My little sister, Lauren, is a phenomenal singer. Okay, she’s not my sister. But she is an amazing singer and songwriter. We’re a lot like sisters—she borrows my clothes, we share lots of meals together, and we love to hang out. You may have heard her voice and not realized it, especially if you’ve ever heard the Cheetah Girls or The Bratz. Lauren and I have traveled together around the world doing concerts (for those of you who don’t know, I’m a rapper) and speaking to countless millions of young people about abstinence. She’s living the abstinent lifestyle and waiting for Mr. Right instead of settling for Mr. Right Now.
Lauren called me over the holidays just to holla at a sista. She said her grandfather, John, had moved in with her family. It was the first Christmas he’s been apart from his wife and it was taking a toll on everyone. The really hard thing was listening to her grandfather talk as if her grandmother, Mildred, was still alive. John was finding it difficult to be alone for the first time in more than 50 years.
Lauren shared their story with me. As a young girl, Mildred volunteered to write letters to the men in her church denomination who were serving overseas in the military during WWII. She befriended a young soldier with whom she became close pen-pals, and she was heartbroken to receive the notice that he had been killed in combat.
As sad as she felt, Mildred knew his family was grieving even more. She began writing letters to console the soldier’s family, and through this tragic event, she met the soldier’s younger brother, John. They quickly became good friends and wrote each other often, and as time passed they began to sense that this friendship could be more than just a pen-pal relationship. Though they had never even spoken on the phone, Mildred and John fell in love.
Keeping it to herself and praying to God for direction, Mildred continued to write to John as usual, until one day she received a letter that read, “If you can tell me the verses in the Bible that God has put on my heart, I will know that He has chosen you to be my wife.”
With more than 31,000 verses in the Bible, Mildred knew it was impossible without God’s help. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack or locating one star at random from our entire galaxy. But Mildred wrote John back and quoted Ruth 1:16-17: “Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
That was the Scripture! The next day John packed his bags and moved from Texas to California, where he saw Mildred in person for the first time. They were married the next day. Lauren told me that they never spent any significant time apart, up until the day Mildred died. When that happened, John’s life was changed forever. As sad as it was to witness his mental and emotional distress over the loss of his wife, Lauren said that is exactly what she hopes to have one day: a marriage and family like her grandparents, John and Mildred.
Have you ever taken a good, hard look at a one-dollar bill? Have you really looked at the color of the ink, the feel and smell of the paper, the shape and the size, and read the year it was minted and the words printed on it—“In God We Trust”?
When I’m speaking in an assembly, I often ask students, “Who has a one-dollar bill easily accessible?” There’s usually one young guy who pulls a crinkled bill out of his front pocket and makes his way down to the front of the stage.
I ask if what he’s holding has value, and the guy always says yes. Then I hand him a $20 bill—or if I’m in a generous mood, I pull out a C-note—and ask him to analyze it.
“What does it smell, feel and look like?” I’ll ask.
The answer is usually, “The same as the one-dollar bill.”
“If you had to choose between your bill and my bill, which would you pick?” I ask. Of course, he wants the larger bill!
But my next question is, “Why would you want my bill? After all, isn’t it just a piece of paper?”
The Naked Truth is that one piece of paper has greater value than the other. People have been known to mug little old ladies, rob banks and steal others’ identities to acquire money, which at the end of the day is “just a piece of paper.” The larger the number written on the paper, the more it is valued. That’s why some people counterfeit: If they can’t earn it, why not copy it?
Now, we know money gets respect, but what about other paper? Try presenting your favorite Pokemon card to the Highway Patrol when he asks you for your driver’s license, registration and insurance. Let’s see how far you get.
Or how about going to the state lottery officials to collect the $87 million jackpot with the card you made for your mom on Mother’s Day in the second grade? How much cash do you think you’ll collect with it? You guessed it—nada!
The reason some forms of paper command respect and esteem is that their value has a direct relationship with an object or activity. Paper money issued by the government represents something of real value, such as gold or silver. A lottery ticket and its numbers are related to the jackpot. A registration tells the policeman your relationship to the car you’re driving, and your license tells him that you have been deemed a legal driver by your state.
My marriage license, though it’s printed on a piece of paper, has value because it defines my relationship to the man I sleep with every night as wife—not wifee, shortee, friend with benefits, significant other, partner, or anything else. This paper says we are legal and legitimate, and we are driving this life together.
