In today’s society, marriage happens when two people (usually a man and a woman) fall in love and decide to spend the rest of their lives together in monogamy. But did you know that wasn’t always the case? In fact, the modern version of marriage emerged a mere couple of hundred years ago. In the past, marriage rarely involved love (most marriages were arranged based on income and social status), and the majority of societies allowed and expected plural marriages, with either multiple wives or multiple husbands.
Clearly the concept of marriage has changed greatly over the years. And with today’s rate of divorce between 40 and 50 percent, coupled with the prevalence of adultery in many marriages, perhaps it’s time for the concept of marriage to continue to evolve. According to Associated Press, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 41 percent of spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional. This leads me to ask, “Are we really supposed to be with just one person our whole life? And if not, must we get re-married five times? Are there alternative ways to perceive and participate in a marriage that will guarantee its success?…”
Don’t get me wrong… I’m not condoning adultery as we know it, because I’m not strictly talking about sex. But because it is so taboo, when you consider the historical context of marriage, isn’t being shocked by adultery a bit of an overreaction?
And the beat goes on. No fault adultery, building on the homosexual foundation and laying the ground work for polyamory and the eventual destruction of marriage.
A culture in moral free fall and one not worth preserving
In answer to the question in the article headline –
“NO!”
Marriage will not be eventually destroyed for the same reason that eating a good diet, staying reasonably fit, and getting sufficient sleep every night will not be eventually destroyed notwithstanding that people today eat garbage, are grossly overweight, and frequently get little sleep. In other words — over thousands of years marriage has evolved and stuck around because it’s generally good for the people who participate in it and good for society. The way evolution works is — some individuals manifest trait X and other individuals manifest trait Y and over time trait X provides an advantage such that individuals with trait X are overrepresented in the population compared to trait Y. It’s true both culturally and genetically — indeed, in humans cultural evolution takes place much faster than genetic evolution. In the West, up until a very little while ago, individuals pretty much conformed to an expected social norm of heterosexual marriage. But given this socially-induced conformity, there really wasn’t much opportunity for selection to occur. Now there is. What we’re going to see (and are seeing) is that there will be people who get married and generally stay married and raise families within a family structure, and groups of people who don’t. And the former will be (and already are) selected for on the basis of of economic, social, and reproductive advantages.
Remember that allegation of “no gay agenda” – http://news.yahoo.com/did-christians-gay-marriage-094500388–politics.html
And then this article articulates similar thoughts without sourcing the greatest thing that ever happened in the history of the universe? It’s just not fair.
Hmm, I sense “the Spirit” is getting ready to do another “New Thing.”
This is a seductive article for young people with little life experience but lets hope it also somehow makes the sensitive reader feel unclean. It reminds me of old articles in Time magazine that talked about how adultery was an evolutionary biological trait intended to increase the diversity of the gene pool…and therefore it would be unnatural to resist temptation. It was kind of the idea of what the missionaries and their oppressive religious views did to the communal paradise of the Polynesian people.
#6– These are “serpent arguments,” straight from the Garden: Did God really say? Much of what we get bombarded with today are serpent arguments.
Your comment is actually ironic, since I am Native Hawaiian myself. I always think about my ancestors who were converted to Christianity by the missionaries in the early 1800s and what they would think about all this. Actually, they would be appalled, especially since in their own immediate history they could remember a time of non-stop wars, human sacrifice, polygamy, infanticide, promiscuity, and all the problems that behavior caused in terms of spiritual and physical health, and quick depopulation through disease and mortality. I have a strong suspicion that African and Asian Christians look at the decaying West through that same lens.
“…a mere couple of hundred years ago.”
And yet Jesus Christ affirmed a standard definition that still applies.
“…between 40 and 50 percent…”
To be clear – and to the extent such numbers might be accurate and pertain, they apply to incidence as in the number of marriages ending in divorce, as opposed to the number of married couples that every divorce. Her ‘re-married five times’ example illustrates how serial marriages and multiple divorces contribute multiple incidences. A fickle couple married six times (to each other) and divorced five times would count as five marriages out of six, yet only two people would be involved.