On the 10/2/14 episode of his Daily Briefing podcast, Albert Mohler began with the alert that marriage in America is in trouble.

But the theologian did not provide statistics regarding disturbingly high rates of divorce, shacking up, or out of wedlock births.

Instead he provided the number that 1 in 5 of adults over 25 had never been married.

That tells those contemplating such a naked statistic nothing necessarily regarding the moral status of those within that particular demographic under consideration.

Conservative Evangelicals such as Albert Mohler position themselves rhetorically that the Christian Bible is the only absolutely binding source of ethical authority.

Within the pages of the sacred text, both the benefits and drawbacks of both matrimonial states are detailed.

The individual is free to select from these for themselves without it being accounted as sin against them.

Therefore, if sin is to be thought of as engaging in a practice either forbidden or not authorized by explicit divine command, by imposing his own preferences on the unmarried Christian, is now Mohler committing the more explicit sin by demanding something of the individual that even God Himself does not?

By Frederick Meekins