Qualifications for Marriage?

Today is the 43rd anniversary of the day I married my wonderful wife, as well as the 45th anniversary of the day we first met.  So marriage is my topic today.

There is a Christian blogger who I think is probably about 40 years old, who has yet to marry, and, with his demands for his spouse to be he will probably NEVER marry.  Yet he often spews out requirements for spouses. I doubt if many Christian marriages would ever have taken place if we followed what he demands for a qualified mate. Let me give you some examples of his diatribes (unfortunately, too many Christians have the same ideas): 

How does a marriage happen? Basically, a marriage-minded man prepares himself for marriage by denying himself “fun” in order to position himself to be a husband and father. He studies hard STEM subjects in order to get good jobs. His resume is gap-free. He started working early, and didn’t take summers off. He saves his money. He understands beliefs that are incompatible with marriage, such as pro-abortion, pro-divorce, etc. and he is able to argue against them. When he meets a woman, he presents his preparations to her, and tries to get her to focus on behaviors that will put her on a path to becoming a wife and mother. If she follows his lead, then she becomes safe for him to marry.

Okay, this leaves me out — I was just plain un-marriageable according to him.  I enlisted in the Army before I finished high school so that I went active duty two weeks after graduation. I trained as a combat engineer and as a paratrooper and served for 4 years 8 months. During this time my goal was to eventually leave the service and get a job flying. To that end I joined the flying club and acquired a commercial pilot license with a multi-engine rating, and started on an instrument rating which I finished after leaving service. I also acquired a helicopter rating. All this time I saved virtually no money because it was mostly spent on flying lessons (not that the Army paid that much either in the early 1970s). When I left the Army at the end of February 1975 I had virtually no cash and a paid-for 1972 VW Super Beetle. Oh, and I had become a Christian just 13 months earlier! 

Out of the Army I worked six weeks as a carpenter’s apprentice at minimum wage while looking for better occupations. I left that job for twice the pay as a letter-sorting machine operator with the main Post Office in Columbus, OH, all the while seeking an aviation job. In 1976 I was laid off and had to work another part-time job just to make my rent payment, so when I got married that year I was living by the skin of my teeth — my new in-laws even paid for my tuxedo as well as the one for my best man (an Army friend).  As time went by I was finally back to full-time at the P.O. until September 1978 when I was picked up by the FAA to begin my 30-year career as an air traffic controller. 

Well, I did indeed understand the Christian faith and had already begun studying apologetics when I met my wife, so I had ONE qualification.

Women [need to] switch from non-STEM to STEM degrees. To quit easy jobs like waitress and teacher and get hard jobs like IT Project Manager or Software Engineer. To stop wasting money on thrill-seeking and instead pay off loans, then invest. To stop watching TV and movies, and start reading good non-fiction books about marriage, parenting, apologetics, economics, etc. And [be informed] about marriage related topics, e.g. – divorce, infertility, child development, homeschooling, daycare, school choice.

What about my lovely lady? Well, she only finished her second year of college towards a degree in horticulture the spring of 1976, dropping out because she wanted to “just” be a wife and mother. She had “easy” jobs working at a steak house, McDonald's, and even working for “Manpower” - an employment agency which sent people to temporary jobs. She didn’t waste money but she also didn’t have much of a savings.  She never really liked reading books, and only reads for entertainment for the most part. She was raised a Christian but had no clue about apologetics, and her education about marriage and parenting was from her own parents. Homeschooling was unknown. So with no STEM degree, I just don’t know how she was marriageable material!

So, I guess now I’ll issue my advice to women in their 20s on how to avoid being single and childless at 35.

Money gives men confidence to pull the trigger on marriage, so you should focus your efforts on men with a solid balance sheet and a gap-less resume. 

Wow, Jill was 20 when she married me and I was broke! I guess she blew it there.

Beware of men who paint a rosy picture of their finances in the future that makes you feel good, but who have not demonstrated their ability to earn or save. 

I never painted a rosy picture, but she knew my goals were in aviation, and that I would take care of her no matter what our financial situation would be.

It’s much better to focus your time on a man who can marry you right now. The best way to tell if a man is capable of marriage is not by listening to confident words, it’s by looking to see how he has prepared to perform his roles, one of which is provider.

Well, as far as she was concerned, my wife knew I could marry her when she was ready. It had nothing to do with my balance sheet, but everything to do with my character.

Be debt free. Study STEM in school, update your resume, and get a job that pays well. Jobs are not meant to be fun or fulfilling. You need to be preparing financially for marriage, and that means a normal 8-4:30 job in an office with 3% annual raises and 401K matching. 

Well, she was debt free, but there goes that STEM requirement again. She really didn’t prepare financially for marriage because when I met her she was only 18. 

Having a rationally-grounded Christian worldview is essential to the roles of wife and mother. A Christian man cannot be confident about the trustworthiness of a Christian woman’s convictions unless she demonstrates her ability to defend those convictions to non-Christians in the ordinary way that she can surely defend other truth claims in areas where she does have the knowledge. If I ask a Christian nurse to defend the claim that germs are real, she will appeal to logic and evidence. I expect her to have put in as much work into defending the claims of Christianity, and to use the same methods: logic and evidence.

Well, Jill’s state was with a very simple faith when I met her, so she failed this guy’s qualifications.  But guess what, she matured in the faith during our marriage and does a good job of defending it!

So to sum up, in this guy's ideology, to be marriageable you need a STEM degree and lots of money saved up, with a 401K, a super-mature Christian faith which can lead to apologetics battles with the best of them. Never work a low-skilled job — that’s for losers!

Okay, now let me tell you what one really needs to have as qualifications for Christian marriage:

Solid Christian faith with reliance on God to lead your life.

Good character.

Yep, that’s it. With good character both will do their best to make a good marriage, to work together providing for a family financially as well as raising children.

My wife may not have a STEM degree, but she is the most caring, compassionate, loving person I have ever known. Her character shines and she has been loved by the many elderly women she has ministered to, the younger women she has mentored, and the hundreds of children she has encountered working part-time in public schools, Sunday schools, and VBSs, as well as the many children of friends over the years.

The point of this article is to encourage you to worry more about seeking a person with good character and a strong faith than to seek a person with a huge bank account and STEM degrees.