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I'm basically just thinking out loud here and in a state of perplexity as I normally am about a lot of things Christian. So if anyone wants to chime in with their thoughts that's great.
I was perusing the Internet the other day and stumbled across this letter to a Christian marriage website:
Quote:
I’m 39 years old, never married (seems mostly like it was because I knew it was wrong to party, drink, and sleep around). Now I wonder if I made a mistake, most of those people who did this are married (yes some got divorced, but the majority turned their lives around and are celebrating 15+ years of marriage). I admit that ticks me off. I obeyed, and they reaped the benefits. If they obeyed they almost always had a great marriage. Now when this life ends I get to marry a guy[Jesus], or be single and celabate for eternity. Great choices huh… This really makes me angry.I have been called names for feeling this way “Heretic”, “Dammed for idolizing marriage”, whatever. Other Christians seem to find comfort in this, but I do not. So does anyone have any insight or wisdom to share that isn’t just a pious sounding “Shut Up”? (Oh and by the way I still desire to have a wife and family, but as usual when you obey God He seems to ignore you. Too preoccupied with fulfilling other people’s every whim and desire I guess.)
I thought it was just an anomaly. The odd thing was that as I read the responses to the topic "Does God Promise You A Spouse?" (1500+ responses) these kinds of letters became more and more frequent until they numbered in the hundreds. And this is just one website! Here's another:
Quote:
to finish what i was saying with my last comment, it is no fun at all being alone and single. since i am a straight man, it is so very precious and wonderful to have a good woman in life to share with. to see other people have it, makes me feel very hurt and upset. i certainly do not want to be alone the rest of whatever of my life is left, that would really make me very depressed. it changes your attitude, it makes you very hurt like i have mentioned before, you feel as though the world is crashing down on you, you feel as if there is no one to turn too, especially when your a man like me that does not have that many friends at all. this is the absolute reason, why i go out every single night. since i have no one to stay home too, this is why i always will go out. if i had met the right woman in my life from the very beginning, then i certainly would have had a good reason to stay at home all the time, and just be going out with her. they say that married men will always live longer than single men. the men and women today that were very lucky enough to have met one another and have a family, should certainly go to church to pray and thank god for what they have. it is the men like me that are really hurting now. i will just keep going out and try to have a much better attitude, but it is very hard for me since i am a very sensitive and low confident type of man. i will try to be as strong as possible, and not lose faith. thank you so very much for your support, peace.
Then as I read I started to sense a disconnect between what these people THOUGHT the Bible was saying and what it really says. The most common rationale I saw for why they thought God owed them a spouse was Genesis 2:18 "It is not good for man to be alone. I will create an help-meet for him". They thought that God making an observation that something was not right about His creation and then of necessity creating a mate for Adam to right that error automatically entitles every man and woman of earth to expect God to play matchmaker for them, and not just matchmaker but for Him to match them with the "perfect" spouse of their dreams.
That's not the way it works, ladies and gentlemen. For those of you young kids in your 20's who earnestly desire marriage I advise you to wake up to reality and smell the coffee:
1. based on Christian statistics you have a much greater chance of staying single all your life or ending up divorced than you do living your life out blissfully with the partner of your dreams and having 2.5 kids.
2. nowhere in the Bible does God promise you the perfect spouse you're looking for. He doesn't even promise you a spouse. What He does promise is to fulfill all your needs. How "needs" ties in with social connection, marriage and everything related I have no idea.
3. You young Christians who are standing on Genesis 2:18 as God's promise to them that God will provide a spouse for you are making a huge, HUGE mistake. The graveyards are littered with the bodies of Christians who prayed to God for a spouse and then ended up dying single and loveless. The Christian marriage graveyards are littered with millions of corpses of broken Christian marriages. Some will say, "You are trying to turn people away from God." No. I am trying to make young Christians wake up to the reality of how things really are in this life and to snap them out of their dreamworld.
In closing I just want to say two things:
1. For those Christians desirous of marrying don't sit in your rooms waiting for God to drop a spouse into your lap. He might or He might not, but according to statistics the odds of Him doing it are -- well you have a greater chance of winning the Powerball lottery.
