"Your confidence in making decisions is directly related to your confidence in God himself"

I agree with DeYoung that at least some Christians are unnecessarily stymied about getting married because they are frozen into indecision by the approach to decision-making that requires them to discern “the specific will of God” for their lives (and, consequently, to find “the one”) (pp. 107, 109).

I disagree with DeYoung’s blanket criticism of young Christian men as the sole or primary cause of any glut of Christian singles in the church today. (“[I] t’s a problem I put squarely at the feet of young men whose immaturity, passivity, and indecision are pushing their hormones to the limits of self-control, delaying the growing up process and, and forcing countless numbers of young women to spend lots of time and money pursuing a career (which is not necessarily wrong) when they would rather be getting married and having children.” p. 108). I’m sure these criticisms are true of some Christian young men. But DeYoung understates two other huge problems. First is the unreadiness of Christian young women, who are (with the encouragement of the church and their parents) more focused on their education and their careers than on marriage until closer to age 30, too many of whom are just as immature and immoral as their male counterparts in dating (or “hooking up”), and too many of whom (chaste or not) have an unfairly low opinion of the men around them (thanks to insidious feminism). Second is the overwhelming imbalance of incentives in our society and legal system that horribly disfavors men in marriage, as a result of no-fault divorce laws. If a Christian young woman marries a lout who later divorces her, she’s going to get the kids and some financial support in almost all cases. If a Christian young man marries a — what’s the female equivalent of lout? — who later divorces him, he’s going to lose at least half of his time with his kids (and probably more), half of his assets, and he’ll have the privilege of paying for it all until the kids are 18. Alert Christian young men face obstacles to marriage that previous generations didn’t face. I certainly don’t blame them for hesitating.

I am glad the DeYoung book was important to you and I am glad that you learned from it.

Thank you for sharing your opinions. It was never my intent to misrepresent De Young. I was just trying to summarize.

Maybe if a man or woman asked God for direction in who to marry, he/she could avoid divorce…but I digress;-)

By the way, for what its worth “have at it” meant “get started with the marriage”. I was not thinking anything sexual when I wrote it. I was trying to use hyperbole…

The reason I don’t engage much in these forums about decision making is that the belief systems that set up your decision making are deep. Does God “speak” in a personal way to believers today? What is the purpose of prayer? What does predestination mean with respect to every day decisions? Does a man have free will? Is there a “perfect mate” for you? A perfect job or career? Are you destined to marry or be single? Is it equally good for you in the eyes of God to go to Bob Jones University or Bob Jones School for Construction Workers? Be a missionary or a waitress, its all good? Etc…that is more than I want to deal with typing or have time to deal with, especially given that every time I mention not liking Friesen or DeYoung there is always some devout defender of both who rises to the challenge! You get a 10 paragraph multi-post response to a 3 sentence summary accusing you of deliberately distorting what someone wrote!

MY ONLY INTENT is to warn people that maybe not everyone dare to think Friesen/MacArthur/De Young have the ultimate guides to decision making.

A nagging question for me: What do you do if you know NO ONE who will give you good advice by the way? In my experience NO ONE would ever give me advice, even when asked.

[Mark_Smith]

A nagging question for me: What do you do if you know NO ONE who will give you good advice by the way? In my experience NO ONE would ever give me advice, even when asked.

Why, set up a SharperIron account, of course!

Good advice!

My wife knows God’s will for my life

[Why bother reading a book when she knows!]

