Lent, Day 2: In which the top of my head shoots off.

OK, I have to get this off my chest. Sorry it's such a long, rambling bit of nonsense. If it's too long and rambling and nonsensical, I won't be offended if you skip it. ;)

Fellas: you are misinterpreting data, to your own frustration and the frustration of many, many single women around you. In 2011, a woman who has a career and a college degree (maybe even an advanced degree) and a mortgage, who pays her bills on time and takes her own car to the mechanic and hasn't lived with her parents in ten years is not necessarily, by definition a raging feminist who thinks she needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Nope. She is NORMAL. Got that?

Tip: that's the summary. If you're sufficiently convinced, feel free to stop right here. Need more persuasion that you oughta change your mind? Read on, my friend.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, women in the business world were rare. The average age of a first marriage was still in the early-mid twenties for both men and women. And the message from Western culture was loud and clear: Sisters, get into work. You can still decide to have children later, after you've gone up the ranks in your job, after you've accomplished something "real."

Add to this the shame that generation of feminists heaped on men: you're irresponsible, power-hungry, insensitive; you're someone to be resented and competed with, boxed in, restricted, pushed aside, stepped on. Those power-suit-wearing, marriage-spurning, child-hating career girls -- even then, the stereotype was developing!

But, guys? That was thirty years ago. Somehow, it seems, too many Christian men are still being taught to see career, mortgage, and financial stability in a woman and interpret that as "feminist, not wife material, run far far away"!

I grew up being taught not to waste time or money sitting on my hands, and that it was ungodly to waste my gifts and opportunities. You know who taught me that? Not just my mother, though she certainly did. No, it was the women who had, thirty years ago, bought the lie that they could subjugate their God-given desires, that those desires were wrong, that "wife" and "mother" were not the most honorable titles they could seek, but that they were rather titles to be avoided. These women, who learned through bitter experience, taught me to cherish my God-given desire for marriage and motherhood, but also to seize whatever opportunities the Lord put before me. They passed on their experience and wisdom, and started to break down that paradigm.

In my bitter moments, I want to sock every Christian single guy who whines about modern women being overly independent, and tell them that, if they didn't propose to a girl in college, it's their own fault there are all these career women running around. But in my better moments, I just want to be helpful.  So let me help you.

Most of us, brothers, are working, paying our bills, getting promotions, working on our degrees, and all those other things, not because we  don't  want to get married and have children.  It's because we had the opportunity to use our gifts in a job, or use our finances more wisely by buying instead of renting, or develop our skills with an advanced degree, or whatever... and haven't had the opportunity to get married and start a family. Most of us would happily re-arrange any or all of those things for the right man, if given the chance.

If I have one word of caution, it's this: guys, you tiptoe toward slandering your sisters when you silently accuse them of selfishness, unhealthy independence, and unbiblical attitudes toward femininity just because they have careers and mortgages -- love, after all, believes the best about people. You are misinterpreting the data, and coming to wrong conclusions. Don't be put off by a woman who makes a decent living at a job she's good at, a woman with an advanced degree, a woman who owns a home. Don't assume the worst about her.

Thirty years ago, a power suit and a mortgage might reasonably have meant this was a woman who didn't want marriage and family. It doesn't have to mean that anymore. Got it?

In Which I Unexpectedly Post a Picture of Kanye

(First: I lied.  I know I said I'd publish a follow-up to the Titus 2 post but I totally forgot and then didn't have time.  I'll try to get it wrapped up and published tomorrow.  Sorry.)

In the Facebook comments from the last post, a friend summarized the advice columnist's attempt at guiding the letter-writer thusly: "(1) grow up, (2) get to know her, (3) get married."  All excellent advice except for step two which is, alas, hopelessly vague.  Twenty or thirty years ago, there wouldn't have been any vagueness, because "get to know her" would have meant one thing: "ask her on a date."  Now?  Not so much.

And that's where the trouble lies.  When you combine all the varying advice young single people have been given, what you end up with is a mire of confusion, mixed signals, indecision, and heartbreak.  Seriously, how do you make a game plan out of that? 

Here's just a taste of the kind of advice I've received or heard over the last ten years or so:

Don't date. Dating is bad; Joshua Harris said so and if a 19-year-old kid says something in a book (!!!) that got published (!!!!!), it's probably true.  Get to know people only in a big group.  But it's a bad sign if you "struggle" with too much attraction toward one person, because that's lust and it's bad, so go after someone you feel really ambivalent toward.  Lack of attraction is HOLY, you guys.

