Tag Archives: fear

You Don’t Marry A List

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At some point when I was a young Christian single I made a list.  You know the list I’m talking about.  The list of things that I wanted in a wife.  I’m not sure if I was encouraged to do it or if I just did it on my own, but I made it.  Several times actually.  One in college for sure and another one right out of college, a couple of other random times.

There’s a lot of interesting things about this idea.  I mean I get it.  The whole idea is don’t settle for less than God’s best for you.  But there are some serious problems here as well.

For starters there is an entire shift that needs to be made in the Church.  We are often so concerned with getting it wrong, that we don’t end up getting it at all (read that sentence again and apply it to about half of Christianity as we know it – but I digress).

There is the overriding concern that we have to keep people from “marrying wrong”.  I think 20 years ago this was maybe true.  That time is over.  People aren’t marrying wrong but along with that they aren’t marrying right either.  So maybe instead of worrying about settling for less than God’s best, we should worry more about what marriage is, how to know if I’m called to it to begin with, and how to pursue it – then let the chips fall where they may. “The List” might well keep you from “marrying wrong” but it also might keep you from marrying at all.

Secondly the list turns us into consumers.  That’s because the list, while having to do with the attributes of the other person, usually ends up being about me and what I want and expect.  Now again, there is an element of good here.  We should have some standards for who we would date/marry.  But if/when the list moves from the essentials (they must love Jesus) to the personal (they must be joyful) to the trivial (they must be blonde) we start sliding into what we prefer instead of what God commands.  And that is dangerous grounds for lots of reasons.

If we make the list based solely on our needs and wants, we are in danger of making it all about us.  And that is not biblical love or marriage.

Instead we should flip the script big time.  We need to figure out how to love another person vs. being focussed on having to be loved by another person.  Don’t get me wrong, you should definitely not marry someone who doesn’t love you.  But if our focus is on this other person being the answer to our life questions then it will be impossible to love them.  If we get married, our commitment comes from our decision to love them, not the love we receive from them.

We need to get away from this idea of finding this person who will be perfect for us in every way.  This person who will “meet all of our needs and desires”.  This person who will magically give us our worth and value within that relationship.  That’s called an idol.  It’s not the point of marriage.

When we date, or search for someone to date, with that stuff going on we are never going to get married.  No one can live up to that.  And if we do get married then that marriage will be in trouble.

Which brings me to the final problem with The List.  You don’t marry a list.  You marry a person and no matter what you think you know about them, you don’t know anything yet. Even if you can check everything off the right way, you still have no idea how all of it is going to play out over the next decades.

It’s like school vs. the work environment.  There’s passing all the tests and learning the information.  But that’s not the same as putting it into action in real time and real life. That’s part of the adventure of marriage.  It’s what makes your story together happen.  It’s good to pass the test but it’s a lot more fulfilling to live out the actual adventure, failures and all. People, along with their needs and desires, change as their story develops.  You and I are not exempt – neither are our spouses if we marry.

For proof of this ask yourself if you list at age 20 would be the same as your list today. Mine isn’t.  There are three or four things that have always been on the list, but other things have changed as I’ve grown and changed.

What’s on your list?  What is honestly important to you?  Not just the “right/holy” answers but what really matters. . . to you?  What parts are trivial?  Has the trivial ever gotten in the way of commitment?

Is Marriage Under Attack?

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There’s a lot of talk these days in the Christian community that marriage is under attack. The idea is that marriage is no longer seen as valuable or as a lifelong commitment.  I’ve heard it stated that young people don’t see it as important.

I can see how people come to this conclusion.  We are all well versed in the numbers. 50% of marriages end in divorce.  A third of first time marriages are over within 10 years. But, the divorce rate has actually dropped steadily for the last couple of decades. (That doesn’t make it good, but it’s not going up).  (This is also in spite of the fact that no fault divorce has been legal in 48 states since 1983).

But one of the biggest reasons the divorce rate is going down is that people aren’t getting married to begin with.  Only 51% of all people in the U.S. are married at all.  Only 20% of those aged 18-29 have ever been married.  That number is down from 60% 40 years ago. Catch that number again – 80% of adults 30 and under have never been married.

But here’s the part that should have everyone freaking out.  A lot of singles seem to not care about getting married.  They seem to be saying do whatever you want.  We haven’t quit having sex or even living with other people and having kids.  This is where the numbers are just astounding.  41% of women aged 15-44 have cohabited.  The number of cohabiting unmarried partners increased 88% from 1990 to 2007.  Most startling of all, since the late 1980’s more women in the U.S. give birth to their first child out of wedlock than as a married person.  Read that last line again!

