The Purpose of Marriage

The following post is excerpted from the chapter, "The Purpose of Marriage," in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

At some point, all the practical questions about marriage find their basis in the central question of what marriage is supposed to be all about. One might think that we should begin with that question, but in reality none of us do. Ask most couples when they’re about to get married, and they will tell you that they’re getting married because “We’re in love.” Doubtless at the time, that is true. Ask a couple on the verge of divorce why they got married in the first place, and sometimes they’ll say the same thing, and say that later on they fell out of love. If they’re being sincerely reflective, though, they’ll acknowledge ulterior motives. She wanted to get out of her parents’ house and couldn’t afford to be on her own. He wanted sex, and for religious or other reasons didn’t want simply to sleep around. She wanted the security of a committed relationship. He was afraid he was going to lose her if he didn’t lock in the relationship with a ring. She hadn’t had a lot of guys interested in her, and felt that this was the best she could do. He had been scared to death of marriage, until he ended up being more scared of ending up alone. She wanted children and didn’t want to raise them alone. There are a multitude of reasons. Feel free to swap the pronoun genders around: none of these reasons are specific to men or to women in particular.

So which is true? The romantic version at the time, or the jaded version from years later? Most likely, both are. People are complex beings, and we all have ulterior motives, whether we think we do or not. It doesn’t make the love we feel at the time any less real.

But the important issue is not what we think marriage is all about. Rather, it’s what does God think marriage is all about? Why did he create marriage? What is it for? How is it supposed to function in our lives?

Christian Married Sexuality (part 2)

The following post is adapted from the chapter, "Sexuality," from my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God. 

Check out Part 1 of this series by clicking here.

Sex and the Christian Marriage

The previous post of course leads to the question: what is healthy sexuality in marriage? A favorite text that seems to address this topic is Hebrews 13:4, which reads in the King James Version, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” This looks like an endorsement of marriage itself and of married sexuality (take that, Jerome!), and I recall having heard a number of sermons that focused on this endorsement as an affirmation of the goodness and rightness of married sex. Not only that, but it was pretty much interpreted to mean that anything goes within the marriage relationship. Nonetheless, contextual indicators lead most modern translations and commentators to take the passage as an imperative: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (NIV). While this is doubtless the correct translation, it reopens the question of what keeps the marriage bed pure. Is an undefiled marriage bed one in which sexuality is restricted only to procreation? Is it one in which only the missionary position is used? Is there stuff that’s allowable and stuff that isn’t for a married couple?

Those looking for specific techniques and detailed strategies will have to go to other writers. However, the immediate context seems to spell out the intent of the author of Hebrews: what would defile the marriage bed is adultery and sexual immorality. That is to say, it wasn’t anything happening between the married partners, but rather when one of the partners committed infidelity of some sort. The kinds of things that defile the marriage bed are the same kinds of things that eventually lead to permissible divorce and remarriage, according to Jesus. When the author of Hebrews says that the “marriage bed [should be] kept pure,” he essentially means to keep other people out of it. (tweet this)

Christian Married Sexuality (part 1)

The following post is adapted from the chapter, "Sexuality," from my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

On the evening when Cecile first came to church with me, a group of us went out afterward to a Big Boy restaurant. Pastor Bill, our College and Career pastor, came out to eat with us—probably to get to know Cecile better and witness to her—and sat down with Cecile, me, and my best friend Dave. He was asking her questions, and I was mostly nervously listening. I didn’t really know this woman all that well, although I knew enough to know she was liable to say anything. I felt that whatever she said would reflect on me, even though it wasn’t as though we were dating or anything.

After learning about her background, her divorce, and the loss of her children, Pastor Bill asked her, “So have you ever thought about becoming a Christian?”

“Well, I did for a while, but then I heard that you had to give up sex, so I thought, Forget that!”

Dave snorted Coke out of his nose, and I started slinking under the table. Pastor Bill didn’t miss a beat, though. He simply replied, “Well, that is an obstacle for a lot of people. What you have to decide is, what’s more important?”

Cecile didn’t betray that Pastor Bill was getting to her, but she went home thinking about the conversation, and within a week, she had given her life to Jesus. That was to be the beginning of living celibate for two years before we got married.

Finding "The Right One"

The following post is excerpted from the chapter, "Finding the Right One" in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

The question of whether we married “the right person” hinges on a very faulty and foolish view of marriage. According to this view, God has planned out one and only one perfect person for you, and you need to find that person or your life will be a living hell from that moment on. Everything hinges on that choice.

