Theology for Women

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled “What God Thinks About Your Sex Life.” Since that post, I’ve had some follow-up thoughts that I have decided to add here.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but God designed sex in kind of a weird way. Depending on the context, sex can have two completely opposite effects. Within marriage, sex can make a marriage stronger, but outside of marriage it is just the opposite. Rather than make a dating or engaged couple stronger, sex can actually tear the couple apart.

Perhaps one of the best analogies for this principle can be seen in a fireplace. When a fire is built inside the fireplace, it heats the whole home and keeps everyone warm. Prior to the age of electric heated homes, this was a life saving gift during winter. But if you take that same  life-giving fire out of the fireplace, it will burn the house down, destroying everything and everyone within it.

It is the same with sex. Marriage is the hearth that contains the flames of sexual passion. When taken outside that protective guard, it has the power to destroy.

But why is that? Why is it that, in one context sex builds up, and in another context sex tears down?

To answer this question, we must first recognize the fact that most people, even many married people, have a fundamental  misunderstanding about sex. We see it as a right, not a responsibility.

Think about it this way–the way that Christians frequently articulate the nature of sex within marriage is that all bets are off once you say “I do.” As soon as the ring is on the finger, your bodies belong to one another so you can and should do whatever crazy sexual stuff you want, as long as it’s legal. And the more sex you have, the better.

For example, I heard about a church in Texas in which the pastor gave his married listeners a homework assignment as follow-up to the sermon–every night that week, they had to have sex. That is the Christian culture we live in right now.

What is somewhat problematic about this mentality is that it flirts with the idea that sex is a right. In a Christian form, it sells the worldly mentality that we all deserve sex whenever and however we want. That is the perspective driving the homosexuality debate right now–Americans believe they have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and sex. And anyone who stands in the way of you having sex the way you want it is either a religious fundamentalist or a chauvinist.

But sex is not a right. It’s a responsibility. When two people engage in sex, they put one another in a position of extreme vulnerability, which means they are in a position to get hurt more than ever before. That’s why affairs are so devastating. But when two people have sex they ALSO create the possibility of conceiving a child. Those are high stakes!

And that’s why it’s important to guard sex no matter where you are in life. Whether you are married or single, it’s not as if anything goes. Sex is still a responsibility, and it should be treated as such. That is what I love about the natural family planning method of birth control. It requires that a married couple abstain from sex once a month when the woman is most likely to get pregnant. It demands that the couple make a sacrifice and step away from the act of sex to reflect on the responsibility that it involves. It prevents them from taking sex for granted.

When married couples forget the significance of sex, they are tempted to use abuse it just as much as single people. Maybe a husband begins to see his wife more as an object to used than a gift to be treasured and romanced before she gives herself to him sexually. If she does not give him his right to sex, he may even go looking for it elsewhere. Conversely, a wife might withhold sex from her husband as a form of manipulation.

Yes, sex must still be guarded within marriage because it can very much be abused.

But what does this mean for single people? Given that sex is such a powerful force, even within the hearth of marriage, it has an even greater potential to destroy when taken outside of that context. Why? Because having premarital sex means you have altogether bought the lie that you deserve sex whenever you want it. And when you engage in that kind of perspective, sex becomes a false idol.

Maybe it’s not an idol at first. Maybe it begins with you messing around with your boyfriend from time to time. Slowly, you two push the line back further and further and further. You’re no longer going too far once a week–now it’s almost every night. And one day you push the line back all the way. You have sex.

But don’t think the story ends there. Soon you find yourself justifying the sex. “I really love my boyfriend” or “I know I’m going to marry him” or “There are worse sins than this one.” Eventually you reach a point at which it no longer bothers your conscience. You have altered your entire system of faith to suit your sexual practice. Now, your life and your beliefs center around  your sex life. Your interpretation of Christianity has been perverted or ignored to serve your sexual needs.

That is the definition of idolatry–when you center your life around something other than Christ. That doesn’t mean you’re a sex addict, it just means your sexual desires hold rank over God.

And that is the key difference between sex in marriage and sex outside of marriage. One stems from a life centered around idolatry and a need to satisfy one’s own desires. The other stems from a life centered around God.

And that is why one practice is more likely to bring life, whereas the other is likely to destroy. Whenever any practice or belief supplants the centrality of God in our lives, then we are headed towards self-destruction.

No matter where you are in life, married or single, that should be your theology of sex. Sex should always be practiced in a way that draws one another closer to God. This can ONLY be done in marriage, but it is not necessarily done in marriage. It is a discipline, and it is a form of worship so we must keep it sacred. Take the steps to guard it as such.

I recently received an e-mail from a young woman who loves her career but is getting married soon and wonders how her job will fit with her family. If she’s going to have kids one day and stay at home with them, then why bother building a career now? Is it even worth it?

This is a question that many women find themselves asking, so I decided to post a version of my response to her. I hope you will find it helpful.

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This is a question that a LOT of women ask–what’s the point in working now, or even getting an advanced degree, if I’m not going to use it later on? In my opinion, the root of this question comes from observing a very narrow sample of what the Christian family looks like.

For many of us, when we look around our church we see families in which the father works and the mother stays at home. And as a result of our cultural surroundings, we assume that this model of family must be set in stone by Scripture. In reality, this model is more often determined by the family’s personal circumstances.

