A Response to a Sermon on What to Consider in Selecting a Spouse

Hey everyone! I wanted to write here and give my two cents about something. My husband had listened to a sermon and he came to me afterwards to talk about it and we got into a bigger discussion about what was said and how we would respond to it. Mainly with our kids in mind, this is my attempt to write that down. The sermon was on how to pick a spouse and was focusing on what the young adults group, and that church, were learning about this topic. I’m going to briefly touch on a couple points that were mentioned in the sermon, but ultimately I just want to spend more time on the thoughts that we had about it because I think it brings up a good discussion about what godly friendship and godly marriage is and how to process that. Ok, so here goes.

There are three points that I wanted to mention from the sermon and then I wanted to speak more fully on some thoughts and questions that I had in regard to what was said. So the first point that was alluded to was that the person you are looking for should not be considered your best friend. You shouldn’t put that on the person. You shouldn’t make the selection of this person such a “there’s only one plan” kind of an idea. It alluded to the idea you should have other friends that you go to outside of this person who you can talk to about things that you can’t talk to your spouse about. Your spouse will be at the same level as your friends and, in some cases, your friends may be even higher than your spouse (think a “you can’t break loyalty with your buddies” kind of viewpoint). Now this way of thinking raised a whole lot of red flags for me, especially if this is advice that is being given to young adults or in marriage counselling situations. Let me explain why.

In a Christian setting (and I will be speaking strictly regarding this mindset and not any other), your spouse, or soon-to-be spouse, most definitely should be seen as, or should become, your best friend. I would even highlight it and say the bestest of your best friends. There is a stark and vast difference between your spouse and all the rest of your friends. Your spouse should know you as you know yourself. Your spouse should know you as if you are the same unit. See what I’m saying? A bunch of people will say that the “being one” thing has to do with sex in marriage. But before any sex in marriage, there must be the oneness in the spiritual, emotional, every-other-aspect-of-your-marriage part. The man serving his wife part. The getting to know each other, the communication, the openness part of the relationship. A couple could be having sex and the other aspect - the spouse knowing you as you know yourself - is not there, and the marriage will be hollow and empty. The oneness in the every other aspect of your marriage makes the sex meaningful. The sex is a small part of the whole thing. The serving, the communication, the understanding each other - all of these things are the main thing. This is the reason that affairs happen a lot of the time - the couple could be having sex but the other isn’t there and they go looking for that in another “that’s not there” relationship. Because inherent in a male and female relationship is the giver and receiver idea that I spoke about before in a previous blog - that’s what people are looking for (Hence the reason I do not think that men and women can be just friends or that a man should have a female friend that he meets up with separate from his wife or vice versa. Men can be friends with men and women with women and couples or single people with other couples. And if you are a single woman and are friends with a single man, for instance, then why not marry him? Why share all of that with a man that you are not going to marry? Or why marry another man when you are friends with that man, keeping in mind that a relationship between a man and a woman has that inherent giver and receiver difference aspect in it?) What is this giver and receiver aspect? It is (just briefly) that the man will serve his wife, he will love his wife in a way that points to Christ’s relationship with the church (that He served and she received the abundance of His love) and, in this servant leadership, the husband will be interested in her life, in her, taking initiative to communicate and understand and never stop growing to know her, being her confidante and her emotional support, being known as if one being. See it? But all that is often talked about for marriages is something along the lines of: make sure that you have sex when the guy wants it, or the biggest thing about marriage is that you get married to have sex. It’s not that the men will be leading this family, that they will be serving their wives, that the most important aspect of the marriage is the oneness in the internal relationship. So, to go back around to the original point: yes, your spouse should most definitely be your best friend. Actually, you can’t even speak of friends and your spouse in the same category. In terms of priority in a life, it is your spouse, your dependent children, and then your friends, extended family, independent children (believers who are adults). When you go and you talk with your friends, it should be what you and your spouse have already had conversations about. You have made the decisions, you are having the discussions, and then you go and you speak to your friends and it’s not some topic that your spouse doesn’t know about. There shouldn’t be an area of discussion, or some aspect of your life, that your husband or wife doesn’t talk to you about, or that you have to go and talk to some other person instead of your significant other. Yes, there might be things that someone might know a bit more about. Take music, for example. My husband knows more music theory than I do but he doesn’t cut me out and just go to his music friends. I am interested in what he is interested in and he talks to me about what he knows and it’s fascinating. And, in the midst of the conversations, I realize that I know more than I think I do, or can spot more than I think I could, and he values what I am able to see and hear musically and attempt to communicate, as well. Take another example. He’s a software developer and I knew very little about coding, but I’ve talked with him and he explains it and I’m interested in it and, you know what? I’ve used more coding methods in my life than I realized I had. He doesn’t have to go to his coder friends to talk about coding exclusively. Sure, he can still go and talk to friends about coding, but if there is a situation in his job or a problem with his developing project, he doesn’t leave me and talk to them. We work through things together, we discuss options, we make decisions, and when he goes and he talks with his friends who know how to code about the issue, it is what we have already talked about. Friendship in the life of a Christian will be deep and real, for sure - a lot more deep and real than the superficial friendships in many places that are touting community - but the friendship is still not at the level of being seen as one being like with your spouse.