Is it any wonder that young people are so freaked out by the prospect of marriage?

What this leads to is a very selfish view of what finding a spouse is like. Singles evaluate one another based on how well they think that other person is going to meet their needs, wants, desires, and ambitions. Everyone is trying to find the “right person” for themselves, and no one is trying to become the right person for someone else.(Tweet this!) When we expect someone else to meet all of our needs, hopes, and dreams, we set that person up for failure. No human being can fulfill us in that way. Meanwhile, while we’re constructing the pedestal for someone else to fall off of, we’re also short-circuiting the process by which God might be trying to tell us that our perceived needs, ambitions, dreams, and goals could be wrong. Why should we bother changing these expectations—or even evaluating them to see if they need to change—if the real problem is that we just haven’t found the Right Person to meet them yet?

We’re creating an idol out of that person—whether it’s someone we think we’ve already met, or whether they’re still just a figment of our imagination whom we’re sure is out there, somewhere. We’re putting them in the place of God. When a real person occupies that space, they can’t possibly live up to our pre-made image of them.

Why I Married a Divorced Woman

Shiela over on To Love, Honor, and Vacuum has a very thoughtful, carefully-considered post entitled, "Why I'm Anti-Divorce and Pro Remarriage." I wouldn't necessarily dot every i or cross every t precisely as she has, but she has the main idea dead-on right: that even though God hates divorce (Malachi 2:16), he doesn't hate divorce in isolation, as though he just thought up something arbitrary to hate. He hates it for a reason, and that reason--stated in the verse--is because divorce is a form of violence against the person one has married. If he hates it for a reason, then there might be reasons why it would be allowed, if the marriage itself has become a form of violence, if one person has made it clear that he or she is refusing to honor the vows taken when they married. This is precisely what Jesus said: "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so" (Matthew 19:8). God never intended marriage to be temporary, at least within this lifetime, but because people's hearts are hard, it had to be allowed to prevent the worse evil of someone being trapped by a marriage covenant that the other person has no intent to honor.

All of this became very real to me when I began getting to know my wife, Cecile, who had been divorced several months before I met her. The full story is told in my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God, but I want to share here, briefly, why a young man who had grown up in the church, was waiting for sex until marriage, and had dedicated his life to pursuing God's purposes, chose to marry a divorced woman.

The Not-So-Romantic Tale of Jacob, Rachel and Leah

Those of us who grew up in the church are familiar with the story of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. After fleeing for his life from his brother Esau, Jacob comes to his relative Laban in Haran to find a wife, and meets Rachel, Laban's daughter. He falls in love with her at once and makes an arrangement to work for seven years to earn her hand in marriage. At the end of the seven years, Laban tricks Jacob into marrying Rachel's older sister Leah instead, and Jacob works another seven years for Rachel. The story is almost always presented as a beautiful love story with a touch of intrigue thrown in. Laban is considered a rotten trickster, Leah his accomplice, Jacob is viewed as receiving a bit of poetic justice after having tricked his brother and his father out of the oldest child's traditional birthright, and Rachel has the role of the hapless heroine, caught in the middle of this mess through no fault of her own. It is often pointed out that "Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (Gen. 29:20).

We are told that "Leah's eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance. Jacob loved Rachel" (Gen 29:17-18). Commentators are not agreed on what the "weakness" of Leah's eyes means. Most seem not to believe that it reflects poor eyesight or blindness; the majority seem to believe that her eyes were simply unattractive--possibly blue, which may have been considered a defect in the ancient Middle East. Adam Clarke has an intriguing suggestion: that the "weakness" of Leah's eyes reflects not a negative quality but a positive one--that she did have pretty eyes, but by contrast, Rachel's entire "form and appearance" were attractive, and therefore Jacob gave his love to Rachel. One way or another, it was Rachel's beauty that swayed Jacob. There's nothing wrong with this, in and of itself: many significant women in the Bible are described as being beautiful. But if we look at the respective characters of Leah and Rachel, and the results that came from the two marriages, a picture emerges that is very different from the romantic one usually taught.

Marriage, Family, and the Image of God: If It's Permanent, Make It Good

This post is adapted from a chapter of my upcoming book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God.

