[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f I can say anything about Chapter Four {The Lack of Male Leadership: The True Cause of Protracted Singleness} in a literary sense, it is that I felt like I was hit by a truck the first time I read it. The first three chapters of Getting Serious About Getting Married go much more slowly through topics like what the Bible says about marriage, what the Bible says about singleness, and historical perspectives on marriage and singleness. In fact, there is almost a whole chapter devoted to I Corinthians 7!
Chapter four, on the other hand, flies through some huge topics, making it a mile wide and inch deep compared to the previous chapters. This doesn’t mean the ideas are bad. It’s just that they aren’t fleshed out very well. So my attempt to discuss it is a bit thwarted because there is so much and so little to work with all at the same time.
The chapter is broken into three main subtopics {after discarding feminism, of course}: Education and Independence, The Lack of Leadership in the Home, and The Lack of Leadership in the Church.
The Lack of Leadership in the Church
I’m going to work backwards here, because my main complaint is the first subtopic, and I want to save it for last. First, in The Lack of Leadership in the Church, Maken describes how the church has turned the table on singles. Whereas, traditionally speaking, it was always believed that marriage was normative for all humans, and singleness was a rare exception, now singles are told to pray and see if getting married is “really God’s will.” They are told to be content, when our forefathers would have thought that the notion of being content when you are outside God’s explicit design for mankind as expressed in the Creation account in Genesis, was pure ridiculousness.
Conversely, Maken argues, pastors should be confronting the males in the church that are single and yet obviously do not have the gift of celibacy. By encouraging men to grow up and take a wife in the way Genesis describes, they will be doing single women a world of good.
And I completely agree. In fact, Si and I spent a bit of time discussing possible ways of influencing our own single male friends. After all, according to Maken, Calvin once declared that any man who did not have the gift of celibacy and failed to secure a wife was guilty of stealing a husband from a wife!
The Lack of Leadership in the Home
This section is mainly a rightful criticism of the modern and postmodern methods of parenting. Maken spends a small amount of time explaining why she believes parents fail to raise up children {specifically boys, I assume} that are ready to get married and create a family in a timely manner. It reminds me of the extended adolescence issues facing this country.
I decided to take action with our son, who loves to quietly sing this song to himself:
I’m the boss of this house…
I’m the boss of this house…
Yep. The kid has a definite problem with authority. So yesterday, after thinking over this chapter, I pulled him aside and explained that this song was silly, that he was not yet ready to be boss of this house, but that someday he would have authority when he became an adult that had his own wife and children. Maken explained that our culture tends not to link adulthood with marriage and family, even though the Bible explicitly does. I thought I’d take advantage of an opportunity to link these ideas {authority, adulthood, marriage and family} for my son.
Education and Independence
Bet you thought I was going to discuss this section today. I’m not. I’m running out of writing time, plus this post is getting a bit lengthy. Si often says my Thinking posts are too long. Tune in next time for Education and Independence.
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