Given the choice, most people will choose items of greater value over lesser ones—or will they? Why is this true about other forms of paper but not about the marriage license, which gets about as much respect as toilet paper these days?
When I shared with an acquaintance in the entertainment business that I was getting married, he remarked, “Why in the world would you want to do a thing like that? You should just live together … after all, marriage is just a piece of paper.”
Today, living together has become a popular counterfeit to marriage and one of the most deceptive lies in truth’s clothing. The wedding day is documented with more than beautiful photos—it’s sealed by a piece of paper called a marriage license, and The Naked Truth is that it’s not just any piece of paper.
The marriage license represents a marriage, which is the cornerstone of bringing people together in a family. Marriage is a social institution that has been tested and reaffirmed countless times over thousands of years and is deeply rooted in every society around the world. When marriages and families are healthy, communities thrive—and when marriages break down, communities break down.
The Naked Truth is that a marriage license isn’t just any piece of paper.
Former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton popularized the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” However true this may be, the corresponding African proverb was completely ignored by her and the press: “The ruin of any nation begins in its homes.”
Marriage is the means to a stable and enduring family, but it has taken a backseat to cohabitating (also known as shacking up or living together). Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, many people have come to view marriage as an old-fashioned, outdated institution that has no relevance in modern American culture. Many view marriage as “just a piece of paper.”
“In 1930, married couples accounted for 84 percent of households in the U.S. By 1990, that number had declined to about 56 percent. In 2005, it slipped to 49 percent.—U.S. Census American Community Survey1”
The idea that living together before marriage is an equally beneficial or even better option than marriage is flat wrong. This may come across to some as an arrogant statement, but facts—like a DNA paternity test—don’t lie. Since the 1970s, marriages that began with cohabitation have skyrocketed from 10 percent to 56 percent.
Recent surveys of men and women show that the majority of single young adults in metropolitan cities favor cohabitation before marriage. Almost 60 percent of high school seniors agreed with the statement, “It is usually a good idea for a couple to live together before getting married in order to find out whether they really get along.”2 This lie in truth’s clothing couldn’t be farther from the truth. Research shows that cohabitation does not lead to increased or even equal satisfaction or stability once a couple gets married. Compared to marriage, cohabitation creates disadvantages for individuals, couples and children.3
“It’s the legacy of the Boomers that has finally caused this tipping point. Certainly later generations have followed in Boomer footsteps, with high levels of living together before marriage and more flexible lifestyles. But the Boomers were the trailblazers, once again rebelling against a norm their parents epitomized … This would seem to close the book on the Ozzie and Harriet era that characterized much of the last century.—William H. Frey, demographer, Brookings Institution4”
Our culture has developed such a cynicism toward marriage that it’s no wonder the majority of people I talk to in my peer group say that they no longer value marriage. Yet I have found that they don’t necessarily hate marriage or find it undesirable. If the truth be told, they have a secret fantasy to find a “happily ever after” kind of love, but they don’t know where to find it or how to keep it, and question if it really exists in the first place. A close friend of mine idolizes marriage yet lives with his significant other, lamenting that he’ll probably never find his soul mate. He says, “I’m not afraid of marriage. I’m just terrified of divorce.”
“For the first time in our nation’s history, marriage has become a minority status.”—U.S. Census American Community Survey5
I can understand why some of my peers may be gun-shy or resistant toward the concept, especially when the adults in their lives have had less than exemplary marriages. The majority of people my age and younger will be casualties of divorced parents or will be raised by a single parent who never married. I know that if I didn’t have my grandparents as role models, the only example of marriage I would have had would have been tired reruns of The Brady Bunch—and how real is that?
Let’s take a look at why people choose living together over marriage, explore why cohabitating doesn’t work and consider the better alternative: marriage.
The lie that marriage is just a piece of paper is usually cloaked in other common little lies. They are so cliché that nobody questions them anymore, and most people miss what is really being said.
It’s just so much more convenient for us to live together. I mean, it’s less expensive to share rent and utilities than to pay for two. Besides, it’s easier not to have to carry my overnight bag back and forth all the time.
This is just another way of saying, “I want you to carry my baggage so that I don’t have to be responsible … and if anything should go wrong, I can just leave you holding the bag—or the bills.”