Know beyond a shadow of a doubt whether he/she is "the one" before you make a move.  Be friends first, probably for at least a year, for some reason involving "seasons of life."  

Guys, you don't have to step up and take the lead until you're officially dating, so don't define the relationship until she breaks down crying in your car one day from pent-up frustration and disappointment.  And then tell her that you're just not in a season of life to be dating anyone.  Because your life situation has to be perfect and complication-free before you can be in a relationship of any kind.  

Ladies, allow your nurturing instinct free rein and make sure to be available to your guy friends around the clock, and definitely don't limit your accessibility to a guy you're interested in!  It's ok for "friends" to spend lots of one-on-one time together as long as they don't call it "dating" -- because dating is bad, remember?  If you're attracted to a guy, it means you should spend more time with him dropping hints.  If you're not attracted to him, that's ok.  You can still hang out with him all the time and tell him your guy troubles until someone better comes along.

Don't move too fast or you'll regret it.  But if you struggle with sexual temptation in your months- or years-long pseudo-dating awkwardness stew of a relationship, you'll probably be a social outcast and disqualify yourself from ministry forever.

AUGH.

So now, once and for all, let me make this as clear as possible.  The best way to get to know someone... 

You know what?  Let Kanye break it down for you.

I could have answered this guy's question in five words.

The highlight of Boundless, in my opinion, is the advice column, which almost always contains really straightforward, cut-the-crap, gospel-centered answers.  But not this time.  A fella writes in and asks, "How does a single guy pursue a godly woman in a romantic but godly way?"  I could have answered in five words, but instead, the columnist gave him a manifesto of the same kind of nonsense that's kept many a young man paralyzed with indecision since we started using the word "pursue" to describe what our parents called "dating."

What's in this seemingly designed-to-confuse relationship manifesto?  Stuff like, make sure you're mature enough to date (hint: if you're asking the question and you're old enough to get married, you are).  Ask God to "show you" what you need to do to move forward.  Figure out what your courtship/dating life should look like once you are in a relationship (uhhh... I literally have no idea what this means).  Be intentional about doing covert ops on -- er, I mean getting to know the girl you're interested in, mostly in groups but then singling her out in those groups to find out what she likes (because that's not creepy at all), etc. Overuse of the word "intentional" or some variant thereof seems to be mandatory in these kinds of articles.

And of course there's no mention of, like, letting her in on this process of determining if she's The One.  Just a lot of "determining" and "being intentional" and "using discernment" and "prayerfulness."  No wonder we're all so confused.

Want to know my pithy, five-word response to this guy's question?

Dear Confused Guy:
ASK HER ON A DATE.
Love, Laura

Not enough for an entire advice column?  Fine.

Dear Confused Guy:
If you find yourself attracted to (because physical attraction is OK; you don't have to confess to your accountability partner that you thought a girl was cute) or otherwise interested in a godly woman, ASK HER ON A DATE, probably within a few weeks of first realizing your interest.  If she says yes, then take her on a date. And if you have a good time on that date, ask her on another date. Rinse and repeat, and remember that you're a Christian.
Love,
Laura

See, friends, we have this handy-dandy cultural shorthand for discovering if someone's interested in us.  Ladies, if a guy is interested in you, he will ask you out.  Fellas, if a girl is interested in you, she will say yes when you ask her out.  See how easy that was?  Now, sometimes one party can be interested while the other isn't -- or one party might be dating someone else already.  That's not so hard to handle either!  Ladies, if a guy is not interested in you or is already seeing someone, he will not ask you out.  Fellas, if a girl is not interested in you or is already seeing someone, she will say, "No, thanks," or, "Actually, I'm already seeing someone" when you ask her out.

I can think of so freakin' few genuine, legitimate reasons NOT to act like this, most of them involving some kind of catastrophic relationship blowout in the recent past.  So, if you didn't just break off an engagement or ditch an abuser or something similarly disastrous requiring some healing time, what's the holdup?  Ladies, if a godly man asks you on a date, you should probably say yes.  Guys, if a godly woman has caught your eye, you should probably ask her on a date.

There now, we've got that all settled, right?  RIGHT??

Sigh...