Settling for Mr. Good Enough?

The March Issue of Atlantic Monthly has an article by Lori Gottlieb entitled, "Marry Him!" on "settling." As in, a woman lowering her expectations and marrying a guy who she doesn't see as her one and only perfect "soul mate." I agree with the general point and many of the specific assertions of the article.

Thing is, I find the language insulting and demeaning.

Gottlieb writes from the perspective of a 40-year-old single woman who has realized the pitfalls of "waiting for Mr. Right," recognized the benefits of marriage, even if it isn't to the idyllic man of a woman's dreams, and cautiously advocates settling "young, when settling involves constructing a family environment with a perfectly acceptable man who may not trip your romantic trigger—as opposed to doing it older, when settling involves selling your very soul in exchange for damaged goods." She correctly recognizes that marriage isn't mostly about romantic bliss; it's about "having a teammate" to go through life with, to share responsibilities and chores. She's absolutely right.

The problem is that the language of "settling" is, well, unsettling. I kept reading through the article looking for clues that this was all tongue in cheek, that all this talk of settling was really a matter of being both realistic and simply fair to any real live flawed human man who might actually be interested in marriage. There was one, just one, nearing the conclusion of the article, tucked away in a parenthesis:

Unless you meet the man of your dreams (who, by the way, doesn’t exist, precisely because you dreamed him up), there’s going to be a downside to getting married, but a possibly more profound downside to holding out for someone better.

The man of a woman's dreams doesn't exist, can't exist; and yet men are faulted for not being that. Even though Gottlieb pokes holes in the fairy tale that some day your prince will come, she also makes it clear that settling is still settling to her. The images of men that she discusses are all in some degree repulsive, which I get is her point, but it still puts the woman in the place of looking down her nose at her prospects and giving in to the inevitable with a weary sigh. Any faults that the woman has are attributed to age and motherhood, and Gottlieb discusses the unfair nature of the fact that women lose their appeal earlier than men do (although this is largely due to the fact that women are attracted to older men; whose fault is that?). Gottlieb simply doesn't deal with the issue of how pretentious it is for a woman to set such impossible standards in the first place. What woman could live up to such standards from a man?

Gottlieb argues that men don't settle, and when they do, they don't seem to mind it. She's missed the point entirely. Men settle all the time. Where does she think the stereotype of the Man Afraid of Commitment, the Sweaty Groom Looking for a Way Out, comes from? But men don't generally call it settling, because they don't generally have such Impossible Dreams floating around in their heads in the first place. They don't think of it as settling. They think of it as being realistic. "Dude, you're not going to do better than her," is a perfectly plausible and common conversation for men to have.

So my advice to women would be, don't settle. Because as long as you're thinking of it as "settling," you're demeaning the person you're committing your life to. First, get rid of the notion that one man is going to bring you unending happiness, that all your problems are due to not having him, or once you have him, that all your problems are due to his flaws. Dump the ego trip that says that anything other than the Prince Charming in your brain (to whom you've probably attributed self-contradictory attributes, anyway) is beneath you. Recognize that you're a human being, and any guy you meet is a human being, and if you find someone who treats you with kindness and respect and sticks in there through the long haul, then you're pretty lucky.

Then, you won't have to settle.

 

 

For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .

 

All the Lonely People

Updated to correct the spelling of Paul McCartney's name. I can't believe that no one called me on this. I'm so ashamed.

All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
All the lonely people, where do they all belong?
-- Paul McCartney, "Eleanor Rigby"

There's been a fascinating discussion about male and female relationships going on at this post on the Lone Prairie Blog and an earlier post of mine. In the comments section of my blog, I stated the following:

Here's my take: men don't actually pursue friendships with women. That's not to say that men and women can't be friends, as in, friendly acquaintances who like to chat when they're together in a group situation. But if a man is pursuing a one-on-one friendship, he almost always has the possibility of a romantic relationship in reserve. He may back off and say that he just wanted to be friends, after the fact, maybe because he decided he didn't want to pursue a relationship after all, maybe because he got scared, maybe because he thinks you're not interested. But simply the close proximity and interaction of an attractive woman will start things buzzing in a man.

to which Julie replied,

"Here's my take: men don't actually pursue friendships with women."

I have a hard time believing that.... is that generally true? Or is that just Keith-true? ... I have lots of guy "friends." I'm full up on that. Friends galore. No indication of anything but friends.