Cecile and I decided, even before we got married, that if marriage was permanent, we needed to make a commitment to make it good. That, I believe, is one of the primary reasons that God created marriage to be permanent. Of course he wants to spare us the pain of broken marriages and families. But he also wants us to take the permanence seriously, so that we will decide to make it the best we can, and so that in doing so, we will suppress the individual selfishness that has plagued human beings since the Fall.

The best thing you can do, once you’ve decided to make marriage permanent, is to make it good. And the only way to make it good is to resolve that you are no longer two people but one, that all decisions need to be made with “us” and “we” as the focus, not “you” and “me.” And that takes a willingness for self-sacrifice that, humanly, we don’t have, which is why so many marriages end up miserable and broken. But by seeking God’s help to overcome our innate selfishness, God can use our marriages to mold us into his own self-sacrificial nature; in other words, to conform us into the image of his Son. Other life paths, of course, can accomplish the same thing—those who are married don’t have an exclusive avenue into the image of God. But marriage does have unique challenges. No other relationship is as capable of fostering so much intimacy and creating so much pain.

Marriage, Family, and the Image of God - In the Beginning

This is a first draft of the first chapter of my upcoming book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God. Enjoy!

Cecile and I first met during the summer after I had finished my first year in seminary. I was back home for the summer, and the job I thought I’d had lined up had fallen through. I got a temporary job doing data entry for a travel agency that was converting its files from one format into another. The job was from five at night to one in the morning, for about two and a half weeks.

I was one of three men among about a hundred women working on this project. Since I was shy, this was pretty intimidating, so when an attractive tall blonde in a red dress smiled at me, I stuck with her. Not for the reasons you might think. I went for short brunettes at the time, and I’d just had my heart broken, so I wasn’t looking for anything beyond a summer job. She smiled at me, so I thought she was safe.

She wasn’t safe.

Relational Ministry is Not a Strategy

Scot McKnight writes a good summary/review of Andrew Root's book The Relational Pastor: Sharing in Christ by Sharing Ourselves.

I think that to the extent that emerging and missional models of ministry failed and are failing, it is due precisely to leaders wanting a relational strategy rather than relationships with others for their own sake. It comes down to the same personal kingdom building (not Jesus' Kingdom building) that they think they're rejecting from the old Evangelical models.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today....

Twenty years ago today I sealed my fate.

I had met Cecile two years earlier at a temporary job. We should have known one another less than three weeks. She had just been through a bitter divorce and was not crazy about men. To an engaged girl at our table she had said, "Give me five minutes and I'll have you talked out of it." When she found out I was a follower of Jesus, her first question was, "So what's this crap about women submitting to men, anyway?"

But she was searching--deeply, deeply searching--and when she came to Jesus she fell harder than anyone I'd ever known. Her life was transformed virtually overnight. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And so I began falling in love with her, despite myself. We struggled, that summer, with an attraction neither one of us wanted to admit to or to act on, and when I left for grad school that year, we had no commitment to one another.

But without me being there as an ulterior motive, she kept going to church. She read the Bible through, in about eight months, even though she had never been much of a reader. We kept in contact by letters and recorded cassettes. She asked me questions about my faith and my views of life; I learned everything I could about her--who she was, what she cared about. And by the time I came back home the following summer, I knew I was going to ask her to marry me.

We went to eat at Mexican Village, then took the Ambassador Bridge over to Windsor, sat in a park watching the sunset over the Detroit skyline, and I asked her to marry me. Disconcertingly, she welled up with tears and didn't answer at first. But she eventually said yes, which led up to that day, twenty years ago today, when we got married.

Not at our own church, sadly. They wouldn't allow divorcees to be married there. And we never knew until later to what extent Bill, our college-and-career pastor, had gone out on a limb to marry us. We found a church near my home and made the preparations. Guys have no clue, until they've been through it, how many preparations even a "small" wedding entail. For the groom, the necessary ingredients are a license, a ring, and a getaway car. Brides have slightly more elaborate ideas. And although all kinds of crazy things went wrong at the rehearsal and the morning of the wedding--a groomsman forgot to show up to the rehearsal, a friend who made our wedding cake got into a car accident and spent the night fixing the cake, Bill locked his suit in his car--the ceremony itself was beautiful.

And so we were married, and when we left the reception I giddily took off down I-696, missed the turnoff down I-275, and drove probably 20 miles westbound on I-96 before realizing that we were headed toward Lansing instead of toward our hotel in Romulus. The following day we left for our honeymoon in Ludington, which was probably about the happiest week of my life.