2. The Bible makes a clear contradiction re marriage (those pesky contradictions again). Proverbs 18:22 says "He who finds a wife finds a good thing" but Paul says "I would that all Christians were single like myself" and "But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this...those who have wives should live as if they do not[have wives]". Doesn't sound like having a wife is a very good thing to me. So who are we to believe, Solomon or Paul?
Well, in terms of this idea of God finding you someone...meh...i think this can apply to anyone (not just believers in God or Christians) who just want to sit back and wait for a lover to come to them. It works that way for some people, not for all. From what I've read in what you've posted, it seems many of these people aren't really drawing from Genesis for their beliefs, it's more stemming from a place of loneliness and really wanting companionship, something which, if you take a quick hop over to the Relationships section of this forum, you'd see many people struggling with this issue regardless of religion. That's not really rooted in religion. That's more this desire to have that kind of connectivity with somebody and the original poster is just a little jealous that those around him are experiencing something which he has yet to experience and taking it out on his idea of God.
I would imagine that Paul felt so in love with the idea of being single that he wished everyone felt that joy in singledom as he. Much like those who are married and so long to get everyone else married. You don't have to choose to "follow" one or the other if you know what you want and what you're about. But i think it's easy to be holy and righteous when you're on your own. In a way, it's less struggles too. When you get that close to another and have to deal with their "thorns" and have them shed light on yours, it brings out sides of you that you forgot were there. So it's an amazing and yet very humanizing experience. And I think Paul was expressing the struggle part of it. He didn't say it was terrible. Just that you will have struggles. Life can be easier when single, imo.
To address Solomon: Being single is great but to find someone who makes you want to be a better person is very enriching too. It's a good thing when you have that company and you have that person you can talk to and share with and connect to. You can build a life together and that's a very solid experience.
Really appreciate your reply, Royalite. It is very wise. And I also like your current "status" :-)
To the OP(Thrillobyte) - you are right that good marriages don't just drop out of the sky like manna from heaven. It takes commitment in good times and bad to make any marriage stay together. Apparently many people are lacking in the will to remain committed and unforgiveness and refusal to compromise is the downfall of many-a-marriage.
The statistics in this article are rather stunning to me. The change in divorce rate for people over age 50 in the past two decades has gone from 1 in 10 to 1 in 4! That's a major societal shift, I'd say. The reasons are cited in the article:
Well, in terms of this idea of God finding you someone...meh...i think this can apply to anyone (not just believers in God or Christians) who just want to sit back and wait for a lover to come to them. It works that way for some people, not for all. From what I've read in what you've posted, it seems many of these people aren't really drawing from Genesis for their beliefs, it's more stemming from a place of loneliness and really wanting companionship, something which, if you take a quick hop over to the Relationships section of this forum, you'd see many people struggling with this issue regardless of religion. That's not really rooted in religion. That's more this desire to have that kind of connectivity with somebody and the original poster is just a little jealous that those around him are experiencing something which he has yet to experience and taking it out on his idea of God.
Yes, this is true. The premise of my OP was to try to distinguish the Christian from non-Christian (atheists, agnostics, etc who don't rely on God to help them find a spouse).
This is the critical issue: naive Christians have been taught by their elders to have unwavering faith that if they so desire to be married that God will 100% without failure find them a "Godly" spouse--meaning someone who fits their preconceived notions of what a "Godly" spouse is i.e. (s)he has a strong faith in God; is moral; a good provider; wants 2.5 kids to rear in a Godly manner; oh and at the top of the list, must have hair on top, teeth inside and be handsome/beautiful. Of course, after 10-15 years of believing this tripe reality strikes them like a bolt of lightening and it ain't a pretty sight when it finally sinks in that they have been sold a bill of goods, hence these thousands of letters from disillusioned Christians who are either having a crisis of faith or have left Christianity entirely.