So everyone is dong what every generation has done. . . except get married.

That is not Biblical singleness.  Let me assure you that when the Bible talks about singleness it is not talking about living with someone and having a kid or two.

But here is where I think we are missing it. I’ve met literally thousands of people currently age 15-35.  I don’t actually think young singles are devaluing marriage.  In fact, a recent survey found that 84% of women and 82% of men said that marriage was somewhat or very important.  Only 5% said that it wasn’t important at all.

The problem is they have no idea how to do singleness and most don’t know how to get married. Many are scared crapless of marriage or better stated they are scared of divorce and bad marriages.  People like the idea of marriage, they just don’t know how to do it.

Marriage is under attack but not in the way we think.  The problem isn’t that people don’t want it.

I think we need a new strategy.  We need to quit defending marriage, and start helping people figure out how to get married.  This is going to take a lot more than slogans and rhetoric.  We are going to have to get messy.  We are going to have to actually go after these people.

First we have to help define what marriage really is.  We need a right theology and practice of marriage.  This is one thing that the Church is doing very, very well.  There has been a huge movement in the last 20 years to talk about marriage in a new way with an emphasis on covenant and commitment.  We have gotten much more real about how hard that can be.  We’ve become more practical and real in our sermons and books.  We’ve stepped up Christian marriage counseling.  I’ve been hard on the Church here and there so I want to give due credit here.  The Church truly is fighting for the married.  Not perfectly of course but they have changed.

But we also have to figure out how to help the unmarried.  We have to step into the mess, not just send out conflicting and confusing spiritual platitudes.  Instead of trying to convince people that marriage is right, we have to help them become right for marriage.  We have to help them face fear, be it fear of commitment, fear of failing, fear of rejection, fear of divorce, fear of choosing wrong, fear of being let down, fear of how hard it is, or fear that they’ve already disqualified themselves.

That requires reaching out to them.  Want to change the culture?  Change how we do singleness.  Want to help people not have sex outside of marriage?  Want to deal with homosexuality, abortion and porn in a new way, and help young single people navigate this stuff?  Then help these young single people understand the theology of celibacy and marriage.  Help them pursue one or the other. Don’t just call out their sin, help them face their fear, hurt, and wounds. We need some sermons and books on this.  We need Christian singles counseling – dead serious.

Right now, over all, we are not winning.  But it isn’t because young singles don’t want to be married.  We are helping married people stay married.  It’s time to help single people get married.

I’m A Poser – And So Are You

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I’ve always said that one of my goals in life is to get over myself.  One of the keys to doing this is to identify and kill the false self, or what one might call the poser.

There are I suppose different reasons we pose but the main one I find is how I view myself in relation to how I view others and what I think they think of me.

What’s funny about this of course is that we are all posers.  So when I meet someone else, most of the time, I’m meeting that persons pose.  This just exasperates the problem because I don’t even consider that fact.  Instead what I do is compare my true view of myself (which is usually my insecurities etc) with the pose of the other person.  This leads me to pose more – lest they find out that I’m not as good as their posed persona.  Exhausted yet?  Yeah we all are.

Jesus is of course constantly trying to take out the poser in people.  Think of just about every interaction He has with people in the Bible.  People are constantly posing around Him.  Obviously the Pharisees but many others as well.  The rich young ruler and the woman at the well come to mind.  Jesus is always cutting to the chase and calling out who the person really is.

We pose in order to hide our wounds, insecurities and sin.  It makes us look better, or at least justifies us feeling better about ourselves.  As men, we are constantly posing.  We could be the “busy guy,” the “funny guy”, the “dominant guy”, the “in charge guy”, the “nice guy”, the “business guy” or the “ministry guy”.  We pose, and the bad news is, it works.  We actually sort of become known as that.  Even if we say we hate that people see us that way, there is comfort in it.

The worst part is that it keeps us from dealing with our real self.  It “protects” us from our wounds and hurt.  It keeps us from our identity in Christ.  We are afraid of our real self being exposed.  But if we are in Jesus, we don’t have to be.

Jesus is in the process (sanctification is the official word) of making us who we were created to be.  We are becoming.  He is restoring us to who we were meant to be when He thought us up.  We aren’t there yet of course, but we are on the way.  If I’m with Jesus then the truest thing about me is that I belong to Him and my validation comes from that.