We have a framed engagement photo in our bedroom, and occasionally I look at that picture, at the couple so full of hope. I miss them. The years that have gone by haven't been what either one of us had expected. But there is no one I would rather have gone on this journey with than Cecile. No one even comes close.

Twenty years ago today, I married the most remarkable woman I know, or can even imagine. She has been the best friend anyone could ever have, the most loyal, the most fun, the most supportive. Although I was instrumental in leading her to faith, she has been the one who has most strongly helped me to continue in faith myself. She has gone with me to the UP, to Pennsylvania, and back to Detroit with scarcely any complaint. She looks for and encourages the best in me, even though she's seen me at my worst. She's kind and loving and far more elegant than she has any idea of. She has given me three wonderful sons. And whatever else is happening in this world, whatever hurtfulness or cruelty or unkindness comes against us in day-to-day life, she has made a home that is always safe to come to, where we can be ourselves. Where it doesn't matter what we have or don't have, what we've achieved or haven't achieved, where the only thing that matters is that we love God and love one another. She is truly the greatest blessing of my life.

What we have together is what I wish every couple had. I wish I could give away our secret, but the truth is, I don't really know what the secret is. If I had to boil it down, I'd say that "us" is more important than "me" to both of us. But really, I think she lives that out better than I do.

So here's to my Cecile. Twenty years ago today, I made the best decision of my life. I can't possibly express the gratitude I have for her. Here's looking forward to the next twenty. 



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

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 .

 

Screwtape on Frames of Reference

In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.
--Screwtape

So, yes. There's a flip side.

Frames of Reference

"Words, words. They're all we have to go on."
--Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

I recently had a misunderstanding with someone that's gotten me to think about the nature of communication. The odd thing about it was that the point I was trying to make had to do with exactly that--the difference between what a person thinks he has communicated to someone else and what that someone else thinks has been communicated to him. The difference between giving and receiving communication.

We've probably all had the experience of having someone say something that hit us as being insulting or rude or otherwise inappropriate, and when we call them on it, they respond, "No, no, that isn't what I meant at all." The conversation can go in many directions at that point, but isn't the feeling we usually have, when this protest is made to us, something along the lines of, "Well of course you did! What else could you possibly have meant?" We just simply cannot believe that anyone could have said those words and not meant them exactly the way they came across to us.

Of course, there will be those times in which the errant communicator is indeed, shall we say, fibbing about his original intentions. But I am also convinced that there are times when the EC truly did not mean what we so forcefully heard. Why is that? How is it that someone can say something, in all sincerity meaning one thing, and someone else can hear that same thing and just as sincerely feel that it means something completely different?

"It is impossible to say just what I mean!"
--J. Alfred Prufrock

Communication is a tricky thing. A communicator, attempting to convey a thought, a feeling, an idea, starts out with a particular frame of reference, a matrix of understanding that is a conglomeration of his personality and entire life experience, and more specifically, his experience of how words have been used toward and around him. He shapes this thought into words, the symbols by which we attempt communication, within this matrix; he says what he says because it makes sense to him to say it that way; to him, that's what the words he comes up with mean.

But the recipient takes these words into a completely different personality and life experience, into a different experience of how words have been used toward and around him. He receives the sounds, or the sight of print on paper, or on a screen, and has to create meaning out of these raw sensory impressions, and the meaning he creates has as much to do with his own matrix of understanding as it does with the actual words that have been used. To the extent that the two frames of reference are similar, the communication will be understood in the same sense as it was intended. To the extent that they differ, communication will be impeded.

It's most obvious when people speak different languages. Here, there is no common frame of reference at all, at least where language is concerned. But also, there is no real issue of misunderstanding, because there is no illusion of understanding at all. The dangerous situation--which is by far also the most common--is a partially shared frame of reference. We have just enough similar life and language experience to be dangerous. We know each other well enough to think that we know everything--or at least enough to understand what they said! And so we react, based not on the actual words that were said, but by what those words would have meant if we had ever uttered them. Coming out of our own frame of reference, saying such a thing might have been unthinkable, or would have been spoken only with a completely different intent. But we really have no way of ever experiencing anyone else's frame of reference. The closest we get to it, aside from shared experiences (we both know what "As you wish" means because we've both seen The Princess Bride), is--talking: i.e., communication, language. The very thing that seems to be the impediment is the only clue we have into one another's world.