Well, the truth of my statement depends on how you understand it. One could understand it to mean that guys are, after all, really only after One Thing, and are incapable of dealing with women on any other basis. Which would, a) truly be depressing, and b) make me, the author of such a statement, a pig. Luckily, I'm not a pig, and that's not what I meant.

Guy Friendship and Chick Friendship

Part of the answer lies in understanding the differences between men and women on what they mean by "being friends." C.S. Lewis discusses friendship in the Phileo section of The Four Loves. Unlike eros, which is a face-to-face relationship whose object is one another, friendship is a side-by-side relationship whose object is a common interest. That's a very good description of male friendships. Men tend to be friends because they have a common interest: baseball, Spider-man comics, astronomy. Their friendship is about that common interest, and not about one another. If a man loses interest in the thing they have in common, he will generally drift away from the friendship, and usually there will not be hurt feelings, unless the other guy has no other friends and suddenly feels isolated.

From what I've gathered, female friendships, especially close ones, are not like that. Women analyze their friendships like they analyze romantic relationships. They feel much more like they have a claim on their friends; they will get offended and angry if they feel neglected by their friend. They may include shared interests, but the real interest is one another.

Guys, in general, do not have that kind of friendship with one another. They generally pursue that kind of friendship in the context of a romantic relationship with a woman. Most guys would feel a little creeped out if a male friend started making the claims on their friendship that women routinely make on theirs--specifically because they would interpret such an interest in them (and not in the shared interest of the friendship) in sexual terms.

"Let's be friends."

So let's say a man says to a woman, "Let's be friends." What are the possible meanings of that statement?

1. I have no interest in a romantic relationship with you, but I don't want to hurt your feelings.
2. You seem friendly/nice/enjoyable/nonthreatening, and I like hanging with you in group situations.
3. Hey, you like hunting/theology/chess too? Cool! Wanna go to the convention next week?
4. I find you intriguing and I'd like to get to know you better, and see where things might develop.

You may have noticed that #1 and #4 are almost diametrically opposite. Evidently women don't have the market cornered on "complex." At any rate, #1 is the standard "Let's be friends" speech. Nuff said--for now.

#2 is on the level of group friendship. This can seriously mean nothing, although sometimes shy guys will seek out no more than this with someone they're secretly interested in. It can also be a difficult platform from which to grow anything more: you feel conspicuous, like the whole group is watching your relationship develop. Is it any wonder that people in church youth and singles groups often find boyfriends/girlfriends from outside the group?

#3 is the typical level of male friendship. This is the really ambiguous level, because a shared interest is a perfect pretext for a date. What you're wanting to do here is to figure out whether the guy is mostly interested in the museum/the Renaissance Festival/the Star Trek convention itself, and just likes having you along because you said you liked it too, or if he mostly likes being with you, and the venue doesn't seem to matter.

#4 is the level of friendship that I meant when I said "Men don't pursue friendships with women." Because the truth is, men don't pursue friendships at all. They pursue football/computer games/film noir, and are glad to have someone to share their interest. But they don't pursue friendships. So level 4, to a man, is the beginning of a romantic relationship.

The confusing part to a woman is that level 4 is actually the normal level of a close female friendship (well, without the "see where things might develop" part. I'm not trying to be wierd here). They're interested in each other, as well as whatever interests they may have in common. So it seems plausible to a woman that a man might be pursuing a close friendship, and just mean it as friendship.

Mixed Messages

So what does it mean when a man's actions indicate a level 4 interest, but his words indicate a level 1 cutting off of romantic possibilities? To be blunt, he's lying.

There might be a ton of reasons why. Maybe he's afraid of commitment; maybe he's afraid his interest isn't reciprocated; maybe he's had bad experiences with dating before and decided that upping the ante will ultimately mean losing what he has now. This is where "Eleanor Rigby" comes into play. There are two people in the song: Eleanor Rigby and Father MacKenzie, both of whom are alone. They could have found love with one another, but they were blind to one another.

Personally, I think we have a whole generation like that, people who have grown up with divorce and broken relationships and a lack of cultural rules for dating and relationships, people scared to death of ending up with The Wrong One and so torpedoing every decent relationship that comes along, until they're even more scared of ending up alone, and so the next relationship magically becomes The Right One. That's what I was seeing when I was Single and Not Very Happy About That Fact, and it seems to me that it's only gotten worse.