This whole posing thing can really kill us as singles in several ways.  There’s the obvious stuff when it comes to the opposite sex.  But honestly that isn’t really where I’m going today.  I think the bigger issue is that killing the poser is basically impossible to do alone.

One of the great things about marriage is that we have to deal with another person, every day.  Yes that is hard, but it’s also good.  We are relational beings created by a relational God, to be in relationship.  You can pose your way all the way to marriage, but at some point, be it a day, a month, a year, whatever, you are going to be exposed.  What happens then kind of determines how your marriage is going to go, but that is a different post.

Let’s face it, as a single person it’s just easier to hide.  50% of unmarried people live alone. Think about that.  Most of us don’t have friends that really know everything about us.  Who knows your hopes, dreams, fears, sin?  Who knows the worst thing you’ve ever done or the thing your heart desires most?  Who knows what you did last night, last week, last year?  Who is your mirror?

But we need to work to kill the poser as best we can, especially as we get older.  We should not be 35 and reacting the same way we did 5-10 years ago.  We should be more of who we are supposed to be.  But to do that, we’ll have to have humility, community, and guts.

Humility to even acknowledge that we pose in the first place and seeking help. Community because we need people who see the real us and fight for our hearts.  Guts because honestly, it takes courage to actually deal with our sin patterns, wounds, and insecurities.

If we don’t do this, we get worse, not better.  This is a serious issue.  There are a lot of 30 something singles in a worse emotional/spiritual/mental state than they were in their 20’s.  As we get older, it gets easier to hide.  Less people ask questions – we aren’t the young unmarried guy who needs a mentor.  We are the mentor. That is when it really get’s crazy.

What is your pose?  How are you hiding?  Who really knows you?

How The Church Is Helping Kill Marriage

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When I was right out of college I attended a conference with several people I looked up to and their spouses.  They did an incredible job of including me which was a real blessing as we went to meetings and theme parks.  One vivid memory was hanging out with a couple of the guys in the hot tub at the resort when all of a sudden one guy said, “Hey Justin, sorry bro, but I’m gonna go have some sex with my wife.”  To which I said, “No apology needed, go now!”  We both laughed.

It was one of my first times being around a bunch of married Christian people and it was inspiring.  We joked with the guys about how every one of them had married up (which was for sure true!).  I saw how they were a team and yet each couple was completely different in how that looked day to day.  It was awesome.  And it made me want to be married.

We need more of this, and a lot less of what the Church has fallen into over the last 20 years.

God bless the Christian culture in this country but man we tend to overreact.  We have been reacting to decline of the family for some time now.  But in a attempt to save marriage, we are actually often adding to it’s demise.

We somehow believe that if we can make every marriage a good one from the beginning, then all will be well.  But, in a culture that is already hesitant to get married, we have often made them more hesitant.

For starters we have attempted to kill the marriage idol. This is the idea that if I get married then everything will be ok.  It is centered on romance and getting my needs met.  It puts unrealistic expectations on the marriage.  So we tell people how marriage is not about romance.  We spend an inordinate amount of time from the pulpit and in books talking about how hard marriage is.

While this is true, it needs to be balanced out. Where’s the joy?  Where’s the fun?  What if pastors stood up in the pulpit and said, “Sex with my wife is awesome!”  If the Church is so concerned that everyone get married, we should quit accidentally talking everyone out of it.

The second thing we’ve done is create an impossible standard for getting married.  We lift up Ephesians 5 and of course the Proverbs 31 woman. Holy smokes!  Who lives this out perfectly?  Can you even be an Ephesians 5 guy if you aren’t married?  We basically have said, “Whatever you do, don’t settle.  You’re looking for a strong, spiritual person, equally yoked to you, who has it all together and is a perfect grown up.  Don’t settle!”

Along with this is the idea that it used to be easier to find this.  Really?!  COME ON!  Let’s talk about Biblical marriage.  You married who your parents picked for you – if you were lucky.  You had to stay in your caste.  They didn’t typically do a spiritual maturity test first. What a joke.  Have these people read the Bible?

In the “religious right” church there is even this idea that somehow there is a previous magical time where everyone in America was a Jesus follower.  Although I’m not quite sure, I think this is the supposed to be the 1950’s.  Just because everyone went to church and didn’t get divorced doesn’t make it “right”.  The revisionist history needs to end.

