At 36, I am well past the prime years to be dating and searching for a mate, especially within the church. Until the last 5 or 6 years, having someone to spend my life with just wasn’t a priority. The first twenty-five years of my life were focused on my health and academic achievement of varying sorts. The last decade has been focused on career goals. As such, like many people of my age, I have resorted to testing the waters on various online dating sources and apps.
What I’ve discovered is that it is incredibly difficult to make an impression when you are just one of hundreds of other singles using the same apps, particularly when one happens to be fairly physically unimpressive as I am. This really wasn’t a huge surprise for me and my general lack of success on those sites is not the real purpose of this post.
I found that there are some really quality women and potential matches on these sites. They check off most of the boxes, similar personalities, fondness for the same hobbies, TV shows, sense of humor, and most importantly, a real desire to have a relationship with Jesus. You may be asking what the problem is, these sound like great matches and until just recently I would have agreed with you until I began to read through Matthew again.
Matthew 5:31-32 stopped me dead in my tracks:
31 “It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife must give her a written notice of divorce. 32 But I tell you, everyone who divorces his wife, except in a case of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. — Matthew 5:31-32 (CSB)
You see, the great majority of those otherwise great matches had one serious issue that stood out like a sore thumb. They were divorced. Now to be completely fair, I don’t know the reason for divorce and some of them may have been for marital unfaithfulness which is the only legitimate reason to divorce that Jesus stated. Unfortunately, in today’s divorce happy culture, my cynical side tends to believe that most divorces are not for that reason.
What about domestic violence you ask? That is a situation where, from what I’ve found, the Bible is silent. In those situations, I have to believe that God allows for discernment and grace. I believe that most of us can agree that we would not ask anyone to stay in a violent or abusive situation.
So what’s the point? The point is that the church today seems to be afraid to tackle issues such as these in a clear manner. Christ was very clear and as a result, the church should be just as clear. What this means for me is that to be the follower of Christ that I aspire to be, I need to be more discerning about who I choose to pursue as a date and potential wife. I pray that the church can step up to the plate and be a light and start to stem the tide of the divorce rates, especially among Christians.
I welcome constructive debate and discourse. This is one of those issues that tends to be heated in many circles.