The church should uphold its teaching! Sex before marriage has become so common to the point that even cultural and religious people no longer think of it as an aggravating immoral or sin. The assumption across the globe is that people do not possess a commendable level of self-control necessary to abstain until they are married. That is why we find more and more people co-habiting for years before they tie the knot, simply because they run alongside the rest of the world, to assume that it is indeed unrealistic to talk about self-control when it comes to sexuality. The church has evolved and as a religious person, I don’t know if that is a good or bad thing. But what I know is, earlier in history, it was forbidden for a pregnant bride to step down the aisle. It was quite a shocking scene; everybody would live to narrate the incidence.Churches would only marry off the couple, if the bride, alongside her partner, apologized to the congregation and showed complete penitence to God. Although we still do have a few churches that still won’t let you go down the aisle when you’re pregnant, very many of them, Catholics, Protestants, Seventh Day Adventists and even some Pentecostals, have changed their stance on the issue and marry off pregnant women at an alarming rate—even before the couple acknowledges that what they did was wrong. In my opinion, this is wrong! Churches should stick to their principles! Young couples who try to get wed when they are pregnant should be denied the right as a lesson to others. If they find that too harsh, they should get wed elsewhere, perhaps through unreligious channels. See, nobody is forced to join a certain church. Everybody joins out of their own free will. When you choose to join, you are expected to uphold the practices and norms of the church; indeed, you should then agree that the church’s beliefs are above and over your personal practices. That is to say, you have converted and will follow the practices they teach through to the end. So, if they are telling you that you will not wed if you get pregnant, why become so infuriated and judge the church for not letting you enjoy your rights? Instead, you should be obedient and patient enough to go through all the procedures that are laid down for you to follow. As a couple wishing to get married, you should be willing, on a particular Sunday, to attend each service and apologize to the over one-hundred brethren in each service and also assure them that you asked for forgiveness from God. If you are willing to do that, you will wed with no problem at all; however, the generation that comes after you will desist from making the same blunder that you made.If the church teaches that sex is a blessing to be enjoyed by married couples, then the church should not be ridiculed simply because they refuses to marry off a promiscuous couple that could not resist the temptation of having intercourse for just a little while longer. The denial to wed completely serves them right! mugishaivan@yahoo.com