You see, this model is most typical of white, middle to upper class families. Once you depart from this demographic you will find that not all families can actually survive on the salary of one working parent. And those of us in a more privileged demographic may come to experience this first hand as a result of the economy’s recent turn. If the country’s economic situation worsens, we will see more and more families in which both parents must work because one salary isn’t enough to live on.

That said, we should be wary of ascribing spiritual superiority to families with privileged financial circumstances. Just because a mom is able to stay at home does not, by definition, make her a better Christian mom.

For another example in which life circumstance might lead a wife or mother to work, there may come a time when the wife is the only one who can get a job and her husband cannot. If your husband is having trouble finding work, your own career might be the only thing sustaining the family financially until he does.

In my own situation, I will have to be the primary provider during the first years of my marriage because my fiancé has another year of seminary, after which he will pursue a Ph.D. When the time comes for me to fill this role, I will be glad to have the education and experience to work a job that will support us both.

And for all you single gals, this isn’t a question you should really even be asking just yet. Instead of looking too far ahead, focus on what God has for you right now. Only God knows when your season of singleness will come to a close, so don’t waste this opportunity simply because you think your job skills will eventually go unneeded. The fact of the matter is that God wants to use you in your career NOW, so make sure you’re maximizing your time and energy for the Kingdom of God and get out there!

So in light of these arrayed circumstances, I would be so bold as to state that it is irresponsible for women to assume that once they get married they’ll have all their needs provided for. That mentality results from a culture of excess, but our country may be entering a time when such a scenario can no longer be assumed. We need to train ourselves to be ready in the event that we need to help provide for our families. Yes, the husband is the head so it is his primary responsibility to provide, but his wife should also be helping him.

Those are the practical argument for women building careers, but there are other aspects to consider as well. One reason the model for American Christian families is often so narrow is that it fails to be creative. There are numerous ways for families to allow both parents to work AND be in the home with their kids, but we don’t often consider them.

For example, I once interned under the president of a non-denominational women’s ministry who actually home-schooled her kids SO THAT she could have a more flexible schedule to work. Because she wasn’t bound by a schedule determined by a public or private school, she could decide when and how to school them in such a way that worked with her speaking and writing schedule. Ironically, she spent more time with her kids than a lot of non-working moms, yet she accomplished more than any woman I’ve ever met.

Now that’s not to say that we all need to home-school our kids, but I think it goes to show that when it comes to the family, we need to think outside the box.

I once a read an article by Nancy Pearcey in which she traced the history of the American family, and as a result of her research she found that prior to the Industrial Revolution the whole family lived and worked together. Unlike our current model in which the family is disjointed because the father goes off to work and the mother stays at home with the kids, EVERYONE worked on the family’s farm or business together. The mom and dad both worked, but they were with their kids throughout the day.

It wasn’t until the Industrial Revolution, which took men out of the home and placed them in factories, that we even see a model in which the man leaves his wife alone with the children. We’re so used to this model that we think it’s Scriptural and that it’s always been this way, but that’s not actually true. Prior to the Industrial Revolution we had a much more holistic picture of the family, in which the husband and the wife both shouldered the burden of providing financially and raising the children.

Reading Pearcey’s article challenged me to question the model that I had always come to accept. It caused me to search for alternative models in which the father is less absent from the lives of his children. My fiancé and I are praying through this as well, and seeking out what model would work best for us.

We both want to be ministers, and that may very well mean that I stay at home more so that he is free to pastor a church. But it doesn’t mean I have to step out of ministry completely. I may work some so that he has to work less, thereby freeing him up to spend more time with our kids than he might have otherwise.

But whatever the model, we want to make sure that we do it as a team. Yes, he will be the head of the home, but that means he has an even GREATER responsibility to be in the lives of our kids, rather than just leaving that role to me when he leaves the house every morning. He doesn’t want the home to simply be “my realm” but to instead be “our realm.” So depending on where life takes us, we’re going to try and think creatively about how to minister to and care for our kids first and foremost, while also honoring and maximizing one another’s individual gifts and callings for the Kingdom of God.

And that’s what I would encourage you to do–be creative, and don’t get stuck in the model that you see around you. Yes, honor Scripture, but even the Proverbs 31 woman worked, so you can certainly be a good mother and also have a job. Your boundaries should be Scripturally prescribed (God first, Marriage second, Kids third, and Work last), but within these parameters you can seek to build a family model as innovative as the infinitely creative God who made us.

Odds are that many of you who are reading this blog right now have either had premarital sex, are having premarital sex, or are thinking about having premarital sex.

Just look at the statistics:

• A 2002 government survey reported that 94% of American women and 96% of American men engage in premarital sex–as one article concluded, almost EVERYONE has sex before marriage
• According to a poll conducted by Time Magazine 10 years ago, 61% of frequent church attenders do not believe that it’s wrong for an adult to have sex outside of marriage. A recent Barna study confirmed this statistical range, also citing that over 60% of born again adults believe that co-habitation before marriage is also acceptable.
• In 2003, researchers at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Of the remaining 39 percent who kept their pledges, 55 percent said they’d had oral sex, and did not consider oral sex to be sex.
• According to statistics in the book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Mark Regenerus), Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17

Now statistics can be unreliable–we have no way of knowing just how the terms “evangelical,” “born-again,” or even “Christian” are defined in these studies. But even considering the margin of error, premarital sex is a big problem in the Church today. Just ask any pastor who does premarital counseling. I, personally, have a number of friends who are professing Christians but have no problem with it and don’t believe it is in conflict with their faith.

