Grow Up? Not So Fast
Meet the Twixters. They're not kids anymore, but they're not adults either. Why a new breed of young people won't — or can't — settle down
This is what Albert Mohler has called “extended adolescence.” Mohler comments on the troubling tend of the “marginalization of marriage” in the church and world today:
Demographic trends, cultural shifts, and a weakening of the biblical concept of marriage have produced a situation in which marriage is in big trouble, even among many Christians. . . . By any calculation, the statistics indicate that young adults are marrying much later in life than at any time in recent human history. As a matter of fact, demographers have suggested that this new pattern of delay in marriage has established a statistical pattern that in previous generations had been most closely associated with social crises like war and natural disaster.
“From Genesis to Revelation,” Mohler writes, “the Bible assumes that marriage is normative for human beings.” Marriage is biblically normative. Therefore, it should be both expected and sought.
Martin Luther argued for the same thing:
If you have the gift of abstinence and can live without sex, well and good. Then abstain from sex life. But if you cannot without sin abstain from uniting with a woman, then make use of the remedy God points out to you. [What Luther Says, p. 898)
Mohler's analysis and Luther’s exhortation could not be any more relevant for our current crisis.
