This essay is the second in a series I've written on the overabundance of unmarried adult, urban, Christian singles in cities. In my last essay I addressed the issue of commitment among single Christians and how both men and women contribute to a cycle of non-commitment. In this essay I'll be discussing the hindrance that the quest for 'the one' can have on dating and marriage.
The problems embroiled in the issue of finding 'the one' are manifold, but I'll try to condense the main elements down to two: attraction and timing. These both, when combined with some of the problems of commitment discussed in the previous essay, result in a consumeristic over-analysis and pickiness.
Now, when I talk about these things, keep in mind that the issue in the background to this all is the historically extraordinary number of urban Christians not getting married. So, for example, when I talk about attraction, I'm coming at it from the angle of rejection: i.e., are Christian singles rejecting potential spouses because of skewed ideas of what we should find attractive?
As with my last essay, these thoughts are based on patterns I've seen in my own experience, observation, reading, and discussions with married couples. They do not reflect any actual training, expertise, or authority. At all. Much of what this essay addresses is also more psychological and less exhibited in external behavior. Therefore the conclusions are both more general and more inferential than the previous essay. So I very much welcome and appreciate any criticism or correction.
Maybe I Definitely Know That Maybe I'm in Love
Attraction is the thing that draws us towards someone initially, instinctively, and perhaps even unexpectedly. In some ways, what or who we are attracted to is out of our control. But in many other ways, we are very much in control of our own standards and how we react to attraction.
For men, the cliché attractive features in a woman are the sensual: physicality, sexuality, that feminine mystique. For women, they are usually the personal: confidence, financial security, emotional availability. These features are certainly to be desired, but they should always be subordinated to Scriptural standards of attraction. Rather than trying to enumerate in detail what these standards are, I'll just sum them up as 'godliness'.
Christian singles are at least cognitively aware that godliness should be the primary element of attraction. We can pay it lip service, both in our own inner monologue and in discussion with others. Nevertheless we so often resort to our carnal instincts of attraction when thinking of a person as a potential spouse.
How does this happen? It happens because we often treat godliness as a binary switch: when we look at someone, s/he either has godliness or s/he doesn't. And so long as s/he has it, we tell ourselves, we're free to indulge ourselves in evaluating him or her with those other factors of attraction. Among Christian circles this is an almost unconscious move. I can't tell you the number of times, when discussing romantic prospects, I have said or have heard others say, 'Well... all of them are good Christians, so...,' only as a preface to giving primacy to appearance or intelligence.
Thus, rather than godliness being instrumental in attraction, it's more often just a convenient baseline requirement for initial consideration. Godliness becomes the entry cost for participation in the meat market, but rarely what determines who wins our heart. It is right for godliness to be the sine qua non, but it should also be the ne plus ultra. I fear we reject too many people for superficial reasons, even though they may possess those features which we should find attractive; but we too soon send them packing without a rose before letting these things reveal themselves.
A big part of the problem is the romanticization of romance. Influenced by the likes of Austen, Brontë, and Fitzgerald, we look for a fulfilling transcendence in romantic relationships. In some cases, we look for ultimate fulfillment in romance instead of in God, but more often we view romance as fulfillment supplementary to the fulfillment we find in God — as if God's fulfillment alone is insufficient.
Accordingly, we are in search of 'the one' who will most fulfill us. Yet this is a very consumeristic approach to marriage; it asks, 'How can I get the most out of marriage? How do I maximize my utility?' The consumeristic approach was taken to comically absurd extremes in the television show Seinfeld, where the main characters frequently rejected men and women for ridiculously superficial reasons. But we all do the same thing, to variably lesser degrees.
Christian marriage, however, isn't about maximizing one's own utility. It's about serving one's spouse and glorifying God together. Rather than selecting a future spouse by whether she has man-hands or he refers to himself in the third person, we should be asking whether this is someone with whom I glorify God. Women, is he a spiritual leader to whom you can submit? Men, is she someone you can sacrificially serve as Christ serves the Church?
