Dating is hard!

Lately I have been trying out online dating. To explain the process for those men who have not tried it, it consists of driving all over town to meet women who are nothing like their online profiles.

In most cases, there is no deceptiveness involved. It is simply that it is very hard for people objectively to describe themselves and candidly explain what sort of match they are looking for.

The problem is even greater if you are seeking a woman who understands and approves the traditional and biblically mandated roles in Christian marriage. Our society has largely turned against such ideas and failed to follow them. Thus, there are not a whole lot of examples of that kind of marriage for people in our society to look at and learn from. The best place to encounter such an example is, doubtless, in one's own home growing up, but such homes appear to be uncommon. I certainly saw nothing of the sort as a child. Many women cannot recognize the Christian pattern as the good idea that it is. Why then would they look to implement it in their lives? They do not see the point of it.

In its simplest statement, Christian marriage works like this. The man shoulders a tremendous responsibility. He is to lay down his life for the woman, framing his life around her safety and wellbeing. He is to live for her--die for her if need be--and it is to be unconditional. As there must be in everything, there must here be a balancing of responsibility and authority. The wife must grant him authority suitable to the responsibility he bears. She needs to cooperate in his efforts on her behalf. Otherwise he is wasting his time.

To some people--especially women who have taken college courses in feminism and have attended churches where the biblical pattern is not emphasized and perhaps not even taught--all of that is unbearably old-fashioned and perhaps even the misogynist bigotry of hateful patriarchal cisgenderism, or whatever the neologisms are this week. In any case, there are many women who do not see how that stuff about submitting to the man's leadership is a good idea. There are quite a few women who are all right with the part about the man laying down his life, but not the part about the leadership that entails, and requires.

Then there are the men who do not want all that responsibility. There are lots of those too. They are all right with the idea of being head of the household, king of the castle and leader of the pack, but the awkward part about framing everything around the wife's good is kind of a drag. So then, there are women who do not want their role in Christian marriage and men who do not want their own roles. Add into that a hint of lip service to that old time religion; the men and the women together create a toxic mix of expectations that will never be met on either side. She wants protection and service without fealty; he wants authority without the matching responsibility.

So, yeah. Dating is hard.

What ideally happens is a match where the man is willing to serve in his role because he sees the woman as eminently worthy of being served and protected. He values who and what she is enough to put everything on the line for her sake. His own interests and preferences must take second place where they interfere. The life decisions he formerly made only to please himself now must take into account their effect on her. Things that get in the way of her wellbeing, even if he really would prefer to do them, must be nixed if they go against his mandate to serve her first and always.

The woman is willing to serve in her follow-the-leader role because she sees him as someone worth following. Of course her reasons may vary. There is an old army service joke about an officer fitness report that said "His men would follow him anywhere, if only out of curiosity." But hey, guys, leadership is leadership however you get it. I would prefer it if she saw me as worth following because I am wise and good-hearted and know how to make things happen, but perhaps I am expecting too much of myself, there. By whatever means you employ, it is best if she finds following your leadership an adventure story rather than a horror story. That is an easier thing for you to achieve if she sees that you really do have her best interest at heart, always: You are not just talk when it comes to your responsibilities toward her and before God.

As I have written elsewhere, the Christian understanding of marriage is something we need to preserve against the corrosive effects of our culture. Marriage is how we explain the church; the church is how we explain marriage. If we dilute the whole question by throwing out that pattern, saying marriage is not important or necessary on the one hand, and couples may get on perfectly well without it, and then, on the other hand, saying that marriage can be redefined at will, to the point that the word means only what we say it does, our witness loses coherence. How can we then explain the church, or justify our now ad hoc ideas of what marriage is and means?

If we abandon this basic moral teaching, what does that say about our commitment to any other moral teachings we may possess from of old? Will we redefine those too, when the culture does not like them?

Further, if we depart too far from the godly pattern of marriage, our marriages will be chaotic. If we can't manage unity even in marriage, how can we hope to unify churches? I hope I do not come off as too woo-woo spiritual here, but perhaps if we first unify our households, we will see more clearly how to unify the churches of God.  Marriage and the church are related things, a mystery we, today, may not fully understand in its depths. (Eph 5:25-33)