Several years ago, I read Friesen’s book and was liberated not by the author (although he is a good author) but by his approach whereby instead of simply asking questions, he systematically went through the various positions regarding the will of God as well as brought up all the Scriptures that pertain. This is how books concerning these kinds of subjects should be written. I became convinced from studying the underlying Scriptures that what Friesen was writing as well as DeYoung today, is thoroughly Biblical, that there are two “wills” of God recorded in the Scripture that we are to concern ourselves with. The Sovereign will of God (God’s will of decree) and the Moral will of God (God’s will of desire). This view has a high view of Sola Scripture, and it is my informed opinion that when we add a third will (God’s personal will that I must figure out by impressions, feelings, tests, fleeces, etc.) tends toward a low view of the necessity of Scripture. IMO, an important question is this, “Is Scripture intended to confirm my innner impressions”? or is Scripture intended to truly guide me in wisdom, discernment, decision-making, and choices of life? Friesen, DeYoung (and I haven’t read Mac.) all emphasize going to the Scripture to find the wisdom and direction for making Godly decisions. To deny that this is the theme of both of these books, is to either radically miss authorial intent by miles, or to read with such a profound bias that makes it ridiculous to even pick up the books in the first place. Being liberated from the unbiblical way of making decisions (which Friesen and DeYoung argue against) has caused me to have a far more serious dependence on God’s Word rather than the foolishness of man. I echo Larry’s challenge, show where DeYoung’s actual statements are unbiblical. God speaks to us today only in the pages of his holy Word. It is all I need for life and godliness.

[dmyers]

I disagree with DeYoung’s blanket criticism of young Christian men as the sole or primary cause of any glut of Christian singles in the church today. […] I’m sure these criticisms are true of some Christian young men. But DeYoung understates two other huge problems. First is the unreadiness of Christian young women, who are (with the encouragement of the church and their parents) more focused on their education and their careers than on marriage until closer to age 30, too many of whom are just as immature and immoral as their male counterparts in dating (or “hooking up”), and too many of whom (chaste or not) have an unfairly low opinion of the men around them (thanks to insidious feminism).

[Mark_Smith]

I am glad the DeYoung book was important to you and I am glad that you learned from it.

Thank you for sharing your opinions. It was never my intent to misrepresent De Young. I was just trying to summarize.

Maybe if a man or woman asked God for direction in who to marry, he/she could avoid divorce…but I digress;-)

By the way, for what its worth “have at it” meant “get started with the marriage”. I was not thinking anything sexual when I wrote it. I was trying to use hyperbole…

I appreciate the clarifications, Mark. Truly.

One (last?) disagreement: Asking for (and receiving) direction from God in who to marry doesn’t avoid divorce. It’s certainly better than marrying without regard for God’s direction (whether solely via scripture, wise counsel, and prayer or also via personal peace or other subjective criteria); not seeking His direction is obviously tantamount to asking for trouble. But, just as with any other major decision, God’s approval doesn’t guarantee success. Just because God leads you to a particular job doesn’t mean you’ll succeed there, and the fact that you don’t succeed isn’t evidence that you were outside His will or that He didn’t approve the decision. The same is true for a pastor who plants a church that later fails, or an entrepreneur who starts a business that later fails. Part of this is because God has more of an agenda than our outward success; part of it is that fallen human beings can and do screw things up for the decision-maker. In the marriage situation, the person you’re marrying is a fallen human being who can choose at any time, with or without warning signals, red flags, etc., to do the wrong thing and end the marriage. It shouldn’t affect the validity of my argument, but I speak from experience. My Christian wife of 29+ years (and 4 kids) unilaterally divorced me, without biblical grounds. (I was certainly at fault for many significant hurts in the relationship, but divorce wasn’t a biblical response, as confirmed by pastoral and Christian counselor advice.) We met at BJU and I spent several years courting her, during which our relationship was a matter of almost constant prayer and direction-seeking. Her “campus dad” was a senior member of the Bible faculty; he counseled us extensively throughout out courtship, was very much in favor of the marriage (he officiated), and thought very highly of my wife. So God’s direction was both sought and received (and remember, this was before I had read Friesen’s book and changed my approach to decision-making to adopt the type of framework that you would not use) — but the divorce happened anyway.

I would simply caution you not to assume that others whose marriages have ended in divorce (or whose other major life decisions seem not to have turned out well) are necessarily suffering the result of a failure to ask God for direction on the subject.

I agree with Matthew J that understanding the two wills of God is essential to understanding a proper view of God’s sovereignty/human responsibility as well as decision making.

