Whatever else He has in store for you could be a lot of waiting.

In his post “Boundless Is Their Foolishness,” Dalrock calls out women who treat every goal in their lives like a job – except getting married.  He writes:

When it comes to her real priorities in life, she is all about the plan.  But when it comes down to becoming a wife and mother, she is sitting around waiting for God to deliver a beta provider.  This seems to fit both with the general advice Haley relays from the church, as well as what I hear many Christians discussing.  If I’m understanding the general Christian message to young women correctly, it is:

Don’t worry, God will guide your heart.

A recent Boundless post encapsulates this exact attitude.  In “A Moment of Reflection,” blogger Emma just passed the six-month mark in her ChristianCafe.com membership and has Learned Things.  She says:

The most surprising thing I’ve learned is how I really feel about marriage. Before I started on this journey, I wanted to get married. But I don’t think I realized how much I actually desired it. In a strange way, it was difficult to admit that I want marriage. (Kind of silly, huh?) On the other hand, it was freeing. Going to Jesus, being honest about those desires and laying them before Him continues to be an exercise in faith. I have also been convicted about the fantasy I’ve built up about how meeting my future spouse is going to happen. The picture I’ve had in my head about how my life would turn out has differed vastly from how it’s actually happened. While I’ve had to work on accepting what God is doing with my life in general, the area of dating and marriage is one place where I’ve held on to my own plan tightly. Slowly I’ve become aware of the need to relinquish control.

So that’s where things stand now. I know that there are many more lessons to be learned. And while the journey has been unexpected, I know that I’m right where the Lord wants me to be. I’m looking forward to whatever else He has in store for me.

I think the whole idea behind this way of thinking is that women are too invested in finding a spouse “their way.”  By being too invested in “their way,” they are not open to other (read: GOD’S) ways.  This is unbiblical because it demonstrates closed-mindedness and lack of faith (remember, God is so great that He can accomplish anything He wants however and whenever He wants! so it’s really not up to you and you should therefore stop trying to make it up to you! Let go and let God!), so women must give up “their way” and only be open to “God’s way.”  And however things happen must be “God’s way,” so there’s really no effective way of dissuading a woman from her current method of husband-hunting so long as she’s convinced she is doing it “God’s way.”

Also, I think the other, not-really-acknowledged part of it is that for all the admonishments for young, Christian women to look forward to the day God brings them to the special man God has picked out Just For Them, a lot of young, Christian women just don’t possess the suite of wifely skills that would increase their marital prospects.  Sure, there are hyper-organized young women whose idea of heaven is The Container Store, but there are just as many, if not more, slobby girls out there whose rooms look like hurricanes blew through them.  A lot of girls don’t know the basics of cooking.  A lot of girls don’t clean…much.  They don’t iron, they don’t decorate, they don’t know how to look for bargains or budget, they don’t know how to dress themselves with both dignity and style.  Some of these skills come with time and experience, but a lot of girls can only offer their youth and their love for Jesus.  That’s just not enough when it comes to marriage, but so much churchly advice does these girls wrong by teaching them that Mr. Right will be identifiable by his love for her good heart alone and that he will arrive in God’s Perfect Timing.  So just keep on being frumpy and praying, because God can see your beautiful heart even if those sin-blinded men out there who are probably addicted to porn and as a result can’t see your true beauty can’t.  Is this really the best way to offer hope to unmarried women?

Translation: she’s not hot enough for him.

Boundless, how I hate hate to love love thee.  Thou art truly the gift that keeps giving.  Without thee, this blog would not have nearly as much reason to exist.

John Thomas has a new column up today called “Wondering Eyes,” in which he advises a male reader on what to do about his girlfriend:  namely, that he intellectually recognizes her as quality but his heart’s not in it anymore.  Reader self-castigates this as “pride.”

