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I have to admit, when I first ordered this book for review I thought it would be DOA. I had read a brief Internet article by the author, and the table of contents. I thought it might have a few good things to say, but I was expecting some serious gender bias, as well as propose that we turn back the clock 50 years, back to a day when single people were considered suspect. Well, I did find some gender bias, and the author would actually like to turn the clock back 500 years if it were possible, but the few good comments turned out to be numerous, challenging me personally both as a single man and a singles class leader.
For the last 25 years or so, the church's teaching on singleness has gone something like this:
"Marriage is a gift from God, and so is singleness. Use the time while you are single to serve God and focus only on Him. Focusing on your lack of a spouse is idolatry, and you need to learn to be content with just Him, just in case He calls you to a lifetime of singleness. If it's God's will for you to marry, He will bring His perfect person for you in His perfect time. Searching for it on will lead to less than what He plans for you."
Hell hath no fury like an attractive, bright, and successful single woman told to stuff her desire for marriage, serve Jesus, and quit whining. Maken is here to challenge all this with an anger that takes you aback. At 28, she finally admitted to herself, that she felt sad, lonely, and depressed about being single. And in a moment of self disclosure that is extremely rare for Christians, and especially Christian women, she admits that she really, really wanted to have sex big time:
"Though I got married at thirty-one, I really could have used a husband at sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty. Especially at twenty-five - a year of numerous cold showers...whoever said that age thirty-four is a woman's sexual peak needs to be shot." (p. 127)
Now married with two daughters, she dares to shout what has almost become a heresy: that she has found peace, joy, and contentment in her marriage that she was told could only be found in Christ alone.
But Maken goes beyond her own experiences to do something that no one else has done, and that is actually ask "Where has this gotten us?" On this, her arguments and data are simply devastating. Instead of God bringing together marriages that are supernaturally more wonderful than those of the past, we have people simply getting older and failing to realize the blessings of marrying in one's youth. Singles are more prone to depression, alcoholism, and suicide. Single women are twice as likely to be raped, and those who conceive their first child late or never are at greater risk breast cancer, besides enduring Hannah's grief of childlessness. Has this been God's will? Given that the greater number of Christian singles has instead led not to greater kingdom building, but at best the adoption of pet ministry projects that and are just as easily done by married people, it's time to wonder. Add to this the statistics on the failure of Christian singles to remain sexually pure, it is obvious that too many Christians who are single don't have the gift celibacy. We really shouldn't be surprised. This is what Paul said would happen.
Our generation is first in both Biblical and Church history to apply passages like Isaiah 40:31 ("Wait on the Lord") to marriage and expect God to drop someone in their lap. Cultures have had various ways of finding marriage partners for young people, and certainly God's lead was invoked, but all of them had intentional, proactive customs. Our tendency is to look at this as outdated and a failure to recognize Paul's endorsement of celibacy in 1 Cor. 7. But in the process we have compartmentalized marriage into something less than spiritual. But Maken astutely observes that since God's image is found in human beings, we learn more about God by closer relationships with people, and the relationships that singles have can only be so close. Thus, seeking marriage isn't in competition with God, but it is seeking God, as well as seeking sexual purity. Most disconcerting is Maken's reminder that forbidding marriage is listed in 1 Tim. 4:1-5 as a doctrine of demons. But could that be that we skirt close to this when we make people feel unspiritual for desiring marriage and discourage their search?
There are a few things that I think she takes too far. She favorably recounts the teachings of the historic church which viewed bachelors with suspicion and/or judgment. In Maken's view, people (especially men) need to be held accountable for not marrying, unless they are in a full-time ministry where having a family is simply impossible. She does make good points that in our culture, singles have to have full-time jobs and even in some cases do all the household chores on their own, so they really don't have more time than married people. But she believes that all of 1 Cor. 7 should be interpreted in light of the present crisis (v. 26), but this is doubtful. Many of the truths seem to be timeless. And while singles may not have more time, they often have more flexibility to serve, so that potential for greater service as a single person is still possible in our culture. Paul, as well as Jesus in Matthew 19:12, leave it up to individuals to decide if they can accept celibacy, and they do not say that they must be involved in a ministry where family life is impossible. True, all the singles actually mentioned in the Bible fit this description, but the actual command that it must always be this way is absent.
Maken also seems to blame just about every social condition different from the Middle Ages as contributing to protracted singleness, from the phenomenon of dating, to singles ministries themselves. In particular, she believes that men have the advantage. The fact that they have "more access" to a greater number of women allows them to be complacent and not pursue marriage. They can always hope for better options to come along, stringing out dating relationship for years, while they spend their time hangin' with the guys, acquiring toys, and goofing off all the while. Women, on the other hand, do not feel the same freedom to initiate a relationship and are forced to wait while their biological clocks tick away. She also can't believe that men don't find the right person until later in life, when in the past they found it by the age of 22.
At this point, I think Maken is relying too much on her own female-view impressions of how young Christian single men think, rather than from actual knowledge. She also doesn't distinguish between single men in the world/nominal church vs. those who are sincerely trying to follow Christ very well. In one singles ministry that I was involved in, for example, there were about 25 marriages that occurred, and this was probably about two-thirds to four-fifths of relationships that began. I also don't recall any that lasted longer than two years. Men didn't think that there was any future in just hangin' out with the guys forever, because their guy friends kept getting married off. I'm a guy, I was in guy's small groups. I know better.
What's more, Maken believes that it's just so easy for men to initiate a relationship, get married, and live happily ever after anytime they choose, because all of these women are just dying for the first halfway decent guy to ask them out. They'll even settle for someone well beneath them. Hey, it's just a slam-dunk! Men, of course, will either roll their eyes and/or snicker at such a naive notion. Pursuing is easy. Pursuing and winning, well, that can be rather difficult for the average guy. On the contrary, it's a good bet that the typical Christian women who hasn't been married by 30 has turned down several, or even more than several, suitors.
That leads me into two other reasons why men don't pursue that Maken doesn't (but really should have considered);
1) Fear of rejection - there are actually quite a few cool, solid guys who still struggle with this as much at 31 as they did at 13, for the reasons I just mentioned above. For all the talk about what men look for, who they actually choose to pursue has a lot to do with who they feel comfortable with and feel they can be themselves around. So, ladies, if that guy isn't approaching you, just try being friendly. Ask him a few questions about himself, smile warmly, and maintain eye contact. Don't give yourself away, just make him feel like he has a chance. Just because you don't ask for the date doesn't mean you aren't empowered to do some of the choosing.
2) If that doesn't work, he probably just isn't into you. Sorry. But after all, Maken encourages women not to get into or continue a relationship with a guy who is not their type or their equal in the areas required for a healthy relationship. Good advice. But it goes both ways. It's only fair.
I think that the truth is that the sense of connection that make for a healthy, life-giving romantic relationship (and here I mean romantic chemistry, shared interests, and comparatively equal levels of intelligence, vitality, spiritual and emotional health, among other things) just don't occur between two people very often, and finding that connection can take a while. It just isn't true that people all throughout history have rushed into marriage at such tender ages. In 1890, for example, the average age for a man's first marriage was 26, hardly different from today, when it's 27.
I don't really think that it's necessary to try to shame nearly every single in the church to get married. Let those who can accept celibacy, accept it. But let those who can't accept it make seeking a spouse a top priority without being made to feel spiritually inferior.
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