That said, I thought I should write a blog about a seemingly obvious truth that is not so obvious anymore: why premarital sex is wrong. And just so you know where I’m coming from, this is a point on which I have no room for argument. If you say you’re a Bible-believing Christian and you think it’s ok, you are wrong. There is simply no way around that fact. Scripture is clear.

(And if you don’t believe me, just go to biblegateway.com and search “sex.” Or if you’ve got the KJV version, look up fornication. That’s the old school word for premarital sex. It appears pretty frequently, and you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.)

However, for a lot of you it’s not enough to hear “because the Bible says so.” You need to be convinced that this is more than a matter of rule following. And I sympathize. Sex is hard to resist because, simply put, it’s awesome. We wouldn’t want to do it so badly if it wasn’t.

But what feels good now is not necessarily good later. My 6 year old self thought that my greatest good was to eat all the cookies that I could get my hands on in one sitting. My parents knew better. They knew that I would enjoy the cookies at first, but I would get horribly sick, and eventually horribly obese. But at the time, I was blind to the ways in which that instant gratification could make me sick, and we do the same thing with sex.

That said, we need to redefine our categories. Instead of thinking in terms of just right and wrong, we need to also think in terms of healthy and unhealthy, or spiritual life and spiritual death.

And that is what’s at stake here–your soul. Sure, it seems like a bunch of harmless fun, or maybe you really do care about the person you’re sleeping with and this is one way of showing them how you feel.

But God says otherwise. God cares about what you do with your body. And what we do with out bodies is very much connected to our souls.

Here’s why:

Sex is not just a benefit of being married. It is an integral part of the way God designed marriage and our function within marriage. The reason being that marriage, as a whole, reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church. And what do we know about that relationship? That it’s defined by two things: intimacy and sacrifice.

Sex within marriage is the only perfect picture of the Christ-Church relationship because it incorporates both of those elements. In the same way that we only achieve intimacy with God as a result of Him first sacrificing His Son for us, intimacy between spouses should only come as a direct result of their sacrifice for one another, their willingness to lay their lives down for one another.

And this idea of laying yourself down for one another is not mere lip service. God didn’t casually mention one day, “Hey, I’ll be there when you need me. Just shoot me an e-mail.” No, He didn’t just tell us with words, He died.

Similarly, it’s not enough to claim, “But my boyfriend loves me and he WOULD do anything for me.” No, he needs to show it, just like Christ. And he needs to make this sacrifice in 2 ways:

1. He needs to sacrifice having sex with you before marriage. Scripture tells us that we are bought at a price, and this verse reminds us that anything worth having comes at a price. That said, when a man sleeps with a woman without “paying the price” of laying himself down for her in a marriage covenant, then he essentially cheapens her asking price. He wants the pleasure without the commitment.

And we do the same with Christ–we “pray the prayer” but we don’t want the commitment and the sacrifice that true discipleship entails. And when we do this, the intimacy we claim to have with Christ, or another, is nothing but a sham. Even if you and your boyfriend have lived together for years and you really love each other, you’ve still sold one another short, because he simply wasn’t worth waiting for.

2. He needs to sacrifice by standing before God, your pastor, your family and your church community, promising to lay himself down for you. In addition to this, he must subject himself to the continuing accountability of those witnesses, who will push him to put you before himself, to take on your finances, your debts, your cares and your hardships, even when he doesn’t want to. In so doing, he lays down his own interests and puts yours first. Only then, having gone through the sacrifical marriage ceremony, does he have the freedom to engage in full intimacy with his wife in a way that mirrors Christ’s relationship with the Church.

With all of that in mind, we come to the key reason why premarital sex is not just wrong, but spiritually poisonous: IT TELLS A LIE ABOUT GOD. It proclaims the lie that intimacy, as God has defined it, is not worth sacrificing for.

That said, you cannot build true, long-lasting intimacy upon a deception about the nature of intimacy. What you have with your girlfriend or boyfriend might be special, but that does not mean it reflects the heart of God. Even if you get along great and never fight and you think that you’re soulmates, you are sewing seeds of destruction into the relationship when you have sex before marriage–you are sewing seeds of impatience, lack of self-control, disrespect, lust, and idolatry. And even though you don’t see it now, those seeds WILL come to fruition.

And that is why I plead with you, not as someone who is lily white in this area, but as someone who has seen the destruction that sexual immorality leads to in my own life–flee from it! Run as fast as you can! Your life might be good now and you might think you’ve got it all figured out–maybe you even think you’ve pulled a fast one on God, that you’ve figured out a way to work the system and get what you want without the consequences. But you will be shocked and regretful 10 years down the road to realize the ways in which your decisions have corroded your soul, your relationship with God, and your relationship with your sexual partner.

Remember, sex is an act of worship because it reflects the character of God. But it is not a thing to be worshipped, something worth compromising your beliefs and your lifestyle just to attain. I know the rationalizations and the justifications because I’ve used them myself, but they are all ultimately lies. There is only one foundation upon which you should build your future, and that is truth. Anything else will ultimately and inevitablely crumble.

*For a GREAT book on this, check out Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. You can also find two great articles here and here.