In his response, Thomas spends a lot of words telling Reader how he needs to have God’s Spirit transform his mind and examine the why of his desire to see what other girls are out there.  (Does it really require examination and prayer to explain a man’s desire for variety?!?!)  Says Thomas:

You’ve got to come to a place where you are grateful, excited and entirely content with the gift of another person in your life.** But where pride is blooming in the heart, there is no room for true gratefulness.

(**Insert manosphere railing against Thomas’s underlying pedestalization of “the gift of another person,” i.e., women.)

But really, Thomas could have saved himself a lot of virtual ink, because the problem is evident in Reader’s first two sentences:

I’ve been dating a wonderful girl. She is witty, intelligent, adventurous, talented, and above all she loves God in a way that I really see as a gift. She has a true passion for Him.

Notice how he NEVER MENTIONS THAT SHE IS GOOD-LOOKING TO HIM.  And he KNOWS she is below his SMV, because later he says:

I’m a good-looking, guitar-playing, God-loving man.

Right on, bro.  Jacob Fink approves.

But more seriously – Where Thomas sees Reader’s problem as an issue of lack of gratefulness, the real issue is a very simple one:  she’s not hot enough for him.  At least Thomas correctly advised Reader to break up with his girlfriend.

ETA:  On further reflection, I’ve also concluded that Thomas is wrong that Reader is immature and is not ready for marriage.  I think, based on Reader’s comments, that he WOULD be ready to move forward toward marriage IF the girl in question met his physical attractiveness requirements.  But she doesn’t, hence Reader’s gut telling him to bail.  And now I’m REALLY hating John Thomas for criticizing this kid for both immaturity as a man and as a believer.

Sex in last place.

As far as I can tell, most Christian advice about picking a spouse puts sex, or sexual spark, or whatever you want to call it, in last place.  It may be because a lot of Christians have mediocre sex lives (just hypothesizing), or because traditionally it was more important for a woman to find a good provider than it was to find a good lover, or because Christians just assume that sexual attraction will be there in some form whenever you put a man and a woman together, but whatever the case may be, at least when I was growing up, sexual attraction was, like, the last thing to consider when checking off the list for husbandly attributes.

Things that are more important than sex:

• Loving Jesus
• Attending church regularly
• Submitting oneself to God’s will
• Reading the Bible and praying
• Having a good job and being a provider
• Not a smoker
• Not a drinker
• Not a gambler
• Not a swearer
• Not an abuser
• Not a porn-watcher
• Loves kids
• Would be a good father
• Gets along with his own family
• Gets along with your family
• Sexually pure
• Sexually faithful
• Completely loyal
• Kind
• Compassionate
• Gentle
• Responsible

(The female version just has opposite genders, and women aren’t required to be providers.)

So, once you have all of these items checked off, THEN you can consider if the other person is at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, and if the person ISN’T at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, then maybe it’s time to start praying and then God may enable you to become sexually attracted to that person.

And, in the churchly way of thinking, the reason this kind of advice works is because it’s “the world” that puts inordinate importance on sexual attraction, and Christians are not to be of “the world,” and that appeals to the whole counter-cultural instinct.  Additionally, a lot of people ruin their lives by letting their sex drives do all the thinking, so there’s a precautionary aspect as well.  Churches are in the business of fixing people, but it’s even better not to have to fix people.  Also, nobody wants to think of all of the senior citizens at church ever having randy feelings.

The other thought that I had was that a lot of single Christians are not beautiful women or top-drawer men, and if churches can get singles to get past the requirement of throbbing physical attraction, more Christians will get married.  And since marriage is good for society and the church and people, then everyone wins.

Take, for example, Candice Watters’ advice from this article from Marry Well:

If what he’s looking to hold his marriage together for “many, many, many years” is sexual attraction, he’s setting himself up for disappointment. The only way to keep the high-jinks of new love going is to keep starting over with new lovers.

But that’s the message we’re bombarded with in our culture. In Hollywood especially, the end of the emotional high signals the need to move on to a new relationship where the high-octane meter gets to start over. Sometimes that means serial dating. More often it means divorce and remarriage. Tragically one in five married couples won’t reach their 5th anniversary.

