I read Aaron because I’m interested in understanding today’s culture and how Christians can disciple younger generations since I come from a different time and America culture.
I’m not trying to change the culture because I know I can’t. But the more I read what is linked or what is said, the more discouraged I become.
Today’s young are sent off to figure out dating, men-women relationships on their own. They look to influencers when they should be looking to their parents who God gave them. While I know many may not have parents that are good role models or are around I have not seen one article that mentions parents.
Now maybe I have missed it, but to me this is a huge gaping hole in what is being presented.
Your point about us being “on our own” in relationships is painfully true. My parents never volunteered advice on relationships, nor did I ever ask. Not that I would have taken it to heart—due to their dysfunctional marriage and bitter divorce, I’ve never considered them good role models in marriage and b) I no longer share their religious beliefs or lack thereof. I should ask my recently-married brother if he went to Mom and Dad for advice.
I’ve instead sought the aid of Godly friends and trusted church leaders—all of whom have successful marriages—but rarely get more than a sympathetic ear and a “Good luck, keep praying and put yourself out there” admonition.
My apologies if I seem flippant about my parents. They still did almost everything right!
I’m sorry to hear that. I have no illusions that many parents are not the ones to go to for marriage or dating advice. And the fact that your Godly friends and church leaders who had successful marriages did not assist is also disheartening.
But I would suggest that if thought leaders like Aaron and those he references would make that appeal many would step up to a Godly discipleship role. But I have not seen that anywhere - other than me repeatedly posting it. Perhaps because I’m a so-called “boomer” my advice is considered irrelevant.
Anyone who begins advice with "Back in my day..." is probably not going to give good advice (No, I'm not saying you would do that). Boomers are notorious for that sort of thing.
I am definitely not saying that, because back in my day parents didn't talk to the children about marriage and dating. What I'm espousing is timeless biblical wisdom. God tells us in the book of James that He freely gives wisdom if we ask, but not to doubt it because many times to us it does not appear to be wise. Later on in the same book He tells us the difference between Godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.
When we raised our children, it was a Biblical focus that parents - particularly the father - who was responsible for helping them mature and to assist them in finding a lifetime mate. Today this is dismissed as the evil patriarchy. Worldly wisdom tells parents that their job is to prepare them for life by getting a good career and education and hands off when it comes to selecting their spouse - which is vastly more important than a job or education.
I have three daughters - two of which are married with children of their own giving my wife and I nine grandchildren. They were discipled from a very early age to be wives and mothers - not in pursuing a career. I also discipled both of their future husbands before their marriage, and we had frequent discussions with their parents to ensure they were ready for marriage. My third daughter had a serious boyfriend whom they both said they wanted to marry, but after several incidents we told them (both my wife and I and their parents) that they shouldn't marry because they did not make each other better and they would be a wrong fit leading to disaster. However, I still meet with the former boyfriend virtually as he is in a different state now to disciple him - which he has asked for.
If we had had sons instead of daughters, we would have raised them in the same manner with their goal to be husbands and fathers. Careers and education are secondary and a means to the end of marriage and fatherhood.
My issue is this is seemingly never discussed anywhere that I have seen. This is not my personal opinion, but a Biblical approach to dating and marriage. All I have seen here is laments on how the dating scene and marriage environment is messed up and a lot of worldly wisdom on how to address it. Parents have been given the fundamental responsibility, and they are ignoring it because they have been told it's none of their business.
I will admit that this Protestant tendency to stick "Biblical" in front of any notion they wish to sanctity is very alien to me as I am not a Protestant.
The Bible is the book of our salvation testifying to the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ by which and in whom we are saved. Beyond that we have two millennia of Tradition, the wisdom and advice of the saints, and the Grace of the Sacraments to guide us. Though often it is true as St Paul said, We see through a glass darkly.
I can understand that. I was raised Roman Catholic when the church did not allow members to even read the Bible. When I became a believer in my mid thirties I read the Bible for the first time. Since then I have read it several times, studied it and taught it. In it contains all things for Godly living. If you are in a church that does not believe that the Bible is the word of God, then you are susceptible to what man says.
Many of both the mainstream conservative intelligentsia and the anonymous online accounts live in urban left-leaning cities. Source: met a lot of them here in NYC, and know that many others live in LA. They romanticize the image of the “trad” rural town because they don’t really know what it’s like.
I found the advice presented in the article to be laughable. Even though I landed in a region where small towns are (relatively) thriving due to agribusiness and industry, it’s still a place that young people leave rather than return to. Also, if you’re not from there, if you have to build a new social circle, you’re years behind the curve.