I published this post a little over a year ago, but it was one of my most popular entries and I continue to hear about it today, so I thought I’d post it again for those of you who missed it. This goes out to all you single gals out there–don’t settle! Even in your friendships.

I am blessed to have a friend in my life who is not inhibited by social graces like tact. If I ever need an opinion, I can depend on him to speak hard truth into my life, generally in the most blunt form possible. Fortunately, he is almost always dead-on in his observations, which is why I go back to him again and again, regardless of the form in which his wisdom is dispensed.

For example, he recently introduced me to a term that I have since found to be both descriptive and extremely accurate. The term is “girlfriend place-holder.”

According to my friend, a lot of guys will have a female friend in their life that functions as a girlfriend in virtually every way–they talk a lot, spend a great deal of one-on-one time together, even go on pseudo-dates and act flirtatious. For all intents and purposes it would seem that the guy is interested, yet he never actually wants to commit. In fact, he never even broaches the topic of dating.

Why? Because, as my friend describes it, this girl is serving as a “girlfriend place-holder.” Though probably doing so unintentionally, some guys will keep a female friend around to hold the place of a girlfriend. In a sense, they are filling their time until they meet the girl they *really* want to date.

As my friend explained it, we all want companionship in some form or another, so even if we haven’t met Mr. or Mrs. Right just yet, many of us will find someone to meet those desires until the “real thing” comes along. And guys aren’t the only ones guilty of doing this. Girls do it just as much. Ladies, I’m sure you can think back to someone in your past, if not someone RIGHT NOW, who is serving as a boyfriend place-holder for you. He’s great because he’ll pay for things when you go out, and he’s always available if you’re bored, but you have absolutely no intention of dating him.

What is interesting about this form of guy-girl relationship is that it is deceptively intimate. Unlike blatant serial flirting in which you can easily spot the players you need to avoid, place-holding seems more real and more deep. After all, it is based upon an actual friendship, so there is more to it than simply having fun.

And that is what often keeps the “place-holders” hanging on so long–because there is depth to the relationship, they hold out hope that sooner or later the guy or girl will snap out of it: “One of these days he’s going to wake up and realize what a good thing he has right in front of him.” That sort of thing. In this way, these relationships can actually result in far greater emotional damage than shallower versions of its kind. Place-holders will more easily open up and make themselves vulnerable since they feel they can trust the other person.

This ultimately leaves the “place-holder” feeling confused and hurt, and sometimes devastated. I have a number of girl friends right now who are in this exact situation. They have a close guy friend that they spend a great deal of time with, but he just won’t commit. In fact, he won’t even bring up any sort of conversation relating to the romantic nature of their relationship. Perhaps the guy is simply afraid of commitment, but in many cases, as my guy friend explains it, these guys have no intention of dating at all. They are unintentionally using these young women as girlfriend place-holders.

Now I think it’s pretty obvious that this kind of relationship is not honoring to the “place-holder” involved, so if you can think of someone in your life who plays that role, then you should seriously consider cutting it off. Even if you are both using each other, and neither person necessarily has the upper hand, you are still not treating them as the brother and sister in Christ that they are. And more importantly, if you think a guy or girl might be treating YOU as a place-holder, then get out of that relationship, and fast! That is NOT how God intended you to be treated–you are to be loved and desired extravagantly, so anyone who makes you feel inadequate or unworthy of love is falling way short of that mark.

In addition to all that, if you have a friend who is treating someone as a place-holder, call them out! Guys, don’t let your friends treat girls that way–if you look the other way when your friends do this, then you are no better than they are since you clearly don’t respect your sister enough to stand up for her. And ladies, the same goes for you. No guy deserves to be strung along, so hold your friends accountable on their behalf.

And finally, don’t forget to reflect on why it is you need a place-holder in the first place. God is always sufficient, so if He hasn’t provided you with a spouse yet, He is still more than enough for you to be content. At the end of the day, that is the key issue here, so be sure not to cover it up with a girlfriend or boyfriend place-holder. Place-holding is little more than the symptom of a dissatisfied heart.

For many women, the idea of trusting a man TOTALLY in marriage is a scary thing. It’s not that their husbands aren’t trustworthy or that they don’t trust their husbands in some things. But the idea of submitting when you think you’re in the right, or when something really life-changing is on the line? That can be hard.

And that’s why so many women find themselves wrestling with a tendency to take control. Stasi Eldredge describes this battle in her book, Captivating. She gets to the heart of this ever-raging struggle as she writes:

“Aren’t your deepest worries and heartaches relational–aren’t they connected to someone? Even when things are good, is your vast capacity for intimacy ever filled in a lasting way? There is an emptiness in us that we continually try to feed. And can’t you see how much you need to have things under control–whether it’s a project or a ministry or a marriage? Are you comfortable trusting your well-being to someone else? And haven’t you felt…your vulnerability as a woman to be a liability? Most women hate their vulnerability….Most of our energy is spent trying to hide our true selves, and control our worlds to have some sense of security.”

Control is a major issue that women struggle to surrender in marriage, but as Eldredge points out, this is not a problem that begins in marriage. It begins long before.

Submission is a discipline that you must work on cultivating now, as a single woman. Think about it this way…

It really is no wonder that the transition from the single life to married life can be so rocky–they generally encompass two completely different mindsets! As a single woman, you learn to be independent and look out for yourself. But then you get married and you’re supposed to let someone else take care of you.

