Mark Driscoll, controversial senior pastor of the Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Arizona, posted a clip from his latest Genesis sermon series titled “Why is Your Spouse the Second Most Important Decision of Your Life?”
In the clip, Driscoll shares what he believes to be a myth about marriage: that it is better to wait until your late twenties or early thirties to get married so that you’ll be better equipped and therefore less likely to divorce.
Driscoll wrote on Facebook that instead of preparing for marriage, society encourages young people to spend their twenties “wasting time, dating, fornicating, drinking, and wasting time, and causing trauma in our own lives. It’s not about how old or wise you are, it’s about how prepared you are for marriage.”
While discussing Issac and Rebekah’s marriage in the book of Genesis, Driscoll pointed out that we don’t know how old Rebekah was, but Issac was nearing his forties.
“So how many of you have been talking,” Driscoll asked the congregation, “and you’re like, well, you shouldn’t get married young. It’s better if you get married older, because then you can mature. How many of you have seen people in their twenties and they’re not mature?”
All one has to do is go on social media and look at someone who is in their twenties for evidence, he explained.
The former Mars Hill Church pastor said, “You can grow in wisdom, but just because you’re getting older doesn’t mean you’re getting wiser. One of the dumbest things we say is, ‘Well as you get older you get wiser.’ That’s not automatic.”
Driscoll used the analogy of a cul-de-sac, pointing out that some people’s lives look like they just keep driving around in the same circle, making the same “dumb decisions, same bad pattern, and ridiculous nonsense over and over and over.”
“It’s not progress. It’s wasted time,” Driscoll said. “The point is this. It’s not how old you are but how prepared you are for marriage.” Young singles can spend their single years growing in their faith or they can waste those years “dating, relating, and fornicating.”
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Driscoll argued that time doesn’t make things better, calling the statement “time heals all wounds” stupid, going on to argue that it takes more than just time to fix things and grow in maturity.