Here's an interesting letter from a guy which demonstrates not just his frustration with God, but the actual moral and physical dangers he faces being single:
Quote:
This article, in many ways, reflects my current situation. I had the best chance to find a mate during my college years; yet the few times I wanted and tried to ask someone out, I got turned down. So I focused on my studies, but at the expense of finding a mate and getting married, like many of my friends did; in fact, if I had been dating, I might not have made it through pharmacy school. Now that I’ve been a pharmacist for several years, I have what seems to be the best circumstances for being able to support a marriage. Yet, I live in a state where the pool of suitable prospects is hopelessly small to nonexistent. I’ve tried the online dating route several times over the last decade, but it hasn’t worked for me. I seem to be the type that likes to meet a single woman personally, but because of these past rejections, I am painfully shy to take the initiative, as the man should. Also, the rare times my friends have tried to set me up with someone, the chemistry just wasn’t there. On top of that, most of my friends don’t know of any single women that they think would make a good match for me, and sometimes I wonder if they even really care, because I am the only single person in their circle of friends.
All of this is making me frustrated with the single life, as it is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know what it is like to be in a romantic relationship or marriage. When the topic of issues with marriage or children come up, I am unable to relate, as those are still very much in the future for me. Conversely, many of my friends cannot relate to being a long-term single for the reasons that I explained previously. Some of them tell me platitudes like, “When you’re not looking, that’s when you’ll meet her, and “There are worse things than being single.” This also has affected my relationship with God, as I am finding it harder to depend on Him for this as I sometimes wonder if He knows or understands my situation and bring someone into my path. I feel at times like taking matters into my own hands and just grabbing the first one that comes. I also have wondered, “What use am I to my church if I feel like I am being slighted because of my singleness?” and “If I am a single man surrounded by married couples and families but despairing over said status, what is the use of still being around?” I envy my married friends with children, as I want to be a husband and father, but still young enough to fully enjoy those blessings (in other words, I’m not fond of the idea of being a late-bloomer). Because of this, I seriously feel cursed and lacking in maturity (i.e. not feeling like I’m fully a grown-up adult).
Please, please, please pray for me that God would wrap me in His arms and reveal Himself to me. Also pray for patience until that appointed time that I meet that special godly woman, or for God to fully remove my desire for marriage out of me. Thank you.
Notice a couple of things that are happening because God is not answering his prayers:
* his faith in God is being undermined
* worse, he is becoming envious of his friends and likely covetous of their wives.
* whether he knows it or not the stress of not having a spouse is going to send him to an early grave (of course, for those of us "in the know", having a spouse is going to do that anyway )
In short, not having a mate is affecting him in all sorts of negative ways. Is this God's will for his life? I can't answer that question but I know this: millions of Christians are raised on this belief that God will ride to their rescue and find mates for them, except that God doesn't appear to be riding to their rescue for reasons known only to God.
Now I am not trying to blame God in this post. His ways are not our ways. Who I am trying to blame are the Christians themselves for falling for this notion that just because ministers and friends quote "platitudes" to them (this guy's own word) that God will answer their prayers in His own good time (maybe He will-maybe He won't; I don't know) and that, based on the promises made by these well-intentioned ministers and friends, they can stand on a 100% guarantee that a suitable spouse for them is "in the works" up in heaven. It's a horrible flaw in Christian logic--one that, as I said and as Heartsong points out, has caused the divorce rate in Christian marriages to skyrocket to nearly 50%, while condemning countless other Christians to a life of loneliness, celibacy, heartache, wavering faith, and early death.
Far as Genesis goes here's a snippet from another lonely heart:
Quote:
There can be no substitute. And no, you can not fulfill this without the physical aspect. Sex is supposed to involve all of us body, soul, and spirit. That is one of the main reasons sex outside of marriage is so destructive, and the reason why no other relationship can fulfill this NEED.
