The surprising reason young adults are more pro-marriage

This just in for Valentine’s Day: Almost two-thirds of young adults believe marriage is still an important institution. Only 21 percent of eighteen-to-twenty-seven-year-olds told a landmark Times study that marriage is “irrelevant,” while 61 percent said they consider it relevant to society. Twenty years ago, by contrast, 39 percent of young adults considered marriage to be irrelevant.

However, the reason for their support of marriage is not what you might think. One explained: “Young people’s life philosophy has baked into it the idea that divorce is a possibility. And because we don’t see marriage as a forever thing, we are more open to trying it. We are about self-love and learning about ourselves in whatever way possible, and if that comes in the shape of a divorce then bring it on.”

In other words, many young adults believe in marriage because they also believe in divorce. If this marriage doesn’t work out, they can always divorce and try again later. This sentiment is akin to the “cafeteria morality” so prevalent in our culture: “truth” is whatever you believe it to be, so you are free to choose the “truths” that appeal to you personally.

The Times study also reports that 23 percent of young adults say they commonly have sex on one-night stands, compared with 78 percent who said they did so twenty years ago. This trend is not the result of a more biblical morality, however: they are inundated with what one commentator called “toxic messaging surrounding sex” from social media. Therapists also cite technology addictions as well as increased stress, mental health issues, and social stunting due to the COVID-19 lockdowns.

So, the good news is that a large majority of today’s young adults believe in marriage and do not believe in one-night stands. The bad news is that they take these biblical positions for decidedly unbiblical reasons.

The problem with “self-evident” truth

This news is part of a global trend we’ve been witnessing in Western culture for generations.

Pragmatism asserts that truth is whatever works; utilitarianism similarly defines truth as what works best for the largest number of people. Postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty took a now-popular further step, defining truth as what works for people in community.

Gone for many is any concept of truth as objective, the claim that an absolute source of morality exists and should guide our moral decisions. America’s founders, in their laudatory declaration that “all men are created equal,” cited as their authority the claim that such truth is “self-evident.” They made no appeal to Genesis 1:27 or any other external authority for the equality of humans.

One result has been that many who do not find such equality to be “self-evident” reject it in favor of truth they do find to be true for them. Many colonial Americans were convinced, for example, that Africans were an inferior species to Anglos and would be better off enslaved to white people than living free on their own continent. Many similarly saw indigenous Americans as “heathen” and their race and culture to be inferior, a view that legitimized the taking of their lands through westward expansion.

I say this to make the point that taking the right position on marriage and premarital sex for the wrong reasons is a step toward taking the wrong position for the wrong reasons. Once we discard north on our compass, going in the right direction will be arbitrary at best.

Why biblical obedience is best for us

St. Valentine would have agreed with me.

By some accounts, he was a Roman priest and physician martyred for his Christian faith in Rome around AD 270. Other narratives identify him as the bishop of Terni, Italy, who was martyred, apparently also in Rome. These could be different versions of the same account and refer to only one person.

While he became famous for healing his jailer’s blind daughter and leaving her a note on the day of his execution signed “from your Valentine,” the fact that he was willing to die for his faith makes my point.

Pragmatism would disagree with his decision, arguing that we should do what is in our practical best interest and claiming that being executed is clearly not such an option. Utilitarianism would likewise claim that being martyred for our faith is not in the best interest of either the martyr or those who martyr them. And Rorty’s postmodern communitarianism would similarly assert that martyrdom threatens the entire community of believers with extinction.

This is because non-biblical thinkers overlook the transforming difference biblical morality makes for those who live by its truth, whatever the cost to themselves.

Jesus declared, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Such self-denial is paradoxically in our best interest if it positions us to experience the best an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Father can do for his children. And surrendering our lives to our Lord does just this.

Paul testified, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). As a result, he served his Lord “with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29).

As the saying goes, the Lord always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him.

We cannot break the law of gravity

As the Anglican philosopher J. V. Langmead Casserley noted, the man who jumps from a tenth-story window doesn’t break the law of gravity—he illustrates it. In the same way, we don’t break God’s commandments—we break ourselves on them. 

God’s word is always “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Moses told his people, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” (Joshua 1:8).

I am not claiming that living biblically will always lead to secular advancement. As we noted, St. Valentine was just one of many who have died for their faith across the centuries. But I am claiming that living biblically will always position us to experience God’s best, whether in this life or the next. If our faith requires our sacrifice, God will more than reward such faithfulness in eternity.

And our faithfulness to our Lord will draw others to him as well. St. Valentine is Exhibit A.

J. I. Packer called the Bible “God preaching.” When last did hearing his “sermon” change your life?