Jack and Jill, sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love, then comes marriage
Then comes baby in the baby carriage.

My childhood friends and I would chant this poem in unison when we mocked our peers who had become infested with cooties and fallen in love with a member of the opposite sex. Although it was designed as a taunt, these four lines captured a set of values that we embraced for love, sex and marriage.

Lisa and I were married 30 years ago, when these values were the norm for many. Before the year ends, I will walk my own daughter down the aisle. She has come of age amid a whole new set of cultural realities that have shaped her generation’s understanding of love, sex and marriage profoundly.

In many ways, these new values are at odds with biblical principles. What God has established, humankind has in many ways put asunder; but we need to understand the new values if we hope to lead the students entrusted to our care into convictions and practices that reflect God’s guidance rather than the confusion that reigns in the world.

A Perfect Storm
If you examine today’s youth culture, you can see a perfect storm of ingredients that have served to change our views on marriage. Here’s a short and incomplete list of some cultural forces and trends that serve as marriage maps for our kids, as well as marriage mirrors of where we’re at as a culture.

First, there’s our growing emphasis on feelings. Somewhere along the way, we’ve come to believe the guide for all of our decisions, convictions and priorities is the heart. “Follow your heart,” we’re told, “and everything else will fall into place.” If it “feels right” or “feels good,” then “just do it.” The opposite is also true. Our feelings will tell us what commitments to avoid or break.

The fallout is severe as we grow up trusting feelings as the pathway to self-fulfillment. Who doesn’t know someone who has justified a decision to divorce by saying, “I just don’t feel as if I love her anymore.”

Second, there’s our growing love affair with ourselves. Dr. Jean Twenge, a sociologist in California, has studied the rapid rise of narcissism in our culture for the past few decades. She concludes that today’s children and teens are the most narcissistic generation, evidenced in their self-centeredness.

In his sermon series on marriage, Timothy Keller says self-centeredness is the main problem and enemy of any marriage. Because marriage is about submission to another person, it’s no wonder that fewer and fewer young people eagerly are entering or staying in marriages. During my daily morning ritual of reading our local newspaper, I glance at the list of people who have applied for marriage licenses, as well as at the list of divorces granted. The former list seems to get shorter and shorter with the passing of time, while the latter continues to grow with the names of far too many friends and acquaintances popping up from time to time. I believe narcissism has been a factor in the growing number of divorces.

Third, there’s the growing acceptance of divorce as a natural and normal life event. Now, you can purchase “Happy Divorce!” greeting cards.

Some say it’s a good thing that divorce has been normalized. I think it’s a shame that there is no longer any significant stigma to divorce that might cause couples to think twice or make an effort to work out their differences. The divorce rate has almost doubled since 1960, and nearly 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce.

A growing number of children of divorce are part of my daughter’s emerging generation. They may not like being children of divorce, but they are more prone to avoid marriage altogether or wind up divorced themselves. That’s not necessarily what they set out to do, but a lack of good marriage models and a host of other cultural forces combine to make them statistically more prone to repeating the marital breakup of their parents in their own lives.

Fourth, there’s the trend toward cohabitation. For a variety of reasons, more than 60 percent of married couples live together before walking down the aisle. The rate of cohabitation has increased 14-fold since 1970. Children today are far more likely to spend part or all of their childhood in a cohabitating household than they are to see their parents’ divorce.

Before their globally celebrated royal wedding in 2011, William and Kate—as do many other high profile couples—lived together. The response of the church at the time to William and Kate was also a sign of the times. An article in the British paper The Telegraph included quotes from Dr. John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, who justified the couple’s living arrangements. Like other modern couples, they want to “test the milk before they buy the cow,” said a senior church leader about the Prince who someday will become the king of England, thereby head of the Church of England.

Fifth, there’s the movement to redefine what constitutes a marriage. The “one-man, one-woman” arrangement increasingly is seen as outmoded, and battles over the new definitions fill legislative halls and appear regularly in many news outlets. Stay tuned as various individuals and groups seek to redefine what marriage means.