One of my favorite parables about the folly of using bad standards is a very short story by Franz Kafka, entitled Rejection. In a couple paragraphs it describes a chance meeting between a man and a woman. When the woman rejects the man's advances, each goes into a laundry list of everything lacking in the other person — wealth, appearance, status, &c. The story then concludes with the following: 'Yes, we are both in the right, and lest we become irrefutably conscious of it, we wish — isn't it true? — to instead go each to our own home.'
We all have numerous flaws which are easily seen; and we all have even more that will not surface until years down the road. To quote an article from a 2009 issue of Christianity Today, 'While it may be nice to find an optimal match in marriage, it cannot hold a candle to sharing a mental and spiritual commitment to the enduring covenant between God, man, and woman. It just can't. People change. Chemistry wanes. Covenants don't.'
This doesn't mean that attraction shouldn't play a part. You should certainly long for someone whom you find attractive. But for Christians chemical attraction cannot be the be-all and end-all; it is part, but not whole. We should seek a more comprehensive attraction. God has given us marriage for far more and greater things.
'If you knew Time as well as I do, you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him.'
The other main element which contributes to the issue finding 'the one' is timing. So many singles put off pursuit of a marriage in order to forge a path for themselves or 'figure out exactly who they are'. Only once they have spent enough time sorting that out, can they then find someone who is best compatible with them: that is, one who is walking roughly along that same forged path and shares interest, ideas, and ideals. This is the mindset that initially contributes to so many Christians going well into the 20s, remaining unmarried.
Not only does this feed into the consumeristic pattern described above, it also is highly individualistic. For it views marriage as if it were a business partnership of two individuals who happen to have certain key things in common. But the Biblical view of marriage is not a business partnership; it is two becoming one flesh.
I think the best illustration can be seen with a simplified version of vector math. In vector math, if you have two paths emanating from a point, but heading in different directions, when you add those two paths together, the result is a path midway between them. So if path A is heading north and path B is heading east, when you add them together, the result is a path C heading northeast. If A is headed north and B headed northeast, C will head north-northeast. Thus the more similar A and B are to each other, the more similar C will be to each of them.
This is the way that many think of marriage: the goal is to find someone whose path is close to one's own — someone who is 'compatible' to use the popular lingo — so that the new path forged together least disrupts one's own already existing path. When stated this way, it should be evident how individualistic this is. Under such a system, marriage is no longer about serving each other, but instead selfishly preserving oneself. Rather than coming together as one flesh, the spouses come together as conjoined twins.
Not only do I think that this model is bad in principle, it is also foolish. For it presumes both some modicum of control over the future and that both spouses are able to accurately assess each other beforehand. But as anyone who has lived more than a few years can tell you, both life and people are full of surprises. If you're banking on a marriage being successful because your pre-marriage life paths have been disturbed only a little by your spouse, you are in for a rude awakening when life and/or s/he throws the first curveball at you.
Instead, I think a more proper view of marriage — as two becoming one flesh — throws the vector math model out the window. If A is headed north and B is headed northeast, when the two come together in marriage, they may actually find their 'one flesh' has headed west, which was in neither's original plans. But because each is committed to serving the other in that marriage, this radically new path is one they are excited to forge together.
At this point, I am irresitibly compelled to quote my favorite passage on the subject of the unpredictability of the future. It comes from C.S. Lewis' book Perelandra. In the book, the main character finds himself in a pre-Fall, Eden-like place. When he encounters the Eve character, he tries to explain 'disappointment'. But because she is without sin, her perspective is quite different from his. She responds to him, saying:
'But how can one wish any of those waves not to reach us which [God] is rolling towards us?...What you have made me see is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one's mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other.'
To apply this to marriage: The fewer personal desires that are set in stone before marriage and the more flexible one is to what God brings one's way, the more easily one can, to use Lewis' words, turn the soul to the good one gets, rather than staying fixated on the good one wanted. God will inevitably give each of us a spouse who has different desires, preferences, and passions than we do. We should embrace those in marriage and the new life that we and our spouse have as one flesh, and not dwell on those desires, preferences, and passions of our own that we may be missing out on because of the marriage.
