January 23, 2014
Author and speaker Christian Piatt suggests that many Christian parents send their children the wrong message about marriage. What kids pick up is that sex is dirty until it isn’t, and the only way it isn’t is when it is in marriage.
Since most kids, especially our LGBTQ kids, are strongly discouraged from either activity (sex and marriage), they are left mystified by the subject and forced to learn in less than ideal ways and always with a shroud of secrecy. And when our children are old enough and are allowed to marry whomever they choose, the message they have been indoctrinated with is that “marriage fixes everything.”
It is as if folks will “magically know how to treat [each other] with love and respect, and how to express [themselves] in a way that honors the covenant binding two people together (in theory) for the rest of their lives.”
Piatt points to our nation’s divorce rate to highlight that treating marriage as a cure-all for sexual relationships is an exercise in self-delusion, and he puts the blame squarely back on us: The problem isn’t with marriage; it’s with what we teach about marriage and how we teach it.
Read the article, “The Dangers of Christian ‘Marriage Worship'” here.