Sixth, pop culture promotes and glamorizes many of these cultural trends. Whether it’s the lifestyle of the celebrity du jour who graces the covers and pages of popular weekly and monthly periodicals (weekly being the most popular genre of magazine among teenagers!); the human dating and mating rituals shown on “The Bachelor” or “The Bachelorette”; or the dark pages of The Shades of Gray trilogy; the antics of the cast of reality-defining shows such as “Jersey Shore”; or any number of today’s sappy block-buster chick flicks, marriage is being reconstituted and glamorized in powerful ways.

Finally, what’s resulting is a deep-seated cynicism toward marriage that’s gripping kids at younger and younger ages. The old cliché “Marriage is a great institution…but who wants to spend their life in an institution?” has moved from being a lame joke to a potent mantra for many in my daughter’s generation. Because of what they’ve seen and experienced throughout their entire lives, many young people conclude that marriage has no chance of working for them.

Rewriting the Script
It’s a daunting challenge that youth workers face, but I believe you are uniquely called and positioned to redeem and restore marriage in ways that systematically rewrite the pervasive cultural script your students have embraced.

You stand between two conflicting sets of values about marriage: the values found in the Word of God and the values that prevail in our culture. You can have a powerful role with the young men and women you lead if you are willing to teach and model biblical views for how they should treat each other now and in the future. Here are some specific strategies you can use.

First, teach them that marriage is part of God’s grand and glorious plan. Walk them through the creation account (Gen. 1—3) to get them to see that God is the Maker of marriage. Help them understand that if He made it, He is entitled to define and rule over it. If they want to understand and experience the joy of what marriage was meant to be, they need to consult with the Maker of marriage.

Second, define, define and keep defining marriage according to God’s design, which brings one man and one woman together into a binding covenantal promise that they will commit to each other through all of life’s ups and downs without wavering or caving, even when their feelings tell them to do otherwise. If you want resources to help you do this, I recommend Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage and Paul Tripp’s What Did You Expect?

Third, re-define love in light of God’s Word. Culture somehow has succeeded in transforming love from a willful decision to commit to another to a mere feeling. While infatuation might feel pretty doggone exciting, wonderful and good, it’s only a feeling. It never, ever remains and cannot be the foundation for a marriage. Drawing the distinction between other-serving love that gives to another and self-serving love that makes me feel good might be one of the greatest favors we could do for our students and their future spouses.

Fourth, debunk the cultural myths and lies about marriage. These values are omnipresent in the cultural soup your students swim in every day. Ignoring these lies will not make them go away. Instead, you need to recognize their presence, explain their influence, and expose their fallacies under the light of God’s Word.

Always remember that great patience is required as you challenge these cultural realities. They are pervasive and convincing. Your students all have bought in, incorporating aspects of anti-biblical concepts into their beliefs and behaviors. It will take time for God’s Spirit to work through you as you tell the truth.

Fifth, expose your students to examples of what God intended marriage to be. If you’re married yourself, start with your own marriage. Let your students know how you and your spouse understand and manage your marriage in the midst of a culture that’s hostile to biblical marriage. Get permission to take your students to a Christian wedding. Afterward, hold your own reception with students to process what just took place. Talk about the covenant of marriage, the vows and the place the Lord should hold in a couple’s marital relationship.

Finally, be forthright about the challenges, difficulties and delights that all couples will encounter. After all, we are broken people marrying broken people. Marriage in a sinful and fallen world never will be perfect. Anticipating the inevitability of struggles goes a long way in preparing your students to live out the marriage covenant when the feeling to do so might disappear or wane.

To help students see how men and women can overcome these challenges, invite Christian married couples who are at different stages in their marriage journeys (newlyweds, 10 years married, 25 years, 50 years, etc.) to share their stories and field questions from students.

I sometimes wonder if members of my daughter’s generation got some of their values from that now-famous cleric who officiated at the wedding in The Princess Bride.

Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam…And wuv, tru wuv, will fowow you foweva…So tweasure your wuv.

Sure, there’s some good stuff in there; but we need to do better. What’s been done to marriage in our culture needs to be undone by painting a glorious picture of the reality of God’s design for marriage. Commit yourself to teaching, modeling and promoting that message of covenant love. Accept no substitutes.