Marriage Does Not Equal Maturity

Dennis Prager's take on social issues, as well as many others, takes off from his profound respect for Judaism.

The religion of the Jewish People, as rendered in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible. also known as the Torah and the Tanakh, speaks of a coming Messiah.

The Messiah is the focal point of all scripture, not rules and regulations.

The whole point of the Mosaic Law was guardianship for the Jewish People until the fullness of time would come, in which Messiah Jesus Christ would come and die for the sins of all mankind and offer us kinship once again with God the Father.

Because Dennis Prager holds on to the customs and traditions of the Old Covenant, many of his arguments have no salience or stability, and his conservatism has little ground.

Marriage does not make us mature, any more than sitting in a garage makes us a car.

Yet he argues precisely this view in his latest piece for the Jewish Journal.

The publication is vocally, and virulently liberal, especially because of the offensive political cartoons of Steve Greenberg.

In order to draw in Reform Jewish readers, not necessarily conservative ones, the publication offers a column from Prager.

His arguments are inconsistent and inconsequential.

He submits that marriage forces people to mature.

His definition of maturity is commendable.

The notion that men and women stop depending on other people and learn to take responsibility for their lives, that sounds like maturity to me.

The argument that marriage causes one to become mature, in fact "forces" maturity is not true.

First of all, maturity by its nature cannot be forced. If someone is required to be responsible, then they are not motivated from within to take on a task or a calling.

Maturity must spring within a person, or otherwise that person is still dependent on someone, something, or some circumstance ever still.

In effect, people cannot be forced to be mature. They choose it.

Second of all, two married grown-up children will end up creating a marriage of two grown-up. From counseling television shows to personal experience, I have witnesses grown children who still behave that way when married, and often they end up getting divorced.

Marrying younger does not guarantee that anyone will grow up sooner or faster.

Any challenge, including marriage, will reveal character, but not create it.

Marriage does not equal maturity, and the high spate of divorces in our society attest to this truth.