Yesterday the Christian Standard magazine published an article I just wrote on the issue of Cohabitation.
The article was birthed out of the reaction to a post on this blog from 2009 (Seven Reasons Why Living Together Before Marriage is Not a Good Idea) that has been viewed (as of today) over 50,000 times.
Here’s an excerpt from my article, Cohabitation for Idiots:
OK, I can hear what you’re thinking. This is an opinion section in the Christian Standard, and you’re going to try convincing me that living together before marriage is a bad idea. Why don’t you stop wasting my time and tell me why I’m right to believe it’s a sin for women to serve Communion?
Well, because I’m not and you’re wrong, but that’s just my opinion and not the point of this opinion piece.
And anyway, I’m the one who was asked to write an opinion article about something I care about and I want to write about cohabitation, which I’m a lot more excited about than what I was previously going to try to write about, which was an article about why we don’t use hymnbooks at Journey Christian Church (where I am the lead minister), which I realized was quite simple to answer: because we don’t want to—and by “we” I mean those in the leadership team who lose sleep over reaching lost people.
So, that’s that, and now I really do want to try to convince you that living together before marriage is a bad idea—and by “you” I mean “you members of the Christian church,” because according to a survey on my blog,1 which more than 1,600 of you answered, the majority of you Christian church people who took my survey (40 percent) believe it’s OK to live together before marriage.2
I do a ton of marriage counseling. Currently I’m working with about a dozen couples from all over the country. In the past 21 years of ministry I’ve worked with hundreds of couples, with most of it being—what I would call—“crisis marriage counseling” with couples who are having huge problems that are directly connected to the fact that they cohabitated before their wedding day.
So, let me “waste” a few moments of your precious time and share why I think cohabitation is an idiotic thing to do.
Click here to read the rest of the article: Cohabitation for Idiots.
Here’s a chart that I’ve created comparing Convenient Love vs. Covenant Love:
Aaron, I had planned to write after I read the article yesterday. My 25 year old granddaughter questioned me “Gran, did you get the Standard this morning?” I pointed it out by my chair; she grabbed it, thumbed through to back and started reading. Finished reading, put it back by chair and we sat down to Mother’s Day lunch.No comments. As soon as she left, I went for the paper. What could be so interesting to her in the Standard? Was thrilled with your article and feel you presented your case well. Thanks so much! P.s. Rich Franz is my minister in Florida. Love their family. Also enjoyed EATS WITH SINNERS when Rich preached from it this winter.