Even God said this in Genesis 2 "it is not good for man to be alone." But think, before the Fall Adam had a closer relationship with God than any person who ever lived except Jesus. The relationship required was not a prayer life, a life of service. He filled the need with the opposite sex. It is designed into our very being, save for a few. So if heaven is where God ends all pain and sin is totally conquered, then why does He leave the pain of singleness unfulfilled. Sin actually wins an eternal victory, because sin is why people like me have to go without, and in the next life that remains unchanged. Can anyone explain to me why this is or why I am wrong?
Yet another naive Christian brought up on this ridiculous notion that because of Genesis 2 he has an ironclad guarantee that God has an ideal spouse waiting somewhere in the wings for him. And the number of letters is legion in which the writers quote Genesis 2 as their "signed contract" with God that He will deliver on some supposed promise to them.
I grieve for these Christians. I grieve because, to get back to my earlier point, they are apart from ordinary people. Ordinary people follow the laws of mating and go out and search. Some succeed and some don't. But Christians are being snookered into believing they merit some special favor from God simply because they ARE Christian and that because of that God will perform a miracle and get them matched up with the guy or girl of their dreams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Royalite
I would imagine that Paul felt so in love with the idea of being single that he wished everyone felt that joy in singledom as he. Much like those who are married and so long to get everyone else married. You don't have to choose to "follow" one or the other if you know what you want and what you're about. But i think it's easy to be holy and righteous when you're on your own. In a way, it's less struggles too. When you get that close to another and have to deal with their "thorns" and have them shed light on yours, it brings out sides of you that you forgot were there. So it's an amazing and yet very humanizing experience. And I think Paul was expressing the struggle part of it. He didn't say it was terrible. Just that you will have struggles. Life can be easier when single, imo.
To address Solomon: Being single is great but to find someone who makes you want to be a better person is very enriching too. It's a good thing when you have that company and you have that person you can talk to and share with and connect to. You can build a life together and that's a very solid experience.
I have a lot I want to say about this aspect but I am a little tired. My next post.
I know several people who made a list of godly attributes they wanted in a mate, who faithfully prayed over this list, and were later blessed with a good Christian person who became their spouse. It does happen. And I also know people who have not been blessed this way. Not all of us were meant to have a spouse. Everyone's godly calling is different. Pray and ask God to tell you what He has called for your life.
Yes, this is true. The premise of my OP was to try to distinguish the Christian from non-Christian (atheists, agnostics, etc who don't rely on God to help them find a spouse).
This is the critical issue: naive Christians have been taught by their elders to have unwavering faith that if they so desire to be married that God will 100% without failure find them a "Godly" spouse--meaning someone who fits their preconceived notions of what a "Godly" spouse is i.e. (s)he has a strong faith in God; is moral; a good provider; wants 2.5 kids to rear in a Godly manner; oh and at the top of the list, must have hair on top, teeth inside and be handsome/beautiful. Of course, after 10-15 years of believing this tripe reality strikes them like a bolt of lightening and it ain't a pretty sight when it finally sinks in that they have been sold a bill of goods, hence these thousands of letters from disillusioned Christians who are either having a crisis of faith or have left Christianity entirely.
Here's an interesting letter from a guy which demonstrates not just his frustration with God, but the actual moral and physical dangers he faces being single:
Notice a couple of things that are happening because God is not answering his prayers:
* his faith in God is being undermined
* worse, he is becoming envious of his friends and likely covetous of their wives.
* whether he knows it or not the stress of not having a spouse is going to send him to an early grave (of course, for those of us "in the know", having a spouse is going to do that anyway )
In short, not having a mate is affecting him in all sorts of negative ways. Is this God's will for his life? I can't answer that question but I know this: millions of Christians are raised on this belief that God will ride to their rescue and find mates for them, except that God doesn't appear to be riding to their rescue for reasons known only to God.
Now I am not trying to blame God in this post. His ways are not our ways. Who I am trying to blame are the Christians themselves for falling for this notion that just because ministers and friends quote "platitudes" to them (this guy's own word) that God will answer their prayers in His own good time (maybe He will-maybe He won't; I don't know) and that, based on the promises made by these well-intentioned ministers and friends, they can stand on a 100% guarantee that a suitable spouse for them is "in the works" up in heaven. It's a horrible flaw in Christian logic--one that, as I said and as Heartsong points out, has caused the divorce rate in Christian marriages to skyrocket to nearly 50%, while condemning countless other Christians to a life of loneliness, celibacy, heartache, wavering faith, and early death.