What people need to realize is that marriage is almost always really made or destroyed within the marriage. Unless someone has made a stupid mistake (believers marrying unbelievers is the most common and biggest), marriage takes just one thing: "us" and "we" instead of "you" and "me." If I focus on what I want, to the exclusion of what my wife wants, then I'm just asking for trouble in our marriage. But if I pursue marriage with a focus on what's best for us together and not me individually, and if my wife does the same thing, then we have the potential for a fantastic marriage. It's a matter of perspective and choices that we make within the marriage, not the particular person. And if single people could get hold of that truth, it would make dating a lot less stressful.

So, what does a woman do with a man who's denying his own feelings like that? I wish I knew. The only thing I can suggest is not to make herself available for that kind of ambiguous relationship. "I can be your tennis buddy, or I can be your girlfriend, but I won't be your security blanket with nothing in return." Make him make a decision. Beyond that, both men and women could do with a little less trying to find the Right Person for themselves, and do a little more with trying to become the Right Person for someone else.

And that's all I have to say about that.
--Forrest Gump

For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .

Useful Guy Info for Residents of Chickville

There's been a very interesting discussion at the Lone Prairie Blog on Julie's post, "Useful chick info for residents of guyville." She threw down the gauntlet for a man to come up with the reverse list, so here's my attempt (same caveats apply as in her post--I don't speak for all guys; when I say "guys," I really mean "guys like me," which might possibly describe a set composed of exactly one person):

1. Guys cannot read your mind. I know that this completely obliterates your secret fantasy of the perfect man who will unfailingly know exactly what you want all the time and give it to you without you even having to ask, but it can't be helped. It's not just an act. We really are that dense.
2. You cannot read our minds. I know that you think that you know what we're thinking, but we're probably thinking something else. It's quite possible, even likely, that we're thinking of nothing at all. We also don't know that you don't know what we're thinking and want to know, or that you are probably guessing a thousand guesses, all incorrect. There's nothing to be done for it: you'll just have to break down and ask.
3. Men and women handle stress differently. Most of you tend to need to talk it out with someone else. Most of us tend to want to escape into a hobby and try to forget about it. John Gray calls it "cave time." We need cave time. It's not about shutting you out; it's about trying to calm down and not get ourselves worked up all over again.
4. We are the true romantics. This is contrary to popular belief, but that's because romance tends to be defined as things men do for women. Who's more romantic: the woman who likes to receive flowers, or the man who doesn't care a bit about flowers but goes and buys them for the woman he loves simply to make her happy? Men--until they've been burned and heartbroken sufficiently--simply fall in love and don't see anything else; it's women who want to analyze the relationship. This is not a good or a bad thing on either party's part--some relationships need to be analyzed.
5. Both we and you recognize something about women, but we describe it in different ways. Women call it being complex; men generally see it as being either crazy or dishonest. Nice guys--the kind of guy that a woman will say she wants--will get dumped for guys who are jerks. I have been the "shoulder to cry on" for a woman bemoaning the fact that a certain guy she was interested in didn't notice her, and I was sworn to secrecy, lest the other guy find out how she feels--and then, when I finally told her (later on, when she wasn't hung up on someone else) of my interest in her, she told me I had been "dishonest" for not having told her before. These kind of inconsistencies (or "complexities," if you will) drive us crazy.
6. We hate it--vicious, vile, ugly hatred--when you ask us to do something embarrassing that you could have done yourself, but didn't do so because you didn't want to be embarrassed.
7. We know that you would like us to be the initiators. However, if we're not among the 10% that is being chased by 90% of you (same percentages apply in reverse as well), we've probably been shot down enough to be pretty gun-shy. You're going to have to give us at least some indication that you'd be receptive to an invitation.
8. Much of what appears to you to be a fear of commitment is actually a healthy respect for responsibility. You have a tendency to want us to be ecstatic over life changes that dramatically increase our responsibilities. Many of you tend to see marriage as a source of security; most of us (or at least the best of us) see it as a significant responsibility. Even if we both work, guys will view providing for us, and later for a family, as primarily on us. The birth of a child, especially a first child, hits us in the same way. Nothing prepares us for marriage but marriage; nothing prepares us for fatherhood but fatherhood. Please try not to be too disappointed in our reactions.
9. We are far too prone to think we know you before we really do, especially if we're attracted to you. We fill in the gaps of what we don't know with our hopes and expectations. The death stroke for one relationship I had, although it lasted for another few months, was a game of Scruples, in which I simply could not believe that my girlfriend really would drive someone into bankruptcy by holding them to an ill-considered contract.
10. We don't understand why you break up with us. This is partially due to the fact that you actually do not tell us why you break up with us (more often than not, we believe, merely to spare our feelings). As we get older, the more observant of us figure out that there are a myriad of reasons, often involving your belief that we will at some point break up with you, and you'd rather be the dumper than the dumped. For our part, we don't end relationships unless we actually want to end them; we don't end them because we've analyzed them and decided that they're doomed (see #4). Since we don't understand this at a young enough age to do us any good, we don't understand that you grieve relationships that you yourselves ended. Hence the bitterness you've frequently encountered.

