This question was asked on the Upward Thought YouTube channel:

"This is the second time I’ve heard you talk about marriage without the state being involved. Indeed, if the state could be removed, it would solve a lot of problems. One of the greatest fears about dating and getting married as a man is the draconian divorce laws that can destroy a man’s life almost overnight. Could you talk a little more about having a marital relationship that would be acceptable to the Lord without having the state involved, or being what we call “legally and lawfully married?” How is this different than just living together? And how does the Lord perceive something like that. I could see that being a solution for many men that fear getting married because of the current state of our family court system."

Answer:

First, this is a wonderful reason to use the search function at upwardthought.org. You can easily look up every mention I've made to marriage.

Recently, I had a friend request that I conduct a legally recognized marriage for her son. I declined. I said that even before looking into the legal requirements to legally marry people, what would my inclusion add to the arrangement? While I am a servant of God and a teacher of righteousness, her son has no regard to me in these respects. I have had no involvement in his courtship. He has not sought my advice on who to marry, and I do not know him or his bride to be. I would never administer in any gospel capacity in a situation that I did not truly believe was the best possible option (that is, God's will). If you believe that there is benefit in involving a minister of God in your marriage, you should seek his advice early and often, not just when it comes time for a wedding. Who to marry is the hardest decision you'll ever make, the one you are most likely to mess up, and the one you'll pay among the greatest penalties for doing so. It's a good idea to get advice from everyone. But if you are going to specifically go to a minister to get married, you should realize how silly it is to do so without first receiving his teachings on marriage. The value of a minister's participation in your marriage can't be separated from the value of his counsel prior to any more than the value of a minister's baptism can be separated from the teachings that should precede it. But no matter what kind of advice the minister gives, and whether you receive it or not, who you marry is still your choice. The blessings of choosing wisely will be yours alone, as will the burden of choosing poorly.

Marriage is a wonderful example of how much we've allowed tradition to take the place of what actually comes from God, and the price we pay when we do so. Marriage is an agreement between a man, a woman, and God. It is made possible through the agency given by God to men and women. The requirement to have a priest marry you began as a Catholic innovation in the 16th century edict known as the Council of Trent. Government control of marriage came much later. A government or church has no more ability to take from you this right God has granted than they do the ability to absolve you of your accountability for misusing it. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and reserve for God what is God's.

There was a time when men could be forgiven for being ignorant of the way these things work. There is no excuse for such ignorance today. When you create such an imbalance in the distribution of consequences of divorce that men are ruined and women rewarded, you are going to have a lot more divorces, they will be primarily initiated by women, and more women will treat their husbands poorly in marriage under the threat of divorce. This is exactly the case today.

Men who hand control of their lives to a woman or a government out of obedience to God when God hasn't asked them to do either deserve what comes to them. Getting a woman to agree to the historic way of doing things when they get rewarded for bad behavior in the present system is another issue altogether, but a fantastic litmus test to filter out the ones who intend to do precisely that.

It is important to stress that this situation, like so many others, isn't a case of "which solution is flawless," but "which solution has the least bad consequences?"

The problem with present marriage law is that it feeds female human nature. The present system presents no problems when the wife is a righteous women. The problems are that 1) very few women are righteous and 2) there is only so much you can do to vet women before marrying them. While not all women abuse marriage, there isn't a way to prevent marrying one who will, even if you do everything that can be done to do so. Not all women abuse marriage, but enough do that it has become unwise for a quality man to legally marry. The problem with marrying outside of legal recognition is that less-righteous men and women will abuse the right to marry by marrying people with less commitment than they should have. There will be good women (and fewer good men) who are taken advantage of by malevolent schemers or double-minded people and left single in spite of paying the full price of marriage. You should not have less of a commitment to God than you would to a court that can take your assets, but many people are wicked, and the wicked will act that way. This doesn't make the present system any better, or the proposed system less than what is best.

Measuring the worth of a system by how well it performs for those who refuse to overcome their human nature is not a good idea. Human nature is a constant. Some few people turn to God and overcome human nature, but most people will not. A better metric of evaluation is to consider the worth of a system in spite of human nature. This invariably leads to choosing systems that maximize the outcomes of those who are virtuous while minimizing the damage done by those who are not. The present system maximizes the benefits of the least virtuous at unlimited cost to the virtuous.

In the End Times, we will see a shift away from systems that protect the wicked from themselves to systems that unshackle the righteous. This is just and necessary. The solution isn't to continue to forcefully redistribute the blessings of righteousness away from those who deserve it onto those who do not, but to teach truth to the wicked and allow them to shoulder the consequences of ignoring or fighting against it. God's purposes cannot be accomplished while the righteous are prevented from living in the best ways they are able to.

Marriage was never meant for the general population. Most people are completely unwilling to exercise the virtue required for a happy marriage. If the negative consequences that will follow a more sensible approach to marriage are necessary to enable the greatest good for those who would not otherwise have access to it, it is a small price to pay, it will be primarily paid by those who have earned it, and there will be mechanisms to make it up to those who don't. The proposed system requires an enormous extra amount of diligence, especially on the part of women. They should be doing this diligence now already, but the safety net of a biased legal system mitigates the consequences of those who don't. The good news: women have many wonderfully effective ways to vet a potential husband--much more so than a potential man has to vet a woman, which is why the present system is a problem in the first place.