Far as Genesis goes here's a snippet from another lonely heart:
Yet another naive Christian brought up on this ridiculous notion that because of Genesis 2 he has an ironclad guarantee that God has an ideal spouse waiting somewhere in the wings for him. And the number of letters is legion in which the writers quote Genesis 2 as their "signed contract" with God that He will deliver on some supposed promise to them.
I grieve for these Christians. I grieve because, to get back to my earlier point, they are apart from ordinary people. Ordinary people follow the laws of mating and go out and search. Some succeed and some don't. But Christians are being snookered into believing they merit some special favor from God simply because they ARE Christian and that because of that God will perform a miracle and get them matched up with the guy or girl of their dreams.
I have a lot I want to say about this aspect but I am a little tired. My next post.
I have mixed feelings on what you've posted so far though I do understand. As for me, even as a little child growing up in a Christian home no one ever really said anything to me about getting married and having children in terms of religious origin. The ones who did, I was always able to discern that in some way these people were "inserting greed into their creed?" The members of my family who weren't married said, "No where in the Bible does it say that you absolutely HAVE to be married." This was their personal defense against not being married.
A simple google search for unmarried people in the Bible would yield prophets like Elijah, John the Baptist, and possibly even Samuel the Seer? These men weren't known to be married and neither was Jesus. Some members in the Bible were. So I tend to think many of these people are "inserting greed into their creed" and are looking for justification for their desires for what they crave. So I agree with you in that regard. Not everyone is meant to be married. I always thought that the varying lifestyles of the people in the Bible were a testimony to the options available to us on how we can live and still feel connected to the Divine.
I think in the last part of the guy's post, he's trying to find inner peace with his unfulfilled desires, a place that many people come to after pursuing a dream so adamantly and not having it fulfilled. He sounds to me like he's not really sure what his intended path is (Erik erickson might even say he's in the Intimacy vs. Isolation stage of life) and trying to figure out whether he'll get married or not and how he can maneuver life if he doesn't and in a way that provides him with the most satisfaction. But he's utilizing his known resources at this time which for him is his faith. So it's a myriad of things, not that he'll fully lose faith in God as a result of it. It's just he's at a difficult point right now in his love life and is expressing some doubt.
In terms of the marriage statistics. All I can say is: I think many people are getting divorced today because they don't have to be married in order to make ends meet anymore. So there's no real incentive to "work things out" to them and it might sound sad to some people. In a way it is. But we not too long ago left a place of co-dependence in marriage where many women didn't have certain privileges without a man by their side so they put up with a lot of stuff they really didn't want to. Now, we've completely gone in the opposite direction of co-dependence. So our society is so darn off balance with this staunch perception of independence and self-reliance and self-fulfillment and never compromising that we don't yet recognize that we still need one another and give the other full credit for their abilities and the meaning they add to our lives. But eventually people will get tired of feeling so lonely and trying to fill that hole with social networking, one night stands, and everything else, and come back together. And hopefully this time they'll give each other space to be two completely whole beings in a single relationship.
IMHO, lots of Christians are given perfectly good choices for spouses. However, they have their priorities in the wrong place. They exclude some because of appearance, age difference, social status, income and others. ( I admit that I did this when I was in the dating scene.) I also believe that our internet society may retarded some people's social skills, so that they have a difficult time meeting and interacting with people face to face.
I know several people who made a list of godly attributes they wanted in a mate, who faithfully prayed over this list, and were later blessed with a good Christian person who became their spouse. It does happen. And I also know people who have not been blessed this way. Not all of us were meant to have a spouse. Everyone's godly calling is different. Pray and ask God to tell you what He has called for your life.
>>>>It does happen.