Finally, we have completely over spiritualized the entire thing.  If I’m single it means that I just need to be patient and do right because God has a plan.  He will “bring me someone when the time is right.”  Keep praying.  Keep waiting on God.  This sort of “help you sleep at night theology” is killing us.  It makes God the “Great Withholder” and leaves us waiting for our Christian Soulmate that isn’t coming.

Now obviously I’m not suggesting we soft sell marriage or tell people to just go out and marry whoever.  But if we are going to help the next generation we need to stop trying to scare people away from the wrong marriage.  They are already terrified.  They already know marriage is hard – they need to know it is good.  They need to know about the joy of true oneness, the benefits of being in it with someone.  They need to be told about the intimacy available with being with one person for a lifetime more than they need to know about the cost of a one night stand.  They need to be invited to something more awesome. They need to know that they need to pursue it, not just wait on it.

Most of all, they need to see it because most of them haven’t.  We need to give them hope of what it can be, not just tell them what it isn’t.

How Do You Respond To Attraction?

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Here’s a question.  What is your immediate response to attraction?  How do you respond when you are attracted?  Do you move with ease?  Do you hesitate?  Do you let it build up and then blow it up?  Are you relaxed or nervous?  Why?

What most guys feel is some combination of excitement and fear.  What most guys do is nothing.  They choke.  I know, I’ve choked many, many times.

There is almost nothing that tells us more about ourselves as men than how we react to the threat of rejection.  And when we are attracted to someone, that threat is imminent. It tells us the truth about how we feel about ourselves, where we rank ourselves on the totem pole, and how much power we give other people that we think are “above” us on that same pole.

This by the way is why women are attracted to confidence.  It’s a natural test and one that we actually need to pass, not just fake our way through.  If we fake our way through it with posturing and gamesmanship then either we will come off “try hard” and unattractive, or we will attract her only to get crushed later.  That doesn’t mean technique and approach don’t matter, they do and we’ll get to that, but they are hard to pull off if you don’t really own it.

Here’s the questions you need to ask.  What is it that I’m afraid of and where does that come from?

Essentially we are afraid of rejection.  This leads to two other questions.  Why do you think you will be rejected (what are your insecurities) and what do you think rejection will mean (embarrassment and discomfort).  We need to face these fears head on.

What is it that makes you insecure?  In other words why will she reject you?  You know the answer to this by the way so just man up and say it.  Maybe it’s that you think you don’t make enough money.  Is it that you don’t think you are good looking enough?  Is that you aren’t fun or successful enough?  Not smart enough?  What are you insecure about?  Then ask, is it true?  Talk about scary stuff!

When you start actually working through it often you find that it isn’t true or that it doesn’t matter.  I’ve struggled with almost every one of the above mentioned insecurities.  Most of them had WAY more to do with how I viewed me than how women viewed me.  For example, I thought of myself as not good looking, but no woman had ever told me that. The thing is, when approaching a woman, how you think of you is infinitely more important than what she thinks of you.  If you project high value, chances are she will see that in you.

Again, you can try to pose your way though this.  You can try to amp it up and cover it up. But that’s like looking the answers up in the back of the book.  It works for the assignment that day, but it doesn’t help much on the exam.

David DeAngelo (“dangerous” secular guy) calls this improving your inner game.  But really as a follower of Jesus I should be facing my insecurities.  I should be finding out who I really am in Christ, which is usually a lot better than I thought.  Jesus was the most confident person ever.  We should be on that path.  If we aren’t we’ve got way bigger problems than handling attraction to women.  It’s just that attraction brings it out.  That’s why it’s good.  If we engage it, it can force us to deal with the rest of our life.

The second part is the fear of rejection itself.  As men we hate to be embarrassed or uncomfortable.  But this is where we need to relax.  What is the worst possible thing that can happen?  If she rejects you, you don’t have a date with her.  That’s where you are already.  Most women are not mean about this.  If anything they are too nice.  As long as you aren’t a jerk or a stalker you’re probably good.

Sometimes we need to remember we aren’t in 10th grade anymore.  It’s not like you are going to have to sit in class with her all day, while her friends make fun of you.  The only way to get into trouble with this is if you chase her after she says no.  Don’t ever do that.

The final reason we freeze is that most of us haven’t been taught how to approach a woman.  As men we don’t do well when we don’t have the skill to do something.  We are afraid of failure when we don’t know how to do it.  I’ll toss out some thoughts on that next week.

But for today, let me leave you with what I started with.  How do you react when you are attracted?  What are you afraid of?  What are you doing to change that?

Would Jesus Snuggle?