You go from being independent to dependent. What was once a virtue becomes a vice. A practice that once guarded your lifestyle can now sabotage your lifestyle. What are we to make of this discrepancy?

The problem here is that the predominant mindset of single women today is in direct conflict with the Christian life. The idea that single women are somehow independent and must fend for themselves is a mindset that conflicts with the sovereignty of God. If we profess Christ, then there is no independent. There is no “fend for yourself.” And there is no “I am in control.”

On the contrary, it is God who is in control. God takes care of you. To be Christian is to be dependent on Him.

An unhealthy independence is easy to hide when you’re on your own, but it quickly becomes apparent when your life is intertwined with another. It is a mindset that short-circuits your ability to trust others because it is founded upon a trust in yourself alone. That said, if you have thoroughly ingrained in your heart and mind a spirit of independence, then you set yourself up for failure in all relationships, not the least of which is your relationship with God.

With all of this in mind, an inability to trust a husband in marriage is not necessarily a marital problem. It is a spiritual one. It comes from years and years of not trusting God to provide and take care of you. When you live in the knowledge that God is in control, it takes a lot of pressure off of trusting others. A trust in God makes all other forms of trust possible.

So if you are single now, begin the hard work of learning submission–submission to God. Regardless of whether or not you get married one day, this is a discipline that will factor into your job, your church, and your family relationships. It is the difference between relating to others in fear, or relating to others in freedom.

That is a struggle that every woman must face and fight, no matter her marital status.

I wonder if Billy Crystal was right.

Think back to the movie When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the film came out in the late 80’s, and it co-starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The storyline spans a period of many years beginning with the couple’s initial meeting, and following them as their friendship blossoms into romance.

It’s a pretty cute movie and you should check it out if you haven’t, but there is one scene in particular that I’ve always remembered—Crystal’s very first conversation with Ryan. The two are discussing whether or not men and women can be friends, and Crystal firmly believes that it’s impossible.

Ryan is confused by this and argues that countless men and women are friends without blurring the lines, but Crystal still disagrees. Even if the couple never acts upon their romantic feelings, there will always be one person in the friendship who is interested in the other. It may not be a permanent state of pining, but at some point or another, one of them is bound to think about it.

(I would have pasted the convo here but it’s a little PG-13. Google it–you’ll laugh. Oh and for those of you who watched this movie in the theaters, I thought I’d add that this year’s college freshmen hadn’t been born yet!)

So I pose the same question to you–Was Billy Crystal right? Can men and women ever really be friends? When I look back on my closest guy friendships, men that I never even came close to dating, there was still a point in time in which he or I was interested. Nothing came of it, but it seems to confirm Crystal’s point.

On the other hand, I wonder if the act of being attracted to another person necessarily invalidates friendship. Like I said, I’ve been friends with guys who were interested in me, or vice versa, but we got over it and remained friends. I’ve also been friends with guys who were dating another person or were married, so it was never an issue to begin with. Is Crystal therefore wrong, or am I simply being naive?

The reason I bring this up today is that it highlights our complete misunderstanding of male-female friendships. From Crystal’s perspective, men and women can ONLY interact in a sexual way, and I think he is right to an extent. If we spend enough one-on-one time with anyone, the idea is bound to surface.

But does that mean ALL male-female friendships must be inherently sexual? Heck no! And this is where our culture’s understanding of friendship has gone horribly awry.

In order to understand why we’ve perverted male-female friendships we need to first look out our single years, because the way we understand male-female friendships after we get married is profoundly shaped by the way we treated male-female friendships BEFORE marriage. Let me explain….

When you’re single, almost anything goes. You’ll spend excessive amounts of time with guys you have no intention of dating (and guys do the same with girls), and we assume it’s all above board as long as we’re not hooking up. Pre-marriage friendship is therefore defined by unrestrained freedom.

Of course, this almost never works out. No one can spend that much time with another person without someone starting to wonder. Lines get crossed and feelings get hurt. Thus proving Crystal to be right.

As a result of these abuses, we carry our experiences into marriage, and it shapes the way we interact with people of the opposite sex. We remember the fallout from our male-female friendships as a single person, and therefore swing in the opposite direction. There is almost a kind of paranoia surrounding male-female friendships. The idea of grabbing lunch with a co-worker is next to adultery, and you certainly can’t call a man who isn’t your husband on the phone. Ever.

But I wonder if that is altogether healthy. In responding this way, we sexualize ALL male-female relationships, which is a foreign dynamic to the Body of Christ. Shouldn’t our primary paradigm of interaction be that of brothers and sisters? It worries me when we treat our sisters in Christ more like whores who are trying to destroy our marriages, rather than members of a community designed to build our marriages up.

Yet this perspective originates in our unhealthy single friendships. Before we get married we should already be drawing boundaries. That doesn’t mean we should NEVER be alone with another man, but it does mean being responsible and making sure we treat our male friends as brothers. I have plenty of male friends who I consider to be good friends, but with whom I haven’t spent much alone time. If I need to tell them something, I will call them, but I don’t call them all the time. I keep them at an appropriate distance that guards their hearts and mine, while still maintaining our friendship.

If we were to have boundaries for male-female friendships prior to marriage, I wonder if we would be a little less threatened by these friendships after marriage. We would continue to have boundaries, but only for the sake of being wise, not paranoid. We could also see one another primarily as brothers and sisters in Christ, which means we wouldn’t always have to feel threatened by our husband’s friendships with other women. That doesn’t mean he should be calling women to confide in them, or that he should be taking them out to candlelit dinners, but he should be free to love them as his sisters.

