Men & Marriage

Let me pose a question: What is a good age to get married?

Now I’m assuming that a good number of us are already married, so to avoid this question being purely hypothetical let me rephrase: What is a good age for your children to get married? Most of us I think will answer something like “mid-twenties”. And if we were to be asked whether we thought it was a good idea to get married at 18 most of us would answer “No”.

Behind these answers I think are two thoughts about maturity; one about its timing, and one about its goodness. Before I am misunderstood, let me clarify:

• I AM NOT SAYING EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET MARRIED
• I AM NOT SAYING EVERYONE NEEDS TO GET MARRIED YOUNG
• I AM NOT SAYING THERE ARE NOT GOOD REASONS TO DELAY MARRIAGE
• YOU CAN BE A TRUE/REAL/MATURE/GODLY MAN WITHOUT BEING MARRIED, JESUS WAS (and yes, I was shouting)

I am saying though, that our attitude to those who marry young (and to the prospect of our children marrying young) diagnoses and discloses some things we believe about maturity – and it is the attitude I wish to challenge.

The first aspect of this attitude concerns the timing of maturity – simply we do not expect it to coincide with adulthood. Now at one level it’s a good thing we don’t expect it to coincide with adulthood – as it rarely does. It is quite another though to think it’s a good thing. So often “I’m not mature enough for the responsibilities of marriage” really means, “I’m not mature enough for the responsibilities of marriage and I’m really happy about that fact.”

And perhaps our joy at delaying maturity comes from the fact that we have a negative view about it: we simply don’t believe maturity is good. Certainly we may concede its necessity, but only reluctantly so. The parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) tells the story of servants with varying levels of ‘productivity’. The productive servants are rewarded, the unproductive servant are punished. Notice the reward. The productive servants get more opportunity for productivity. The parallel in reality is something like this: the reward for faithful service of Jesus… is the opportunity for more faithful service of Jesus. This only makes sense if serving Jesus is good; if serving Jesus is not only duty but delight, not only obligation but joy, not only what is right to do, but what is good to do. It is the same with maturity. And perhaps if we became more convinced about the goodness of maturity we would welcome it a little more readily.