Marriage, family - today, perhaps, this is one of the most painful social issues. According to statistical evidence, the number of marriages in Ukraine has decreased by about three times over the past thirty years. And this progression does not decrease, but, on the contrary, increases. What is the reason for this? Let's try to figure it out. I have identified several forces that affect marriage and the family in general.
1. Negative fashion that has become a social tradition.
Unfortunately, for several decades, and not only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but even in the eighties of the last century, there has been a tendency when a marriage (and we are not even talking about a wedding here, but just a civil marriage registered by the state) begins give way to cohabitation without any obligation. In Roman law, this cohabitation is called "concubinage" (in Latin, the designation of the very process of this cohabitation). In ecclesiastical terms, this cohabitation is a sin called "fornication." One of the main social qualities of this concubinage is that it does not entail the creation of any legal rights and obligations. In principle, including and even recognition of the paternity of a child born in such a union. That is, this is life on the principle of "run, run away". Without any consequences leaving no trace on the water. Like animals. Animal low level of relationships.
It should also be said here that in many respects similar views among young people were formed by their parents, who were brought up in the USSR, where morality continued to decay from decade to decade. In this state, an attempt was made to remove the Christian background of marriage, but without it, marriage simply turned into some form, a form of spirituality. As in an old Soviet joke: “There are two friends who have not seen each other for a long time. One asks the other ‟How are you?”. He answers ‟Everything is fine, like everyone else. Wife, mistress ””.
And parents, whose address “is not a house or a street, but the Soviet Union,” passed on to their children a similar distortion of the perception of marriage. Like, you want to get married, not yet. You will live first, try it, and then it will be seen. Thus, fornication, which leads to debauchery, depravity of the soul and body, to their spiritual pollution, becomes a social norm. And if earlier the parents of these children still had a gravitation towards marriage as a form of social life, then their children have stepped even further. For them, marriage is a meaningless purple stamp in a passport. They no longer need marriage.
Especially, of course, in this respect, men are the “winner”. I didn’t like it, I got bored, collected my bag and went, disappeared in an unknown direction. As the humorists of the post-Soviet period wrote, "I went to take out the trash and disappeared forever." And the woman is left with a serious psychological trauma, because deep down she hoped for a marriage and became attached to a man, and maybe even managed to give birth to a child from him.
Let's be honest with ourselves. Marriage is love and self-sacrifice for the sake of a loved one, beloved and future children. And fornication is selfishness, where a man or a woman is ready to abandon each other at any moment for selfish reasons. And if we consider that any person is proud, and if he has not yet been polished, not cut by Christian morality, then there are thousands of such motives. And the modern relationship between a man and a woman turns into chaos, where neither he nor she knows what they want from each other, just as, however, they do not know what they want from themselves either. Because they don't even know themselves. Instead of living as the cornerstone of Christ, they live in a shaky mirage that changes every minute and drown in labyrinths of false illusions, which, in general, have no meaning for life. And here we come to the second question.
2. Mirages.
The problem of our 21st century is dreaminess, a lovely state, as the holy fathers used to say. Intoxicating state, hot blood, intoxicating, leading away from God. Unfortunately, today it is very difficult for a person, especially a young person, not to be dreamy. Various film products of "Hollywood", "Bollywood", etc. shoot at the human heart from a thousand guns. An incessant stream of serials, various television programs is trying to form in a person a certain illusory world of marriage and family relations, which has nothing to do with reality. And all these products hit the center of pleasure, awakening an unhealthy fantasy. The person still has no family, no marriage, no children. But inside he had already thought of everything. And if a real person on his way does not correspond to the "lofty ideals" of fantasy, then he must be rejected. But I want to ask a question to a person who lives a similar “Hollywood” perception of the world: “Look at the life of the director, actors, screenwriters of this film. Does this life correspond to the declared "high" ideals? Do they themselves have happiness in marriage? "
But falling in love with fantasy obscures reality. And as a result, youth passes, real candidates are rejected. And the person is left alone. Captured by their passions.
And these passions have one motor. I want it to be the way I want it. And not as God gives me in life. And such a person does not understand that all those Hollywood “celestials” are “powdered” fantasy, which is practically unviable and is designed only to play on feelings and instill in a person a certain matrix of behavior.
But with you, Christian, let it not be so! You're sober. Wake up. Wake up from sleep. Stop reveling in your own pride, feeding on mirages and illusion. Stop being Andersen's "naked king". Get sober! Start living a real life in which real people live around you. As Peter Mamonov sang in one of his songs: “I am inside my people”. Live by serving God and people, and by love as self-sacrifice. This is the beginning of the correct dispensation of the soul, and, as a result, marriage. Learn to love the person whom God sent you, and not whom you drew for yourself. Pray. And if you are ready to create a family, to take care of it, then the Lord will send it to you. If it is His holy will.
Take action! Resist the assault from the rainbow mafia: