Dear Jenny

A Young Man’s Musings on Marriage

Perseus, Andromeda, and Cetus

Come on, boys, don’t you know?
There’re dragons out there, dragons out there
Come on, boys, don’t be slow
Cut down Leviathan, go get the girl…

Don’t give any heed to cowardly tongues
There’s glory out there, out there to be won
Look to the King; He’s thrown down Goliath
And cut off his head; take courage, now son.

Dear Jenny,¹

It took me overcoming great hesitation to write this to you. First, it turns out it’s not very easy to write to someone you do not know,² even though it was much easier to write to our future son last year. Maybe it’s because a classical motif of marriage (“kill the dragon, get the girl,”³ which I shall speak on shortly) is indicated in this letter, which undertaking is not for the cowardly. Or perhaps it was just the dread of approaching in a personal manner a subject I was little prepared to address publicly. As I attempt to weave these words together, I question my decision. Is it wise to publish these musings of mine, particularly when I still find myself falling short of the standards they portray? Perhaps others may learn from them? Is this really for you, when you may not get to see it until a decade or less later? Maybe it is. But honestly, I think it is more for me to return to time and again and remind myself of who I must be, who you will be, and what we shall be.

Kill the Dragon

Lately, I have learned of the great vice of cowardice (Revelation 21:8). How it is not one of the seven deadly sins will furnish discourse for another day. You must be familiar with the medieval romance trope where the knight is charged to rescue the damsel in distress from the terror of the beast.⁴ He ventures into the unknown, knowing and being resolute concerning one thing—he must kill or be killed. And he counts the maiden as being worth it.

A lot may be—and surely has been—said in tracing the thematic contours of this magnificent lore, especially of the non-negotiable virtue of courage. But I’m afraid that I know too little of this by experience. I have learned that love is an act of the will that undertakes action to the benefit of the object.⁵ I know that “falling in love” is not a biblical concept but a derivative of Greco-Roman mythology captured in the story of Cupid, because the biblical motif of love is volitionally intentional. I know that the pursuit of marriage will entail me venturing into the unknown in many regards. I know that there’s no such thing as “the one” whom I may miss, for “the one” is whoever I make her to be. I know that true love is to be fought for: I must choose one woman, close my eyes to all others, and love her like my life depends on it—because it does. I must keep choosing to love her every day till our hairs turn grey and wrinkles adorn our bodies.

But why am I afraid? May I pray each day for courage to cease eluding me? Or may I venture into the wild and thereby invoke it to possess me? Is it something lying dormant in me waiting to be awakened? Or is it a grace whose unction I may only beseech and wait on God’s Spirit for? But does it not pertain to common grace which even unregenerate souls often display? Jenny, I must confess that I currently lack sufficient courage, and I can definitely not say it is because of my age. As I turn a year older today, I am faced with the reality that I must become courageous if I will be ready to find you, for although finding a good wife is a good thing, only courageous men do.

But then, where is the dragon? This is where I twist the trope. The call to the husband is to lay down his life for his wife like Christ did for the Church. Every day is a call to death for me. And so, I have come to learn that self is the dragon to be slain. In discharging my four-fold role of Prophet, Priest, Protector, and Provider in our home, self is the beast I must daily contend with. Only in the mortification of self will self-preservation take the backseat and I become willing to put myself in harm’s way to protect my home. How else shall I learn that whatever I own is not mine but ours—and that I go into the world daily to war in order that there may be bread in our home? If self doesn’t die, how may I adequately represent my home before God (as Priest) and represent God before my home (as Prophet)? How shall I wash you in the water of the Word when I myself have long been away from the fountain? A cobbler would sooner perform an open-heart surgery than a prayerless man lead his home in the proper worship of God. If comfort remains my god, I will default on my task to lead. Yet now, self-denial seems a subject of occasional convenience. Must God not then deliver me first if I shall make a good husband to thee and father to our offspring? I must indeed learn the art of self-control (Titus 2:6), without which purity of heart is only a mirage.

Get the Girl

“The girl that is to be gotten must be worth dying for, then,” the lore’s observer says. One must agree with him, for he has only asserted the obvious. It is not my desire to belabour the message of Proverbs 31, for even the blind can see the pricelessness of the virtuous woman. I have hardly found folks stuck in the weeds of the proverb’s wording; it appears to be everyone’s favourite—and I may well assume it to be so with you.

But some people reckon Paul to have been often unnecessarily austere. They believe him to have been sorely mistaken and even overtaken by the degrading effect of misogyny, as he penned seemingly “restrictive” statements concerning the roles and place of women in the home and the church (e.g. head coverings in 1 Cor. 11:2-16; “silence” and submission in the church, 1 Cor. 14:33-35 & 1 Tim. 2:8-15; submission in the home, Eph. 5:22-25). Tomes have been written on these subjects, to which I will not engage to make any additions.⁶ Though I acknowledge that some of these are somewhat difficult due to our modern sensibilities, I have little business with those who do not regard these as God’s Word—they are on a slippery slope that, unfortunately, will almost inevitably result in apostasy.⁷

I know that for you, the doctrines of grace are not objects of rationalistic scrutiny, but vehicles of doxology borne on the wings of joy. I know the utter sovereignty of God is the ground of your hope in life and in death, such that every Word He speaks is a fiat to live by, universally and eternally binding on every soul. I know of your total satisfaction in Scripture, embrace of the implications of Providence, and delight in the ordinary as God’s normative way of working in the lives of His people. I am fully convinced of your treasuring Christ through the ordinary means of grace—true, heartfelt prayer; affection-fueled study and meditation on Scripture; the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and gospel-fueled church life and confessional fellowship with the saints. I am confident in your ability to properly articulate these sublime truths to fulfill our covenantal obligation to raise godly seed (Deut. 6:7; Gen. 18:19).