[dcbii]

As the father of two college-aged daughters, I have to disagree a bit with your characterization of how an educated and career-prepared young woman is a huge obstacle for young men seeking marriage, and your seeming implication that it’s at least suspect for parents to seek their preparation in this fashion.

Looking around at the average crop of teens these days, it seems to me that most of both genders are not particularly trying to make plans that will include any kind hard work (College? That’s hard and takes so long! Learn a trade? But I’ll have to do physical labor for long hours!). The lack of motivation present in this crowd would turn off anyone who wants to do the right thing (of either gender) seeking a marriageable partner. Seeing this, I not only supported, but *encouraged* my daughters to not wait around, but to prepare for what might be ahead of them, which includes completing a college education. If they find good husbands who want to follow God and provide well, great. If not (which could easily happen), they need to be prepared to earn their own living, and most women will find it much easier to work at a job learned with a college education than with something like the armed forces, construction, fire-fighting, etc. Further, even if they do have a great marriage, what says God won’t take their partner from them after a short time? What should they do then? Beg? Take the next man that will provide? In the words of Paul, I would say “God forbid!”

My daughters do not have to have had any influence from “insidious feminism” to have a low opinion of most of the men their age around them today. They can see it themselves in the young men they work with, and even in a significant percentage of those in church. I certainly will not apologize for teaching them to prepare themselves well and aim high (which I would also have done if they had been sons). If you see that as a bigger part of the problem than young men who will not grow up or have any motivation or desire to be something more than they are, then I think your perspective has been skewed somewhere. I’m certainly not going to tell my daughters to think such a man is just fine. If young men will stand up and be men, Christian women will be much more likely to believe they are the right type of man to marry (and it won’t be feminism teaching them that).

P.S., just in case you might be thinking this is about income, it isn’t. I would have no problem with my daughters marrying a pastor or a missionary, or a teacher or an auto mechanic. I certainly do want them to find someone with good character who is willing to work hard to be what God wants him to be. However, if any man feels threatened by the fact my daughters will be educated, then in my view, he’s definitely not the right kind of man. Hopefully, I’ve taught them better than to settle for someone like that.

I appreciate the response, Dave, and I hope we can both gain some insight here. You have two college-aged daughters and I have two college graduate sons (the oldest is two years out, the younger just graduated) plus a son who is a rising high school senior. (I also have a 20-year old daughter, but she is special needs and is unlikely to ever be married or to live away from home.) We can offer each other some valuable perspective, perhaps.

We’re both dealing with generalizations informed by the specific crowd of young men and women with which our children have had contact. For whatever reason, most of the young men I’ve observed through my sons don’t fit the lazy, unmotivated generalization. Almost all are going to college and want to do well at whatever they’re pursuing. Many show more initiative than I had at their age (and I was pretty motivated, I thought). I’m biased, but my own sons exemplify this drive, motivation, and competence that is at odds with the common description of today’s young men. Yet, not only is neither married, neither seems anywhere near it. And both went to Christian colleges, which is what I did and where I met my wife (not that that ended well either).

I don’t envy your situation. In some ways it is a relief to me not to have to worry about how best to prepare and position my daughter for a future that might include marriage or might require a career. I’m not sure what direction I would give her if she were “typical” and had the options of college, career, and marriage. Purely in the abstract, I think I would lean more heavily toward marriage preparation than toward career preparation.

This is what I have observed of today’s young (i.e., college-aged) Christian women (and I recognize these are generalizations): They are not interested in even thinking about marriage while they are in college (which is their most target-rich environment, at least if they’re at a Christian college). They are instead focused on their career preparation and on playing the field socially. As they play the field socially, their approach is nearly indistinguishable from their non-Christian counterparts: they are concentrating on superficials — looks, flash, cash, popularity, etc. (In secular “manosphere” terms, they pay attention only to the alphas and ignore or even disdain the betas.) Very few of them have a complementarian (I would say biblical) view of manhood and womanhood; instead, they are strongly egalitarian and therefore, again, virtually indistinguishable from their non-Christian counterparts. (This egalitarianism may be overt or it may be disguised, but it’s there.) The result in my life, so far, is sons who are prospering in their careers and socializing (usually in groups) with young women who are still career-focused and who, when they do get more interested in marriage, are generally going to be unsuitable candidates for a biblical marriage.

