I just found out some sad news about the young man who inspired my book. As I mention in the Introduction, the spark for this book was a young man I know who made a girl pregnant out of wedlock. I spoke to him fervently about the need to marry, and about his ability to obey God and take care of the mother and child. I spoke with him about the ability to redeem with good what had been done wrong in the past. Well, he was moved enough that he looked into buying a ring and asked the father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Believe me, at this point, I was praising God, and in absolute adoration of God’s mercy and power.

Well, the latest news I’ve heard is that the father would not permit him to marry the girl until he gets his college degree. Now this does not make it an impossibility, but it puts a major block before the process. It also means a young woman – of Christian parents – will be raising a child without a father. There is no law of the land or of ethics that says you cannot marry without a college degree. Nor is there any law that you have to have one in the first place. A man can go to work or start his own business and earn money that way. However, the most difficult challenge is that over this time – and four years is plenty of time – either one of them may be tempted away from the other, or the young man, being discouraged and having poor influences on his life, may become apathetic about being a husband or father.

There is great danger for these two and their child, and it was not Atheists who made it difficult for a young man to marry the mother of his child. It was – once again – Christians who did this. And they’re doing this all over. When they are not ending marriages after they happen, they are preemptively making sure they do not happen in the first place. They are letting their daughters join the ranks of the world in being single mothers, perhaps perpetually. They are making sure little children don’t have a father to speak of, and don’t have both their parents together. They are making sure the risk is high that children will grow up not with one father and one mother, but simply with a mother, and multiple men in their lives. This is 21^st century Christianity for you, brethren. And obviously, that form of Christianity is also part of the reason I have written Get Married and Save the World. We need a radical change of attitude and behavior. What’s going on in the Church is sick. It has to stop.

I don’t give up hope for either one of them. I continue to pray for their marriage, and lifelong witness as a family. I hope one day to share great news about them. But this is a big letdown, though not wholly surprising. I don’t believe I will put this news in the book. I’ll probably leave the Introduction as it is, since that’s based on the situation as I knew it at the time. Perhaps if there is a sequel for the book, I will bring the situation fully up to date.

Thank you all. I hope you are blessed.