editorial than news – actually, more personal journal than news. To boldly state sociologists describe marriage as broken leaves the impression that this is the view of the majority. if not all. after decades of study. Not so.

These two women look upon the passé marriage as having been “… how women ensured their financial security, got the fathers of their children to stick around, and gained access to a host of legal rights.”

Wow, there’s no romance in their view of marriage at all! How sad it must be for them never to have experienced the bond that grows between a man and woman as they share their children growing up. As they see their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren. Sharing these memories instead of saying “Will you be with us or your father this Christmas?” or watching children attempt to understand the intertwined relationships of multiple marriages.

Wait – these two women do give a caveat. They let us know they may change their minds.

"Before we get into specifics, a caveat: check with us again in five years. We’re in our late 20s and early 30s, right around the time when biological clocks start ticking and whispers of “Why don’t you just settle down?” get louder. (We’re looking at you, Lori Gottlieb.) So just as NEWSWEEK will never live down its (false) prediction that 40-year-old single women were more likely to be “killed by a terrorist” than to marry, we permit you, friends and readers, to mock us at our own weddings (should they happen)."

However, it would appear from what they write about co-habiting, they will not enter their marriage pure, nor will they give that much thought, either. They state they dislike marriage because it is “idealized.”

Why not work toward ideal? Many have determined it is not worth the effort. Not me. I know I cannot achieve perfection, but I know someone who did.

And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; [Hebrews 5:9 KJV]

I wonder how the two women look at religion. How would they look at that one verse, much less this one:

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. [Hebrews 12:1-2 KJV]

Regrettably, they do not see the cloud of witnesses in which I stand.