timeimmortal

V is ticked off because some religious types (a group I appear to be a part of; I’ve never been able to coax this particular Wordpress installation to send out trackbacks, but evidently it decided to finally spit one out…) identified with something she wrote about marriage. Okay, she doesn’t believe in the sanctity of marriage and all that, and maybe she’s even just down on the general concept of marriage itself. Fine, that’s her right. Let her have every beef in the world with marriage, people who get married, God, and everything else for that matter.

She wrote something about marriage, childbearing, and the order in which these two events in life seem to be occurring for far too many people.

And as Disputations is fond of asking: “is it true?”

Well, yes…yes it is.

Does it impair us religious types from recognizing that, as wrong as she might be about things like God, and like the sanctity of marriage, she has a legitimate point? Does the fact that V doesn’t believe in the sanctity of marriage, or the fact that V doesn’t believe in God, mean that her point is not legitimate?

That’s right, O Reader: it does not. And despite all her other erroneous views about marriage and God, she still said something that was right, no matter how inadvertent the utterance itself might have been.

I believe that God calls each of us to live a moral life, and to understand that the world “just works” in certain ways. That’s kind of an oblique reference to natural law, in case the Reader is wondering. But I also believe that religious persons do not have exclusive license on living out the reality of that call, any more than we have exclusive license on perceiving it (which we also do not have). That’s not to say that those who are not religious necessarily understand a) where the call to be moral comes from, or b) that they are even heeding a call when they strive to be moral. What it is saying is that we all have opportunities to be wrong…or to be right.

In that sense, it’s irrelevant what V thinks about God, or about the sanctity of marriage — what’s relevant is the conclusion she came to in spite of all that baggage (exactly like how those obesity researchers figured out how to reactivate the human memory). Because at the end of the day she had a valid point that everybody with a brain, whether religious or not, should be able to recognize as valid. Having a child — creating a new life — really is a huge commitment (d’uh!), and if a person can’t make the commitment that forms the core of marriage then there is no way in any extant realm that said person is ready to have a kid. That society seems to have decided that the inverse of that statement is true is, at best, pitiable, and at worst a damn shame.

Should I be expected to disagree with that conclusion simply because I’m religious and the person making it is not? Should it be so confusing that I agree with that conclusion simply because I am religious and the person making it is not? Screw that. If someone says something that gets it right, then whether or not they believe in God is irrelevant. They still said something that gets it right, and that’s always worth remarking on.

Although, if V really needs to see a disagreement between her point of view and that of a religious type like myself, I will note one curious thing.

If I were to meet a pregnant, unwed Mother who told me that while she loved her partner and was committed to him completely, she would not be getting married because she didn’t think it was necessary to legalize her love, then I would applaud her wholeheartedly.

That’s interesting to hear coming from the same person who has, all along, been attempting to hammer home the point that if you can’t make a lifelong commitment to a person outside of having a child, you shouldn’t be having a child. I suppose that when one gets too caught up in an atheistic view, it’s easy to miss that marriage is a bit more than just a legal contract. No, I’m not going to argue, at present, for the sanctity of marriage. I’m simply going to remark that marriage, even secular marriage, is a formal statement of commitment.

In an certain way, I guess I’m saying that I don’t think V goes far enough. Believing one’s self to be committed is all well and good…but it’s also not enough to simply believe something to be the case; action is required. Personally, I hold that anyone who claims total commitment to another person but actively refuses to seek a marriage to that person is a coward.

Non-marital long-term commitment is a fiction, an excuse used by two people who “feel” very committed to each other at the time, perhaps even in a way that is, for the time being, genuine…but who are still looking to keep their options open, to have that “easy out” as a fallback plan. Absent any discussion of divinity, marriage is still not just a legal distinction; it’s a declaration, a statement made between two people that they are not only committed to each other, but that they have the courage to declare that commitment before the world.

That’s as true for secular folk as it is for religious folk.

Those old nursery rhymes were right, O Reader.

Grace and I waited until marriage for sex. We’ve decided, too, that we’re going to try and not have kids for another year or two, so that we can pay off our debts and spend some time just as a couple, travelling.

You know…a sane, normal plan that almost anyone could pull off, and which can be expected to work out rather well both in the short term and the long term. The sort of thing that used to be normal before we started mainstreaming illegitmacy.

In her typical way, V of Violent Acres speaks rather plainly about this issue in a recent post. And while I’m not sure I’d be anxious to ever end up as a member of her circle of friends, it’s always nice to hear someone else (a) talk sensibly about issues like sex and marriage, and (b) speak out in support of people who order the major events of their lives in the right way.

Even if she is wrong about the whole God thing, it’s still nice to hear.