So, this leads into the other part of this point - most definitely you should be considering this spouse selection as “there’s only one plan.” A Christian should be caring about who they will select as a spouse, they should process it beforehand, they should think about who they would want to consider and what would be criteria that would be important to them. They should take that time of dating as a space to have serious and deep and in-depth conversation about what the individuals believe and what their answers are to questions about marriage and parenting. It is not about settling. It is not about just finding someone because everyone is pairing up. You should care deeply about who you want to marry because it is a lifelong thing. You leave your parent’s households and are together. You are not still part of your parent’s homes. You are together, you and your spouse are your immediate family. I have heard multiple pastors say things (in marriage counselling, no less!) like, there will be people in your life that you will have to tell your spouse about who are a “your type” person - a person (or people) who you will find attractive outside of them. And each time I hear that I am blown away by the dangerousness and lack of understanding of marriage in this answer. That is a Christian version of a hall pass. That means your spouse is looking around at other people and considering them for themselves! Your spouse should be your bestest of all best friends. Your selection of your spouse should be considered with care and not with settling. Your spouse should know you in a “knowing you as you know yourself” way. Your spouse should be exclusively yours, exclusively the apple of your eye. This is your greatest commitment, if we’re talking about being committed to someone - this is the only person with whom there is true covenant commitment, so consider who it is! Process that commitment before it happens. Think about it beforehand, consider what qualities you value, be picky! Put that bestest of all best friends label on them because they should be looking at you that way, too. And you know what? This doesn’t put pressure on them, this should be a great honour and privilege to them to be considered by you as their spouse and for you to be known as theirs. You know how it’s said that if you love everyone the same it cheapens love? If you say you love your best friend and you say you love the person who delivers your mail under the same category of love, it cheapens the love that you have for your best friend, right? (Side note: That’s my issue with the heart taking over the thumbs up AND heart symbol options on social media - it’s grouping everything as a love and it lessens something that is actually loved). ‘Cause there are levels of love in relationship - strangers, acquaintances, friends that you’re congenial with, then there’s you’re really solid and close friends that get the real talk and you’re certain of their counsel, and then there’s you’re spouse up above that. It’s the same with talking about God and His people - you have to talk about how He doesn’t love everyone equally, and this highlights how huge it is that He sent His Son to die for His people - it should fill a Christian’s heart with amazement that any are saved when none were deserving. It highlights the costliness. So, back to what I was saying before - why would this ever be seen as pressure to be called the bestest of best friends by a spouse, or to want to look for this person who you will call that? What a thought to be considered in this way! Different from all of the other girls and guys! Loved with a different love! And looking for a spouse who is also considering who their mate will be in a similar way?!

