In this review of Getting Serious About Getting Married, Lynn Barton agrees that Christians, and Christian parents, and Christian churches, might be making some big mistakes in that trip down the aisle

"There has to be a better way to arrive at the altar than through all this hurt."

So thought Debbie Maken, after yet another dating relationship ended and she found herself at age twenty-eight, wondering whether she would ever get married.

For years she had been told that she should surrender her desire for marriage and focus on serving God, because "Jesus is all you need." At just the right time, God would bring her a husband, without any effort on her part. And if it never happened, she should conclude that God had given her the "gift" of singleness, and she must learn to be content.

But she was not content, she was miserable, and she was tired of pretending otherwise. Increasingly skeptical of what she was coming to see as unhelpful platitudes uttered mostly by married people, she wondered, why are there are three times as many singles today as there were thirty years ago? Is it really God's will to "gift" so many in this generation with singleness? Or is something else going on, something wrong with the way we approach marriage?

So she began to study carefully what scripture says and what the church historically taught about marriage. And she discovered that things have changed. A lot. What she learned and her recommendations for getting back on track became "Getting Serious About Getting Married" (Crossway, 2006), a fascinating and provocative book.

Does God's command to Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply (later repeated to Noah) still hold for believers under the New Testament covenant of grace? Should Christians actively pursue marriage as a matter of obedience to this command, or passively wait on God to sovereignly intervene to make the match, if ever? Is it reasonable to expect young adults to remain chaste for protracted years of singleness? In addition to teaching sexual purity, have we neglected to teach the ultimate biblical solution to sexual desire: marriage?

Maken thinks so. She points out that in the 1Corinthians 7 passage where Paul recommends singleness over marriage (the one so often used to browbeat women unhappy with their unmarried state), he also recommends that those who experience desire should get married, "for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." To elevate singleness to the preferred state for Christians as a matter of principle conflicts with the Genesis mandate. In fact, it has always been God's will that the majority of his children marry and procreate. Maken argues from this passage that singleness is a relatively rare calling evidenced by the removal of sexual desire by God in order to serve him for a particular purpose that marriage would impede. And most single men do not fall into this category!

Maken believes that we have become far too casual about marriage. Parents have abandoned the crucial role they once played in helping their children find a suitable mate. Most parents see their job as limited to making sure their children are educated and suitably employed. But in her view parents should also be training and preparing their children to marry and start a family, and sooner rather than later.

This is especially true for young men, who tend to enjoy years of bachelorhood without feeling any obligation to find a wife. Maken believes that men who refuse to marry are actually disobeying God's express command given in Genesis. They share the cultural attitudes of the majority of men who cherish their personal freedom. When they do marry - someday - they prefer a..

"pay your own way type of deal where the mantle of adult responsibilities of assuming the care of another is avoided and their personal autonomy remains unchecked. This allows many men to keep jobs that resemble hobbies and to maintain hobbies as costly as their jobs."

What a difference a few hundred years makes. Maken describes colonial Massachusetts, where it was actually against the law to live alone. If a young man came over from England, he was expected to find a family with which to live, so that "disorders could be prevented and ill weeds nipt." A single male who refused to make himself accountable to a family could be jailed. Today, men who put off marriage receive many benefits (even live-in girlfriends) and few if any negative consequences, not even from the church.

The implications are serious for young women, whose fertility declines much sooner than men's, and who may never be able to bear children if marriage is delayed for long. Maken even objects to older men being able to marry younger women, feeling that this only rewards them for their sin. I'm somewhat sympathetic to her feelings, but on the other hand, it can take time to develop a career to the point where a man is able to support a wife and family. I do agree with her that it's highly unlikely for a young man to have kept himself pure if he has delayed marriage, whatever the reason. It's just too difficult, and willing women are too readily available.

Maken's recommendations are similar to those of Josh Harris (author of "I Kissed Dating Goodbye") and our own Pastor Dale, including the conviction that the dating system is a terrible way to find a spouse. Up until about a hundred years ago, parents were intimately involved in the marriage decisions of their children. Courting couples did not go out alone into tempting situations, and engagements and marriage happened relatively quickly. Men who showed a lack of interest in marriage were disdained and not given access to precious daughters. (To show how far we've sunk, consider how quaint this once-familiar query now sounds to our ears: "What are your intentions toward my daughter?") Nowadays, instead of being "held back" by social taboos and "overprotective" parents, women are "free" to invest years of their lives in relationships with men who have no intention ever to marry them. And with no other prospects on the horizon, they often hang on, hoping he will change his mind, though he's made it clear by his behavior that (as the title of a popular secular book lays out):  "He's Just Not That Into You." Lovely.

Maken also suggests the courtship model, or "enlisting agency," as she puts it. Women who want to marry need to limit men's access to them. I couldn't agree more. When I was young I was advised to date many men, on the theory that "to find the handsome prince you've got to kiss a lot of toads." Looking back, it's hard for me to imagine worse advice. Parents are the ideal scouts and gatekeepers, but for women who don't have Christian parents, she recommends finding an older Christian couple to serve in that protective role. By the way, she took her own advice and is now a happily married wife and mother of two.

She is also on a mission to get the church to return to explicitly training and expecting young men to marry and have children as a matter of obedience to God, not just personal preference. Of course this applies to young women too, but in her view their problem is more often a lack of men willing to marry them than a sinful desire for personal autonomy.

As far as Maken is concerned, when sexual desire awakens, it's time to start thinking about marriage. I do wonder how the need for years of education fits into that ideal. Or about young people marrying so young that they end up divorcing because they felt they really didn't know what they were doing, or never had a chance to do the things they had hoped to do before committing themselves to another person. I don't know how much weight we should give to such concerns, whether they are legitimate feelings are simply sinful selfishness. They are certainly common! But those who put off marriage until after college or for other reasons will have to fight temptations that possibly God never intended for us to battle for so many years.

Maken concludes by saying the ideas she is presenting are so old they are new again. Indeed. Though personally I enjoy it,  her polemical, almost combative tone may put some readers off, and that would be a shame. I didn't agree with everything she wrote, but she made me think about this subject in ways I hadn't before. She has convinced me of this: the haphazard way we approach marriage is not working and is unbiblical. The church and Christian parents need to get serious about getting married. Reading this book is a good start toward that end.

By Lynn Barton and posted at www.pastordale.com.
Source: http://www.pastordale.com/articles.asp?specific=144