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The other day one of my friends posted a link on facebook that just stopped me.  I wasn’t even sure exactly what to do with it – it’s just dumbfounding.  And yet . . . it’s not.  Which is why she posted it.

There is a new place called The Snuggery.  Basically the idea is that we all need physical touch and intimacy.  It brings healing and comfort.  But sense most people don’t have it, this lady has started a business.  I’m not making this up.  For $50 you can have a 45 minute snuggling session.  There are two professional snugglers.  You can snuggle with both for $100.  Again, I’m not kidding.

It’s not to be sexual and it must be fully clothed (pajamas are ok though).  Just wear what you are comfortable in.  You can talk or not talk.  Whatever you want.  You just snuggle. You get to be touched.

I’m literally not sure whether to laugh or cry.  Seriously.  In a way it breaks my heart.  This is where we are at as a society.  We are this alone.

Now I guarantee there are some married people who haven’t snuggled at home in a while, which is tragic.  But as a single person this is a huge issue.

I mentioned this in one of my first blogs.  One of the absolutely hardest things as a single is the lack of touch.  And the older you get, the more this is true. What these ladies have right is that touch matters.  Under the heading of WHY SNUGGLE they list out the benefits of intimate, nonsexual touch.  They aren’t wrong about any of it.  And as their lead sentence says, “Why Snuggle? Quite simply because it makes us feel good.”

But if you are single what do you do with this?  If it is true that we need touch, what do we do?

The problem is exasperated by several things.  First off we have had a lot of bad physical touch in our culture.  Over the course of their lifetime 28% of kids age 14-17 have been sexually violated in some way.  This doesn’t even begin to include physical abuse or physical neglect.  That is the world we are growing up in.

Secondly, we have a much more isolated world.  We are way more likely to work alone, and 28% of us live alone. (Now if half of us are married that means that 50% of single people live by themselves.)  That does not lead to good touch.  It leads to isolation.

Finally, partly in response to all of the above and the sexually immoral culture that we live in, the Church has told us not to touch anyone.  Kiss dating goodbye.  Don’t touch or it could lead to sex.  I get it, I really do, but man, if we don’t touch at all, that can’t be good.  We can’t live in fear and call it religion.

I can speak from personal experience here.  I went 10 years without kissing anyone (age 25-35).  Most of that was spent with very little touch.  There were lots of reasons.  But to be honest as I turned the corner of 30 I was messed up, and I’d say lack of touch contributed to that.  I remember feeling awkward even hugging sometimes.

I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how to fix all this.  I’m not suggesting the Church start establishing Christian Snuggeries.  But I know that we need an answer.  We need something different than “don’t have sex” and “don’t go to far”.  Why should two women be addressing this while we stand on the sidelines?

Appropriate touch is vital.  I can’t remember where I saw it but there is a video of nuns in a poor country taking in dying children.  You know the first thing they did?  They hugged them and held them for extended periods.

In Mark 2 a leper approaches Jesus.  Back then, lepers were separated out and seen as unclean.  They were to avoid contact with the “clean” people at all costs.  In fact there was a six foot rule that said no one was supposed to be within six feet of them.

But as this guy approaches Jesus, he doesn’t move out of the way.  Now Jesus could have said the word and this man would have been healed of leprosy.  But he still would have been untouched, and maybe people would have wondered, “is he really well?”

In one of the most simple, powerful moments in Jesus’ ministry, he reached out and touched the man.  He knew he needed more than a physical healing – he needed to know he was touchable.

Somehow we have to rescue this.  We have to know that not only are we “Christian” or “Saved” but that we are touchable.  Whatever message we send the single person, that has to be part of it.

Have you ever suffered from lack of touch? Where do you go for appropriate touch?

Frozen Masculinity

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My sophomore year I played varsity basketball.  I didn’t typically start but I played (a lot) on a team made up of 7 seniors and 3 Juniors.  I was the future.  But my junior year, while I was a better athlete, I was a worse player.  It was hard to describe.  It was like I was out there but I couldn’t fully engage.  I was kind of frozen.  There were many different reasons. I broke my thumb, we switched coaches and systems etc, but really, I was just off.  It was like I wanted it so bad that I couldn’t get it.  I was a starter, but honestly I shouldn’t have been.

One day after a particularly bad game my dad pulled me into his office.  We had a man to man.  He said, “Look, you’ve probably lost your starting job.  I wouldn’t start you.  You’ve got to turn it loose.  Somehow you’ve got to find some reckless abandon.  Sometimes you just have to say F it and go.”  My dad never cussed.  It’s maybe the best advice he’s ever given me.