Okay, second part. The sermon said that your main criteria for the person should be that they attend church, are part of a Bible study group, are part of some kind of ministry. This was stated as the main criteria. Again, a very hard No. Not even remotely close to being your main criteria for picking a spouse. All of those things stated above do not mean that the individual is a Christian. If I heard that as someone who was contemplating what spouse to pick, that would set me up for a whole can of problems. I could have married a whole bunch of guys that would have been very, very bad for me. That they just attend a local church, were attending the Young Adults or College and Career Bible studies at the church (that I didn’t even want to go to at the time because they were focused on nothing), and were part of/playing an instrument in the worship ministry? Oh boy. None of those factors mean that the man that I was looking for was a Christian. Anybody who is completing their spiritual checklist can be doing that. Anybody can say that they are attending church, or that they go to a Bible study, or that they are active in a ministry. But if you are attending places, as I was when I was younger, and you were frustrated because the services were not really saying much, and the Bible study groups were either focused on playing games or being led by young adults who didn’t know/didn’t care to know or were focused on commiserating about how hard it was to not do the things that they wanted to do, and the worship ministry was more focused on performancism, that’s not criteria that is helpful or wise. And the Bible says that too. Paul says in Romans that there is physical Israel and spiritual Israel. There was the nation of Israel and there was the remnant (true believers). That’s why Paul says in Romans that it is by God opening eyes and giving faith, even in the OT, that a person came to be a believer - not that every person in the nation of Israel was a believer. And Paul also says that this is a picture for us of the situation that happens in the church too - there’s the physical church and the spiritual (universal) church. So, focusing on the externalities as your basis for spouse selection goes against what Paul is saying here because those things can be ritualistically done. What should be focused on is the internal. The main criteria for spouse selection: the content, their theology, what they believe. Get to know that. Talk about that with them. This is super important. This will determine a lot of things and lay bare a lot of things. Because a person focusing on the internals will know right off the bat that the external things that were stated above are not the main things. And this isn’t to say that a person who focuses on the internals won’t want to meet with other Christians and talk about God, or won’t want to sing to Him, but that’s just it - it will be about Him, and it will take different forms than the way things are done in most places. In fact, they probably won’t want to stay in those places, they would be unsettled in those environments, the groups in that environment would be heavy and unsatisfying to them, they won’t want to be part of Bible study groups that are not focused on God, and they won’t want to be in ministries that aren’t about Him getting the glory instead of man. But that would look anti-social in those places I guess, and would be an indicator of a not good spouse? Hmmm, strange. There was one part of my life (and my husband had the same experience) where we were pretty much either on our own for a bit friends-wise, or had very few real friends (which, to be honest, we still have few friends but each one is valued as a deep one because quality comes over quantity in real friendship). In an environment that valued contentless friend accumulation as goals, we were considered very weird because we were looking for good places to go and we weren’t settling on friends and so on, by God’s help - there was a discontentment in our souls. But we could have had hundreds of friends if we went to a couple of the places that we tried out if we had just stayed and not cared. And in those places we were told numerous times to just find someone to date - my husband was told that countless times: “what’s wrong with you, there’s all these girls around, just date one” - but do you see? It’s the internals that matter the most for spouse selection, because that is the thing that is going to drive character, drive decision-making, drive discernment, affect the marriage relationship, SO MANY THINGS.

