Cohabitation Defies God

by Jael SC · June 19, 2018

By Tshiamo Stephen Takongwa – Marriage is not a human invention but part of God’s plan for humanity. The first thing to be labelled “not good” by God was not man’s disobedience but man’s aloneness (It is not good for a man to be alone).

So God created woman and put the two into an inseparable union: the two shall become one (Gen 2:24). In that way God instituted marriage, as a union of two physical beings (one man, one woman) who are one spiritually.

Though marriage is divinely instituted, it is very much a human affair which is not immune to the challenges that characterise the human sphere. When God instituted marriage it was his intention that the two be committed to each other to the extent of each leaving his mother and father and clinging to their partner.

This commitment was meant to be permanent and exclusive, in the sense that God created one Eve for Adam as opposed to several Eves.

Instant Gratification and a Temporary Spirit

The current human trend leans towards instant gratification and the temporary: “I want it, and I want it now. And I can dispose of it whenever I feel like it.” These tendencies have also found their way into the institution of matrimony. Humans can’t alter or change God’s plan but they can and do defy it – to their detriment.

The “right now” current trend has led to a failure to delay gratification. Young people enter into a relationship already geared towards sexual intercourse. The injunction to abstain from sex before marriage is seen as archaic and even repulsive to many youths.

This leads to many early pregnancies and eventually unplanned marriages. The two hardly know each other, they are hardly committed to each other, yet they are entering into something that is meant to be permanent. Accidental marriages do not tend to last.

A “temporary society” makes people keep a thing for only as long as they enjoy it. The moment it calls for endurance, they dispose of it and look for another thing which gives them instant pleasure.

Temporary and Disposable

This has also crept into the marriage sphere. People are entering into marriage without much preparation for commitment. Marriage has very much become a temporary and disposable arrangement.

In that context, marriage in the plan of God suffers. In that plan, marriage is meant to be a sacrament, in the sense of it being a visible sign of an invisible God. Marriage is meant to be a reflection of God.

St Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 outlines the characteristics of God: loving, faithful, trustworthy, all-forgiving. God is a permanent reality, and marriage, as a mirror of God, must reflect permanence. But the world today tends towards the temporary.

Cohabitation is Commonplace

This tension between God’s original plan and the status quo has led to an alternative to marriage: cohabitation, which has become commonplace even among Africans.

This is an agreed union where two people stay together for as long as they choose to. There is no permanence and formal commitment. Have people lost the stamina to abide by the demands of marriage?

How can we approve of cohabitation while at the same time claiming to be Christians? It is a paradox to go against the original plan and be called Christians. Where is God in our society today?

We need to wake our moral conscience and revive our commitment to God.

We Become Blind

God cannot institute that which he cannot give us power to handle. He is the designer of marriage and he knows how to fix it when it is in trouble.

We cannot settle for the easy while at the same time defying the God on whom we rely for everything. Despite its challenges, we have to realise that marriage is beautiful and contains good things.

A relationship that does not mirror God’s original plan cannot to be condoned. Let’s go back to God. Trust God, everything he created, everything he put in place is indeed very good.