Do you need to be married? The answer is no.

J3thekingofking said:

It makes no sense for the sake of being married you marry someone you're not interested in.

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Why would anyone marry someone they are not interested in ?

For emotional and sexual satisfaction and the ability to actually preserve mankind, marriage, or at least family formation is a necessity for most people. We are seeing the results of our fruitless self indulgent nihilism and most don't like it, nor are they ultimately satisfied by perpetual singledom.

For emotional and sexual satisfaction and the ability to actually preserve mankind, marriage, or at least family formation is a necessity for most people. We are seeing the results of our fruitless self indulgent nihilism and most don't like it, nor are they ultimately satisfied by perpetual singledom.

J3thekingofking said:

Because not everyone is able to meet their partner.

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With God, you can find the one you belong with . . . not necessarily the one you would choose, but with God it will turn out so much more and better of more, than whatever you the way you are mature now could want and look for.

After you mature more with one another, then can be when you will do some real discovering of how love is done.

So, trust God about it

God is more "mature" and good and smart than we are, and He started marriage; and nowhere does He say to stop being married because we have had children and turned them loose, or have never had children. Either way, they need our example.

Like I understand you are saying, reproduction is not only physical; be we need to bring up children who know how to love. And in case we do not have our own, we can minister to others who do and their children.

"casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

So, we should not limit God to what we are capable and mature enough to know and understand now.

J3thekingofking said:

Sure you can argue the genesis mandate but that's old testament, they're enough unbelievers for you to convert, you need not your own bloodline to be Christian.

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This is true, in case I understand you correctly. it seems you are saying you can reproduce children of God, by reaching and ministering salvation to lost people - - - so they become our Father's adopted children in Jesus.

However . . . God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit > family. And He does still have families . . . where we can learn how to love and share as his family, and minister this to other families and unmarried people. Families, then, can be used by God to help us all learn how to love and share as family in Jesus. This could be part of why our Aposte Paul's qualifications for a "bishop" include how a "bishop" qualified is a family man > 1 Timothy 3:1-10.

J3thekingofking said:

Also there's also practical issue like can't meet with someone you're into. By that it's ok to stay single. It makes no sense for the sake of being married you marry someone you're not interested in.

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Guided by God > this works better than I look for someone who meets my requirements which I am now capable of having as a less mature person. We need to become able to love as God's family with various people of many interests . . . and not get bored and lonely in the process. Because God who is all-loving has adopted all of us.

And our Apostle Paul became as ones he was reaching to > 1 Corinthians 9:19-23. So, from this I see Paul did not pick and choose who had his interests, but he could adapt to each person, in order to communicate with the person. He would take an interest in anything that mattered to someone so he could communicate, and then bring the person to Jesus and Jesus Christ's interests

I think marriage is an outward official way of recognising the sacredness of marriage. Like a contract represents the importance of the legal obligations as opposed to just a hand shake.

In that sense its preserving something special in the act rather than treating it as like something that couples can back out of because they never really regarded it important enough to make official or binding.

That doesn't mean its the marriage certificate that makes the marriage and we know of times where there was no priests and people just lived together as man and wife.

But this was also a different time I think where most people already know the importance of the marriage vows. For most of our history we have lived by the bible as a society and marriage and family have been the foundation. So there was generally a respect for coupling.

But I think to then say why bother with the official status and commitment. I think symbolically this would be the thin edge of the wedge scenario where good intentions turn to apathy. Humans have a tendency to then take over and supplant that sacredness with other ideas.

We don't have to look far to see how the sacredness of marriage has changed in the last 100 years or so. Its no coincident that its come at a time when people are questioning all biblical truths and the need for a God altogether. I think now is a time more than ever where we could do with some good old fashioned acknowledgement of the importance of marriage and the family.