The New York Times recently reported a profound statistic that bespeaks of a sad state of affairs with regard to traditional marriage: more American women are now living without a husband than with one.

The Times analyzed census data and found that in 2005, 49 percent of American women are living with a husband, compared with 51 percent without. The upshot? Married couples as a whole now represent a minority of American households. In seeking to establish a possible cause for the trend, the Times theorized that cohabitation with a boyfriend or girlfriend, a reality it points out that was once shunned as "living in sin," is now "a rite of passage for many 20-somethings." It does not take a cultural expert to validate that statement as fact. The Times report continues, "At one end of the spectrum, women are marrying later or living with unmarried partners more often and for longer periods. At the other end, women are living longer as widows and, after a divorce, are more likely than men to delay marriage."

Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com points out the Times' evidence suggests that women on either side of the spectrum "are finding it easier—at times even enjoyable—to spend time alone."  Clark-Flory recounts a "Chicken Soup for the Single Soul" moment while reading the article in which a divorced women turned down the proposal of a man because she was "just beginning to fly...just beginning to be me," telling her suitor "Don't take that away." Interestingly, Clark-Flory denounces those who see marriage as required for a woman to have a fulfilling life, but then admits, "It's also disheartening that some see legal unions as necessarily sapping one's individuality."

While her concern over the view that says "marriage saps one's individuality" is commendable, our concern over this disturbing trend should be much deeper. Some, indeed, are called to singleness for effective kingdom service, but delaying marriage simply to pursue one's individuality is a choice that undermines the Gospel.

God has created men and women for each other and He has created them to unite in one flesh in a way that pictures the Gospel, Christ's love for His church and a believer's union with Christ. When women or men are living self-focused, "lone wolf" lives, it robs God of His glory as seen in the beautiful covenant union of male and female and denigrates the body of Christ which is a community of persons living in selfless communion with one another—not as individuals who are "just beginning to fly."

Let us pray that God brings revival to the local churches to our land, that this trend begins to go the other way and Christ's love for His church is put on display more and more as we await His return.

The US Census data as of 2006 shows that in the last 30 years mothers are having one-third fewer children (1.9 versus 2.9 in 1976). Also, twice as many women forego ever having children as compared with 1976.  If this trend continues, not enough babies will be born to replace the population. 2.1 children per woman are demographically needed for this.

What's behind this trend?

The USA Today article speculates that the reason for the decrease has to do with the time women are choosing to bear children.  Women are opting for marriage and motherhood later in life. Noteworthy, the educational level of women who reported the most births in 2006 was that of graduate or professional degree. And women in the work force accounted for the majority, 57 percent of recent births. To put it bluntly, significant numbers of women are choosing careers over children.

Would this decline occur if motherhood, the value of children and the global fame of Jesus Christ were as precious to the American culture as they are to God?

God places motherhood far higher in esteem than the value of a two-income lifestyle. "An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels....Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her" (Proverbs 31:10,28). Few career women will find that their bosses, or co-workers, or market competitors will ‘rise up and call her blessed.' And even if they do, those blessings will ring hollow, compared to the sounds of a husband and children who bless her having known her well.

Would that all wives were so prized like jewels at home, that they never let money pressures lure them into the workforce.

Having children then would hardly seem the burden that it appears to be. God's command to "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it..." would be seen, not as a burden, but as the blessing He intended it to be. The joys of motherhood, the rich rewards of parenting and the pleasure of passing on our faith in Jesus Christ to the next generation all would take on the treasured status God intends for them to possess.  Even in the midst of the daily difficulties of dishwashers and diapers.

One could applaud the impulse to not have biological children if it were driven by a higher ideal to give oneself to the care of orphans around the world. Steven Curtis Chapman, a man who knows much about God's heart for children, has recently quoted a stunning statistic: if just 7 percent of the 2 billion Christians in the world adopted an orphan, the world's orphanages would be closed!

The great German pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wisely observed, "The test of the morality of a society is what is does for its children."  If fewer and fewer American families choose not to even have them, for whatever reason, the test is complete and the results are not good.

