Marriage and Freedom in Society

Two months ago, my sister was given away to a fine gentleman I now call my brother-in-law. During the wedding ceremony, the pastor made mention of a statistic not uncommon to us all. The statistic was that approximately 50% of all marriages would end in divorce in America. A brief consideration would ponder how incredulous it is that the concept of marriage has been deduced today to being devoid of the very commitment it symbolizes.

Considering the modern civilization we boast in, there is nothing civil about the realization that our intoxication of freedom's abundance has finally penetrated the most basic social entity between the husband and wife. A covenant made empty on the drainage of contentment, an engagement made barren when interest dries, an agreement made temporal by the whims of loveless fools. Where such commitments fail to flourish, divorce's freedom is made apparent.

Freedom has promised happiness through self-appeasement. Freedom has brought us down to our core nature - that we are not inherently "good". We do not inherently look after the well-being of another person, we do not inherently live absent of the pursuit of our own contentment, we do not inherently love (in the selfless sacrificial sense it's most accurately described by). What has marriage promised that freedom could co-exist accordingly? It has only promised a faithful obligation that apparently half of us freely and most willingly choose to ignore.