BiblicalInsights.net

     Karen Uhlenhuth wrote an article for the Kansas City Star (Sept. 7, 2008) entitled, “More than half of young mothers give birth out of wedlock.”  Consider some of the statistics reported in the article.
     –For the first time in a half-century of record-keeping, a majority of babies born to women younger than 30 were out of wedlock.
     –In 2006, 50.4 percent of children born to those under 30 were born to single women. Compare that to 1960 when only 6 percent of babies born to women under 30 were born to unmarried women.
     –Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University in Boston (director of Northeastern’s Center for Labor Market Studies) estimates that taxpayers contribute about $7,000 a year to support the typical family of an unwed mother without a high school diploma. 
     –The Institute for American Values published a study in April (2008) that pegged the cost to taxpayers of children living with a single parent–whether because of divorce or an out-of-wedlock birth–at more than $112 billion annually.
     –Sum made an interesting observation, “Private family miseries translate into major public burdens.”
     A social disaster is looming on the horizon.  More and more women and children are going to be in poverty.  What is the real problem?  Is it carelessness?  Is it lack of education?  Or, is it lack of moral values and moral restraint?  As our society drifts farther away from God and His truth, it becomes morally weaker.  The apostle Paul writes, “Flee fornication.  Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (I Cor. 6:18).  “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the lust of concupisence, even as the Gentiles which know not God” (I Thess. 4:3-5). 
     God has ordained that one man and one woman come together in holy wedlock to form a new union which is able to support and care for children born to that union (Matt. 19:4-6; Eph. 6:1-4).  When we violate God’s Will, there is a price to pay.  The queston is, “Can we afford it?”  Can we afford it economically?  Can we afford it spiritually?