(first published June 11, 2009 in Cebu Daily News Life!)
Literary laureates and songwriters have written hits and waxed poetic about June as the favored month for weddings, that real union and symbolic ceremony whereby man and woman give themselves one to another till death separate them.
The last month of the first half of the year therefore impels many a young adult to consider his or her readiness for the call to marital love and to the raising of a family, the basic unit of society, the nuclear community without which there is no such thing as a people, a country, a nation, or an independence day.
In recent decades, sociologists have observed a general upward shift in people’s marrying ages, from about 23-25 years old on the average about 40 years ago, to about 27-30 in the present years. The phenomenon, by their interpretation, is due to the increased variety of things a single person can enjoy nowadays, as well as to the costliness of entering the married state, which therefore implies more years of working and saving before marriage.
One of the more prominent pastors of the evangelical United States, Dr. Albert Mohler, wrote a checklist that men can go through to see if they are ready for marriage. This checklist has temporal and spiritual components and is heavy on the concept of maturity.
Mohler lists the following temporal criteria against which men intending to marry should measure themselves: (a) Personal maturity sufficient to be a responsible husband and father Economic maturity sufficient to hold an adult job and handle money (b) Physical maturity sufficient to work and protect a family (c) Worldview maturity sufficient to understand what is really important (d) Relational maturity sufficient to understand and respect others (e) Social maturity sufficient to make a contribution to society (f) Verbal maturity sufficient to communicate and articulate as a man (g) Economic maturity sufficient to hold an adult job and handle money.
These are the spiritual criteria: (a) Spiritual maturity sufficient to lead a wife and children. (b) Sexual maturity sufficient to marry and fulfill God's purposes. (c) Moral maturity sufficient to lead as example of righteousness. (d) Biblical maturity sufficient to lead at some level in the church. (e) Ethical maturity sufficient to make responsible decisions (f) Character maturity sufficient to demonstrate courage under fire.
Addressing himself to young adults of both sexes, another evangelical, Joshua Harris proposes “principled romance” as a pathway that begins in friendship and culminates in marriage.
“The seasons I propose are not a magic formula for a perfect relationship, nor are they the only way for romance to unfold,” Harris writes in his book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” adding: “But I think they can help us develop godly romantic relationships.”
Harris outlines a continuum from casual friendship to deeper friendship to courtship and then engagement. The continuum is quite traditional, but is rooted in a defining objective: woman and man should live it such that they may one day write a love story they will feel proud to tell.
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