“Ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your
souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)
“Am
I doing enough?” It’s the recurring
question that invades the mind of every single woman over the age of 30. Singleness is a season of ebbs and
flows. There are days when you’re
immersed in the wonders of God, relishing each moment of praise and adoration
for Him, captivated by the display of His glorious attributes, grateful for each opportunity to plunge head-first into the knowledge of Him, undistracted
by the cares and concerns of family life – so thrilled that He chose the single
life for you!
But
then something happens. You hear of a woman
becoming engaged at your church; a family is welcoming another baby; an older
couple is celebrating their 25th anniversary; you have another
birthday – and those dreams of marriage and motherhood, those desires that are
always just underneath the surface, bubble up into your waking consciousness. You find yourself suddenly in a state of
panic, fearful, remorseful, regretful, thinking “Did God really choose the single life for me or have I done this to myself?”
Should
I be doing more to get a husband? Should
I be more aggressive in my efforts to get married? Is praying not enough? Is it time to take the bull by the horns, take
life by the collar, pound the pavement, hit the streets, walk the line, put the
hammer down, batten down the hatches, pay the piper, shoot the curl and do
everything I possibly can to land myself a man?!
Does the “How”
Matter?
It’s
a touchy subject, especially in Christian circles. We all know the roles that God assigned to a husband
and wife in marriage, roles designed to maximize His glory, intensify their
enjoyment, and display the relationship between Christ and the church. But what about the approach to marriage? Does
the man always have to initiate and lead?
Does the woman always have to wait patiently and respond? Might marriage happen quicker if women take
the lead?
Cyberspace
is buzzing with such talk these days. More
and more men……Christian men…..are saying, “Yes! It’s time for women to step up
and start initiating! We’d be thrilled
if a woman approached us. After all, nowhere
in the Bible does it say ‘Only men shall lead in dating relationships’”, they
reason. And that’s true; there is no explicit
commandment in the Bible. But does that mean
the Bible is completely silent on the issue?
A journey through the Word of God reveals otherwise. Consider these scriptures:
“Therefore a man
shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall
become one flesh.” – Genesis 2:24
“When a man is
newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable
for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with
his wife whom he has taken.” – Deuteronomy 24:5
“He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.”
– Proverbs 18:22
“House and
wealth are inherited from fathers, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.” – Proverbs 19:14
“An excellent wife who can find?” – Proverbs 31:10
“Are you bound
to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.”
– 1 Corinthians 7:27
“For when they
rise from the dead, they neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” – Mark 12:25
More
than just a hodge-podge of unrelated verses, these scriptures show a pattern in
the way men and women approach marriage.
All the action verbs belong to the men; a man leaves his father and mother and holds fast to his wife, he takes
a wife, he finds a wife and obtains
favor from the Lord, he receives a
wife from the Lord, he seeks a wife,
and finally, the man marries while the woman is “given in marriage” (the
Scriptures are replete with that language).
Many have dismissed these descriptions as throwbacks from ancient
times. But though the formal courtship and
arranged marriages of the Bible have never been a significant part of our
American heritage, our speech from the not-so-distant past reflects this same
pattern of men leading and women responding.
A
man who married used to be said to have “taken a wife”, but never was a
marrying woman described as “taking a husband”.
An older woman who had never married was called an “old maid”, a
derisive term suggesting such a woman had been rejected by eligible suitors and
now had only the company of stray cats to look forward to. An older never-married man, however, was
never called an “old bachelor” but a “confirmed bachelor”, a much more positive
term indicating the man was not a victim of rejection by women but had decided
his own marital status. Even today in
our women-can-do-everything-a-man-can-do-only-better American culture, barely
1% of all women propose to their husbands.
So much for the Sexual Revolution.
It seems even in our God-ignoring, secular society women don’t want to
do the chasing and men don’t want to be chased.
It’s ingrained in our very natures.
This is messed up.
