Disclaimer: This post mostly targets young, unmarried women.

Let’s start with famous pastor Mark Driscoll explaining how men are to blame for single motherhood:

Part of it is the unintended consequences of divorce. Forty percent of kids go to bed at night without a father. Not to be disparaging toward single moms, but if you’re a single mom and you’re working 60 hours a week, and you’ve got a boy, and he’s home all by himself with no parents and no dad, he’s just going to be hanging out with his buddies, feeding himself pizza rolls.

The number one consumer of online pornography is 12- to 17-year-old boys. What that means is he’s home eating junk food, drinking Monster energy drinks, downloading porn, masturbating and screwing around with his friends. That really doesn’t prepare you for responsible adulthood. That’s a really sad picture, especially if you’re a single gal hoping to get married someday. You’re like: “Seriously, that’s the candidate pool? You’ve got to be kidding me.” That’s why 41 percent of births right now are to unmarried women. A lot of women have decided: “I’m never going to find a guy who is actually dependable and responsible to have a life with. So I’ll just get a career and have a baby and just intentionally be a single mother because there are no guys worth spending life with.”

First, notice how Driscoll is apparently clueless about the fact that many single mothers have lots of children precisely so that they don’t have to work, and can just live off of welfare. But that doesn’t fit his narrative.

My main point, though, is that the Bible says that premarital sex is wrong for men and women, but Mark Driscoll knows better – he thinks that it is only wrong for men. And that the consequences of it can all be blamed on men. Driscoll also says that Christian women who choose to have recreational premarital sex with non-Christian men should expect those men to commit to them. He also has said men should not pass over single mothers, although the sociological data shows that single mothers are more likely to divorce if they do marry, which is bad for men financially. The same is true for women who cohabitate – there’s a higher risk of divorce if they do eventually marry the person they are cohabitating with.

If you look at the sociological data, single motherhood by choice is extremely harmful to the child- we should not be condoning this by telling women “it’s not your fault, it’s the fault of bad men, so just go on and keep choosing bad men!” As my friend and fellow woman-blamer Dina would say, “No, Baby, No!”

To respond to this problem, here is a post was written by Lindsay.

First the picture she posted:

Now here is what Lindsay says about the image above:

Focus on the Family recently posted this meme on their page.

At first glance, many people might be tempted to agree with it. But the statement in the poster is actually false.

The truth is that there are plenty of loving, gentle men who are worthy of respect but whose wives are not responding properly to their love and gentleness. Plenty of women have fallen for the feminist ideas that they should never submit or let a man lead them and will be difficult to live with, no matter how wonderful their man is. Even among women who are not feminists, it’s difficult for many women to follow a husband’s leadership because our sinful nature is in rebellion against God’s plan.

Submission and following our husbands is something that must be learned, not something we’re born with or develop naturally. Women aren’t naturally good and kind any more than men are. We’re all fallen. We have to work to develop good habits and learn to do what God wants of us.

It certainly is easier for women to follow a loving, gentle man, but the poster is wrong in assuming that the only barriers to a woman following her man are his flaws. That simply isn’t true. Women also have to overcome their own flaws that stand in the way of the proper relationship they were meant to have.

Unfortunately, this attitude that women are naturally good and that men are the flawed ones that need to change is very prevalent, even among Christians. Imagine the outrage people would have if the scenario was reversed and the poster said something like this:

“Men are usually comfortable being kind and loving to their wives if their wives are submissive, keep up their appearance, and respect them.”

People would be up in arms over such a statement that assumes that men are always wonderful if women will just behave as they should. Why is it any different if the assumption is that women are always wonderful if men are behaving properly? Both are wrong. Both sexes are responsible for their own actions, regardless of what the other person in the marriage does.

Note that the Bible does not qualify the command in Ephesians 5 that women should submit to their husbands by making it conditional on anything that a man has to do. A man has separate duties, and those are not conditional on anything a woman has to do, either. He has to get up and go to work to provide for the family, whether she does what she is supposed to do or not. It’s a moral obligation. The command to not deny each other sex except temporarily and by mutual consent is not conditional on anyone’s behavior. NO SEX-WITHHOLDING, if you believe the Bible. It doesn’t matter if you are feel happy or unhappy, you are obligated. That’s what it means to take responsibility to perform an obligation!

What I have been seeing lately is older Christian women telling younger Christian women not to take seriously the obligations of complementarianism, but to instead make sure they choose a man who will let their desires rule. As someone who is used to not getting my own way, but instead putting God first, I find the idea that my resources will be redirected to making my wife feel good rather than serving God as a team to be absolutely horrifying and unacceptable. I have been entrusted with significant resources by God, and much is expected of me and my marriage. I really wish women would understand this – I have a Boss and my purpose in life is to serve him effectively. We are in a battle here in this culture, and there is a lot I want to do. I want a wife who will sacrifice her own happiness and needs as much as I have, and help me to serve my Boss. She needs to have experiences that prepare her character for that role. I am not asking for any more self-denial and self-sacrifice than I am willing to do myself, and I am not asking for her to do these things for me, but for our Boss.

As someone who has made sacrifices to prepare for marriage in areas like chastity, education, career, savings, apologetics ministry, etc., I am often shocked when I meet women who have – throughout their entire lives – always done what felt good to them. And yet many of those women tell me what a great Christian wife and mother they would make. I often find a huge mismatch of education, career, financial assets and chastity between men and women in relationships, and I believe that much of it results from pastors and church leaders giving Christian women this implicit green light to let their feelings and desires override the plain meaning of the Bible. Christian women need to understand that doing whatever feels good to you over and over is not consistent with the example of Jesus, nor moral teachings of the New Testament as a whole. Marriage is hard work, and you need to train yourself to get used to it by repeated exposure to experiences of self-denial, self-sacrifice and self-control. If your preparation for marriage is studying what feels good, working wherever feels good, spending money in order to feel good, etc. you are not preparing for marriage. There is no “happy path” to a great marriage.

Greg Koukl has a wonderful line: “the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle”. That’s right. Lindsay and her husband have been married for five years*, and they have never shouted at one another once. That takes wisdom. We ought to be listening to people like Lindsay and her husband about marriage. I know I listen to them. If you want to know what to do to have a good marriage, why don’t you just ask Lindsay? Similarly, my best friend Dina has an extremely stressful job dealing with difficult customers and life-or-death situations every day. She has so much responsibility at work that she makes my job look like a boiling an egg. And yet whenever I ask her for anything, e.g. – “play a game of Memoir ’44 with me”, she almost always does it, even when she doesn’t feel like it. I ask her why, and she says “because although you are very demanding, your needs are easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy compared to what I had to deal with today at work!” That’s why I encourage women to do hard things.

*=Today is their 5-year anniversary! Congratulations, Doug and Lindsay! I admire you both so much, and you make me feel validated about my vision for marriage, and my high standards.