Bless a child today. Choose to start a family if you are married, even by adopting. The rewards are far richer than Wall Street can ever imagine, much less offer.

Yesterday we talked about how our experience alone cannot shape our understanding of God. But often this begs the question, "What do I do with my pain?" I don't want to pretend that there is not legitimate pain out there experienced at the hands of ungodly people. Even Job did not shy away from this reality. His suffering was excruciating, and to dismiss it without an answer would merely trivialize what he went through. Maybe the same is true with you. You are left wondering what to do now in the wake of a hurtful experience. There is hope for you.

I realize that I cannot know exactly what you are going through. I have never experienced suffering in a seemingly unbearable capacity, but I am a sinner living in a sin-cursed world, and I do have a Bible that tells me about this world and my own sin. All of the pain that we experience, whether great or miniscule, is a result of the curse. And though your situation is real, you are never alone in your pain (Hebrews 13:5b).

I wasn't there, but Christ was when your boyfriend broke up with you. He was there when your father let you down for the tenth time. He was there when your pastor disappointed you with his resignation. The sovereign hand of the Father is on every event that happens in your life. God is so powerful that nothing moves, even Satan, without his approval. We even see in Job's story that Satan had to seek permission before he was able to afflict Job. God is there in the midst of all pain and all suffering. He is the perfect and powerful Father.

But, let me tell you about real suffering—the suffering of the Savior. And he suffered an excruciating death and tasted abandonment by his own father, not only for your sin, but for the sins done against you. He knows our pain because the pain that he experienced, on our behalf, was far greater than we could ever know or handle. We serve a Savior who understands us.

So what do you do with your pain?

God has given us his Word for our good, and that is certainly true as we wrestle through pain. In the Psalms we see honest accounts of people in pain, crying out to God. There is much encouragement to be felt in reading the Psalms. And there is a wealth of rich theological truth about our great God in the midst of trying times. God's people were made to gather together. We were never made to walk through suffering alone, and within your local church you will find people who can hold you accountable and point you to the Savior. Sometimes there is no greater encouragement than to know that someone else knows what you are experiencing. Ask God to help you find someone suffering more than you and minister to them as you walk through these trials together.

When our theology of God is placed into experiential categories we create a God who is fluid and changeable. This is not the God of the Bible, and viewing God this way really brings no hope in the end. And though sometimes it seems like immediate comfort, it will not give us a Christ who saves us and deals with sin—even sin done against us.

Pain is a result of the curse, so we must look to the only One who can free us from this curse—Jesus Christ. And as you look to him know that the wrong done against you will not escape ultimate justice. Not only is there hope for you to be comforted in your pain, but you also have the freedom to forgive your oppressors as you have been forgiven. In all of these things know that the pain and the suffering must be brought to the foot of King Jesus, who knows us and loves us. We can experience the peace that Job expressed (42:5) when he said to God, "before my ear had heard about you, but now my eye sees you."

Everyone has experienced painful relationships in some capacity. Whether you are a college student in the wake of a bad breakup, a single woman facing conflict with another sister in Christ, or a wife in a painful marriage, there is no getting around the fact that life is hard. We live in a sin-cursed world where the ravaging effects of sin scar people on a daily basis. It is an inescapable reality that our experiences shape us either for good or for evil. It is common for women to allow hurtful or frustrating circumstances to drive our worldview.

Here is how it happened for me. Two years ago I went through a situation that was both painful and consuming. As I processed through all of the emotions surrounding this time, I would repeatedly make blanket statements about relationships, and people in general. Thankfully, my parents shepherded me through this with the truth that my experience was not a universal truth about the people in my life. 

We are susceptible to this in the wake of every painful relationship—whether guy or girl. When we are confronted with these types of relationships the temptation is to stamp every man like "that guy." The same was true for me. We can probably all agree that we have wrongly judged men on occasion, but do we ever stop to realize that these judgments can be a feminist heart still speaking?  Here are two examples of this lived out.

I have been a part of conversations with girl friends that led to "male-bashing" when a beloved guy did not return the affections offered to him. It is so easy to label all men as jerks when our feelings aren't reciprocated, but to do so is to unfairly categorize all the other brothers in Christ and a man created in the image of God.

An egalitarian conference speaker recently spoke to the issue of pain in women's lives. By using Job as an example, she correlated the tragedy that Job suffered with the sufferings of women who are not allowed to preach in pulpits. She says,

I want you to understand that Job's situation is connected to the sense of pain, loss, and confusion that many women in the church today suffer as a result of the effects of patriarchy.

While you may think that you have not gone "that far" in your thinking, the feminist is in all of us. Adopting an interpretation based on what happens to you can lead all of us to improper assumptions of Scripture. If pain, rather than Scripture, leads us to judge the men around us, what will stop us from taking this to its logical conclusion? To fall into that temptation means rewriting God himself.

Perhaps you are not on a trajectory to new interpretations of key Christian doctrines, but you may have scoffed at male leadership in your church because of the sorrow that men have caused you in your own life. You may deem every man as a moral failure because your father left your mother for another woman. You might even think that there are no Christian men worth talking to because you have been let down so many times. The circumstances that have occurred are sinful, and your pain is real.

But they are not the end of the story. There is a heavenly Father who will never fail you and he will not falter even when every earthly man around you does. Pain and experience cannot dictate our theology. Rather our theology must lead us through the pain and experience. And tomorrow, we will discuss what we should do with our circumstances. I promise you that this answer has hope.

A while back I confessed that I am a recovering feminist. I'm still recovering. Hopefully, by God's grace the recovery is farther along than when I first wrote the article—but I remain in recovery nonetheless. For a while I was a blatant feminist, viewing everything through the lens of oppression and freedom from oppression. After conversion I became "tamer." But I still held on to the fact that I could be a Christian and still be an independent woman, free from authority. I didn't need a husband because I was going to do great things for Jesus. Marriage seemed to be a hindrance to these great things.

Thankfully the Lord intervened and opened my eyes to my sin. Apart from his work I would still be wallowing in darkness. In this process of sanctification I have realized that all of us are feminists at heart. And while I am still recovering, I am thankful to be able to say that the recovery has taught me many lessons.

The Lord has woven into my heart a deeper appreciation for marriage, and a greater respect for the married women in my own life. I used to scoff at friends who put their husbands first, but now I see the beauty of a wife who values and treasures the man that God has given her. As a result of seeing this respect lived out, I have grown in more grace in my interactions with men—whether in a dating relationship, friendship, or employer relationship. The Lord has helped me to see that these men are not only created in his image, but also someone else's future (or current) husbands and I must treat them as such.

As a single woman I have learned that the qualities of a godly woman matter for me right now. Marriage does not make someone feminine. Rather, divine design has made me feminine and I must cultivate that femininity now, and flee from feminism. In all of these things, I have learned that it is ultimately not about me and my rights. There is something far greater going on than my meager life. Recovering from feminism has given me greater opportunities to cry out to the Father for more of Christ and less of me, because apart from him I would be lost.

Perhaps you wonder why this sort of response to feminism is warranted. It is very easy to adopt a way of looking at the Bible—a hermeneutic—built around pain and experience (even if you are not a feminist). And because we are so prone to rewrite God into our own image, and thus rewrite who he has created us to be, it is helpful to stop and think through what exactly we are doing when we allow our experience to drive us. As we think through what God has called us to be as men and women, we must ask ourselves if our theology is born out of preconceived ideas or the text itself.

So whether you are reading this as a mature Christian, seasoned through suffering, a new believer wrestling through what it means to be a woman, or a recovering feminist like me (or soon to be) processing how painful experience has shaped your present view of the world, these posts are for you. And as one recovering feminist to, Lord-willing, future (and current) recovering feminists, I pray that you would see the God of the Bible. We all bring our own ideas to the Cross—and the Cross is where our sinful ideologies are shattered by the powerful blood of Christ. In these next two posts I hope to shed light on what we do with our experiences as women—and bring them to the foot of King Jesus at the Cross, where love and mercy meet.