All of that to say, how do you single gals interact with your male friends? Are you engaging in a degree of friendship that is sustainable once you start dating someone, or will you have to pull back considerably? Platonic friendships with guys can create just as much baggage for a dating relationship as ex-boyfriends, so only foster those kinds of friendship that would honor your husband. Not only for the sake of your future husband, but for the sake of guarding your guy friends’ hearts. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with guys, but it does mean we need to change the way we relate to them. Remember, these men are your brothers, not your boyfriend place holders.

Be the appropriate friend to men that you’d want your own husband to have. Let that be your compass.

When I was in Southeast Asia this summer, I had a very unusual experience–I went to see the movie Sex and the City with some Muslim girls from Sudan. It was seriously disorienting as we walked into a movie all about sex, accompanied by girls wearing conservative head coverings. Granted, the country censored all the nudity, sex scenes and kissing out of the film, but it was still pretty racy. I never would have guessed that these girls would be interested in seeing such a movie.

But what was even more surprising is that we all enjoyed it, including myself! Since all the sex had been edited out, I was able to focus more on the plot line which, at its core, is about the unshakable bond between friends.

That story line, about 4 friends who stick together through thick and thin, is a story line that transcends age and culture. That’s why so many women all over the world have identified with the show and its characters. Each woman in the group is different, but each fits in perfectly as she offers her own unique dynamic to the group. And each woman is fully loved by her other friends, in spite of their differences.

In Sex and the City, we see a vision of friendship that allows us to be who we are, and still be loved unconditionally. We also see a vision of friendship that perseveres through adversity, as well as rejoicing in the good times. It is a kind of friendship that most women desire because it provides us with an emotional refuge, and it allows us to be free in who we are. As a result, women watch the show and aspire to have the same kinds of relationships.

There is a similar phenomenon with the show Entourage. Here again, we see a group of guys who live the kind of life most guys only dream about. But what’s even better is that they live this dream life together. Unlike many people, they have not attained success only to find themselves alone at the top. Instead, they remain a solid core through the adventures of life. And like Sex and the City, each guy is different, offering his own unique personality to make the group what it is. Again, each man is free to be himself, and still be accepted.

As a result of shows like these, I’ve noticed men and women will subconsciously (or consciously) imitate the lifestyles of the characters. They mimic their language, their dress, their behaviors, and the way they relate to members of the opposite sex. They are trying to live out the friendships that they’ve seen on t.v. because they look so desirable.

And this is where our sweet tale of friendship goes horribly awry. While both shows display a quality of friendship that we rarely experience today, that tiny bit of truth has blinded countless viewers to an underlying perversion.

The problem with the “friendship” offered us in these shows is that it is ultimately self-destructive. It is a kind of friendship that has no real moral compass because it isn’t founded on anything that is morally tangible. It may appeal to some vague sense of love and commitment or shared experiences, but those elements don’t guard a friendships from selfishness, or guide friendships in the way of integrity.

And that is why the moral values of these shows are so shaky. Throughout the course of the series, the Sex and the City women simply laughed about one another’s crazy antics as several of them had affairs with married men, had affairs themselves, and engaged in other behaviors that would lead to unspeakable pain and heartache in the real world. There was no higher standard by which to measure their actions. The group itself sets the standard.

In the same way, the men in Entourage essentially cheer one another on as they objectify women and treat them like throw away kleenex. It’s all about sexual conquest after sexual conquest. The friends are not cultivating any kind of character in one another. They are instead reinforcing behaviors and mindsets that cultivate selfishness and short-circuit one’s ability to love and commit in a self-sacrificing way.

That is the deceptiveness of shows like these. They offer us a vision of something we desire, and there might even be some truth to it. But ultimately, these friendships are fatally flawed for one reason, and one reason alone: they are not founded on Christ.

Any friendship that is not founded on Christ can wander astray into one of two categories, both of which are demonstrated for us through Sex and the City and Entourage:

1. Friendship founded on idolatry–This is a friendship that is grounded in a mutual interest or shared history, anything other than Christ. It could be anything from the innocent interests of shopping, running, or knitting, or it could even be founded on gossip, partying, or promiscuity. While some of those mutual interests can add depth to a friendship, they cannot replace the importance of placing Christ at the center of your Christian friendships. When Christ is removed, our friendships no longer have an immovable anchor, but are instead founded upon a shakeable moral ground which is largely determined by the subjective opinion of the group.

2. Friendship founded on exclusivity–This model of friendship is not based on who you are, but instead on who you’re not. It tends to take an attitude of “us against the world.” Specifically, women can stereotype and tear down their male counterparts–”we women need to stick together against the men.” Similarly, men can objectify women, seeing them not as equals but as prizes to be competed for. They are not given the same respect and care as members within the group. These friendships also cultivate a false sense of intimacy–you may feel close to the members of the group, but there is nothing substantive that’s really connecting you together. And that spirit of opposition can easily be used to exclude you one day.

HBO is selling a model of friendship that offers us a kernel of truth, and that truth is refreshing in a world where good friendships are hard to find. But we must not allow that grain of truth to blind us to the lies hidden within. True, edifying, Christian friendship should be centered on Christ alone–any other model only feeds our destructive tendencies. Remember that the next time you watch these shows, as well as something as benign as Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Ask what these shows are selling, and whether or not you’ve bought the lie. When you look at the friendships in your life, what model do you see?

