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To those who would ask, "What about the fact that Jesus was single?" Maken summarily answers, "There are a lot of things that Jesus was and did that we are never going to be or do." Case closed. That seems like a scary, simplistic paradigm with which to view our Savior. If marriage really is a biblical mandate for all believers, why aren't there any recorded words from Jesus about the matter? Why didn't he turn to his band of brothers and urge them to settle down? Why didn't he tell the woman caught in adultery to go, sin no more, and get married? Why didn't he confront his seemingly single friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus about their failure to wed? He said so much about the needs of the poor, the way the body of Christ should operate, and the times the Pharisees missed the mark, why don't we have any words to the single people of his day, urging them to marry, as Maken asserts is "the highest calling given to men and women"?

She also employs a troubling technique common in Christian circles—making the descriptive prescriptive. The Bible mentions "the wife of your youth" a couple of times, so Maken extrapolates that all should marry young. Maken found her spouse by "enlisting agency" and therefore asserts that all singles will find resolution in the same manner. Unfortunately, this technique of over-prescribing doesn't allow room for one of God's best traits: his personal touch in our lives. He relates to us individually, has different plans and timelines for each of us, and such cookie-cutter theology doesn't allow room for this wonderful truth.

Maken points to many root causes of the current singleness epidemic: our culture, media, the church, single men, parents, previous generations, faulty theology. There might be truth to some of these claims, and it's certainly helpful to examine them, but making such an impassioned case against all these sources won't help the intended audience of the book, single women, the one segment she all but lets off the hook for the current state of affairs. With her angry finger-pointing at all these factors, I fear she's simply inciting bitterness. And when are shame and blame, anger and bitterness ever helpful motivators or solutions—let alone biblical attitudes?

The 30 pages of solution at the end of the book suggest that dating is a harmful, ineffective means of meeting a spouse; that single women should move home or at the very least employ a father or father-figure to find potential suitors; that we should limit men's access to single women (which apparently lowers their motivation); and that singles shouldn't take much more than three months to figure out if someone is a good marriage match. These kinds of counter cultural solutions work better in theory than in reality. I asked several single male friends what they would think if someone like me, a never-married 34-year-old woman, were to move home and/or get my father to broker my dates. Their incredulous, confused stares said it all. If we were all agreeing to work from this playbook, these practices might be effective. But going so counter cultural in a climate where dates—let alone marriages—are already hard to come by for many Christian singles seems risky and misguided. 

Perhaps the most troubling thing about Getting Serious About Getting Married is its lack of understanding and acknowledgment of current realities. I, like most singles I know, find myself still-single in my 30s by surprise. I don't view singleness as a higher spiritual state I'm loathe to leave, even though I have found unique ministry opportunities in this life stage. I haven't avoided marriage. In fact, I've allowed friends to set me up on dates, signed up for Christian online dating agencies, prayed for God to open doors. I have been serious about getting married.

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June (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50