Christians who don’t promote young marriage don’t actually care about chastity.

Reader Nate Winchester sent me a link to this article from The Catholic World Report: “Should We Bring Back Young Marriage?”

It’s a longer article, but it’s a good read.

My take on the issue of young marriage is that if Christians are actually serious about chastity, then they HAVE to support young marriage.  And it seems to me that Christians at large are not serious about chastity.  All of the “True Love Waits”-style campaigns, purity rings, abstinence education – all of that means NOTHING in the face of biology…or at least it ends up meaning nothing if you’re alone with your boyfriend in your apartment at night and you’re in love with each other, or at least happen to think each other is hot.  I mean, what do parents REALLY THINK is going to happen?  Maybe not the first time, but given ENOUGH time.  That they’re just having Bible study at 1:00am?

Are adult Christians just stupid?

Is it not obvious to anyone with half a brain that human beings were not designed to delay sex for two or three decades after coming to sexual maturity?  Yet we have Christians not blinking an eye at full-grown adult singles waiting until age 35 to marry for the first time, because that was just God’s perfect plan or whatever.

Maybe these Christians (because THEY married at age 21 or 22 and never had the delightful experience of having unfulfillable sexual desires for 10 or 20 years) think that anyone can wait because THEY were able to wait for, like, five years.  Maybe the only singles they know at church are low sex-drive 2s, or girls who became chubby single cat ladies by age 26 and are totally content to serve in the nursery at church while patientlyyyy waiting for Mr. Right that everyone knows will never arrive – isn’t it obvious that waiting is a realistic and achievable goal?

Or maybe it’s that as long as the couple weren’t cohabitating before marriage, then we can totally assume that they weren’t having premarital sex, right?  Even though they dated for five years!

I think some of it is that there are a lot of married Christians in the church these days who had premarital sex, and they just don’t want to address it, because then THEY might have to come clean about their own fornication, and nobody wants to go there because (A) no one else’s business, and (B) awkward.  So everyone just turns a blind eye to what they know is going on, and it’ll all work out because we’re all forgiven and everybody makes mistakes and no sin is greater than any other sin.

Until someone gets pregnant.  But even then, everyone rallies around the brave single mother (no abortion = hero for life) and volunteers to babysit.

We hear a lot these days from pearl-clutching Christians about how evil the world is and how depraved the culture, etc.  If Christians are really serious about changing the culture for the better, then they need to get serious about promoting young marriage and stop telling singles (either explicitly or implicitly) that they have a long time to find someone and it’s better to go off and have adventures while they figure out who they are.  And they also need to stop telling people that the 20s are a “season” in which you can work on yourself to become closer to God and therefore marriage-worthy or whatever.  By the time you hit your 20s, you should already be well-formed enough to be a good candidate for being a spouse.  That has not so much to do with how many various experiences you have in life but very much to do with your fundamental character.  Marriage shouldn’t be about bringing two “experts in life experience” together but rather about bringing two young people who may be inexperienced in life but of solid character together.  All the life experience in the world means very little with no character.  Age 22 is not a good age at which to BEGIN to develop character.   Yes, it’s a good thing to have done some introspective thought about who you are and what you want, but this idea that we have to be practically irrevocably formed before even entertaining the thought of marriage is wrong-headed.  If anything, too much formation makes it that much harder for someone to get married and stay married.

 

Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20.

In case this video hasn’t made the rounds to your internet neighborhood yet –

Meg Jay is a clinical psychologist whose practice focuses on 20-somethings.  In this TEDtalk she discusses why now is the time to invest in your life, rather than believe your 20s are a ten-year freebie pass to mess/wander around because life and direction are just going to be there for you at 30.  I think she is actually the first person I’ve heard who tells people that the decisions you make today can cut off possibilities for your future (such as the ability to have a family when you want one).  Even church advice is typically of the “get married young, but if God doesn’t bring your mate into your life in college, just keep hoping and praying – God’s timing is perfect!” variety.  Meanwhile, girls are turning 30, dressing frumpy, and waiting for that sacrificial leader to walk in the door on Sunday and choose them.  Good luck with that!