Perhaps what we most suffer from is a lack of empathy. We simply don't have the imagination to conceive of another way of looking at life, at people, at language. Our way seems so obvious, so right! The problem is that everyone else stubbornly refuses to agree with God and me! Or perhaps it is merely inconvenient. It's easier simply to think that the other person is wrong than to think that they view things from a different point of view. It's easier simply to react than to give the other person the benefit of the doubt, to imagine what might have caused them to articulate what they did. I've found myself in the position of being a translator on numerous occasions, not between different languages, but between different frames of reference, trying to get two people to see things from one another's point of view, and it can be exhausting. But really, if we're to love our neighbor as ourselves, isn't that exactly what is being asked of us?

"That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at."
--Addie Bundren

Of course, I can only hope that anyone could possibly understand this.

Love and the Pro-Con List

Julie has another terrific post, this time about expectations of singles for marriage, especially among Christian singles. Well worth checking out. I'm going to do a bit of fisking here, but in a good way.

Julie writes,

During my first year of college (which was a Bible college), there was a girl named April who firmly believed that she was so special and unique in God's sight -- this had been drummed into her head by well-meaning parents, teachers, and youth pastors trying to protect their young flock -- that her list of qualifications for a guy was incredibly long and incredibly impossible. Nothing but the best for her, she insisted, pointing out that God wanted the best for his daughters. April did not have any comparative list of such actual qualities in herself.

Just so. I've observed before that everyone is always looking for the "right person" for himself or herself; hardly anyone is looking to become the "right person" for someone else. Which, when you think about it, is pure selfishness: I want precisely what I want, at the least possible cost or annoyance to me. What's more, that process of becoming "right" for one another doesn't end with an engagement, or even a wedding. It's a lifelong process of learning, growing, reacting, rebuking, and generally becoming intertwined.

Think about it. People are fluid. You're not the same as you were a decade ago. You won't be the same in another decade. How can you possibly know what future-you will need or value most? How can you know if future-him or future-her will be able to provide it? So how can a list, based on present-day needs and expectations, possibly forecast the future?

At some point, we have to realize that the process of becoming one is a lifelong process, directed by God, sometimes painful to our individual desires, but nonetheless beautiful, wonderful, and eminently worthwhile. I don't know who I would be without Cecile in my life for the past eighteen years; I'm not sure I want to know.

Too often the phrase "God has called me to be single" is a Bible-laced excuse to continue being selfish, fearful, proud, and content with smooth sailing. Many beautiful books and web sites by lovely men and women discuss singlehood as if we were all Paul, mysteriously and unfairly going through life without the healing of our affliction.

Yes. Reread 1 Corinthians 7. Does Paul ever say that singleness was to be pursued for its own sake? That it's a spiritually superior mode of being? No. All his reasons for preferring and advocating singleness are practical. Singleness is practically preferable for a dangerous, itinerant ministry like Paul's (you don't have to worry about how your family will be provided for while you're being thrown in jail, thrown out of town, and shipwrecked) and in times of persecution (you don't have to worry about what will happen to them if you're beheaded). It allows you to focus on service to God, exclusively. So if someone genuinely has that gift and is genuinely called to be single, then they will also be called to some form of ministry that makes apparent why marriage would be significantly detrimental in that situation.

I'm not saying that everyone who is not specifically called to singleness must get married by age x, to the first available candidate. I am saying that avoiding marriage out of fear and selfishness, and calling it a calling, is wrong. Marriage and parenthood are two of the most powerful tools God uses to get our focus off of ourselves and make us part of something larger. They teach us things that are difficult to learn in any other way.

The Evangelical world should stop having singles ministry that encourages singles to stay single and get their weekly relationship fix over pizza or coffee with the rest of the group -- sans any icky side effects from commitment -- and instead tell them to quit waiting for "the right one" and get over themselves and get married to a good and decent one.

Oh yes. What biblical justification is there, anyway, for this concept of "the right one"? That if you don't marry the one person in six billion that God has Specially Chosen Just for You, that life will be toast? As Julie says, we've become "vast herds of terrified, lonely, confused people insisting that good people right beside them simultaneously moving in the same direction are not the right people." If we find someone who is good and decent and loves God and we're genuinely attracted to them and we share interests and like being together, then that should be enough to start on. God will take care of the rest.

Please understand. I'm not saying take the plunge hastily or thoughtlessly. And we are entitled to our own preferences. But somehow, because of fear of making a mistake, we've forgotten that marriage is also a gift. A really, really good gift.

