Don’t marry a pro-choice woman.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the acknowledgment that many good women are nominally pro-choice, which is to say that their bleeding hearts won’t permit them to legally “force” any woman into a pregnancy she doesn’t want but they are in general horrified by the idea of a woman having a baby cut up and scraped out of her uterus.  Such women typically believe strongly in contraception and “responsible sex” and do not believe in abortion as back-up birth control.  These aren’t the women I’m referring to.

Rather, the type of woman I’m referring to is the type who is ideologically committed to the complete autonomy of a woman’s body to the point where an unborn baby may be considered a parasite and that even a husband has no say and deserves no say in his wife’s choice to abort their child.

I don’t think there are that many type 2 pro-choice women in the United States, but they’re certainly the most vocal when it comes to sex reproductive issues “women’s health.”  A good example of such a voice is the group of writers on Grey’s Anatomy, which on Thursday had a married female character (Cristina) abort her unborn child because being a mother would just get in the way of being a surgeon, which was her top priority, plus she had never wanted children and believed she would not love her child and would be a dreadful mother.  That in itself was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that this character’s husband (Owen) wanted her to have the baby and wanted to be a father.  Despite his wishes, Cristina was determined to abort their child and (in a bid to get viewers on her side) gave her best friend Meredith a speech about how she really wished she could want a child and how she wished her husband could be supportive of her and understand her, instead of leaving her sad and scared that she was going to have to abort alone.  Sadness and fear, obviously, mitigate all moral consequence.  As a result, Meredith went to Owen and talked about how she (Meredith) had been raised by a mother who loved surgery more than her daughter and how awful that was, and that if Cristina did the same thing, it would “kill” her.  Strangely enough, Meredith did not also add that it would have been preferable that she had never been born, or that her late mother regretted having a daughter who cared for her in her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.  Owen – an Iraq War vet, by the way – was then convinced that it was right for him to accompany his wife to the murder of their unborn child, and he dutifully burned his man card on the altar of feminism.  I guess viewers were supposed to take this as an example of true love, or at least that the woman is always right.  My opinion was that the writers had just made Cristina one of the most morally repugnant women to appear on the small screen and that if I had been in Owen’s shoes, I would have shown up at the abortionist’s with divorce papers.

It was interesting to read the opinions on Owen and Cristina’s actions because they illuminated the divisions within the pro-choice crowd.  At least in the comments at ew.com, about two thirds of the commenters thought Cristina behaved disgustingly.  Sure, the commenters supported a woman’s right to choose, but people who get abortions aren’t supposed to be financially secure, educated, intelligent, married women.  (And how can a SURGEON not know how to practice birth control, or at least get a tubal ligation?)  Furthermore, there was no indication of problems with the pregnancy.  Healthy unborn babies products of conception aren’t supposed to aborted, only the damaged ones.  The other third celebrated Cristina’s decision to exercise her full rights over her body and “remain true to herself,” because it would have been a compromise to her self-identity had she chosen to go through with the pregnancy.  If Cristina had had a baby, the parasites would have won.

Obviously, most people will never go through a real life version of this fictional drama, but the ideological stakes are real.  Among Christians I would presume that most will be pro-life, with varying stances only on issues like rape or health of the mother.  Regardless, for Christians or non-Christians, this is an issue I would definitely check out before the relationship becomes serious enough for marriage.  While you may not go through a scenario just like Cristina and Owen’s, you may face a scenario in which you conceive a child with Down’s syndrome, or a chromosomal disorder that makes it unlikely that your child will survive for very long outside the womb, or some other physical flaw.  You may face a scenario where the pregnancy may endanger the health of the mother.  Knowing what you both believe, and that you are in agreement on those beliefs, could save your marriage someday.

P.S.  Men, if you begin dating a woman who would deny any rights of your paternity to your unborn child, RUN!!!

Me no speak-ah Christianese-ah.

Sometimes I think Christians would have a better chance of being understood and a lesser chance of being mocked if they would not resort to speaking in Christianese when they are trying to discuss simple concepts.  Here’s a statement I found in the latest Boundless thread (a thread I would eventually like to discuss since it’s about online dating):

Treat other men and women as prized children of God and help them to guard their hearts, rather than becoming one more in the arsenal of the enemy who wants to dash their hopes about finding a Christian spouse and rob their joy in the season of singleness.

Seriously, is anyone not born and bathed in churchliness going to have any sympathy for a statement like this?  (I mean, aside from the fact that the sentence is 48 words long and therefore the average American reader’s eyes glazed over 32 words ago.)  The whole thing is one declamatory churchly cliche after another.  “Prized children of God”?  “Guard their hearts”?  “Arsenal of the enemy”?  “Rob their joy”?  “Season of singleness”?  Who talks like this other than the churchliest of the churchly?  The whole thing would have been more effective if communicated less like a blustering televangelist and more like a person you might actually speak to in real life.