That night I did start.  I also played freer.  I finished the last few games a little better and then had a good senior year.

Here’s what crazy.  The same thing happened to me in dating.  As a kid I had no game. But when I got to college I suddenly had dates.  I gained confidence and I was fearless.  I’d ask out a person in a store, the waitress, whoever, and they’d say yes.  But then some stuff changed. I had a long relationship that rightly ended but it was then that I knew I needed to date to get married, not just to date.  The pressure kind of mounted.  I was 22.

It was at this point (in my mid 20’s) that the whole “biblical dating” movement happened. Being a young Christian leader I of course wanted to do right.  So I didn’t date to date, never kissed anyone and even did the whole “courting” thing once.  Turns out you can get hurt there too.

When I turned 30 I moved to St. Louis, a much more target rich environment.  But there was a big problem.  I was frozen.  It was like I couldn’t pursue.  I over thought everything.  I was still too religious and when I did like someone I was too try hard.  I over thought, over pursued and felt awkward.  I was the nice guy.  It was seriously crazy.  It was like I was on the court, but not really able to engage.

There are a lot of guys in some sort of similar boat.  We talk all the time about how guys are passive and don’t pursue.  And many times when they do it’s all wrong.  A girl once told me, “I’m so tired of Christian guys.”  This was a gal who loved Jesus.  What she was really saying is, “I’m tired of wuss Christian guys who either won’t pursue me at all or who chase me and are constantly needy.”

We have a serious problem.  Many guys are frozen.  The reasons include but are not limited to:

  • Over-spiritualizing the whole thing.  This includes all I talked about here.  
  • Over-thinking the whole thing.  All of the pretend conversations with girls, trying to figure out if they like me, speculating on how it will all pan out, trying to avoid hurt and on and on
  • Fear of rejection – we are often afraid to ask out who we really want to.  Part of this comes from over thinking and building up the situation to begin with.
  • Fear of commitment – a lot of guys are just scared of marriage –
  • Not knowing how to attract girls.  Most men have no training or help on how female attraction works.  They don’t know how to do it.
  • Waiting for the perfect person – you know the one who looks just right, talks just right, and acts just right – before you even know her
  • Worrying about what others think – both the girl we might ask and what others will think of her if we do
  • We’ve spent too much time having our sexual needs met other ways, which drives down the desire for marriage and drives up our shame – bad combination (more here soon)

All of these can play into each other.  It’s a cycle.  I think about it more, which steals more of my identity away from Christ, which makes me more worried about how it will go, which makes me less likely to act, which means when I do it will be awkward, which will make me more unattractive, which will mean I’m rejected, which will make me think about it more . . . . Whew I’m tired.

We’ve got to figure out how to stop it.  We’ve got to figure out how to act with some reckless abandon (which by the way is extremely attractive).  We have to break free and just go.

What freezes you?  What keeps you from fully engaging and pursuing marriage?  What has helped you get past it?

Why Do We Date The Wrong People?

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Recently in a sermon a pastor was sharing about how singles can become bitter while waiting on God to bring them a spouse. This can be true, especially if you wait without really walking with God.  But then he went on to say that bitterness could lead us to dating the wrong people – in other words we give up and kind of say screw God, he’s not bringing me someone, so I’ll go date people I shouldn’t. (By the way, the pastor deserves for credit for actually addressing singles).

But, while I don’t doubt that people sometimes do date the “wrong” people because they get tired of “waiting” on God, I don’t think it works quite that way very often.  Most of the people I know that are bitter at God for not having a spouse are not dating anyone – right or wrong.

Many people who would say they got tired of waiting on God, and therefore dated someone they knew they shouldn’t, are kind of full of it in at least one of two ways.  First they usually didn’t really wait that long, and they never really have (again I’m talking generally here).  Waiting six months is not a long time.  Heck a year is not really a long time. Secondly, usually they were attracted to someone and they went for it regardless of what God wanted, and then they rationalized it backwards.  That’s not being bitter about waiting for God, that’s being disobedient to God and then trying to rationalize it.  Those are two different things.

Being mad at God is not typically the reason that we date the wrong person. Usually there are other reasons – and it’s habitual.  In other words we have a pattern of dating people that we later would say we shouldn’t have.

How does this happen?  I’ve had several different people tell me that it seems like their “picker” is messed up.  In other words, somehow they keep picking the wrong people to date.  I think there are several ways this happens.