“So
what’s a single woman to do?!”, many Christian women have lamented. “I have hoped, and hoped, and hoped, and waited,
and waited, and waited, and prayed, and prayed, and prayed, but no man has
approached me. No man has asked me to
marry him. No man has even asked me out
on a date. My youth is slipping away, my
beauty is fading, my fertile years are drying up, I’m withering on the vine……I
must do something!” Many women in this predicament are wondering
if the “how” really matters. Does it
matter how marriage comes about? Will it
matter in the long run who initiated, as long as it leads to the altar? When it comes to marriage, do the ends
justify the means?
Ruth and the Art
of Husband-Hunting
In
recent internet discussions on the subject of dating and marriage, many
Christian men and women are holding up Ruth, the Moabitess, as the archetype
for women pursuing marriage aggressively.
Ruth, they say, took matters into her own hands when she found herself a
widow and in the presence of the eligible Mr. Boaz. When she uncovered Boaz’s feet at the
threshing floor that night she practically proposed to the man, and, in doing
so, upended this silly, antiquated nonsense about men leading and women
responding.
But
is that really what Ruth did? Herein lays
the danger of modernizing and applying a passage of Scripture without correctly
interpreting it in its original historical context first. On Boaz’s threshing floor, Ruth took
advantage of an Israelite social structure called Levirate Marriage. In this arrangement, a brother or close male relative
of a deceased Israelite man would take the man’s widow to be his wife, giving
the firstborn son she bore to the brother her dead husband’s name so that the
dead man’s name would not be blotted out of Israel (see Deuteronomy 25). It was not a twist on dating; in fact it wasn’t
dating at all. Our modern American
culture has no equivalent. Furthermore, it
wasn’t Ruth’s idea to instigate the Levirate Marriage system, but her
mother-in-law Naomi’s idea (Ruth 3:1-4).
Ruth dutifully obeyed Naomi’s instruction. In the passage, we don’t get many details on
what Ruth thought of Boaz.
We
do, on the other hand, get lots of information on what Boaz thought of
Ruth. He is not a passive bystander here
– indeed, he has been closely observing Ruth and assessing her character. He
tells Ruth, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of
your husband has been fully told to me” (Ruth 2:11). Later Boaz commends Ruth for not going “after
young men, whether poor or rich” and adds that “all my fellow townsmen know
that you are a worthy woman” (Ruth 3:10-11). Boaz was clearly intrigued with Ruth and when
presented with the opportunity to marry her he gladly takes it. Even though the Scriptures don’t reveal Boaz’s
state of mind in Chapter 4 when he offers the opportunity to the nearer
redeemer, we can almost feel through the pages of Scripture Boaz’s sigh of
relief when the other man turns the deal down.
None of us want Ruth to go to some nameless bozo we haven’t even been
introduced to in the narrative. We want
Ruth to go to Boaz, and she does. And so
ends one of the most beautiful love stories in the Bible.
Was Ruth an aggressive, role-reversing, go-get-it kind of gal? Not according to Boaz.
Ruth
is far from an aggressive, marriage-hungry woman on a man-hunt, as some have portrayed
her. Mangling and misinterpreting the
book of Ruth cannot refute the obvious fact that men don’t want to be hunted
down like prey and women don’t want to chase men down like scared rabbits in a
briar patch. The way men and women
approach each other on the road to marriage, the complementary roles they
assume, really do matter because they reveal a lot about the participants. If a man likes being chased and pursued what
kind of man is he? What kind of husband
will he be (likely not a good one)? What
kind of precedent will a potential wife set if she chases, catches, and pins
down a suitor? Can she really say to
him, after the wedding, “Well, Johnny, I approached you and proposed but now I
want you to lead our family. DO IT NOW!”?
Tales from the
Pulpit
The
pastor of our church is not only a gifted expositor but also a man extremely delighted
to be married to his wife of more than 10 years. This means that in between blocks of his
exegesis of Scripture, he regularly regales our congregation with tales of how
he met his lovely wife, how he got to know her, how he pursued her, and how he
eventually married her – an accomplishment he clearly enjoys remembering and
one he expresses with effusive pride.
Whenever the biblical text covers words like “love” or “husband” or “wife”
or “veil” or “altar” or “covenant” or any word remotely connected to marriage, you
can take it to the bank, he will seize the chance to reminisce rhapsodically
about how he won his fair bride.