I’ve noticed that in general, Christianese is a rampant affliction in evangelical circles.  Who hasn’t attended a Bible study and heard someone say something to the effect of God just laid it on my heart…?  Or such-and-such just touched my heart, or that just blessed my heart so much?  WHO TALKS LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE????  I get that every subculture has its own jargon, but there’s something about Christianese that rankles so deeply.  It overly smooths the surface of everything and speaks of things in terms of emotion.  In a world full of Christianese, nothing is raw or dirty.  Nothing is awkward.  Nothing bleeds.  Even pain is somehow blunted.  For me Christianese is strangely gooey and antiseptic at the same time.

On the upside, if you are a single Christian man in intentional pursuit of God’s unspeakably precious gift of a helpmeet designed specifically for you because God is wildly passionate about His utterly beloved children, then a young woman fluent in Christianese is often a good sign that you have found a righteous candidate.

Whose last name?

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any conservative Christian marriages of my acquaintance where the wife didn’t take the husband’s last name.  Even among the nominal or seculars, I know very few couples who don’t share the husband’s last name.  (Although my own family is an exception.  One of my cousins married a woman who hyphenated her surname, which caused my grandmother great distress and many subtextual remarks…until one of my other cousins married a secular Hindu who didn’t change her name at all and they had the audacity to send out a Christmas card signed with both of their full names.  That caused a bit of a behind-their-backs stir.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given my upbringing and general conservatism, I’m pretty agnostic on marital naming conventions.  The wife’s taking her husband’s name is a Western cultural tradition, but it’s only that:  a tradition.  It’s not mandated by the Bible, and I can’t recall ever hearing any sermons even addressing the issue.  Sharing the husband’s last name doesn’t make a couple more or less married, nor does it make their marriage better or worse off, just like wearing a wedding band in and of itself doesn’t make someone married or make a marriage better or worse.

I do think that it’s best that married couples with kids all share the last name.  It’s just easier to identify the family as a unit, it cuts down on confusion with teachers and other parents, and it gives kids a tangible “belonging” as a family member.  As for hyphenation, it’s just cumbersome.  Think of poor little Johnny taking his SATs and only being able to bubble in “Nakopokoulous-Sm” because his hyphenated name is just too frickin’ long.  Not everyone can have a hyphenated surname as snappy as the Jolie-Pitts.

Of course, it’s easiest just to follow convention.  (That’s why it’s convention.)  If you decide not to follow convention, you should also be willing to accept that other people won’t agree with your decision and may even get confrontational/judgmental about it.  Then again, I would expect people to be understanding if your fiance’s last name is, say, Fahrts or something along that line.

Church is for frumps?

It occurred to me today that maybe part of the problem of getting people to meet and marry within the church is the high incidence of egregious frumpiness.  I’m not saying that this is the reason or even a main reason, but surely it is a not completely insignificant contributing factor.

Seriously, look around the average evangelical McChurch on Sunday morning.  People don’t dress up for church anymore.  In the effort during the past 25 years or so to entice non-churchers into (or back into) the fold, churches ditched just about everything that was traditionally churchy.  Out went the stiff, boring hymns**, and in came “worship choruses” that sound like the worst dreck of soft hits radio and usually feature lyrics addressed to “you” about streams, fountains, skies, and hearts.  This also meant that organs were out, and “praise bands” led by a semi-hip guy (sometimes trendily unshaven) who passionately grimaces while strumming his acoustic guitar were in.  Similarly, pastors stopped wearing suits and ties and started wearing Hawaiian shirts in order to be “accessible,” everyday joes.  Churches started trying to be cutting edge and “not scared of the culture,” injecting movie clips, popular songs, skits, and lots and lots of PowerPoint into sermons.

And, not surprisingly, with churches now acting the part of “cool hangout where, like, you can learn stuff that’s, like, totally important for life – bring your unsaved friends!”, out went the practice of dressing up in Sunday’s best.  Nowadays it’s rare to see a man in a button-down shirt, much less a tie, much much less a suit – and this goes tenfold for younger men.  Women don’t wear dresses, and if they do, they’re not nice dresses but Frump City specials that don’t accentuate anything good about the woman’s body.  In the summer, it’s common to see hideous khaki shorts all over the place, and in the non-summer, jeans galore.