To a female, this trial run is a naïve hope that her live-in boyfriend will eventually see it her way and commit to marriage—but studies show that the longer they live together, the more negative his (and perhaps even her) attitude about marriage and childbearing will be.6 She may hope for a wedding, but odds are she’ll be disappointed in what’s really coming—the relationship between living together and eventual divorce is very strong.7
Individuals who choose to cohabitate often develop a relatively low tolerance for unhappiness and a greater willingness to quit relationships, including marriage, because they have established a pattern of leaving rather than choosing to work through differences.8 (For further clarification, I recommend you watch a few episodes of Judge Judy. She does a much better job of explaining why single people should not shack up than I ever could, considering that she’s been sitting on the bench as a judge longer than I have been alive.)
Moreover, the breakup of a cohabiting relationship is not necessarily cleaner or easier than a divorce. Any breakup that involves splitting up a household may lead to conflicts over property, leases, and past due bills, bills, bills.9 Just ask Judge Judy. If you’ve never seen her dispense justice to the victims of a live-in situation gone bad, let me tell you—it’s never good! Being house-mates and being spouse-mates are not the same under the law.
I think we need to see if we’re sexually compatible.
Compatibility? Are people still using this tired old line? First of all, if this person approaches you and you have any hopes of the two of you ever getting married, forget it! Your beloved’s obsession with sexual “compatibility” reveals that he or she is more likely to have a negative attitude about marriage and in the long run is more likely to accept divorce as a solution to marriage problems.10
Second, if they are basing a marriage on whether or not the sex is good, they aren’t a good marriage candidate—to say the least. Someone who makes such a dumb statement with regard to marriage hasn’t the faintest idea what marriage is all about. Married people spend much more time doing life than doing it. Compatibility is a choice.
When it comes to compatibility, I like to say, “Read the box before you buy your software.” Will it function with your hardware and operating system? This is all you need to know, and all that information is printed on the package. I can hear you asking now, “Why buy the software when I can download it for free?” Because free downloads are how you get viruses.
I think living together 24/7 is good practice to see if we get along, without having to be trapped in a marriage if it doesn’t work. It’s just not smart to buy a car without test driving it.
The fear of commitment is rampant these days. I know commitment can be a scary thing—especially if you’ve been burned before—but equating living together and test driving (or even leasing!) a car is just wacked. It’s a bad metaphor. No car dealer in his right mind would let you go four-wheeling in the Sahara or drag-racing on the Autobahn in a car you haven’t paid for yet—and the high-speed extreme sport of living with another person makes four-wheeling or drag-racing look like a trip on a merry-go-round. Marriage is like owning a Rolls with the speed of a LOTUS and the safety of a Volvo. Don’t settle for test driving a Geo Metro. It just won’t get you very far.
The sad reality is that cohabitants feel less secure in their relationships than married couples because they view their sexual relationships as less permanent and exclusive. They are less faithful to their partners than spouses. Even when they are faithful, they are less committed to sexual fidelity, which creates more insecurity because “levels of certainty about the relationship are lower than in marriage.”11
Marriage means “I will always be here for you.” Marriage encourages emotional investment in an exclusive relationship. In contrast, cohabitation means, “I will be here only as long as the relationship meets my needs.” Contrary to popular belief, the majority of live-ins don’t lead to marriage! Only an estimated 60 percent end in marriage.12 Those who are afraid of commitment and permanence—or who fear that these qualities can no longer be found in marriage—may settle for cohabitation, but they are likely to discover they have settled for less. Couples who live together before marriage are 46 percent more likely to divorce than people who marry but never lived together.13 No one has ever found that cohabitation makes a positive contribution to later marital stability, regardless of what you see on the latest sitcom.
If failed marriages and relationships aren’t enough to prove that living together is high-risk and low-benefit, check this out: Cohabiting women are more likely than married women to be the victims of physical and/or sexual abuse. Some estimate domestic violence is at least twice and as much as three times as common among live-in couples as it is among married people.14
I talk regularly with casualties of cohabitation. Kathy, a cute high school sophomore, confided in me after an all-school assembly that she loved the abstinence message and wanted to embrace secondary virginity. She thought it was a great idea and she hoped to find an example of a good marriage. Her parents were high school sweethearts but never got married. She and her sister had only seen their biological dad twice.
She told me, “I really want to share this message with my mom, but I don’t think her boyfriend is going to like it.”
“Who cares what he thinks,” I challenged her. “She has to do what’s best for her and her children.”