For all that, we really are still crazy about you. Most of this relates to a period in my life I call, "Single and not very happy about that fact." But God has given me a wonderful wife and a wonderful marriage. I'm truly grateful for the heartbreaks I've had in the past, because they left me open for my marriage with Cecile. He knew better than I did what the fully-adult me would need.


For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .

I've Been Tagged: 5 Things I Dig about Jesus

Peter Lumpkins tagged me. So here's the thing: I have to come up with five things I dig about Jesus, and tag five other people. Here goes:

1. I dig that Jesus is the perfect balance of toughness and kindness. It's become customary these days to pit the supposedly false "feminized" view of Jesus against the supposedly more accurate masculine "tough guy" Jesus. I think the whole exercise reflects more about the insecurities of our culture than anything about Jesus himself. First of all, I don't think there is anything inherently feminine about meekness, kindness, and gentleness--the fruit of the Spirit and the beatitudes are not, I trust, gender specific. Nonetheless, the Jesus who was indeed kind, merciful, and forgiving was also tough enough to rebuke the scribes and Pharisees, as well as his own disciples. The trick was responding appropriately to the occasion, which, in context, is what the wineskins analogy was all about.
   
2. I dig that Jesus is himself, regardless of circumstances or the people who were around. One of the things that I think a lot more people struggle with than admit to it is adjusting their behavior based on who is observing it. Perhaps we downplay our faith when we're with those who don't share it, or pretend we have convictions we really don't when we're with our more legalistic brothers. There is a place and time to be "all things to all people"--i.e., to use our freedom wisely for the sake of the Gospel. But we never see Jesus putting off until a next day a person who needs healing on the Sabbath, or pulling his punches with a Pharisee, even when he's his dinner guest, or stopping short of sharing spiritual truth, even when dining with sinners. He is who he is.
3. I dig that Jesus heals and does miracles out of mercy and compassion. Without naming names, some theological traditions argue that God does what he does for no other reason than to glorify himself. But I see repeated examples of Jesus doing miracles because he had compassion on someone: e.g., Matt. 9:36, 14:14, 15:32, 20:34; Mark 1:41, 6:34, 8:2. Of course, these things are not mutually exclusive; Jesus doing miracles glorifies God almost by definition, and there are other reasons why miracles are done as well. But I dig that one of Jesus' primary motivations is simple compassion on people, because they have a need.
4. I dig that Jesus overcame sin for me, so I don't have to. You read that right. Some of our traditions, including the holiness tradition that Pentecostalism grew out of, treat sin as something we have to overcome. Lip service is given to doing so "by the power of the Spirit," but in reality, it's treated as though it were all on us. But if we really believe that Jesus is "our righteousness, holiness, and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30)--he's not just an example, not just a means to obtain those things, but actually is those things himself--then the means of dealing with sin is not direct, but indirect: we don't simply oppose sin on our own, but draw closer to him and let him do the work in us. I think we're afraid to tell people that, for fear that people will abuse it: "God just hasn't taken that out of my life yet." Yep, some will abuse it. But by not telling them that, we rob them of one of the most precious truths of the gospel, heap guilt on them for not being able to overcome on their own, create hypocrisy because they can't admit to not having everything all together, and withhold from them the actual key that would be able to deal with sin. The gospel, quite frankly, is not about our righteousness, but his.
5. I dig Jesus because he first dug me.

And now it's time to tag five more people. The bad news is, I'm probably no more than a blip on the radar screen of most of the bloggers I read. So a couple of people I'm going to choose aren't bloggers. They can put their five in my comments section. And they can skip the requirement of choosing another five. That's probably against the rules of the meme, but hey, the ball's in my court now.

So anyway, my five victims (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!!!!)