I genuinely fear for my sons’ prospects, based on the generalities. My ray of light is the knowledge that God can always bring along an exception and the hope that He will. Otherwise, the likelihood is that they will marry a bright, pretty, competent, generally nice young woman who will probably expect my sons to wear the pants in the family except when the young woman thinks she knows better, which will be more and more often as life goes along. Society always and the church for the most part will reinforce the young woman’s perspective. My sons will either submit to keep the peace or end up living with the contentious woman of Proverbs and will at all times be exposed to the very real risk that the young woman will pull the plug — again with societal and church support (or at least without church opposition). I will do my best to warn them against these dangers so that they will hold out for the 1 woman in 1,000 who will genuinely love and respect them. But that may well mean that they never marry, in which case they will likely face criticism from fathers of young women for being afraid to commit.

Do you see my quandary? Am I mising something?

[dmyers]

I appreciate the response, Dave, and I hope we can both gain some insight here. You have two college-aged daughters and I have two college graduate sons (the oldest is two years out, the younger just graduated) plus a son who is a rising high school senior. (I also have a 20-year old daughter, but she is special needs and is unlikely to ever be married or to live away from home.) We can offer each other some valuable perspective, perhaps.

We’re both dealing with generalizations informed by the specific crowd of young men and women with which our children have had contact. For whatever reason, most of the young men I’ve observed through my sons don’t fit the lazy, unmotivated generalization. Almost all are going to college and want to do well at whatever they’re pursuing. Many show more initiative than I had at their age (and I was pretty motivated, I thought). I’m biased, but my own sons exemplify this drive, motivation, and competence that is at odds with the common description of today’s young men. Yet, not only is neither married, neither seems anywhere near it. And both went to Christian colleges, which is what I did and where I met my wife (not that that ended well either).

I don’t envy your situation. In some ways it is a relief to me not to have to worry about how best to prepare and position my daughter for a future that might include marriage or might require a career. I’m not sure what direction I would give her if she were “typical” and had the options of college, career, and marriage. Purely in the abstract, I think I would lean more heavily toward marriage preparation than toward career preparation.

This is what I have observed of today’s young (i.e., college-aged) Christian women (and I recognize these are generalizations): They are not interested in even thinking about marriage while they are in college (which is their most target-rich environment, at least if they’re at a Christian college). They are instead focused on their career preparation and on playing the field socially. As they play the field socially, their approach is nearly indistinguishable from their non-Christian counterparts: they are concentrating on superficials — looks, flash, cash, popularity, etc. (In secular “manosphere” terms, they pay attention only to the alphas and ignore or even disdain the betas.) Very few of them have a complementarian (I would say biblical) view of manhood and womanhood; instead, they are strongly egalitarian and therefore, again, virtually indistinguishable from their non-Christian counterparts. (This egalitarianism may be overt or it may be disguised, but it’s there.) The result in my life, so far, is sons who are prospering in their careers and socializing (usually in groups) with young women who are still career-focused and who, when they do get more interested in marriage, are generally going to be unsuitable candidates for a biblical marriage.

I genuinely fear for my sons’ prospects, based on the generalities. My ray of light is the knowledge that God can always bring along an exception and the hope that He will. Otherwise, the likelihood is that they will marry a bright, pretty, competent, generally nice young woman who will probably expect my sons to wear the pants in the family except when the young woman thinks she knows better, which will be more and more often as life goes along. Society always and the church for the most part will reinforce the young woman’s perspective. My sons will either submit to keep the peace or end up living with the contentious woman of Proverbs and will at all times be exposed to the very real risk that the young woman will pull the plug — again with societal and church support (or at least without church opposition). I will do my best to warn them against these dangers so that they will hold out for the 1 woman in 1,000 who will genuinely love and respect them. But that may well mean that they never marry, in which case they will likely face criticism from fathers of young women for being afraid to commit.

Do you see my quandary? Am I mising something?