If Christians are representatives of Christ on Earth, shouldn’t we be doing a little better in the looks department?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, God cares more about the work you’re doing for the lost souls of the world than your appearance, and we certainly don’t want to encourage superficiality or materialism, and heaven forbid we even hint at a legalistic dress code, but ugh…when you think about it, most congregations are eyesores.  And yes, some of it is just a widespread cultural thing, with the average American being an eyesore himself, but man, not many people dress with pride for church anymore.  (And part of me wonders if churches would be more effective if their congregations dressed better.)

So, bringing this back around to the mating game – when the majority of young, single people at a church frump it up on Sundays, how are they ever going to catch each other’s eyes?  (It’s not like they’re dressing any better for the young singles group on Wednesdays.)  I guess everyone’s just hoping that this year’s winter retreat is going to be the one where Jimmy finally sees the inner beauty of Sarah’s godly personality.  Or vice versa.

(To find the above photo, all I used was “worship service” as my search term.  This is fairly dressed up by contemporary evangelical standards.)

**Good hymns = Not Boring.  Boring = Most Worship Songs Sung in Churches Today.

Taking the house.

I was thinking about the thread that will never die, which made me think about the following exchange from Ocean’s Eleven.  Danny Ocean has just been released from prison, and instead of commencing a morally upright new beginning, he tracks down his old partner Rusty to help him mastermind a robbery of  three prominent Las Vegas casinos.  Rusty, however, thinks this is a huge mistake.  Danny is determined, though, and turns on his powers of persuasion.

RUSTY:  I need a reason.  And don’t say money.  Why do this?

DANNY:  Why not do it?  Because yesterday I walked out of the joint wearing my entire wardrobe and you’re colddecking Teen Beat cover boys.  Because the house always wins.  You play long enough, never changing stakes, the house takes you.  Unless, when that special hand comes around, you bet big.  And then you take the house.

It occurred to me that this is the mating strategy that Rebecca St. James followed.  As is well-known, she was very vocal about her virginity and her intention not to have sex until she was married.  She became the poster child of True Love Waits, cut a purity crusade anthem called “Wait for Me,” wrote the foreword to IKDG, and in general became an evangelical darling.  Which was great and all, but no one could have predicted that Rebecca would go on to spend something like 16 or 17 years publicly waiting.  Even among Christians, I think, there’s a point at which admiration turns to UM, WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?, especially for someone who has beauty, wealth, and access to presumably high-quality men.

But instead of cashing in her chips and getting out of the game with a respectable profit, Rebecca bet big on 7-Card Spinster and took the house.  She waited, and waited, and waited…and ended up with a Beefcake Missionary who now has the good fortune of being in a band with a mainstream hit single, and who is both good-looking and gentlemanly enough to have old college acquaintances looking him up and vouching for his gentlemanly beefcakiness.  Were there really NO other godly men Rebecca could have loved and who were willing to marry her in the last 17 years?

I expect that as a result of waiting and winning, Rebecca will continue to be a role model and inspiration to many single Christian women around the world, as she is now living proof that waiting and trusting in God brings big rewards…eventually.  My question is this, though:  is this a strategy that single Christian women at large should follow?  I ask this because I feel that it IS the strategy that single Christian women are being encouraged to follow:  don’t settle, don’t compromise, trust in God’s perfect timing, and He will answer the cries of your heart with more love than you can possibly imagine.  You are His dear, precious daughter whom He loves passionately!  Which is true, and yet…

…most churches have plenty of single women in attendance and few, if any, Jacob Finks in attendance.

So where does this leave most single church girls?  Holding all of their chips, waiting for that special hand to come around, hoping that they’ll be the one to beat the odds?  Or beating themselves up in the belief that if only they were more spiritual and “together,” God would finally send them the man of their dreams?

It’s just hard to see any other strategy catching any kind of fire, for a couple of reasons.  One, American culture is all about going for the brass ring, shooting for the moon, believing that you’re the exception that can defy the odds.  Two, this mindset colors everything we do, including dating and marriage.  Churches these days are all about God wanting The Best For Us.  God’s Best.  God’s Blessings.  Showering, Raining Down, Covering You, Wrapping You In His Arms, etc.  It’s not that most churches are preaching prosperity gospel (at least, I don’t think they are), but it’s not an uninfluential mindset.  Third, most young women are taught that they “deserve” a “great guy.”  It’s all over the place in the media.  Single female characters on TV and film who are looking for love are consistently told by friends that they “deserve” someone great (someone who’s going to be worth all of your own greatness, someone who will appreciate you just as you are, someone who won’t treat you like crap like the last jerkface you dated…).  Anyone who disagrees with this probably is a misogynist.  What young women want to hear that God’s Best for them might include a husband who’s mediocre-looking, bad at sex, and only wants to watch sports on TV?