But it need not end this way. When two believers come together in marriage, they have the potential, when the giddy feelings ebb, to leave what C.S. Lewis calls the “thrill” phase of romance for the “quieter and more lasting kind of interest … and happiness that follows.” He encourages this process, noting it is “one little part of what Christ meant by saying a thing will not really live unless it first dies.”

But in order for that to happen, we need to have realistic expectations, and the awareness that those giddy feelings will ebb.

….

I suspect your friend would say his desire for a “zing-pop” connection is consistent with Song of Solomon. There certainly was chemistry between Solomon and his bride. But nowhere in Scripture is that given as a condition for a God-glorifying marriage. You can build a strong, godly, world changing marriage on many things. But you can never build that simply on looks. Good looks are a bonus.

….

I worry for men like your friend who may miss out on highly productive marriages and families that are fruitful for the kingdom, simply because the women God brings to them don’t, at first, cause a chemical reaction.

The problem with Watters’ argument is that she is jumping to the apex fallacy of sexual attraction being the sole reason to marry.  Physical attraction is important to men, but only the most foolish men marry strictly for physical attraction.  (And they really would be idiots, because everyone knows that senior citizens don’t pose for centerfolds.)  But it’s amply evident from reading manosphere blogs that sexual attraction does help to keep marriages together in times when it would be easy to give up, because sex bonds people together.  Just remove sex from a marriage and see how long it lasts with any degree of happiness on either side.

This kind of advice completely misunderstands (at best) and disregards (at worst) male sexuality and what motivates men to pursue women.  When a man is sexually attracted to his wife in a functional marriage, he will be more productive, more open to her counsel, and all-around more content and happy.  I think what Watters is really doing is projecting her desire for young women not to fall prey to alpha players (“he’s so hot that I have to be with him even though he’s a loser”) onto men and their interest in attractive women (“she’s an idiot who hates kids, is in credit card debt up to her eyeballs, and is an alcoholic, but man, I’ve gotta spend the rest of my life legally bound to those jugs!”).

Is society so broken that every piece of advice or persuasive argument must be presented using extreme examples as rationales?  Can’t there be a happy medium where sex appeal is given its due while also encouraging the value of character?  Sheesh.

Boundless continues to beat “the only true beauty is a good personality” drum.

I guess it’s been too long since Boundless reminded everyone that your personality is the only thing that matters, so they had uberbeta Andrew Hess whip up an article that not only shames people for liking attractive people of a healthy weight, but also blames pornography for unrealistic standards of beauty.  (Um…has he seen the women who act in porn?  Unrealistic, yes.  Beautiful….um.)

The whole article was completely all over the place, as if Hess were grabbing at anything that could even slightly strengthen his argument, which basically boiled down to, “Pretty people have it better, and that sucks.”

First, he lamented the old Sprite slogan that said “image is everything.”  Because darn it, some people actually believe that image matters.   Then he was sad that people had to debate whether a fat man was fit to be President (no shout-out to William Howard Taft?), and even slammed The Biggest Loser for providing the drama of watching obese people lose weight “fast.”

Next, he brought up the ominous statistics of the $60 billion-a-year weight-loss industry and the 75 million Americans currently on diets.  (And this is a bad thing because…?)  And whoa, can’t forget the whole clothing and makeup markets.  Tsk, tsk.

Then Hess asked us what the “real costs of a culture over-emphasizing image and attractiveness” are.  Wellllll, if fat Americans going on diets – and statistically, the U.S. has a majority of its adult population that is overweight – and wanting to dress fashionably constitute “over-emphasizing image and attractiveness,” is that necessarily a bad thing?  Shouldn’t a nation of fat people desire to be less fat?

But instead of discussing his own ideas of what would constitute an ideal world (where I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re fat), Hess bizarrely then starts bashing pornography as creating a population unable to appreciate true beauty.  WHAT?!?  Is he honestly trying to say that if pornography didn’t exist, the average person would find fat people more attractive?  I mean, it sure sounds like it.