1. Bob Mitton. Because he's my pastor, a close friend, and someone who needs an elbow in the ribs to write something. (Like I have room to talk....)
2. Dave Porter. Best man in my wedding, longtime close friend, and most likely to come at this from a point of view no one else has thought of.
3. Cecile Schooley. My wife, and of all the people I can think of, the most likely to use the word "dig" in this sense naturally. (We just celebrated our sixteenth anniversary--yaay for us!)
   
4. Julie R. Neidlinger. Doesn't know me, although she threw me a very nice link once. I doubt very much that this is her sort of thing, but if she could be persuaded to do it, she's someone else I bet would come at it from a unique point of view.
5. Stephen from Y Safle. A brother from Wales. I'm not sure if "dig" in this sense, besides being anachronistic, is actually just an American thing, so we may need to explain it to him. :-)

Honorable mention: I would have tagged SelahV, if she hadn't already done one on her own.

Tags: memes, Jesus, Jesus Christ, digs

Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, and Ministry

I've been following discussions of women in ministry on such forums as Jesus Creed, and Better Bibles Blog. It's rather a tangential issue for me: my fellowship doesn't prevent women from ministerial licensing or ordination; on the other hand, there are not a lot of women who are in positions of senior leadership in my fellowship either. Having watched this debate in as close to a position of objectivity as is possible, it seems to me that the debate is framed in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions, and a significant misunderstanding on the part of both sides of what ministry is.

The two primary terms in this debate are complementarianism and egalitarianism. The egalitarian position asserts that it is part of God's overall plan to erase distinctions of status and authority among the people of God. The key verse here would probably be Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The argument here would be that what God has accomplished ontologically, as a spiritual reality, He also would want to make a visible reality in the lives, relationships, and organization of those who compose His Body.

The complementarian position acknowledges that with regard to our status before God, we are indeed equally sinners and equally saved by the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Nonetheless, complementarians would argue that there remain positions of authority and submission, even within the Godhead, and our human relationships reflect that. There is no one passage that epitomizes this point of view, but a good contender would be 1 Corinthians 11:3: "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Without getting into the thorny issues regarding what headship means in this verse, it seems to imply some sort of relationship other than mere side-by-side equality. Complementarians would argue that the relationship between Jesus and the Father was, among other things, one of authority and submission, and that that same relationship would exist among men and women, or at least among husbands and wives specifically. The central idea is that we do not image God as mere individuals, but in relationship with one another, and the relationships that image God are, once again, not merely those of side-by-side equality.

The reason why I say that the debate is framed largely in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions is this: egalitarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the complementarian position as describing any relationship other than authoritarian domination and abject submission, and complementarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the egalitarian position as anything other than radical individualism, an insistence that there cannot and must not be any differentiation between any two persons, and that each person has an equal right to any position and any measure of authority. Both views are mischaracterizations.

One thing that the Bible focuses on very strongly is our mutual interdependence. That's precisely what the metaphor of the "body" of Christ is used for. We are not pennies in a roll, equal and undifferentiated; we are various "members" with differing gifts, gifts which make us interdependent, since no one person has them all. That is God's design for His people; quite frankly, He wants to force us to be dependent on one another. The odd thing about that is that it is mostly egalitarians who emphasize this mutual interdependence, even though it implies something of a complementarian position. Because the main point of complementarianism is (or should be) not dominance and subservience, but the fact that we complement one another to form a whole that none of us can fill on our own.

Egalitarians will respond: "We agree that all this is true. What we deny is that God does not give the gifts that imply authority only to one gender." And they may be right. I happen to think that they are right. But they are not necessarily right; that is to say, gifts are gifts, and God can give them to whomever He pleases, for whatever reasons He sees fit. Nobody has a right to a gift; the two terms are mutually exclusive. Egalitarians commonly argue, regarding 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent," that Paul is dealing with a local issue involving women at Ephesus. What this implicitly acknowledges is that under certain circumstances, God may in fact rightly place restrictions on one group that He does not on another. Because after all, they are His gifts to give, His ministries to fill.

And this is where I think that both sides misunderstand what ministry is. Ministry isn't about authority; it's about service--that's what the word means. And it's not about the right to self-expression on the part of the one ministering; it's about meeting the needs of those who are being ministered to. As someone who has been in and out of a few different types of formal ministry, I hardly know what those who are agitating for their "right" to minister are after. The best medicine might well be for them to get what they want. The slings and arrows of ministry--the second-guessing, the opposition, the pettiness, the politics--fall on anyone who ministers.

