Open Letter to Andreas Köstenberger

Dear Alex (and Marni),

Thank you for honoring me with your Open Letter. I understand your situation with your limited family budget, so if you will supply me with your mailing address, I will mail a copy of my book to you free of charge. Hopefully you will enjoy reading the book which, as you know, deals not only with singleness but with other issues related to marriage and the family as well. You can contact my administrative assistant Matt Lytle at mlytle@sebts.edu to let him know your address, and we will mail the book out to you promptly.

With regard to your response to my post, yes, you have rightly discerned that the answer to my question is “only God knows.” As far as whether a given person should marry or not, I believe it is ultimately that person’s prerogative to discern this, if they are a Christian, under the personal guidance of the Holy Spirit and in keeping with the general scriptural parameters given. Of course, you and I may differ in our interpretation of Scripture, so there may be some difference in whose parameters we are talking about (yours? mine?). As I mentioned in my blog, I believe it is judgmental and arrogant to try to settle this personal issue for someone else.

Sure, there are all kinds of wrong reasons to stay single, as there are to get married. That’s because we’re all sinners! There’s just no easy formula, in my opinion, to “solve” the “problem” of singleness in our day. You raise a good point when you talk about what you call “the parameter of sexual continence” in 1 Corinthians 7. Still, there seems to be a subjective element in this, and it is hard to quantify just how high this standard is (as you also seem to indicate in your parenthetical remark). I think we should remember here that all believers are called to exercise self-control, and both of us have heard people quote “It is better to marry than to burn” out of context.

Please give my regards to your wife. My wife’s name is Marny as well, so there’s something we have in common.

Cordially,

Andreas Köstenberger

So based on your response to Alex & Marni, you really have nothing to contribute to this debate and the truth is to each their own. So everything you have written so far has been utterly pointless. You can’t even acknowlege that singless is a problem (as evidenced by the quotation marks around the word problem)

Regarding your aside about "socially awkward" men:

First of all, what is your definition of "socially awkward" behavior? Are you talking about behavior that is repulsive and anti-social or are you talking about the behavior of introverts?

Second, what evidence do you have that "socially awkward" behavior can be cured by marriage?

Third, what evidence do you have that "socially awkward" behavior is primarily a problem of men?

Last but not least, have you considered the possibility that men (and women) who exhibit "socially awkward" behavior might have endured difficult circumstances such as being a child of divorce or a victim of abuse?

The debate over the issues discussed by Dr. Kostenberger and Ms. Maken is contentious enough as it is. Your aside has the potential to further demean never-married men in their thirties or older who already feel besieged in the family-centric evangelical church.

The problem we are running into here with the "gift of singleness" is that there seems to be two definitions of it:

"Only God knows if I SHOULD marry": the "calling" to marriage or singleness from God to the individual. This definition is the one that dates back to the 70's charismatic movement and Gothardism. It's the one that creates the most ANXIETY in young people, because it is often accompanied by an expectation that they seek "word from the Lord" about what His plan is for them-- a scary prospect for those who desire marriage and are afraid that they might hear the bad news that God wants them to be single (this can also work the other way around).

The irony is that the Bible doesn't say to singles "God may want you to be single", as Tim Stafford does. Or ask "Does God want you to marry anyone, ever?", as Don Raunikar cruelly suggests. If anything, the Bible points to the human intentionality of finding or "taking" a wife, and the personal choice of those who "made themselves eunuchs" for the kingdom (1Cor7:17 is not a stong argument for either marriage or singleness as gifts or callings, either is 1 Cor 7:7, which I have discussed ad nauseam elsewhere).

"Only God knows if I WILL marry": In recent years, "the gift singleness" has been interpreted as being what you have now if you are single now (C. McCulley, E. Elliot, Al Hsu all express words to this effect). In other words, it's an admonishment to be content with your current "season of singleness" even if it's a lifetime because whatever happens under the sovereignty of God is "God's will". Maken calls this presumption "outcome based theology" and rightly points out how it can overlook, and even justify, the larger sin-based causes of a problem such as widespread protracted singleness.

I think the second GOS definition emerged as softened version of the first one, which had left pastors overwhelmed with so many questions from singles trying discern God's will or plan for their life. So the second one has been designed to get individuals to focus less what they want out of the unknowable future and more on the present and being content in their situation, because after all, that is "God's will".