Last point. The sermon mentioned that you should look to their friends and how loyal they are to their friends as another spouse selection criterion. Talk to their friends and see how the friends talk about how loyal they are to them. Another hard pass. Like the previous point, this is a bad reference standard. Before I expand on this, I want to talk a little bit about the term loyalty. Nowadays, it is often referred to and thrown around as a good thing. But I would question that with its’ current definition. It is often focused on the people - be loyal to your people - and it is meant to say that you are helping the people carry on in doing what they are doing and they help you go on in what you are doing and you stand by their side as they are doing it without thinking about the content. The problem is, that in man centred places, it is based on a subjective truth standard, and so you have people in competitive community environments, doing their spiritual checklists for their glory, and being in these “loyal” friendships that are very person’s-glory-centric - you’re supposed to be the saviour for the friends, you’re supposed to do the sermon take-aways to the people in the community, you’re supposed to help the people in the community do the checklist but in an “I’ll help you, while you help me” strings-attached kind of way, and so on. It’s not thought, “Is this good community?” It’s just thought, “great, the person is in community.” But there is bad community. The Mafia are loyal to each other, gangs are loyal to each other, frat boys are loyal to each other. The whole idea of brotherhoods that come before the women that they date is loyal community. I’m not going to think that someone’s loyalty to their friends is going to be a green flag, especially if the loyalty means that the friends are all still acting like they were when they were in university. If the loyalty means that the boys are still helping each other be boys, that’s going to be a pass for me. If the loyalty means that the friends will take precedence over the spouse because you have to remain loyal to those friends, that will be a red flag for me. ‘Cause when issues arise - whose side is the guy going to take? His wife’s side or the group that he can’t be disloyal to? Is he going to leave a church that is not a good place to go or will he not even think about it because his guy group is there that he has to remain friends with and, to be honest, the content was never the main priority in the first place ‘cause the root of the friendship was more focused on the games and fun of the young adults group than about God? Do you see what I’m saying? I would rather a man that looks un-loyal in that environment, who goes by an objective truth standard (the internal understanding of the content and theology of God), who leaves that group of men to grow up and lead his wife, putting her at a higher priority above that group. That’s not to say that he wouldn’t have friends, but they would take a different form. This is where I take issue with college and career groups and lifestage groups because not only do they not get the younger people (of adult age) into the life of the church and interacting with everyone as worshippers first (I would never had some of the greatest friendships in my life if we were sorted into life stage groups - we would have never interacted, we would have never met!), it also can leave those young people stunted in everlasting adolescence. Unthinking loyalty is dangerous, because how it is being used is similar to the above point about being involved in a ministry. There’s no discussion about content, about theology. It’s just “they’re in community, just date them, they are committed to those people.” But what is the community focused on? Is it like a football player that still talks about the glory days and what it was like back in high school even now when they are in their forties? Or is it a man that leaves that community in desiring to find good fellowship but is labelled as apparently un-supportive and questionable marriage-material in the process? I’m not opposed to the word “loyalty” but I think the definition is skewed. Loyalty to community is loyalty to man, but true loyalty in a Christian environment should be loyalty to God and His word and the friendship flows out of that shared beholding. Again, the focus is off of the person. As a Christian who worships God, they will desire fellowship in friendships that put God above the friendship and they will look to God to worship through their marriage in the joy that He prepared for it. And those friendships, where the fellowship is real and meaningful and looks to God and desires to walk beside each other - across adult age groups and life stages - in pointing to the joy that He desires for His people as they put God, and His word, first - those friendships will be a lot deeper than the people loyalty friendships because those friendships will be rooted in more than just “community,” more than just man. And the person looking for a spouse will be more concerned with the internals and the content to be able to say, “I don’t want the person to just be in community. I want them to be thinking through what good fellowship is. And I would rather a person not be in community if it is unthinking and man-focused. I would rather that person be out of the community, or be unsettled or questioning that community, or walk away from the community and go in search of good fellowship, than just be in community. Community doesn’t show their heart. Community is an externality.”

The last thing I wanted to mention as a side note to all of this discussion (and one that I want to touch on in a later blog post) is that, if it means that it will take longer to find a spouse because you are waiting to find a best friend and not wanting to settle, than so be it. And I say that with all respect, knowing that it is easier said than done - believe me, I waited so long for Dave to come into my life as my first legit guy that I dated. The gathering of believers should commend the single individuals who are waiting and not settling, instead of making them feel less than and prodding them towards the opposite. So I say this speaking to the person who wants to look at the content and theology of their soon-to-be spouse, who is waiting for the confidante, the giver to their receiver (or vice versa), the man (in the case of the women) who will serve them and lay down his bachelorhood to love in a way that worships God - I know that person will see that there is greater joy in waiting on this type of relationship than the emptiness found in settling for less. This is what bothered me so much with this sermon - what apparent Christian community points their friends into the emptiness of settling when it’s a commitment so big? Especially when God desires such abundant joy in a spouse relationship that beholds Him.