My question to you, Jenny, is whether you relish and delight in these “difficult” texts as God’s Word as you do the rest of Scripture. Do you delight in the complementarian portrait of God’s design of the sexes set on display in the biblical parameters that define our roles in the home and the church? I know you do not think you are wiser than God. When you read the following inspired words of Titus 2:4-5, what comes to your mind: “The young women [are] to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled”?

You are my queen, for whom I must be ready and willing to live and to die. This is the import of Ephesians 5:25. The objective observer sees how far this is from the picture of oppression some folks use these texts to paint. But I know you’re very much aware of the historical reality that societies wherein Christianity has most taken root have been most conducive and catalytic to the flourishing of women. I therefore hope you take delight in God’s design and all-wise provision for our home.⁸ I hope your priorities and ambitions⁹ are defined by the expectation to shape the souls of our offspring according to truth, goodness, and beauty. I hope you never buy into the lie of the culture that shaping eternal souls is a less noble task than managing corporations. I hope you delight in being an oikourgos (“worker/keeper at home,”¹⁰ the Greek word in Titus 2:5), faithfully discharging all the duties pertaining thereto. I hope you love and relish the gift that children are. I hope you never grow weary of honouring God with silent, unseen labours. And I hope God strengthens me to labour side-by-side with you, holding your hand through it all.

So, What Now?

What do these mean for me now? I guess I must be continually reminded why I am not ready to venture into marriage—or a relationship leading to it now. I have been told that one is never fully ready. And maybe it is true. Maybe it is true that I don’t have to have it all figured out. But I think I honour you best by first becoming the kind of person you would want to marry, in order that you won’t have to lower your biblically defined standards just to accommodate me. I speak not of being the perfect man, but a biblical man, because you deserve nothing short of the best version of me. And as I turn a new year, I want myself to know and remember that waiting is often a good thing. Love is patient, I have learned, and that often looks like befriending time. I must adorn these virtues and watch them age on me. Then, and maybe just then, may I prove myself as being worthy of the treasure that you are.

Yours only and yours ever,

Igdy

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P.S. The quote in the intro is from my favourite song that captures the essence of the trope. Give a listen to “Old Neptune, He’s Roaring” by Brian Sauvé; you’ll be glad you did!

1. No, God didn’t reveal to me that I will get married to one Jennifer. Jenny is the name of the beloved in my favourite love song, “Jenny” by Marty Goetz:

2. However, it is possible that the person who will later turn out to be Jenny may be someone I know at the moment.

3. “Kill the dragon, get the girl” is a phrase that summarizes the biblical story of Christ’s triumph over sin and death to rescue humanity, with the dragon representing Satan and the girl representing the Church. Credited to Douglas Wilson & Andy Naselli as a succinct way to summarize the biblical narrative. Learn more here, here, and here (a book by Naselli).

4. An instance is the Greek mythological account of Perseus, Andromeda, and Cetus. Here, using the Gorgon Medusa’s severed head, the hero Perseus slays Cetus (the sea monster which had been sent by Poseidon to ravage the kingdom of Aethiopia as punishment for Queen Cassiopeia’s boastful hubris), thereby rescuing the princess Andromeda who was chained to a rock as a sacrifice.

5. I got this definition from one of Voddie Baucham’s sermons.

6. A good place to start is “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” by John Piper and Wayne Grudem.

7. While this may sound harsh, this is a historical reality, demonstrable in denominations that have now gone apostate. Wherever liberalism takes root and people begin to “take issue” with any portion of Scripture, they have begun a functional denial of divine plenary inspiration (inspiration of the whole of the Bible, per 2 Tim. 3:16) and biblical inerrancy, and it’s only a matter of time before they proceed to a full-fledged denial or “reinterpretation” of any concept in Scripture that doesn’t sit well with them. At that point, they are not engaging in the worship of God but of self, as Augustine of Hippo wrote in his City of God, “If you believe what you like in the gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

8. I would recommend “Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home” by Gloria Furman to cherish the mundane in home-making as worship.

9. I would argue that the negative perception of marriage as a “graveyard of dreams” for women (associated with the notion that a woman should therefore delay marriage until she has attained career fulfilment) stems from (1) a presuppositional underappreciation of the woman’s role in the home, biblically defined, (2) an egalitarian (rather than complementarian) outlook that may tend to obliterate crucial distinctions between the sexes, (3) the historical influence of feminism, and (4) a pragmatic approach to marriage—i.e., a greater consideration of “what works” than what is Scriptural. I would also argue that it is largely inconsistent with a biblical family ethic.

10. I believe this text doesn’t imply that a woman can’t work outside the home, but that her primary responsibility (as a wife and mother) before God pertains to her home. In short, whatever other work she does must not impede her role to “be a keeper at home.” However, if a woman chooses not to work outside the home so as to adequately discharge her duty within, she is well within the bounds of God-honouring service and should not be said to be living a “substandard” life.