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.
Contra the culture both within and outside of the church, I remain an advocate of marrying young. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with waiting to marry until you are older or that you should marry young. However, I do I suggest you at least be open to the possibility of it. It’s 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’s definitely not to say you should marry when you are still a child—so perhaps we can define “young” as being something like twentyish to twenty-sixish—ages that are within the bounds of adulthood but still significantly younger than the contemporary average.
With that in mind, I direct this brief article to Christian young people and offer them several reasons they should be open to marrying when they are young.

There is something sweet and significant about building a life together. While there is nothing wrong with building separate lives and then combining them in your late twenties or thirties, it is a special joy to begin with nothing and build it all as a couple.

While the Bible offers no explicit directives on the age of marriage, it does at times seem to assume or commend it as an aspect of being younger rather than older. For example: “Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth” (Proverbs 5:18). Sure, part of this may be related to the realities of an ancient agrarian culture, but still, the Bible’s assumption for marriage generally seems to point to youth more than age.

Once you are certain that you have found the person you would like to marry, there is often little benefit in remaining unmarried for a long period of time. Conversely, there may be difficult struggles and temptations.

It is powerfully counter-cultural to not only reject cohabitation, but to embrace marriage. Everyone expects you will get married someday, but few expect you will get married until you have tried many partners and trialed many relationships. Young marriage testifies to God’s plan for men and women to form exclusive and lifelong partnerships—to not only choose to build a life with another person but to forever reject all other possibilities by deliberately closing out your options. Such a decision is guaranteed to provoke interesting and biblically-based conversations.

When I have spoken to couples who have reached their 50th, 60th, or even 70th anniversaries, they have always lamented that it feels too short. More years together, they insist, are better than fewer years.

Part of the beauty of marriage is that it involves a second person coming alongside to help, strengthen, encourage, support, and care for you. More years of such blessings may prove a greater benefit than fewer years. This is perhaps especially true when those blessings come in your formative twenties.

Part of the beauty of marriage is that it involves a second person coming alongside to help, strengthen, encourage, support, and care for youShare
You may hear that marrying young is more likely to lead to problems in marriage or even to divorce. I have only anecdotal evidence to offer here, but it has been my personal and pastoral observation that Christians who marry older are just as likely (and maybe even more likely) to experience difficulties in their marriage. Which is to say, neither youth nor age are necessarily associated with either strength or weakness. Other factors play a more crucial role in marital health.

While many cultural conventions dictate the importance of establishing a certain level of wealth or achieving a certain level of vocational success before getting married, the Bible does not. You can get married without owning a home or beginning your first career. You can even get married before finishing college. There will certainly be matters of wisdom to consider, but God nowhere forbids or warns against it. It may take a lot less than you think it does to survive quite happily together.

Though this is obvious, it also merits consideration: The younger you are, the greater the pool of available potential spouses. The older you are, the greater the number who have already settled down with others.

On a somewhat similar note, I have observed that major decisions often become more difficult as you age. As it pertains to marriage, you may experience more doubts, second-guessing, and struggles deciding on a spouse in your thirties than in your twenties. In this way the naïveté and straightforwardness of youth may actually prove a blessing.

Sexual desire tends to be strongest and sexual ability freest when men and women are young rather than old. One purpose of marriage is to join together with a willing partner who will explore and enjoy sexual satisfaction with you. It is a blessing to have a willing and available sexual partner in those years of greatest desire.

It is generally true that the younger you are, the easier it is to conceive children. Societal norms about the age of childbirth have changed substantially and so too have reproductive technologies. But human biology has not. Society does not tell the truth when it implies or explicitly states that it is best to pursue a career first and consider children only later. (Did you know that if a woman is due to give birth after her 35th birthday—which is not very old!—, doctors already refer to it as “advanced maternal age” or, formerly, a “geriatric pregnancy” because of the increased complications age can bring?)

The younger you get married, the younger you can start to have children. This opens more options when it comes to the number of children you can have. If you begin to have children in your late-thirties, time necessarily restricts the size of your family. But the possibilities remain greater when you have your first a decade or more earlier.

The younger you have children, the younger you will be when you have grandchildren and thus be able to have longer and deeper involvement in their lives. Just consider the differences in becoming a grandparent at 50 versus 60 or 70. This may not seem important when you are 19 or 20 years old, but take it from me and a host of grandparents that someday it will be very important indeed.

I will conclude where I began, by insisting that I am not saying there is anything wrong with waiting to marry until you are older. Neither am I saying you should marry when you are young. Rather, I am saying that you should not exclude the possibility of it. Instead, as you reach your late teens and early twenties and head into adulthood, begin to think, “I am now old enough to marry.” Then begin to pray and consider whether it would be wise and good to marry sooner rather than later.