As
a woman, single long past the desire to be, I sometimes have a difficult time
listening to our pastor’s enthusiastic stories and romantic anecdotes. I find myself wondering if I will ever know
the joy of being pursued and desired like that.
Ever. But there are times when his telling of how he noticed his wife as a single woman –
how he observed her, how he assessed her character, how he wanted her in such a godly and
passionate way – is so beautiful and charming!
I can’t help but to set my own disappointments aside and listen with
rapt attention. One such time, I was
moved to tears (happy, not jealous ones) when our pastor explained the many
reasons why he felt compelled to marry his wife – that even before they dated
he saw that she was gorgeous, witty, intelligent, pure, had a heart for
ministry, and a love for Christ displayed in how she discipled other women; he
determined by watching her interact with others that she would make an exceptional
pastor’s wife and a wonderful mother to his children. Their
resulting courtship was careful, thoughtful, intentionally biblical, bathed in
prayer, and surrounded by wise counsel and godly mentors. It was apparently quite a journey and, no
doubt, equally thrilling for his wife. Hearing
Pastor recount it, I must agree with Proverbs 30:19….the way of a man with a
maiden is too wonderful for me to understand.
One
thing’s for certain: No one gets married
like Adam and Eve. God will never again
give men wives by fashioning females from their ribs. But it is astounding to me how often godly
marriage stories seem to reflect the characteristics of that first encounter,
when man met woman. Married Christian
women will often tell me how long they waited for their husbands to notice them
and approach them but their Christian husbands often recall the experience very
differently. They describe how one day,
seemingly out of the blue, they saw this radiant, godly woman in front of them,
as if she had been hidden from their sight before that glorious moment. Strangely, it resembles that moment when God
presented Eve to Adam and Adam excitedly claimed her as his own, “bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23).
So
where does that leave me? I want to be
desired, I want to be pursued, I want to get married, but I feel helpless to
make it happen. What can I do? What’s my role in this? Earlier this week, I expressed those concerns
to my former pastor who lives in another state.
His advice was surprisingly simple.
He said my job was to prepare. Not
to worry, not to fret, not to frantically pursue men, not to church-hop looking
for Mr. Right – but to simply prepare to be the best wife I could be. Then pray and wait to see what God would
do. It was advice the relationship
pundits of this world would surely laugh at and scoff. Though even the worldliest advice columnist will
never tell single women to head out in hot pursuit of a man, they will suggest
things like, “Invade his personal space.
Make deliberate eye contact.
Mirror his body movements. Lean
in when he’s speaking to you. Stroke
your hair. Purse your lips.” After doing all that you might as well hold up
a sign with the words, “TAKE ME! TAKE
ME, NOW!” No, as frustrating as it is to
wait and wait and wait, I know my former pastor’s advice is faithful and true.
What not to do.
It
all reminds me of a quote from Ray Comfort, the famous street evangelist. In one of his books, commenting on sexual
immorality, he stated,
“One who commits fornication
takes what could lawfully be his as a gift from God, and corrupts it. He is like a child who one night steals a
crisp, new twenty-dollar bill from his father’s wallet, not realizing that his
father intended to give it to him as a gift in the morning.”
I read
this and thought, “But what about those of us who have never gotten the
twenty-dollar bill? You got your $20,
but some of us have waited until the next morning, the next week, the next
year, the next decade, and we still haven't gotten the $20. Where’s my twenty bucks?!” As I slammed the book shut in anger, the Holy
Spirit impressed something on my mind. As
a woman, I am not waiting for the twenty-dollar bill. I am the
twenty-dollar bill. God had the task of presenting
me as a gift to a godly man searching for the twenty-dollar bill. That thought gave me much joy and relief…and
even a cautious optimism of what is yet to come.
But what if God never gives me to anyone?! Then I will be safe in the wallet of my Heavenly
Father. No, it’s not the same as being in
a home with a husband, but I can’t think of a better place for a single woman
to be.
Copyright © 2013