Here’s a great quote, “It just seems like all the people I’m attracted to (or who are attracted to me) aren’t Jesus people.”  Really?!  Have you ever thought about why that is?  I mean are non believers etc, really “hotter” than believers?  I’m gonna go with no.  So what gives?

Here’s some ways we get into these traps.

Sometimes we are afraid of the real thing.  In other words if you constantly date people you know you can’t marry, guess what – you don’t have to get married.  You will always have a way out.  It’s a control thing.  I know it seems weird, but I promise you there are some of us that are sabotaging the whole deal from the get go.  We are scared of marriage for whatever reason, but we want companionship so we date people we know deep down we wouldn’t marry.  This always turns out one of two ways, you have to break up (some do this super quick each time, others do it long and drawn out each time) or you end up so tied to the person that you go ahead and marry them – you’ve come this far.

Some of us think we are disqualified from dating and marrying the good person.  In other words, I’ve done bad stuff, so the person who has it together with Jesus won’t want me.  The truth of course is that we have all done bad stuff in one way or another and none of us is disqualified from marriage.  If God is not going to withhold salvation, is He going to withhold a spouse?

Another version of this is the “I don’t want to face my hard stuff, so I’ll date only people that won’t make me face it.”  This is one of the exact reasons God created marriage to begin with – to make us face stuff and grow.  Running from the people that make you grow is bad in every way, including but not limited to who you date.

Finally, there are a lot of Christian people who say they want to follow Jesus and date a Jesus follower who quite frankly aren’t actually walking with God.  In other words they would give all the right answers but their lives and hearts don’t actually reflect it.  They are actually doing exactly what they want to do, they just don’t want to admit it because it sounds bad.

Here’s the reality.  We date based on how we see ourselves.  This is always true regardless of high or low we view ourselves.  It’s true of not just of who we date, but how we date, how we approach the opposite sex and how we act.  This is why having our identity in Christ is so key.

Is your picker broken?  How do you see yourself?  Is your identity in Christ?  If not, what is it in – really?

There Will Always Be Someone Else

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Ever since I was a little kid it seems like there was always ONE girl that I liked.  And this didn’t have to be a girl I knew well, just the one that I wanted.  This lasted all the way through high school, kind of changed in college (I mean target rich environment right?) and then returned for my twenties.

In a lot of ways this is similar to what I talked about a few months ago about there not being THE ONE.  This idea that if I can just get “this girl” to like me or be with me then everything will be right.  This is not good.  That’s called an idol.  The idea that if I can just get this or that, things will be right.  Bad news.

It also crushes any hope of actually dating that person because you end up caring too much which in turn makes you unattractive.  It also keeps you from seeing other potential people around you, because you are so focussed on that one person.  If I could change anything about my high school (and to some degree later) dating experience it would be that I wouldn’t get so focussed on one person, that frankly I usually didn’t even know that well.  Looking back there were other just as attractive people that would have gone out with me.

You shouldn’t get focussed on one person until you are actually dating that person (obviously at this point you should be).  It puts too much pressure on you and them.  It distorts the image of this person and makes them more of a goal or object than a person to get to know.  Even if you “got” this person you’d be in trouble because they’d have all the power, and you can’t love someone who you need constant approval from. It also can make you pass on others that you should not be passing on.

Here’s what we need to get in our head: There Is Always Someone Else.  Always.

Now you would think that I would have figured this out a lot earlier than I did.  I mean in middle school I was obsessed with one person.  Then in early high school there was a different person, and in later high school yet another.  There’s always been another. Hmmm.

Look, I don’t care how hot she is, how much you like her, how perfect you would be together, there will always be someone else.  To have a chance you have to keep this in mind, otherwise every time that you meet someone you like you’ll try too hard, push too much and/or not know when/if to walk away. But if you know there will be someone else, then you can relax and be yourself because if it doesn’t work out, you guessed it, there will be someone else.

I don’t care how old you are either, or how long you’ve waited, or how tired you are of being single – there will be someone else.  If you get this in your head, there really is no fear.  Go get rejected, no big deal, there will be someone else.  Seriously.  I know it sounds kind of cold but it’s actually vital.  Even if you find someone you want to marry.  This is what makes you free to choose to marry that person.  If I know that there would be someone else then I can choose not be with anyone else but instead to be with only this person (sounds kind of like a wedding vow huh?).  Be sure you understand that you’re not choosing this person because they are THE ONE. You are choosing to make this person the ONLY ONE.