Jay’s talk is important because a generation of young people has been raised to believe that they can have whatever they want, whenever they want – they are just that special, and all they have to do is wish hard and it will happen.  Especially now, with the ubiquity and immediacy of texting, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media, you can get stuck in a bubble where reality doesn’t intrude – where you don’t (and don’t have to) contemplate reality.  This makes getting hit in the face with reality even worse, AND you’re totally psychologically unprepared to deal with it.  While Dr. Jay does not give Christian advice, she does hit a lot of the same areas that the Boundless types are always harping on, except Dr. Jay does it in a way makes a lot more sense and is far less annoying.

Also, although Jay focuses on twentysomethings, her advice is good for any age.  Now is always the right time to take stock of your life, get focused, and do things that will help you get where you need to go.

Should Christians EVER go on dates with (presumed) non-Christians?

For those of us who have grown up in the church, probably the cardinal rule of dating that is hammered home again and again and AGAIN is to never date an unbeliever.  This is because if you date an unbeliever, you will have premarital sex, never go to church again, and basically ruin the rest of your life.

When you’re in high school, or even college, this seems like pretty solid advice.  For girls, you are advised to keep holding out for that ambitious young man who loves Jesus and is a spiritual leader and material provider who will love you sacrificially and be a good father to your children whom you will raise in the faith, trusting God every step of the way as this young man challenges you to grow in your faith and prays for you to love Jesus even more as you have your couple devotions which he leads.  You know this guy is out there, because God is writing your love story and you are using this season of singleness to fall in love with Jesus even more in anticipation of the spiritually appointed meeting of this young man, who is also using this season of singleness to grow into the strong, faithful leader that God intends him to be.  Sure, you’re frustrated because the guys in your youth group seem immature and only interested in the popular girls (which you are not one of), but you can hold out, because you can’t imagine your life beyond age 25 and by then you’ll surely be married.

I’m not sure what the equivalent advice for guys is, but I’m guessing it’s some combination of never looking at porn, confessing your boners to other men, and praying and averting your eyes when you feel temptation.  Also, praising God for redeeming the precious young women in the group who had been deceived by men who only wanted to use them for sex.

And again, all this seems like a solid game plan……..provided you’re married by age 25.  It’s just – what about the rest of us for whom that cutoff point passes, and we’re still single?

By this point, you are:

• out of college
• in the workforce, full-time
• starting to feel uncomfortable in “college & career” settings
• but too young to be part of the “dregs of the church SMP baby mamas/broken divorced people singles” scene at church

The young married people you know have fallen into the Young Marrieds Abyss, where conversation now revolves around mini-vans, preschool, coupons for Kohl’s, and recipes on Pinterest.

The older married people you know don’t know any young singles to introduce you to, or if they do know anyone unmarried, that person would not be a good match for you.

As a good Christian, you do not troll bars, and if, on the off-chance, you happen to go to a bar with some friends (where you feel very uncomfortable), you are DEFINITELY not there to meet men, because good men don’t go to bars – especially not to bars with the goal of meeting chicks, because everyone knows that girls who go to bars are trampy sluts – and a marriage-worthy Christian man would NEVER look for wife material at a bar – and so you know going in that you have already written off every man in the bar, full stop.

So you go through some very long dry spells where the most male attention you get is from a 44-year-old church creeper from the singles group, but there’s a kind of cute guy at work who probably is not a Christian, and you know this because he sometimes drops the F-bomb, but he’s nice to you and you think that sometimes he’s sort of flirting with you, and after a while you start wondering…….would it really hurt so much to go on a date with a non-Christian??  I mean, a date is not a proposal, and you’re 30/32/35/38/41/43 and not getting any younger.