I have definitely had my fair share of dating horror stories. At this point in my life I can look back on most of them and laugh, but I have ended more than a few relationships with some major scrapes and bruises that left me feeling very broken at the time.

At the end of many of those train wrecks, I was often left wondering what had happened. After all, the guy had seemed normal when we were dating. Then all of a sudden he turned into a thoughtless jerk who didn’t seem to care a shred about my feelings. How could he call himself a Christian and behave that way? Are all men just dogs, regardless of whether or not they are believers?

I’m fairly certain that most girls have asked those questions at least once before. I am also fairly certain that many guys have as well. Not only have I heard countless women bemoan the lack of solid Christian guys to date, but many men have echoed those sentiments about women.

“It’s so hard to find a nice, Christian ________.” “I just don’t understand _______. They are crazy!” You can fill in those blanks with either “men” or “women,” depending on who you are. But no matter which camp you find yourself in, odds are you find the other gender to be completely mystifying.

I would, however, warn against such generalizations. Yes, I have dated some major jerks. But I am no lily white soul, and I know other girls who have done some pretty under-handed things to guys. And gentlemen, you may think that all girls are completely nuts, but you’d be lying if you said that you didn’t know some slimeball guys. You may have even done some pretty hurtful things yourself.

That said, the reason that dating is so hard has nothing to do with “all women being crazy” or “all guys being jerks.” The reason is two-fold, the first of which being that we are sinners. Unlike God, who loves perfectly, we love conditionally and limitedly. We are selfish and we use people, so when we make ourselves vulnerable to such imperfect love, we risk getting hurt. And this is a tendency that crosses gender lines–most likely we have all done some things we regret, but that reflects less on our sex, and more on our humanity. We are, simply stated, a fallen people.

The second reason dating is so hard is that we tend to throw God’s sovereignty out the window whenever we enter a relationship. Rather than let God determine our peace and happiness, we rely on the other person to do that. As a result, we become controlling, jealous, and we begin to let that person determine our self-worth. We HAVE to make the relationship work, because our contentment depends on it. And if it fails, then we blame the person, rather than resting in the knowledge that God might have been protecting us, and that He probably has someone better.

Now don’t get me wrong–sometimes people will hurt you in ways that are horrible and inexcusable, and we are not called to ignore the pain or belittle the injury simply because God is in control. But the question is what do you DO with that pain? Do you become bitter and jaded about dating, do you begin to generalize an entire gender as being beyond understanding, or do you eventually come to rest in the knowledge that it simply wasn’t meant to be?

The best indicator of where you are in trusting God’s sovereignty is often revealed by how you talk about your exes. If you spew venomous slander whenever their names come up, or accuse them of not being a good Christian or following God’s will, then those are not the words of a person who is waiting on God’s best. Those are the bitter ventings of someone who made their boyfriend an idol, and was devastated when he couldn’t live up to that standard.

Such bitterness also reveals a profound misunderstanding of our own sinfulness. We are all sinners saved by grace, and I for one appreciate having been pardoned for the times that I have hurt people. Far be it from me to withhold such forgiveness from others.

So yes, dating is hard. As a matter of fact, I hate it a lot of the time. But God is still God, which means He is still in control. He has a perfect plan for me, and if the next guy I date is a part of that, then praise be to God. But if he isn’t, then God simply has something better. Either way, I can praise Him.

Eve is a unique character in the Bible. She is unique in that she is frequently referenced as a prototype for ALL women. The rest of the women in the Bible are used to highlight certain attributes of women (with the exception of the Proverbs 31 woman, perhaps), but Eve embodies them all. She is the source of all womanhood, so Scripture and Church tradition alike have looked to her as a model for what women should, and should not, do. For this reason, Christian women throughout the Church’s history have looked at Eve for direction and identity. She was the first woman, and is therefore the definitive woman.

With all of that in mind, I was deeply dismayed when I came to a startling realization: Eve was never single. Eve was the prototype for all women who followed her, yet her life was defined by only two key phases: marriage and motherhood. She was created into marriage, therefore by-passing singleness, so the only way we ever really talk about Eve is in relation to Adam. In fact, her first sin was in being independent from Adam.

So if Eve is the definitive woman, and her entire life is articulated in light of her relationship to Adam, how are we single gals to relate? Does this mean we are only fully women once we get married and start having babies? Surely that can’t be true since God does not ordain that all women get married. That being said, what does Eve’s life have to say about singleness? How are we to understand Eve’s life in a way that embodies ALL women, no matter their stage in life?

The answer to this question can be found by shifting the way in which we look at Eve’s life. Instead of dividing her life into the two stages of marriage and motherhood, we must divide her life between the stages of obedience and disobedience, faithfulness and unfaithfulness, Paradise and Fallenness. There was the period of time in which she lived in perfect bliss with Adam, and the time in which she lived in sin outside the Garden. It is these two stages, rather than marriage and motherhood, that are the most important stages in Eve’s life, and the two stages that we women need to note.

Why is such a shift in perspective necesssary? Because communion with God will always and forever be more important than marriage and motherhood. Marriage and motherhood are gifts, as well as a means for serving God, but they do not make us who we are. God alone determines that. Our identity as women comes first and foremost from our relationship with God, not a husband or any other man, and that is the bridge with which all women can connect with Eve.