Kudos to Julie. Brave words, coming from someone who is single herself. So far. Check out the entire post; there's a lot more there.

 

 

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 .

Finding the Right Husband or Wife

Joe Carter has a great post on finding the right husband or wife. It's a review of a book by Alex and Marni Chediak entitled With One Voice: Singleness, Dating and Marriage to the Glory of God.

The basic point of the post (and apparently, the book) is that it is more important to work toward becoming the right person for someone else, rather than to try to find "Mr. or Miss Right." During the period of time in my life that I call, "Single and Not Very Happy About That Fact," I figured this out: everyone seemed to be trying to find the right person for them (i.e., the person who will accommodate all of their whims and fulfill all their dreams and not require them to change at all) and not at all trying to become the kind of person who could be a good husband or wife for someone else.

The pattern that I saw was repeated relationships and break-ups, over and over again (well, except for those of us who had a difficult time getting anything going to begin with), until finally the person became more fearful of being left alone than of marrying The Wrong Person--at which point the next dating relationship magically became The One.

Another mistake singles make when dating and looking for a marriage partner is assuming that marriage is supposed to be the panacea that makes all of life a state of joy. The Chediaks write, "Women have been duped by the media into thinking that marriage must be
a state of perpetual bliss and that, if it is not, something must be
wrong with their partner" (p. 47). There are two things going wrong here: unrealistic expectations regarding what marriage should be like, and the assumption that anything that goes wrong must be the fault of one's "partner"--i.e., never oneself (or just the reality of living in a fallen world).

Much marital unhappiness comes from failing to recognize that putting marriage on such a pedestal is a form of idolatry, and marriage can never live up to these expectations. It can be wonderful--the very best relationship one can ever have with another human being--but only when both people are willing to adjust to one another's flaws and foibles, and are willing to try their best to be the best husband or wife they can be. 


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

Johnny Lingo and the Ten-Cow Wife

"So tweasuwe youw wife--"
--The Impressive Clergyman

I read this story years ago in the Reader's Digest. It made a significant impact on me. One of the main keys of a happy marriage is to treat your spouse like the person you want them to be. I've never understood people who got married and then complained about the "ball and chain" for the rest of their lives. Statistics have shown that evangelical Christians have marriages no better than society as a whole. This is a tragic shame, and a horrible witness. God wants our marriages to represent His love for His people. I hope this little story reminds us of how we should be treating the person who should be the closest one in our lives.

"Get Johnny Lingo to help you find what you want and then let him do the bargaining," advised Shenkin as I sat on the veranda of his guest house and wondered whether to visit Nurabandi. "He'll earn his commission four times over. Johnny knows values and how to make a deal."

"Johnny Lingo." The chubby boy on the veranda steps hooted the name, then hugged his knees and rocked with shrill laughter.

"Be quiet," said his father and the laughter grew silent. "Johnny Lingo's the sharpest trader in this part of the Pacific."

The simple statement made the boy choke and almost roll off the steps. Smiles broadened on the faces of the villagers standing nearby.

"What goes on?" I demanded. "Everybody around here tells me to get in touch with Johnny Lingo and then breaks up. It is some kind of trick, a wild-goose chase, like sending someone for a left-handed wrench? I there no such person or is he the village idiot or what? Let me in on the joke."

"Not idiot," said Shenkin. "Only one thing. Five months ago, at festival time, Johnny came to Kiniwata and found himself a wife. He paid her father ten cows!"
He spoke the last words with great solemnity and I knew enough about island customs to be thorougly impressed. Two or three cows would buy a fair-to-middling wife, four or five a highly satisfactory one.

"Ten cows!" I said. "She must have been a beauty that takes your breath away."
"That's why they laugh," my guest said. "It would be kindness to call her plain. She was little and skinny with no--ah--endowments. She walked with her shoulders hunched and her head ducked, as if she was trying to hide behind herself. Her cheeks had no color, her eyes never opened beyond a slit and her hair was a tangled mop half over her face. She was scared of her own shadow, frightened by her own voice. She was afraid to laugh in public. She never romped with the girls, so how could she attract the boys?"

"But she attracted Johnny?"