“You’re right,” she said, “but her boyfriend lives with us and he’s kind of abusive.”
At this point I thought to myself, Here we go again … same story, different girl. As we talked further, she began to reveal the dark secrets of her life, which unfortunately fit perfectly into the statistical profile of a child of cohabitation.
This young woman and her sister were both molested by one of her mom’s previous live-in boyfriends, and when her sister told the mother, she didn’t do anything about it. Some women think that living with someone will help in the raising of their children, but cohabitation increases the chances that a child—male or female—will be abused. Boyfriends are disproportionately likely to sexually or physically abuse their girlfriend’s children. In fact, the most unsafe family environment for children is when the mother is living with someone other than the child’s biological father.15
The abuse, as you can imagine, heaped a great amount of emotional distress on both this young woman and her sister. She told me that she wanted to go to college, but her mom didn’t have the money. She didn’t know where her father was, and she had no right to support from any of her mother’s previous “partners” who were not her biological father. She and her sister paid the economic price for her mother’s life.
“Your grades aren’t that good, are they?” I asked.
“How did you know?” she responded with surprise.
I knew because it’s the same sad story I’ve heard too many times to count. This girl wasn’t getting low grades because she wasn’t bright, but because she was experimenting with alcohol and sex to emotionally escape her situation at home. She seemed very bright and extremely mature for her age, but her mother’s poor decisions had caused her to have behavioral problems and lower academic performance than children in married families.
I truly believe countless lives would change for the better if people were told The Naked Truth about the benefits of marriage. Families could not continue to be in such disarray if true believers—not make-believers—began to evangelize their communities about marriage. It’s important to share what God says, but it’s more powerful to live the truth. How you live your life says more about you than anything you can ever say. A marriage revival will only occur when Christians obey God’s charge in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then … I will heal their land.”
“Evangelize at all times, and when necessary use words.—St. Francis of Assisi”
Sex in America was a book that documented the most exhaustive research study ever done on married couples in the U.S. and it found that married people achieve the five basic things that almost everyone wants: long life, health, financial security, sense of well-being, and a happy sex life. Though living together is now generally accepted, its outcomes can’t compare to the benefits of marriage.16
Married people not only feel better but are actually physically healthier and live longer than single people.17 There are many mental and physical health benefits to knowing that there is another person who will take care of you when you cannot take care of yourself. Married people vow to care for each other “in sickness and in health, as long we both shall live.”
Married couples—who are mutually dependent upon each other, helping each other to meet their financial and career goals—are more likely to be financially responsible for their partners than live-ins, who place a greater value on their independence over dependability. Live-ins are more likely to control their own finances and protect their individual economic futures by having separate bank accounts, instead of working as an economic team.
Married men earn nearly twice as much as single men. This may be explained by the increased financial responsibility men feel when they marry as many men have been heard saying, “Marriage made me get more serious about my career and making a good living.”18
Married women also benefit from marriage in that they make more money than their cohabitating or single sisters, and they also have access to more of their man’s earnings. In addition, many married women report receiving considerable support from their husbands in their careers.19
Married couples are also better off financially because they monitor each other’s spending in a way that emphasizes “our budget.” For most marrieds, “Your money is my money, and my money is your money.” According to the authors of The Case for Marriage, “This financial union is one of the cornerstones (along with sexual union) of what Americans mean by marriage.”20
Finally, married people are emotionally happier on the whole than singles, and they have more stable and secure relationships within their communities.21
In some families, cohabitation is no longer cause for parental disapproval. But in many families, cohabitation is still immoral and embarrassing to extended family members. Live-ins from these families run the risk of damaging their relationships with parents and experiencing the withdrawal of parental and extended family support for the relationship. Additionally, the temporary nature of live-in relationships may limit access to grandparents for children who might end up switching sets of grandparents multiple times.