At this point, Christian advice tends to bifurcate.  On the one hand, you have the hard-liners who feel that The Bible Says, and if you never go on that first date with a non-Christian, you will never have to deal with all the problems that come from Unequal Yokeage, which is the whole point of The Bible Says in the first place.  Plus, where is your faith?  God can work miracles.  Keep hoping and praying for your miracle.  Everything God does is perfect and in His own time – there will be so much greater and more rejoicing as you look back on this season and recognize His faithfulness to you.  And if you never meet anyone, then that is God’s plan for you and you can serve Him so much better as a single person, anyway.  Those people who have to spend time with their children?  They can’t serve at church potlucks and crisis pregnancy centers the way you can.

On the other hand, you have the people who approach dating slightly more recreationally.  These people don’t see the harm in going out with someone because it’s Just A Date, and Just A Dates don’t have a lot of big-picture significance.  Why not spend some time getting to know someone else?  It’s just a date, and early dates are casual.  No harm, no foul.  Plus, if you start to get a reputation for saying no to those who ask, eventually NO ONE will ask.

The two positions, as far as I can tell, are irreconcilable.  If you go to a church full of The Bible Says-ers, you will be frowned upon if word gets out that you went out with a non-Jesus-lover.  (You can tell if you attend such a church, because if you mention a young man to the women at church, the first or second thing they will ask about him is if he is a Christian.  If you say “no” or “I don’t know,” they will immediately advise you never to date a nonbeliever.)  But – are you doomed to zero dates over the course of a decade or more, potentially turning down a number of men just because they swore in front of you?  Is it really worth being alone all the time?

I don’t know what the answer is.  I just feel frustrated with the state of things.  And I feel despair when I read comments like this one from MontanaMoxie at Boundless:

I enjoyed listening to the panel discussion on 2nd dates. It sounds like CO Springs has a pretty great Christian singles dating scene.  Maybe I ought to move there!  Just kidding, of course…but I’ve been a little discouraged this weekend.  I’ll be turning 33 years old this week, and I haven’t ever been on a first date as an adult, let alone a 2nd date.  I don’t know how I’ll get to marriage someday (something I highly value, study and prepare for, desire, respect, etc.) if I can’t even get to a first date.  I suppose I’ll keep asking God to work a miracle, because I think that may be what it will take!

Really?  REALLY??  I know the Christian wing of the manosphere loves to focus on tearing apart and mocking the Saved Single SlutMoms, but there are a bunch of MontanaMoxies in churches, too – girls who have been churchpilling all their lives and have gotten nowhere romantically by doing so.  They’ve been told to trust God, and fall even MORE in love with Jesus, and to stay chaste, and to look for that Strong Leader Guy, and to IKDG and not date casually, and to keep hoping and hoping and hoping and praying and praying and praying – and the clock keeps running.  Meanwhile, guys feel like they’re at a job interview when they go on Christian Dates.  In the same thread at Boundless, Corwin aptly sums up the Christian Dating Problem from the male perspective:

I’ll be completely honest with you, I hate Christian dating, haven’t been on a date in well over a year, and have little interest in dating a Christian girl ever again because it often seems like first and second dates are more like a driver’s licence exam than a social evening. Did he show ability to take risks by asking me out in person? Nope, he used Facebook — two demerits. Did he show ability to provide by jumping up to pay for my $3 coffee? Nope, he was in the bathroom when I ordered, so I had to pay — three demerits. Did he show leadership by picking a venue conducive to conversation? Nope, he took me to a crowded place that he should’ve known would be too loud to talk deeply — six demerits…and that’s a fail for this dude’s godly husband potential.

Of course I’m exaggerating, but I really have found that the expectations and judgements that are made on Christian first dates are quite extreme. I really don’t think you can accurately assess anyone’s leadership or provider or parenting potential the first time you go out with them. No one is truly themselves on a first date either due to nerves or trying to be impressive, yet statement like “if he can’t lead a first date, he can’t lead your children” make it sound like it’s totally legit to give guys one high-pressure shot to prove who they are to women.

Christians love to talk about how “the world” is so messed up and “worldly” dating is so messed up – maybe they should look at the church, because as far as I can tell, it’s not any better inside the church.

Sorry if this is a downer, guys – just feeling frustrated at the moment.