But both versions lead to the same excesses common to many other 20th century pop theology trends: THEY BOTH FRAME THINGS TOO MUCH IN TERMS OF "GOD'S PLAN" FOR AN INDIVIDUAL'S LIFE, which can detract from God's revealed will, as written in the scriptures. In the first version, the individual gets stuck worrying they are not going to hear God correctly and end up choosing the wrong path, or be told to take a path they don't want. In the second version, you're going down the path that God sends you whether you like it or not. Sure, you don't get everything you want in life, but who's to say that if you want a spouse and you don't get one, that you must see that as God's will, plan, GIFT? (even if your singleness is "self-inflicted" as Kostenberger says, or societally inflicted as Maken suggests)

On one hand, Kostenberger's "God only knows" position looks compassionate to singles (at least, the ones who don't want someone else imposing their will on them to marry), BUT as you've mentioned, Alex, it's not very helpful. And his statement from his first article on the GOS that "it is impossible to know for certain whether or not one has the 'gift of singleness' until one dies" is even less helpful, and ludicriously contradictory preceded by “How do I know if I have the gift or not? In short, my answer to this question usually is, “If you ask this question with fear or trepidation, this probably means that you do not have the gift.” Elsewhere, he talks of being "called" to marriage or singleness (meaning, what you want? or what you hear from God? what ends up happening?. It's a critical confusion...

...And a perfect example of the muddle that gets created by these dubious conceptions of "the gift of singleness" that keep people stuck. It's like leaders want to say that marriage is "God's will" in general, but maybe not for you (because it might not happen for you, personally), which makes the encouragement to pursue marriage luke warm. Throw in the fear of stepping on the toes of the contentedly single, and basically we're left with a lot of empty rhetoric and phony sentiments about how great this gift of singleness is.

BTW- the question you raise about 1 Cor 7 and sexual continence is a good one. There is a difference between an ordinary single being obediently celibate (abstinent) and one who has consciously choosing a path of celibacy "for the sake of the kingdom" (because they have joined a religious order, or to undertake a special mission where they may be martyred before they get a chance to marry. As I've said on other posts, the enablement alluded to in 1 Cor 7:7 is mysteriously unnamed.

Dear Singleman,

I grieve for those who experience social awkwardness. And I would acknowledge that the horrible experience of abuse, be it physical or verbal, in one's childhood (or adult years) can surely contribute to it.

I was not discussing the various sources of social awkwardness. We all are emotionally crippled to one degree or another. The process of the Christian life is the restoring of God's image in us. I'm merely noting that marriage is instrumental in that process for most of us (unless we have the divine gift for undistracted devotion, which is what is being discussed/debated). So regardless of where we got our quirkiness, marriage does a lot for helping us grow in this regard. It does so because we are forced to deal with Another at a level of intimacy and unbreakable commitment that is not experienced elsewhere.

I say "men" as opposed to "women" or "men and women" because research studies (Christian and non-Christian alike) have established that men and women are different with regard to verbal prowess and social intuition. Women are generally more socially adept even from an early age--they speak sooner, demostrate greater verbal prowess, and are more socially aware/conscious of how they are being perceived. Secondly, I single out men, because women generally are more interested in romance and marriage than men. Just look at the magazines, books and movies that are advertised almost exclusively to women. So the unprecedented delay of marriage in our day, though somewhat owing to amoral social factors (a knowledge-based economy which encourages higher education) is more attributable (generally speaking) to a lack of marriage-mindedness in men, not women. For confirming data, see this American Values Report:

http://www.americanvalues.org/html/r-hooking_up.html

Respectfully in Christ,

Alex

RE: socially awkward men.

I think that the causality runs both ways, Alex. You are correct that marriage can improve a man's social skills and prolonged bachelorhood can tend toward increasing degrees of eccentricity, but I think the main issue is that these guys failed to establish relationships due to their social deficits.

John T. Molloy studied marriage patterns for his book "Why Men Marry Some Women and Not Others," and interviewed many older men who had been unable to marry despite a desire to do so. The conclusion was that almost every man lacked either "looks, height, or social skills,” and that many had been rejected and often treated cruelly by women (but that they were "just as nice" as the married men, apparently)

So the "singleness is a sin" preaching becomes a form of bullying, where a good-looking, charismatic “alpha males” (such as Albert Mohler, who has the political skills to rise to president of his organization and the conversational skills to host a radio program) and possibly yourself, who easily won the affection of a young lady they liked, beat up on geeky guys who are already lonely and hurting.

Re: socially awkward men. Yes it's true. But the fact is that men's awkwardness is more evident than women's awkwardness. Many unmarried Christian women suffer from anxieties about sex and relationships, partly because we never have the chance to experience relationships due to the lack of men asking us out, or not being patient enough to earn our trust and just hopping around to another woman who seems more confident and less cautious.

What we need is for the confident men to mentor and support the more awkward men. I'm suspicious though; do the confident Christian men want to do this, or do they avoid this responsibility because it might increase the level of male competition for women in the churches ?