With that in mind, Eve is the definitive woman in that her life illustrates two types of womanhood: a woman in pursuit of God, or a woman in disobedience to God. In the Garden of Eden, Eve’s happiness was primarily connected to her relationship with God. After the Fall, her unhappiness was a direct result of her alienation from God. In a sense, Adam’s presence was merely circumstantial. Yes, the way in which she related to Adam was a way of honoring God, but ultimately it was all about God, Adam or not.

This, then, is what women are to learn from Eve: No matter where you are in life, single, or married, your primary concern is God. Ultimately, nothing else defines you as a woman except your discipleship. You are the fullest embodiment of a woman when you are submitting yourself to God in all that you do. You will also be most content when you are obedient to Him. We see what this kind of womanhood looks like in the Garden, and we see what fallen womanhood looks like after the Garden. And in addition to that, we are reminded that there is a danger in defining yourself any other way. If you think Christ-centered womanhood only comes with marriage and motherhood, then you commit the same sin as Eve: finding your identity in something other than God.

Thus Eve’s life is a reminder to us all, regardless of where we are in life. It is comforting for us singles, reassuring us that we are just as much women as anyone else, but it is also a form of accountability for wives and mothers, for whom it is easy to get swept up in the commitments of those roles. Neither singleness, marriage or motherhood make us women. God alone can make us into the women He created us to be, so it is a waste to seek for our identities in anything else.

I am blessed to have a friend in my life who is not inhibited by social graces like tact. If I ever need an opinion, I can depend on him to speak hard truth into my life, generally in the most blunt form possible. Fortunately, he is almost always dead-on in his observations, which is why I go back to him again and again, regardless of the form in which his wisdom is dispensed.

For example, he recently introduced me to a term that I have since found to be both descriptive and extremely accurate. The term is “girlfriend place-holder.” According to my friend, a lot of guys will have a female friend in their life that virtually functions as a girlfriend in every way–they talk a lot, spend a great deal of one-on-one time together, even go on pseudo-dates and act flirtatious. For all intents and purposes it would seem that the guy is interested, yet he never actually wants to commit. In fact, he never even broaches the topic of dating.

Why? Because, as my friend describes it, this girl is serving as a “girlfriend place-holder.” Though probably doing so unintentionally, some guys will keep a female friend around to hold the place of a girlfriend. In a sense, they are filling their time until they meet the girl they *really* want to date.

As my friend explained it, we all want companionship in some form or another, so even if we haven’t met Mr. or Mrs. Right just yet, many of us will find someone to meet those desires until the “real thing” comes along. And guys aren’t the only ones guilty of doing this. Girls do it just as much. Ladies, I’m sure you can think back to someone in your past, if not someone RIGHT NOW, who is serving as a boyfriend place-holder for you. He’s great because he’ll pay for things when you go out, and he’s always available if you’re bored, but you have absolutely no intention of dating him.

What is interesting about this form of guy-girl relationship is that it is deceptively intimate. Unlike blatant serial flirting in which you can easily spot the players you need to avoid, place-holding seems more real and more deep. After all, it is based upon an actual friendship, so there is more to it than simply having fun. And that is what often keeps the “place-holders” hanging on so long–because there is depth to the relationship, they hold out hope that sooner or later the guy or girl will snap out of it: “One of these days he’s going to wake up and realize what a good thing he has right in front of him.” That sort of thing. In this way, these relationships can actually result in far greater emotional damage than shallower versions of its kind. Place-holders will more easily open up and make themselves vulnerable since they feel they can trust the other person.

This ultimately leaves the “place-holder” feeling confused and hurt, and sometimes devastated. I have a number of girl friends right now who are in this exact situation. They have a close guy friend that they spend a great deal of time with, but he just won’t commit. In fact, he won’t even bring up any sort of conversation relating to the romantic nature of their relationship. Perhaps the guy is simply afraid of commitment, but in many cases, as my guy friend explains it, these guys have no intention of dating at all. They are unintentionally using these young women as girlfriend place-holders.

Now I think it’s pretty obvious that this kind of relationship is not honoring to the “place-holder” involved, so if you can think of someone in your life who plays that role, then you should seriously consider cutting it off. Even if you are both using each other, and neither person necessarily has the upper hand, you are still not treating them as the brother and sister in Christ that they are. And more importantly, if you think a guy or girl might be treating YOU as a place-holder, then get out of that relationship, and fast! That is NOT how God intended you to be treated–you are to be loved and desired extravagantly, so anyone who makes you feel inadequate or unworthy of love is falling way short of that mark.

In addition to all that, if you have a friend who is treating someone as a place-holder, call them out! Guys, don’t let your friends treat girls that way–if you look the other way when your friends do this, then you are no better than they are since you clearly don’t respect your sister enough to stand up for her. And ladies, the same goes for you. No guy deserves to be strung along, so hold your friends accountable on their behalf.

And finally, don’t forget to reflect on why it is you need a place-holder in the first place. God is always sufficient, so if He hasn’t provided you with a spouse yet, He is still more than enough for you to be content. At the end of the day, that is the key issue here, so be sure not to cover it up with a girlfriend or boyfriend place-holder. Place-holding is little more than the symptom of a dissatisfied heart.