A Biblical Critique of Debbie Maken's Book "Getting Serious about Getting Married" (part 1)

PART I: Debbie Maken's Introduction to Her Book (Disaster Ground Zero)

Getting Serious about Getting Married. This is the book that is supposed to cause a sea change in Evangelical thought about singleness and marriage. No longer are we to excuse singleness as an acceptable lifestyle for most people. On contrary, most Christians (and especially men) are supposed to heed God's call to "be fruitful and multiply."

Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had the following to say about Debbie Maken's book:

"Now comes Debbie Maken with sound advice, serious thinking, and an honest approach to this question that will help all Christians think about our responsibility to get serious about getting married. This book should be a must-read for all Christian young adults--and for all who love them." (Back cover, emphasis mine)

So is this book a "must read" for "all" Christian young adults? I decided to give it a read. It soon became apparent, however, that this book is not for all Christian young adults. In actuality, the book was not meant to be for me, but to be about me ... as a man. It holds those of my demographic out as the punching bags for Mrs. Maken's intended readers. The target audience is single women, and the book is little more than a pep rally for the same. Her publisher may refer to her as an "Esther" (p. 9), but it soon becomes apparent that Mrs. Maken is an Esther without a cause.

In the introduction of her book, Mrs. Maken tells about how her life was in her early twenties:

"When I was in my early twenties, I didn't really mind being single; after all, my life was full. I had a successful career as an up-and-coming attorney. I liked my family, church, and friends. I had a nice car and an active social life. I was involved in various civic and church ministries. I had a beautiful home and was decorating it to my heart's content. As the saying goes, I was cute enough, smart enough, and--don't you know it--people liked me. The one thing I didn't have was a husband, but I considered that only a minor inconvenience that time would fix." (p. 11)

What are we to make of this quote? Here we have a young woman that is materially blessed in so many ways that very few people of either sex are. She goes on to talk about her "rotating boyfriends" who were "mostly frogs who refused to become princes" (Ibid.), so we cannot assume that she was failing to receive any attention from men. It is at this point, at the very outset of the book, that I've lost sympathy for Mrs. Maken. Her statements are very akin to what the Apostle John would describe as the "boasting" of what one "has and does" (1 John 2:16). I could frankly care less about her worldly achievements, so why does she belabor them ("I was cute enough, smart enough, ...")? Here, her narrative smacks of self-importance and detracts from the main points of her book.

She spends the rest of the Introduction bewailing her singleness that she experienced well into her late twenties (although many have been single for a lot longer than that). On page 15, she tell us that God showed her that she "was never going to get true spiritual peace about singleness" because she wasn't "called to singleness", and that "the Spirit does not give peace about something that is outside of God's calling." Perhaps the Spirit does not give peace in something outside of God's calling, but I find myself curious about Mr. Maken's statement just the same. How did Mrs. Maken arrive at her conclusion? Was it through a hunch or some form of intuition? Did she hunt for the proof-texts later on to justify a stance she already purposed in her heart to take? The reason I ask these questions is because the Bible warns against feelings and emotions being a guide in religion (Jeremiah 17:9).

Elsewhere in the Introduction, Mrs. Maken alludes to some social research that supposedly proves married people are happy, healthier, and wealthier than single people. But this ignores other research that suggests only one in four marriages are happy, and that unhappy marriages are detrimental to self-esteem and health. There is also at least one study that suggests that happily married people are not happier because they married, per se, but because happy people are already prone to matrimony. If only marriage was the panacea that some make it out to be.

At any rate, Maken adjures us: "As you read, let Scripture be your measuring stick for truth--not psychology, not culture, not what you accepted thus far, not what sounds good or catchy" (p. 16). However, I find that the exact opposite is true with Mrs. Maken's book: it relies on psychology, acceptance of cultural norms, and yes---what sounds good and catchy (especially in her characterization of single men). I've already indicated where I think Mrs. Maken's book stands in regard to a sound exegesis of the Bible; I will address this concern in the upcoming sections of my critique.