Two caveats to this: the first is that one should always seek a Christian spouse who is following God. This is the one non-negotiable. Wherever his or her path may be leading him or her, it must be leading them ever closer to God. After all, the primary purpose in marriage is for spouses to serve each other as both glorify God.
The second caveat is that I am not saying that compatibility is unworthy of any consideration. But instead consider how you each resolve conflict, whether you are able to guide each other in your walk with God, and whether you are able to forgive one another and repent when the other person points out sins. That is, rather than asking how well you spur each other towards God.
Likewise, if you are certain that God is leading you in a particular direction (e.g., foreign missions), it would be unwise to marry someone who is not also being led in that direction. But that does not imply that you need to first figure out exactly which direction God is calling you; only that if you have a certain direction to take that into account. You and your spouse may enter marriage with no intention, e.g., of doing foreign missions, only to find, once married, that God is leading your new one flesh in that direction.
If you are waiting on marriage in order to first establish a career, to figure out what you desire and 'who you are', or to set a life trajectory, you will be missing out on many opportunities. And that's assuming you will ever a reach a point where you know 'who you are'. (Ask the 50-year-old male going through his mid-life crisis whether he really knows 'who he is'.) You are also setting yourself up for disappointment when things do not turn out as you had planned. Instead, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Postscript
(Particular thanks to one response to my first essay, which encouraged me to write this section.)
One final remark is due. As I showed in the previous article, Hebrews does instruct us to give marriage high honor. But that high honor should not cause so much trepidation that it halts aspirations of marriage. Yes, marriage is sacred, but it is also a normal life event. In 2008, an average of 41,000 couples were married each Saturday in the United States. God also blesses us through marriage; the longer we delay marriage, the longer we delay receiving these blessings.
So while we should recognize marriage as a holy institution ordained by God, we should not try to analyze it as if it were a capital investment. Combining these two approaches will almost inevitably paralyze one with over-analysis and result in picky non-commitment. Instead, simply consider the pattern which Scripture gives for marriage and the elements of attraction which the Bible highlights.
As with my previous essay, let me again close with a passage from Richard and Sharon Phillips' book Holding Hands, Holding Hearts.
Perhaps the biggest reason for the anguish that many feel [in approaching marriage] comes from the burden to find exactly the right partner for life. On the one hand, there is a great deal of wisdom behind this anxiety. This is an important decision! But on the other hand, the normal anxiety is often heightened by unhelpful and unrealistic expectations. The fact is that there is no perfect person for you to marry, and if someone were perfect they should never marry someone like you! There is no other kind of person for you to marry than a flawed sinner in need of God's grace and of a loving companion to walk together with in life. So put your checklist away and examine your attitude in the light of God's word.
Many Christians think they are required to find 'that one person' whom God has chosen for them in order to be happily married. It is certainly true that the God who ordains all things has also ordained the one person you will marry. But God does not tell you who that is beforehand. God does not expect us to plumb his secret will with supernatural knowledge, but rather to exercise our responsibility in a godly and obedient way. We know that God forbids a believer to marry a nonbeliever (1 Cor. 7:39; 2 Cor. 6:14). A woman should not marry a man to whom she is not willing to submit, since God will require this of her (Eph. 5:22–24; 1 Pet. 3:1). A man should marry a woman only if he is willing to show her the self-sacrificing love modeled by Jesus Christ on the cross (Eph. 5:25). But within biblical boundaries such as these, Christians should feel a great deal of freedom and should have confidence that God's grace will enable them to love another in marriage.
What matters most is not finding the one right person but becoming the person that God wants you to be. Before judging the man or woman—scruitinizing and appraising every attribute and characteristic, as if you were buying a horse—you ought instead to scrutinize your own heart. . . . The issue is not whether you can find someone worthy of your love, but whether you are ready to give a love that is worthy of marriage. And if not, then you should turn to God and ask, 'Why not?' God says that it is not good for man to be alone, and this means that we are to learn to love in the way that marriage requires.
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