It’s probably more than a little cliché to point out that we are a busy people who live in a busy time. And while we tend to think there is something unique to the modern context that pushes us especially hard toward overwork, as I have read the books of previous eras I have come to see that the issue transcends the trappings of the world as it is today. There may be some unique components to today’s context, but the issue is much deeper and much older. I dare say it is universal.

It is little wonder that we have a host of books meant to relieve our busyness, or at least to focus it. Many of these books are tremendously helpful and many of them offer useful guidance. The best of them go beyond technique to diagnose and correct the issue from a spiritual perspective. New to the field is a unique and uniquely challenging book from Ian Carmichael titled Busy: Tackling the Problem of an Overloaded Christian Life.
It bears mentioning from the outset that this is not a book that teaches processes or techniques. It is not meant to introduce a new system of productivity. Rather, it is meant to “avoid magic bullets and instead look with you at what God has to say in the Bible about busyness. By which I don’t mean looking for a verse in the book of Proverbs that says something vaguely connected with productivity and using it as a pretext to say what I wanted to say about productivity anyway. No, I mean going to the Bible in search of answers to some of the most fundamental questions about our life’s meaning and purpose—what God created us to do—and seeing what implications that has for our lives.”
In Carmichael’s framing of the issue, busyness is not necessarily bad and may actually be very good, just depending on how it is defined and understood. He begins with ensuring we understand a central truth of the Christian faith—that we are made in the image of God. An implication is that just as God works, so we were made to work. Hence “the bottom line is this: well-directed busyness is actually a good thing. It reflects the nature of God as a worker, and the truth that ‘whatever you do’ can be done ‘as for the Lord’ (Col 3:23). In other words, busyness is not necessarily the enemy. Busyness is definitely not a dirty word.” But then it’s equally true that we were made to rest—“to draw aside from our work and busyness to rest and remember God, and engage with him as our Creator and rescuer,” something he refers to as “God rest.”
At this point the book takes an unexpected turn as Carmichael introduces the Bible’s great metanarrative which he summarizes as going from Point A (creation) to Point B (new creation). Knowing that we are saved by grace frees us from the need to try to earn our salvation and frees us to obey God in leading others from Point A to Point B—to essentially be busy in this crucial work that God has assigned to us through both evangelism and discipleship. This is work we engage in through the local church and through our private lives—work which needs to play a key role in the decisions we make in life.

The mistake we are tempted to make is in thinking about it as my agenda for my life. That is a wrong way to think about it as Christians, because “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”. The life agenda we adopt has to now be thought of as Jesus’ agenda for his life in me. As Christians, we must relinquish any sense of entitlement to the control of our lives or the setting of our own priorities, whilst at the same time thoughtfully setting priorities and making choices about what we do.

What we Need to do is find the right balance of work and rest as we pursue the priorities God has assigned to us.
At the end there are several appendices dealing with matters such as paid employment, the local church, and family life. But there is no app to download, no journal to buy, no technique to master. There is instead much to ponder, much to pray about, and perhaps much to course-correct.
Busy offers a unique take on busyness and one that strikes to the very heart of our God-given purpose. It is a book that blessed and challenged me and, I trust, one that will bless and challenge you as well. I am glad to recommend it.

The Lord bless you and keep you today.

Westminster Books has a sale on a great set of the Works of Francis Schaeffer.
Today’s Kindle deals include one classic as well as a couple of newer works.
The Briefing on the End of Roe v Wade
Not surprisingly, many of the people I follow had things to say about the apparent imminent overturning of Roe v Wade. I’ve linked here to Al Mohler’s The Briefing. See also Joe Carter, Collin Hansen, and Denny Burk.
Older Saints Wanted
Darry Dash: “The older I get, the more I look for the redwoods, not the saplings. Who do I want to be like when I grow up? These older saints. I have a long way to go, but I pray to God for even a little of what they have.”
Why Did the Early Christians Switch from Sabbath to the Lord’s Day?
“What would compel devout Jews—John, Paul, and the entire early church—to exchange Saturday worship for Sunday worship to celebrate a person, the Lord Jesus?” That is well worth considering.
28 Fascinating Facts About Time
“Did you know that a day on Earth used to be around six hours shorter than it is today? Or that Julius Caesar once implemented a 445-day-long year? Learn those fascinating facts about time and more in this list.” Feel free to adapt any facts that have the words “billions of years” in them.
An Example of the Fear of God
Kevin DeYoung considers the Hebrew midwives and an example of the fear of God.
5 Copywriting Commandments and How to Implement Them
Cara has some good and helpful counsel for bloggers and writers.
Flashback: 6 Very Good Reasons to Consider Your Short Little Life
Repentance is our duty before God, but one we are prone to delay. But when we think of the uncertainty of time and its sheer brevity, we will see the danger of delaying. We will see we must repent today instead of procrastinating repentance into an uncertain future.

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard