"Just seek God with all of your heart. They next thing you know, there will be someone going after God with all of their heart running along beside you."
I'm going to be controversial here.
I've heard variations of this same lesson on marriage from pastors, parents, Sunday School teachers and peers my whole church life. It can be stated in numerous ways, but the point is that PRAYER=MATE. It seems like almost every Christian person has the same idea about how one gets that Christian mate. And not just prayer, but a whole laundry list of spiritual activity including:
Fasting, serving, seeking, reading the Word, helping, loving, forgiving, growing, letting go, REALLY, TRULY trusting God, etc.
Many people even testify that that's how they got their mate. "Oh, I met my wife as I really, really gave my life over to God." Or "I met my husband just as I really truly started seeking God." etc. I believe them, it's just that I'm sure that there were some other sociological factors of which the people testifying weren't aware.
The fact is, marriage, though ordained by God, is a social construct. And many people, if not all church people fail to see the important role that sociological factors play in who gets married, when and to whom. Yes, prayer matters! It's important tool that brings the realm of the impossible into the realm of the possible. Yes, faith matters! Faith is being sure of things hoped for and is certain of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1.) So do the sociological factors. Sociological factors matter much more than any Sunday school teacher, pastor, peer, or parent has ever told me.
The fact of the matter there are lots of committed Christians who are and have been doing all of those things for years and remain single. And what do people say: "Oh great, just keep doing that and it will happen eventually."
What do I mean by "sociological factors"? Here are just a few sociological factors that affect who gets married, when, and to whom:
- race
- class (for example, how much money you and your parents have)
- educational level
- geography
- appearance/weight
- culture
- ethnicity
But then I started to look at the Body of Christ as well. Even as I looked in the Christ, I noticed a definite pattern. During a sermon about marriage, my young adult pastor began to call out of the couples who had gotten engaged or married in the last year or so. Some of which I knew, some of which I did not. Now, like I've mentioned before, my church is pretty diverse. Even though the majority of people (Let's say 65-70% are what I like to identify as Sprites) the other 35-30% are Cokes, Rootbeer, Ginger Ale, Iced Tea, etc from places such as Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad,Guatemala, Brazil, Haiti, China, Cuba etc.
(I just like the whole beverage analogy. I just think it's a nice, cute way of discussing what some feel is a sensitive topic.) So that's an approximate cultural breakdown of my young adult ministry. Our church is a smorgasbord of beautiful and exotic "beverages." And yet, when guys go to the buffet, they are all coming back with the exact type of drink. The grooms were mostly Sprite, with an Ice Tea and Coke thrown in. Soooo, as I looked around the room, I noticed the sociological breakdown of the new brides/brides to be:
- 100% of the girls were by my informal estimate, NOT over a size 1o in jeans. That is, they were all smaller, slenderer girls. Not one of them could be described as thick, fuller figured, or tall.
- 100% were Sprites, or at very least a lighter-complexioned Iced Tea
- All but one had long hair.
"Angela," I asked, "How many of the brides were Sprites or Iced Teas?"
"All of them," she said after a brief moment of thinking. "Maybe like, 17 or 18 Sprite, 2 or 3 Iced Teas. But I dunno. That's just off the top of my head."
"Not a Coke bride, or Ginger Ale bride in the whole group?"
"Nope, not all. A couple, may 2 or 3 Coke grooms, but no Coke brides."
What do these numbers mean? In a mega church setting, it seems like you're much more likely to get married if you are a slender, long haired Sprite. It also seems to help if your family is well known in the church. I'm pretty sure that there are more factors involved, but those were the most obvious to me at that moment.
So, in our mega church experience of new brides, a definite pattern emerged. I'm trying to figure out what this means. Do slender Sprite girls just pray harder than say, darker complexioned and or heavier believers? Is it something that they are doing (or not doing) that makes them more appealing to guys as a wifely candidate? According to the traditional advice, only one small demographic of women (long-haired, slender Sprites from prominent church families ) is REALLY going after God with all of their hearts. This seems somewhat unlikely to me. God is clearly not a respecter of persons, but this data shows me that man most certainly is. What does this data tell you?
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