This is the story Shenkin told me:

"All the way to the council tent the cousins were urging Sam to try for a good settlement. Ask for three cows, they told him, and hold out for two until you're sure he'll pay one. But Sam was in such a stew and so afraid there'd be some slip in this marriage chance for Sarita that they knew he wouldn't hold out for anything. So while they waited they resigned themselves to accepting one cow, and thought, instead, of their luck in getting such a good husband for Sarita. Then Johnny came into the tent and, without waiting for a word from any of them, went straight up to Sam Karoo, grasped his hand and said, "Father of Sarita, I offer ten cows for your daughter." And he delivered the cows.

"As soon as it was over Johnny took Sarita to the island of Cho for the first week of marriage. Then they went home to Narabundi and we haven't seen them since. Except at festival time, there's not much travel between the islands."

This story interested me so I decided to investigate.

The next day I reached the island where Johnny lived. When I met the slim, serious man, he welcomed me to his home with a grace that made me feel like the owner. I was glad that from his own people he had respect unmingled with mockery.

I told him that his people had told me about him.

"They speak much of me on that island? What do they say?"

"They say you are a sharp trader," I said. "They also say the marriage settlement that you made for your wife was ten cows." I paused, then went on, coming as close to a direct question as I could. "They wonder why."

"They say that?" His eyes lighted with pleasure. He seemed not to have noticed the question. "Everyone in Kiniwata knows about the ten cows?"

I nodded.

"And in Narabundi everyone knows it, too." His chest expanded with satisfaction. "Always and forever, when they speak of marriage settlements, it will be remembered that Johnny Lingo paid ten cows for Sarita."

So that's the anwer, I thought with disappointment. All this mystery and wonder and the explanation's only vanity. It's not enough for his ego to be known as the smartest, the strongest, the quickest. He had to make himself famous for his way of buying a wife. I was tempted to deflate him by reporting that in Kiniwata he was laughed at for a fool.

And then I saw her. Through the glass-beaded portieres that simmered in the archway, I watched her enter the adjoining room to place a bowl of blossoms on the dining table. She stood still a moment to smile with sweet gravity at the young man beside me. Then she went swiftly out again. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Not with the beauty of the girl who carries fruit. That now seemed cheap, common, earthbound. This girl had an ethereal loveliness that was at the same time from the heart of nature. The dew-fresh flowers with which she'd pinned back her lustrous black hair accented the glow of her cheeks. The lift of her shoulders, the tilt of her chin, the sparkle of her eyes all spelled a pride to which no one could deny her the right. And as she turned to leave she moved with the grace that made her look like a queen who might, with enchantment, turn into a kitten.

When she was out of sight I turned back to Jonny Lingo and found him looking at me with eyes that reflected the pride of the girl's.

"You admire her?" he murmured.

"She--she's glorious. Who is she?"

"My wife."

I stared at him blankly. Was this some custom I had not heard about? Do they practice polygamy here? He, for his ten cows, bought both Sarita and this other? Before I could form a question he spoke again.

"This is only one Sarita." His way of saying the words gave them a special significance. "Perhaps you wish to say she does not look the way they say she looked in Kiniwata."

"She doesn't." The impact of the girl's appearance made me forget tact. "I heard she was homely, or at least nondescript. They all make fun of you because you let yourself by cheated by Sam Karoo."

"You think he cheated me? You think ten cows were too many?" A slow smile slid over his lips as I shook my head. "She can see her father and her friends again. And they can see her. Do you think anyone will make fun of us then? Much has happened to change her. Much in particular happened the day she went away."

"You mean she married you?"

"That, yes. But most of all, I mean the arrangements for the marriage."

"Arrangements?"

"Do you ever think," he asked reflectively, "what it does to a woman when she knows that the price her husband has paid is the lowest price for which she can be bought? And then later, when all the women talk, as women do, they boast of what their husbands paid for them. One says four cows, another maybe six. How does she feel--the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happen to my Sarita."

"Then you paid that unprecendented number of cows just to make your wife happy?"

"Happy?" He seemed to turn the word over on his tongue, as if to test its meaning. "I wanted Sarita to be happy, yes, but I wanted more than that. You say she's different from the way they remember her in Kiniwata. This is true. Many things can change a woman. Things that happen inside, things that happen outside. But the thing that matters most is what she thinks about herself. In Kiniwata, Sarita believed she was worth nothing. Now she knows that she is worth more than any other woman on the islands."

"Then you wanted..."

"I wanted to marry Sarita. I loved her and no other woman."

"But--" I was close to understanding.

"But," he finished softly, "I wanted an ten-cow wife."


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