Yes, it does. I'm not denying that. It's just that the proportion of those success stories to the unsuccessful ones is on the order of 1 success for every 100 failures. The statistics bear me out. Heartsong notes roughly 1 out of every two Christian marriages ends in divorce. What she doesn't mention (no fault of hers, this wasn't the topic) are people like this:
Quote:
I have been married for 10 years. And I am not happy at all with my married with my wife. If it isn't because of my son , I would have already gone , left her alone and don't care about her anymore!
I have started realized that I married with the wrong woman since 3 years after we married. When we have a fight, sometimes I have a really bad thought that I want to kill her. Yes, that's shows how bad I hate her. We fight each other about many kinds of things, from financial, way of teaching our son, etc. The lists is so long, that I couldn't remember all.
In my eyes, she is a stuborn, stone head woman, she think she is smart, but in my eyes, she is the opposite. she play a role in our debt,because of her stupid thought about how to manage money.
When I start to tell her about how to better handle our financial, or how to better take care of our son, or our house, her reaction is always trying to argue with me without seeing the positive goal behind it. That only makes me HATE HATE HATE her MORE AND MORE!!!
I also sick of her lazyness. When she cook , she will only prepare the food for herself and our son. She wash only the dishes that she used, and left alone other dishes that I used.
I feel that our life is INSANE!!!. I don't know how to continue this life. There is no love left between us. Only my son is connecting us together.
Sex? Don't talk about sex, we have no sex for a long long time. And I don't have any desire to do it, even touch her. Am I impotence?? hell no! with her maybe , but I am healthy. The only things connecting us at this time is our son and our religion. But should I spend my life like this for the rest of my life?
and this:
Quote:
"I hate my wife"! How appropriate to begin my story.
Met my wife in my college days. Things did not seem so bad as first. She had always been strong headed and self-centered, but I guess I was always forgiving, and looked past her negative part of her character and tried to see the good in her.
Knowing how aggressive my wife is, after a big fight, I avoided making war with her, and let it pass, and there was peace once again in the house. There were small fights now and then, but I let that pass too. Five years passed, and we have our 1st kid. I love my kid dearly. Not being a good wife, I was afraid how bad a mother she would be. My worst fears came true.
My wife will just sleep till she is ready to get up from bed. Ended up me being the one to attend to my kid, cook for my kid, and the little things that needed to be done. If my kid wanted some milk, my wife can just lie there dead not attending to my kid, and even hit her if she cries. It grew so bad that I have to put my kid with my mom during weekdays, and only bring her back at night and during weekends.
I will have no doubt divorcing her, but if she gain custody of my kid, I can't imagine how my kid will be treated. I feel trapped, and having the kid seems to be the anchoring my decision to divorce her.
and this
Quote:
My husband and I had a major blow out recently. Really it pales in comparison to the years of fighting we've gone through. Of the seven years we've been married so far I have to say this last one has been the best and even then it's been hell.
I found this group. I read story after story. Page after page of living hells of Christian marriages. These stories have been a real eye opener.
I don't mean to interrupt your posts, I just want to thank you for sharing your experiences.
Story after story---page after page!
And these are the Christian couples who choose to stay together. God bless them for obeying Jesus' commandment not to divorce and riding it through. But do these marriages sound like the kind of storybook romances young 20-somethings fill their hours dreaming about and fantasizing over?
So when I say 1 out of 100 I don't think I am exaggerating.
>>>>Not all of us were meant to have a spouse.
Very true, and for those who have chosen to make themselves "eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom" more power to them. But that is a voluntary choice. Cold comfort for those who are eunuchs or in hellish marriages against their wills.
God gets blamed for a lot of stuff. the 42 million divorces that happened since no fault-- were not Gods doing. Mostly women filed and I bet a lot of men were not much fun to live with either.
At this point asking God to let me get married so i can have another expensive divorce is to ask amiss.
Last edited by Huckleberry3911948; 06-30-2013 at 06:03 PM..
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And I think Paul was expressing the struggle part of it. He didn't say it was terrible. Just that you will have struggles. Life can be easier when single, imo. 
