This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.
Age Of Consent
We in the West have generally decided on the age of 16-18 to mark adulthood. Culturally, while things are changing, we tend to be dubious about sex before 16 and marriage before 18. Legally, things are different, and there are ‘close in age’ exceptions. In Old Testament times, the ‘age of consent’, as they would have understood it, would be shockingly low from a modern perspective. So, the real question is, how did we arrive at these ages? Only from a New Covenant perspective can we understand how we can come to approximate ages for consent.
Age of Consent laws have to do, as we regularly use them, with sexual activity although similar terms are used with consent to marriage. Ages for the ability to consent have changed relatively frequently in the West when looked at over the centuries and over many jurisdictions. The general trend in the West has been one of increasing the age of consent from an average low of 13-14 to a modern average of 15-16. We think we now have a better grasp on the age–but how do we know?
There are multiple angles that can and have been considered. Before education filled up the teenage years, a younger age was probably seen as the right time to marry since they had less alternative possibilities available to young woman than we now enjoy. With cultural change and societal progress came an acceleration of pressures, increased education, changes in upbringing, women in the work force, birth control, and more. These trends would have lead to changes in age-maturity, both assumed and actual. In our times, it could be argued that youth are, now, if not less mature then more gullible than they’ve ever been due to progressivist ideology, online life, and social media. All of this can be seen to be working its way through history and culture as post-modernity approached.
We think these things are settled, that is, until we become exposed to postmodern progressive philosophy seeking to deconstruct all of our well-established cultural norms. Queer Theory, drag queens, and trans genders, are all rooted in a neo-Marxist status-class warfare that is designed to undermine societies that are based on a hierarchy of values. Neo-Marcism seeks to replace traditional values with equality of all values, whether those values are equally good or not. In this way, society begins undoing the social norms that tended to increase the age of consent for the protection of youth.
How can we argue against this, then, when traditional and progressive have no common ground for agreement? Appeals to traditional values, Biblical morality, mean nothing to progressives and seem obviously wrong just as we see progressive morality as obviously wrong because each side lacks the moral framework of the other.
There is one aspect that both share, and which might be recoverable, and that is a concept of love. We might not mean the same thing by it but at least some common ground can be discussed. The kind of love progressives wield is one of freedom for self-expression without constraint of any kind and without regard for wisdom or experience. The kind of love we hold is for the good of the individual, however, recognizing their lack of wisdom and experience due to age. We know that one kind of “love” leads to pain, anguish, and death while the other leads to joy, peace, and life. It is love, but a love for neighbour, then, that is the answer rather than an infinitely malleable notion of love of self.
What exactly is the right age of consent? The key to the New Covenant is that the answer is not prescribed and blindly followed but described and considered in each case so that we can come to the best decision that fulfills Love God and Neighbour. We think we know essentially the right answer but are we sure of that? It is widely accepted that Mary, the mother of Jesus, would have been at what we consider a concerning if not a shocking young age when married to Joseph. And Joseph would have been at a similarly shocking older age [1]. Why was that right? Was it right?
The Bible doesn’t comment on Mary’s age. We are allowed to figure it out, though, in our freedom under the New Covenant. An argument could be made that, just as girls were married off relatively young a few hundred years ago, first century Roman and Jewish culture had valid reasons for marrying young that were, in fact, more loving than marrying older.
It is tempting to think that Love God and Neighbour is another term for rationalizing but I would argue this is not the case and the Bible instructs us time and again on what real love toward our neighbour looks like.
What the New Covenant and the Greatest Law require of us is to use the intelligence given to us in the image of God to exercise moral choices that truly fulfill love God and neighbour rather than acting out pre-determined actions based on a moral prescription filled by others. I return to this often but I feel it is profound and true, the things we are expected to be able to judge in the future are far more grave than anything in the present.
Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! -1 Corinthians 6:3
Footnotes
- How old was Mary when Jesus was born? https://www.gotquestions.org/how-old-was-Mary.html
This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.