Before I talk about biblical marriage, I need to talk about what it is not. It is not the current scheme. Deti at Just four guys has given a fairly good description of this. So let us briefly describe the current Western system as revision.

Pre-state marriage (also traditional marriage, or Biblical Marriage). The state is not involved: it is a matter for the church. (In places with established religions, all births, deaths and marriages recorded by the church. Elsewhere, similar rules). There is no marriage licence. There is no authority from the state to marry. Marriages have many forms but in Christian countries the following things generally occur.

1. Marriage is between consenting adults only. There is some kind of minimum age.
2. There is some form of marital contract, entered into between the families.
3. The woman entering into the marriage has generally been living under the authority of a household, either in her father’s home. or as a servant.
4. As a result, she’s generally fairly inexperienced or sheltered.
5. The man is at a point where he can support a woman, or has prospects for the same.

Go read your Austen for this. Mutual attraction was useful, desire or romantic love mistrusted, cads who used exactly the same games pick up artists used today were shunned — to the point of being whipped out-of-town. Because men protected women. Because, at least in the English-speaking world…

6. The property of the young woman became the man’s on marriage.
7. Divorce was impossible, or rare, for any means. If it did occur, then the woman was left with only what the terms of her marital contract included: the children (and most of the wealth) remained with the husband.

Hence the marriage of reigning queens mattered, and the constitutional requirements for this became a concern for Parliament. Marriage was seen as either a sacrament (and the business of the church) or a private contract (and the pastoral concern of the elders of the kirk) but not an issue for the state unless the man and women were rulers, ie. of the state.

And before you say this is Christian centric. the Chinese and Jews did (and still do) use a very similar system. To them, marriage is about cementing familial bonds — extending the family — and ensuring that there is a next generation. (Hence the Levirite laws)

Marriage 1.0. This is a bastard child of the enlightenment and the Victorian accommodation to this: the state will now register marriages and births and deaths, for we will allow those who are not of the established religion the right to their rites, if they accept some regulation. But then things start to change. The Victorian idealization of women, and with that, feelings of romantic love, lead to the doctrine of tender years — with the mother raising children on separation and the father having to provide for her. And the frailty of women (for they were seen as the purer sex, less able to deal with the nastiness of the world) led to demands for alimony.

However, divorce was still seen as something shameful: the substance of many a tabloid and scandal sheet. Bearing a child out-of-wedlock was a scandal. There was some contraception (and abortion) but no member of the medical fraternity would take part in this. Most women married men, raised children, and the church supported men as leaders. There were discussions on how to pray and lead family devotions among men, not how to appease your wife.

Marriage 2.0 came in when I was in primary school. The sexual and feminist revolution removed shame from the agenda. The state bought in no-fault divorce, and mandated child support, together with the debt peonage structure of imputed income. This imploded the family. And this has affected the church which has led to the current game which Dalrock calls having it all.

For those having trouble keeping track of all of this, having it all means:

1. Getting her feminist merit badge while:
2. Having sex with the most attractive men who are willing to have sex with her. After a decade or so of this, she:
3. Marries a nice reliable man who provides the financial support and social status of wife and perhaps mother. Once she has gotten out of this what she wants, she:
4. Discovers that she is unhaaapy, and was somehow “trapped in marriage!” Many women prefer to savor this step for some period of time, perhaps even for many years. There is power and drama here and the next step contains risk.
5. Is forced to divorce the bad man who made her unhaaapy by doing everything she demanded he do.
6. Basks in the drama of a newly divorced woman, wronged by her ex husband and the society which forced her to marry the wrong man.
7. Has sex with the most attractive men who are (still) willing to have sex with her. Since this misguided attempt at reliving the glory of her twenties is generally an immense disappointment, she then wants to quickly move on to:
8. Finds her secret multimillionaire hunky handyman who insists that she marry him, thus returning her to the higher social status of wife.

Believe it or not, the having it all list ends here. A woman divorcing once and then marrying up says drama, rebirth, and empowerment. A woman divorcing twice says loser who couldn’t keep a man. Divorcing without remarrying says post marital spinster, also known as crazy cat lady her still married friends, colleagues, and relatives make fun of. Key to this process is to stick the landing so she winds up in the group making fun of the crazy cat ladies instead of becoming one of them.

This game is in the church. Within the church, before (and during) stages one and two women are told that they are daughters of the king and God has a special place for them. After having some wild years, they return to the church to find a husband, frequently just as they become less attractive to the average pick up artists (those manwhores have low standards, but they still have standards).

And then, having blown up one marriage to a Christian Chump, they try to find an older man with whom they can finish life after their period of Eat Pray and Love.

Now, the church is trying to deal with this, so let’s look at some of the responses to date.

There are three responses from pastoral leadership in most churches.