People who live together may seem to have achieved the same benefits as married couples, but those benefits vanish in the long run and they are no better off than singles.22 Because cohabiting relationships are temporary by nature, the benefits last for a relatively short time, and if the couple splits up rather than marrying, the benefits are lost at a high emotional and psychological cost very similar to what people experience in a divorce.23
Surprise! The vast majority of people might be surprised to learn that married couples have better sex lives than couples who are shacking up. Because marriage is the capstone of commitment in the relationship, it adds a deeper sense of internal security to one’s sex life. Married couples are more likely to perceive love and sex as intrinsically connected. This makes sex between married couples essentially more satisfying because the spouse’s intentions and commitment is not in question. Don’t get me wrong: Live-ins are having sex just about as often as married couples—but they are less likely to say they enjoy it as much as married couples do.24
It is often hard to distinguish between a lie in truth’s clothing and truth itself, so it’s no wonder why living together can appear to be like marriage: shared living space, diminished cost of living, convenient sex, even having and raising children together. I often hear, “We are just as committed as any married couple” … but the numbers don’t lie. Studies show a lower level of commitment between these couples, less dedication to the continuation of the relationship and less willingness to sacrifice to preserve the relationship. Moreover, these couples report lower levels of happiness, less sexual fidelity, more sexual dissatisfaction and poorer relationships with their parents.
Living together as a married couple is not an effective trial marriage. It does not provide divorce insurance and cannot compete with the rewards and benefits of a strong, committed marriage. Couples are better off in life’s measures of success and happiness (emotional health, physical health, personal wealth, general happiness and longevity) if they are married rather than living together. People need to know that Satan’s counterfeit of living together fails to bring couples the happiness and stability they desire in a close intimate relationship. Shackin’ fails to reap the benefits of marriage.
The current generation of young adults longs for satisfying and stable relationships that provide the essential things in life: long life, health, financial stability, a sense of well-being, and a happy sex life. Unfortunately, our American culture has deceived many into believing that they can achieve these things without engaging in the divine rite of passage called marriage. Some have accepted the flawed counterfeit known as shacking up, living together or cohabitating, and those who have chosen to adhere to God’s ordained union called marriage have become anxious about their ability to achieve it in a cynical, media-saturated world.
Their fears will be calmed through better premarriage education and counseling. The alternatives to marriage appear reasonable and attractive but will prove faulty over time and fail when compared to marriage. Educators, premarriage counselors, the Church, the media and parents must begin to proclaim the divine institution of marriage as essential to personal and family success. The Case for Marriage reminds us, “Support for marriage … does not require turning back the clock on desirable social change, promoting male tyranny, or tolerating domestic violence … Whether an individual ever personally marries or not, a healthy marriage culture benefits every [person].”25
There is a movement among young people across the nation. True Love Waits, The National Abstinence Clearinghouse, Club Varsity, and other organizations have led millions of youth to pledge to wait for sex until after they are married. These young adults have rejected the lies in truth’s clothing that many of their peers accept as the norm:
• It can’t happen to me.
• I’ll just practice “safe sex.”
• It (pregnancy) just happened.
• They’re gonna do it anyway.
• What two people do behind closed doors is nobody else’s business.
• I only listen to the beat.
• Sex is a natural bodily function that can’t be controlled.
• Peer pressure/Everybody’s doing it.
• It’s too late for me.
• Marriage is just a piece of paper.
The Word says that Satan often appears as an angel of light, cloaked in truth’s clothing. The Deceiver is like a mirage, holding out empty promises that will disappear and even lead you away from fulfilling the hopes you have for your life.
Not everyone who abstains from sex until marriage always lives happily ever after. But those who choose to live as God intended in the area of sexuality avoid the wide road that ultimately leads to death and destruction (STDs and AIDS, unplanned pregnancy, abortion, illegitimate births, divorce, etc.). Those who decide to follow God and not the world have chosen the narrow road, which promises life and peace.
When I hold up a hundred dollar bill while speaking, I ask the audience, “Who wants this?” The majority of people sit waving their hands around, shouting, “Me! Me! I want that!” But the person who gets to keep it:
1. Sees the opportunity
Know the options and the consequences.
2. Makes the decision to get up out of his or her chair
Make a decision.
3. Ignores what their peers are, or aren’t, doing
Find others who will support your decision.
4. Comes down to the front and pulls it out of my hand
Plan and act.
The Naked Truth is that wanting something is not enough. If you really want it, you’ve got to get up and do something about it. Whatever choice you make, begin with the end in mind. That means, choose today whom to serve! All we have to do is open up the Bible to Proverbs 3:16 to discover that “the fear of the Lord will give you long life, riches, honor, pleasure and peace.” It is the best opportunity for lasting happiness for you, for your children and for the generations to come. And that is The Naked Truth.
• Why is marriage so much more than a piece of paper?
• What do you think your wedding day will look like?
• What do you think your marriage will look like?
• Why is marriage worth waiting for when it comes to sex?