Hess then makes an appeal to the spiritual:

The teachings of Jesus and the other New Testament writers point people toward a focus on spiritual realities rather than physical ones. In fact, Peter clearly instructed first-century women to focus on their inner beauty rather than the external, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:3-4). Peter taught women to think about beauty in terms of their spiritual conformity to Christ’s character, and in the same way, men should think about image and attractiveness in terms of character.

Hess is trying to tie two things together that don’t belong together.  Peter correctly admonishes women to cultivate their personalities, because physical beauty is temporary.  But I’m pretty sure Peter wasn’t speaking to a room full of Weight Watchers members, either.  These verses aren’t an excuse to let yourself go crazy with the Ho-Hos because you’ve got a good personality.

Hess continues:

When the Bible describes the beauty of Christ, it always speaks of His love, His humility, His sacrifice for His people, His continuing work as their mediator, and many other things He is and does. It never even mentions what He looked like. We must learn to see the beauty in ourselves and others in the same way.

This is classic churchian logic:  your exterior doesn’t matter so long as your ~heart~ is beautiful.  But this is utterly ridiculous, because deep down, people know that their insides eventually show up on their outsides.  That is how most people can (often correctly) identify people’s character traits from their appearances.  You wouldn’t want a disheveled, sloppy person to work for you, because that sloppiness indicates interior character failings.  So why are we as Christians continually asked to pretend we are blind?  I’m not advocating a lack of compassion by any means, but I really resent being told to ignore cues that are necessary for society to operate properly.

Hess finishes up:

In a culture that boasts image is everything, let’s remember true beauty is a heart growing in the likeness of Jesus Christ. We should regularly recalibrate our hearts upon eternal reality and not spend our time, energy and money chasing physical beauty that simply will not last. Turns out godliness is everything; image is a distant second … if that.

Absolutely unfair to apply this kind of thinking to something that is a true problem and is unhealthy for society, to families, and to individuals.  But maybe it’s just indicative of the culture as a whole, that perspectives are that out of whack that someone can write an article like this and think it represents a well-thought-out idea some sort of social justice.

It would be nice if Boundless could produce a writer who could craft a persuasive argument that was worth reading.

 

Pervy church geezers.

Just as pretty much every evangelical church has a Youth Group Guy, pretty much every evangelical church also has a Pervy Church Geezer.

On the surface, the Pervy Church Geezer looks like any other typical Church Geezer**.  (**Roughly age 55+, but the whiter/less hair, the more geezery.  “Old enough to have a grandkid whose mom wasn’t a teenager” is another good off-hand measure.)  Like most Church Geezers, Pervy Church Geezers tend to be longtime church members in good standing, with faithful, post-menopausal wives and adult children who have permanently left the nest.  The main difference is that respectable Church Geezers actively refuse to be attracted to young women, reminding themselves that (a) young single women at church could (theoretically) be their daughters or granddaughters, and (b) their wives deserve their libidinal respect, while Pervy Church Geezers treat Sunday morning greeting time as a three-minute Mardi Gras:  a time when all of the normal rules of conduct don’t apply, and they get to hug and squeeze young women without prejudice under the guise of church family friendliness.

For the typical Pervy Church Geezer, this short greeting window is the highlight of his week, as it is most likely the only time he (a) sees any young women, and (b) is permitted physical contact with them.  If you are a young woman and you get to know a Pervy Church Geezer, he will probably keep tabs on your attendance and mention to you that he missed you if you skip a week.  He may also compliment you profusely on your appearance, especially if you wear a dress.  And if you wear heels, his head may explode.

One thing that Pervy Church Geezers are not is creepy.  Creepy church geezers are sexually threatening; Pervy Church Geezers are not.  Rather, Pervy Church Geezers are like jolly grandpas getting one last jump on a car battery.

Although I will say from experience that if a Pervy Church Geezer sticks his face in your neck when you give him his Sunday morning hug, that might be crossing the line a little.

 

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.)