Gentlemen, this is why I keep urging you to get in the game, to get out there by any means necessary, to engage with women, to learn how to quit being nice and learn how to be attractive.  The more you know that there will be someone else, the more free you are to pursue anyone you want.  The more you think there is not someone else, the less you will be able to pursue anyone at all.

There’s a flip side here obviously. You can use this knowledge to treat people how you want, or wait for someone “perfect”, or figure why commit all because there’ll be someone else – I get that, and that post is coming asap.  But I think any honest assessment of most single guys I’ve known (including me) would show this is a huge deal.  It is killing us.  It leads to chasing instead of pursuing, not being able to get out there at all, or even marriages that are set up to fail.

If you’ve been single a while (and heck maybe especially if you’ve been married a while), you know this is true intellectually.  You’ve lived it – but do you live out of it?  Most truth is that way.  We know it but we don’t live out of it.  That’s the battle, but it’s one we have to engage.

We Are Scared Crapless Of Marriage

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Just over 10 years ago I was meeting with a group of about 30 juniors and seniors.  A female volunteer and I were leading a session on sex and dating (because if you are a good youth person you must do this right?).  But anyway, I asked a simple question that brought me a somewhat shocking answer.  I said, “How many of you think that you will get married one time and stay married to that person forever?”  Only about half the kids in that room raised their hands.  This was in the middle of Missouri . . . in 1999.

We so often refuse to deal with the reality of culture. The divorce rate is 50%.  49% of adults are not married.  80% of adults aged 18-29 are not married.  That is the real world. Why?

There are many reasons.  Last week I said one of the reasons is that we have become more self centered.  Today I’d like to talk about another huge reason.  People are scared crapless of marriage.

There’s this idea in the “Christian” world that marriage is less respected today.  I get that thought and I don’t totally disagree.  But I think it is a huge oversimplification of the problem.  I actually think that most young people actually do respect the idea of marriage, which is one reason they are so scared to commit to it.  They’ll do anything but get married.  They will date the same person forever, keep trying to find the perfect person, try out sex, live together and heck even have kids together.  Anything but get married.  Some of that is selfishness but some of it is just pure unadulterated fear.

What is everyone afraid of?  Several things actually.

First, in a general sense people are afraid of screwing up marriage.  They are scared they won’t be able to do it or that they aren’t ready to do it (which of course no one is).  You see they’ve seen it done mostly wrong.  It’s now more normal in our country to grow up in a “broken home” than a complete one.  Kids have grown up seeing their parents in one of two situations.  Many have seen divorce and all the cost that comes with that.  And if that is the choice then let’s not get married at all.  They don’t think divorce is ok.  They have sworn not to let it happen to them and the best way to ensure that is to avoid marriage. Believe me, I’ve talked to these people.  They’d rather have a kid out of wedlock than be divorced.  Less drama.

Secondly a lot of people have watched parents in marriages that are completely dysfunctional and they don’t want that either.  They believe in marriage but they haven’t really ever seen it work.

People are also afraid of community and commitment to others in general.  I mean think about your small group – who really is committed?  Have you ever really been completely committed to anyone or vice versa?  Marriage is the ultimate commitment. It’s the first human community – Adam and Eve with God in the middle.  That’s how it all started and it’s still the idea.  But if I’ve never had real community with anyone – how the heck do I do that with another person. . . every day. . . no matter what. . . with no exit.  Get what I’m saying? We are scared of what comes with community – fighting, getting hurt, accountability, someone knowing the worst things about me.  And there in lies perhaps the our biggest fears.

Men are afraid of failure.  We are afraid we won’t be able to do it.  Can I be a husband? Can I be a father?  I don’t know what I’m doing – can I take on that fight?  What if I fail? What if I choose wrong?  What if I’m constantly all day reminded of my failure over and over?

Women are typically more afraid of abandonment.  Not necessarily that the man will leave physically although that too.  But that he will leave emotionally or spiritually.  That somehow at some point something will happen and she will be alone.

Marriage is the ultimate test of these fears.  Making matters worse is the fact that every guy will fail and every woman will feel alone, even in the best marriage.  So why put yourself in that position.  That’s crazy scary.

I don’t have space here to go at how to face all these fears (I promise to come back to it). But here’s the point for today.  Many of us need to face the fact that we are scared.  We need to ask where that comes from because it’s not from God.  And the Church, if it is going to love singles well has to recognize and help us face those fears.  Morality is not enough in the face of fear.  More to come. 🙂

So are you scared?  What part of marriage scares you the most?  Where does that fear come from?