I find it an odd little contradiction that those in the emerging movement tend both toward affirming women in formalized positions of ministry and being skeptical of formal ministry itself. Perhaps we need to stop focusing on formal ministry and simply focus on service. Serve however we can, wherever we can, whatever our individual circumstances. I know that this doesn't answer all the questions people have, and they're worthwhile questions to explore. But it seems to me that whether Junia was an apostle or what exactly head coverings meant might be less important than asking myself the question, "What can I do, here and now, today, to represent Jesus to my world?"

Come to think of it, Jesus never had a position of formal ministry. And He managed to accomplish a few things.

Technorati Tags: Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Women in Ministry

The Mystery of the Missing Men; or, Where the Boys Are--Not!

It seems to be a new cause du jour: the lack of men in the church, the reasons Why Men Hate Going to Church, and the so-called feminization of evangelical Christianity. David Wayne on Jollyblogger has a list of recent articles about the subject. Some are little more than chest-thumping affirmations of David Murrow's above-referenced book, but there are also those that have a bit more substance.

Among these, Holly Pivec's article, "The Feminization of the Church," notes that the issue is not new--dating back to the Industrial Revolution, according to some theories, or the 13th century, according to others. She cites statistics such as that 57% of evangelicals are women--which seems to me a little less dire than the rhetoric makes out; this means that 43% of evangelicals are men--but also that women are more involved in ancillary ministries of the church than are men. She also notes that worship styles tend toward romantic imagery, service opportunities tend toward traditionally female roles, pastors may be tailoring their messages to their already predominantly female audience, and the ministry itself may be attracting men who exhibit traditionally "feminine" qualities such as gentleness and sensitivity.

I'll confess to not yet having read Murrow's book or any others specifically on the issue. I have mixed feeling-- er, thoughts, yeah, thoughts, on the articles and blogs I have read. I think some points regarding modern worship music are valid, and decor to some extent as well. On the other hand, I've seen some silly stuff trying to show how "manly" Jesus was (mainly by focusing on the confrontation with the money changers and the woes against the Pharisees). And some presentations of the topic appear to be an attempt to repackage the church to target a male demographic, which is another example of the commodification of the Gospel. At any rate, why men say they stay out of church is not necessarily why they actually do. Never underestimate the ability of anyone--particularly men--to rationalize and excuse their behavior. Ask anyone why they stay out of church, and I guarantee you, they'll tell you it's the church's fault.

What disturbs me most of all is the stereotype of masculinity that much of this stuff promotes. I reject categorically the idea that such qualities as kindness and nuturing are inherently "female" and such qualities as aggressiveness and competition are inherently "male." I imagine that the movie Mean Girls (though I haven't seen it) should quell all such ideas. Besides, I'd assert that men are, for example, nurturing--but there is a specifically masculine way to express nurturing. For mothers, it may be kissing boo-boos; for fathers, it's protectiveness and provision. What's more nurturing than providing for a family?

An excellent adverse response to this trend is given by Sean Michael Lucas, who notes that "throughout the history of Christianity from the very beginning, women have had key places in the church and tended to outnumber the men," and asks the very pertinent question,

Could it be that Christianity preaches a Gospel that requires people to view themselves as weak, forsaken, helpless, abandoned, destitute? Could it be that such a message is a stumbling block to males who believe they have strength in themselves to save themselves?

In other words, it might not be how we're presenting Christianity, but Christianity itself that tends to put off men (as it tends to put off the powerful, the intellectual, the aristocratic--cf. 1 Corinthians 1:20-21, 26-29). Lucas also points to the intellectual vacuity of the church (what Pivec calls "touchy-feely pastors giving touchy-feely sermons"). A primarily emotional gospel that is light in intellectual rigor is, on average, going to attract more women than men. (Yes, yes, there are intellectually tough women and emotionally motivated men--I realize this is an extremely broad generalization--but it might help account for a fourteen-percent gap.)

Lucas finally brings home a telling point:

I think another reason some men "hate going to church" is, ironically enough, most of our churches have failed to preach the Gospel. I don't mean the Gospel of "Jesus dying for my sins." But I mean the Gospel--an all-encompassing vision of God's invasion into the world to bring his reign to bear on every aspect of life.

Men are more motivated by mission than by the idea that Jesus really loves you and wants to wrap his arms all around you.