The first don’t even see there’s a problem.

Subgroups are multiple here.

1.   Female pastors. Not a problem because either (a) all the women she knows are strong, independent women (TM) (b) marriage is patriarchal and against the gospel and (c) all the men have left, leaving only eunuchs and the gayz, who tell her it’s OK, ‘cos she married Bob and them.
2. The blindly old-fashioned. They think that their church is still in the time of Jane Austen (although they are probably going to think of John Calvin, Count Zinzendorf or Pius X). The idea that there have been two or three generations of women who have been poisoned with having it all is beyond them.

Anyway, Deti continues.

The second kind are the most common. They see there’s a problem but they don’t know exactly what it is because they have a skewed version of it. What they see and hear are their single women whining and wailing “Where are all the good men! I just wanna get married and have babies and I can’t find a good man!” They also see two kinds of single men: The employed men with good jobs and decent looks who won’t marry because they have options. The second kind are all the other single men: the hapless, uninformed men who have been told for a couple of decades to “be nice” and “be yourself” and “be pure” and “don’t you dare touch her!”. These are the stereotypical Star Trek/basement dweller/video gamer/”Big Bang Theory” men who don’t have a clue because no one ever stopped to think to, oh, I don’t know, maybe GIVE THEM ONE.

And so, these well meaning people take women at their word. They conclude that men are the sole source of the problem, which leads them astray to an ill considered “solution”. Second, they believe the solution lies in men just “growing up” and “manning up” and getting jobs and “quit playing those video games” and getting married off to whatever women will have them.

To these people, the problem is not a lack of masculinity in men or lack of femininity in women. It’s not that women are putting off marriage until the last possible minute. It’s not that men are thirsty and hard up and don’t have confidence and wouldn’t know how to attract a housefly to shit. The problem to these people is a lack of marriage. To these people’s thinking, everything will be OK if you just get them married to someone.

Well, the problem here is that the men do not have a clue. They have not been taught how to lead. And some of us men, particularly the more mathematically inclined, tend to geekdom. We literally have to be taught how to be social, and how to hold frame. This is a job for fathers: my Dad had to do it with me, and I have to do it with my boys. We end up following the behaviours that our fathers had.

And when there are not many fathers around, mothers… cannot do it. They think of what they would do — forgetting that (most) of them do not want feminine leadership or wooing (because they are heterosexual) and that men are different from them.

The third kind of church leadership are the most informed, and the most hamstrung. I’ve talked to some pastors like this. And what I inevitably hear is something like this:

“I know there’s a problem, and I know what it is. I know damn well there isn’t a single virgin among the women in this church. I know most of them sleep with their boyfriends, and a good number of them sleep around. I know that their mothers were the same way. I know most of the men here couldn’t get a date to save their lives. I know most of the fathers here are henpecked. I know what the Bible says about a man being the head of his wife and that wives are supposed to submit to their husbands. I know all that.

“But I can’t say anything about it. Every time I say anything about it, the women howl and screech and freak out. Meetings are held, my bishop gets inundated with letters and phone calls complaining about how I hate women and I’m “judgmental”. The women threaten to leave the church and take their families and tithe money with them. I can’t preach on wifely submission or sexual chastity. I know that if I do, I’ll probably get fired, or at the very least, the women here will make my life and my bishop’s life hell.

“So, I’ve decided I can’t say anything about it — mostly because my bishop tells me not to, because he doesn’t want to deal with the uproar that will result.”

That, friends, is what’s going on in most evangelical churches. And it’s why the problem continues

This is the group we need to get to man up. Worrying about what the bishop says or the women getting angry is not leadership. Talking about how this system damages men and women is leadership.

Taking the Bible seriously is leadership. So, to the one or two members of the pastorate who may visit, and are not in a liturgical church, I have a book for you to preach this year. It may reclaim the ideas of biblical marriage. It will offend almost every churchian in your congregation, and many will leave. It is called Proverbs.

Because the reaction of many Christian men has is contained there: they are not marrying, they are going their own way.

Proverbs 21

⁹ It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.

Proverbs 27

¹³ Take a man’s garment when he has put up security for a stranger, and hold it in pledge when he puts up security for an adulteress.
¹⁴ Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing.
¹⁵ A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike;
¹⁶ to restrain her is to restrain the wind or to grasp oil in one’s right hand

I need not remind you all that Paul advocated that we not marry, but only do so if our desire for the other is burning. He’s right. I’d add that you should refrain from stage 2 (bonking anything that moves) because it ruins your soul and destroys your discernment, which you will need to test the quality of the young woman who you desire so much.

For once you bed, oneitis will kick in as it is supposed to, and you will need the framework of biblical marriage to contain the curse of Eve: her desire to control you, and her contempt of you if she does.