Still, would it really be better to tell women to cash out early and forget about waiting for the special hand to bet big on?  That’s horribly unromantic.   Most women wouldn’t go for that, and most men would be offended and/or devastated if they suspected that their wives didn’t think the husbands were the best they could get but the wives just didn’t want to wait around forever.

So where does a single woman find the sweet spot between waiting for her “great guy” and settling for what’s available because the “great guy” is never going to come and find her?

DON’T TURN THE COMMENTS INTO A WOMAN-BASHING SESSION.  THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER PLACES TO DO THAT.

You are a delusional Christian if you think you can have a very long courtship and/or engagement and not have sex.

A post at Athol’s from July got me all fired up on this topic.  (So I wrote a post and then sat on it for several weeks.  ANYHOW.)  A mid-20s Christian reader wrote to Athol asking for advice about his relationship with his girlfriend of three years.  Christian Guy hasn’t had intercourse with his girlfriend yet because she wants to wait for marriage, so they’ve decided that guilt over handjobs and occasional oral sex is a more tolerable way to have a relationship.  Most recently, the girlfriend has stated that she wants to cut off ALL sexual contact so she can be sure that CG truly loves her.

Athol’s advice to CG was that he should just go ahead and bang his girlfriend because cutting off sexual contact was her sexual rejection of CG and that a future marriage would not suffer from premarital sex due to their being each other’s first sexual partners.  Additionally, girlfriend’s rejection is a shit test because she wants CG to alpha up and just go for it.

Obviously, as a Christian, I disagree with this advice even though I can understand the reasoning behind it.  (And I do agree that the girlfriend’s rejection is a shit test.)  But that doesn’t really address the underlying issue here, which is why are CG and his girlfriend waiting so long to get married in the first place?  They’re both in their mid-20s, have been together for three years already, and are succumbing to sexual sin in what sounds like an unhappy cycle of hopelessness.  Athol’s blog article doesn’t mention any extenuating circumstances such as abject poverty, or someone is waiting to get out of prison, or someone’s gender reassignment surgery is not yet complete.  And yet CG and his girlfriend are not on schedule to get married for another TWO YEARS.

Does ANYONE in their right mind think that this is a plan for success?!?

The thing about sex is that it only goes in one direction, and it is only designed to have one ending point.  In other words, once you start going down the physical road with someone, it becomes nearly impossible to back up to an earlier point; the only solution is to stop associating with that person completely (i.e., a breakup).  And the ending point of sex is intercourse.  A prolonged stay in Hand Job City or endlessly cruising down Blow Me Bypass is sexually dysfunctional for a healthy couple.  It’s like an Olympic diver climbing to the top of the high dive, bouncing up and down on the springboard, and then…not diving into the water.  Repeatedly.  And convincing yourself that this is a cool way to get close to the water without getting wet.  At some point you’ll either fall in in a way you never intended to, or you’ll psych yourself out when it’s finally time to dive (after two years of training yourself to stop at the end of the board).

I think the church has done a real disservice to its young men and women by going along with the cultural flow of delayed marriage rather than promoting young marriage.  Expecting the vast majority of young Christians to keep their clothes on and hands off for 15-20 years after hitting puberty is ridiculous.  By age 25-ish, a lot of young people are just going to give up on waiting if they don’t see imminent light at the end of the tunnel.  They’ve already waited a decade or more, and the prospect of waiting another decade has the pallor of death.  Besides, all of their friends are doing it and lightning hasn’t struck them yet, plus the church has abortion and homosexuality to worry about.  As long as there are genuine feelings of love and no one gets pregnant and no one gets a disease, is it really that big of a deal? (whispers Satan’s Hamster.)

That said, I think a bigger problem is long courtships and engagements.  When two people are sexually attracted to each other but committed to not having sex until marriage, a four-year courtship followed by a one-year engagement sounds like insanity to me.  Once you’ve gotten the big issues out of the way, like faith, money, character, and goals, and you know that you enjoy each other’s company and are attracted to each other, and others whose opinions you value approve of the match, how much longer do you really need to decide someone is “the one”?  What more could the other person possibly do to prove to you that you should spend the rest of your lives together?  For people who are beyond college-age, I think it’s entirely possible to go from meeting to married within a year to 18 months.  Extending the timeframe longer than that is just setting yourself up for failure, not to mention a lot of gnashing of teeth (as it were) due to having to repress a great deal of your physical desire for each other.

By the way, shorter courtships mean more intentional dating.  You can enjoy the company of a whole lot more people than those who are serious marriage material.  Limit your dating pool to marriageable prospects, and you will give yourself a leg up in the decision-making process.  (Plus, you will help yourself avoid the temptation to get physical with someone you have no intention of marrying.)