Yep. I grew up in it and it is far off from their idealization. It was hilarious watching that kid go on his roadtrip last summer. A. M. Hickman (the guy who made the tweet that kicked it all off) was just completely full of it. Meth, alcohol, and the destruction of the businesses and industries of small-town/rural America have just absolutely ravaged these places. No more wholesome diner waitresses and no more Waltonesque families despite what urbanite rightists say.
You even see the meth and other issues reach into the larger towns here too. It's something watching someone the same age working at the grocery store you shop at get into meth and lose their teeth over a few years.
You can find good people in rural areas, as you can anywhere. I'm visiting St. Francisville LA next month (Rod Dreher's hometown, which I was introduced to through him) and stopping to see a lady who has become the best and most Christian friend I have.
However when people opine that country folk are generally salt of the earth types they're engaging in a sort of "noble savage" mythology, or maybe "the grass is always greener over the fence". Vergil wrote "Is no place on Earth free of our calamities?" And the answer is, Nope, no place.
Also, even rural areas will have TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Small town America is consuming the same media content everyone else is. Even the Amish are technologically adept these days.
I’m something of a crunchy con myself, the right really isn’t one thing.
A friend of mine coined the phrase “Heil at Home”, basically the phenomenon of lefties living their personal lives like white supremacists. They talk lefty junk all day but when they’re at home, they wait until they’re married to have children, live in far whiter communities than most conservatives, shoot look at Martha’s Vineyard; when migrants showed up they called up your actual ARMY and had them gone by literal sundown.
Calling them hypocrites has no purchase because their sense of right and wrong is eminently flexible.
Meanwhile conservatives continue to be weighed down by in practice egalitarianism and functional feminism; we’ll talk a big game but the minute “daddy’s little girl” sheds a tear, it’s give her whatever she wants time.
Bill Buckley has gotten some heat lately, some deserved, but the man understood quality control. Keep the crazies out and try to produce actual quality.
Having spent six years in the backcountry, in rural Texas and Montana, I was not surprised by the author's experience. I was in my late twenties, and in both places all of the women my age were either married, had been married, had something very wrong with them, or had left for the city.
Now, for young women, going to rural America to find a spouse isn't the worst idea, but if you're a guy, the cities and suburbs are where the women actually are, and if you're willing to put some work into filtering who you're going out with instead of just swiping right on anyone born with a vagina you can actually find someone suitable to marry.
Honestly it depends on the city. I'm in a metropolitan area of >100k people but finding someone is tough. Maybe itd be easier if I wasnt religious. It seems like all the Christian women found someone in college, the rest must've completely left my state because the singles certainly aren't where I can see them. Or maybe they just don't exist. The trend of more men than women of marrying age in church bears out in my experience. It's grim out here.
Interestingly, I’ve heard it’s not true for Mormons: more young men leave the Mormon church than young women. A lot of it has to do with the higher expectations for the men, since Mormon men have to do 2 years missionary work but women don’t.
I've started attending UMC and even Episcopal churches to find someone who's Christian. Jury's still out simply because I've started to visit them but from what I've seen the trend holds there too. At least insofar as the ones where I'm at.
My experience as an evangelical/non-denominational church regular attendee in a town of 25,000 is this: if an attractive (mentally and emotionally as well as physically) woman shows up, not wearing a wedding ring or with a boyfriend, it’s a noteworthy event. Her being single and interested in a date is orders of magnitude more so.
Yeah, I see this all the time here in NYC: young women talking about how they left their rural town and came to the big city for college or work. I rarely hear the same story from a young man. I wonder what those excess men in those towns are doing.
Working in farming, ranching, mining, or other blue-collar jobs, mostly.
Just to give you an idea of how bad the gender ratio is in some of these places, a church I briefly attended in Montana had about seventeen young men and four or five young women in the singles group. (While I was there, I was the only one in the singles group older than twenty-five.) I will also note that almost all of these young men were either employed with decent jobs, attending the local state university to get a degree to make themselves employable, or both. No failures to launch there.
Been noticing this for years, I’ve posted elsewhere but for some dumb reason conservatives assume every place and venue is roughly half men and half women with a normal age distribution.
The other problem I've seen is young guys who want marriage but can't break the self-sabotaging habits of urban blue-culture "marriage." They go to suburban churches or rural communities and then they start looking for women who share their interests, their politics, their Bitcoin investing strategy, who are conversant in their tastes in literature or niche television shows, and are shocked to find out that 18-25 year old women without a college education don't share the tastes of 25-30 year old libertarian men in law/tech/business.
Not to say that those matches wouldn't work, given the correct mindset, but not as a blue-culture "companionate" egalitarian match. I want to grab those guys by the shoulders and tell them "You're looking for a wife, not a bro, not a person on which to dump the burden of all your social needs, and certainly not a competitor/rival." We need to be reminding young men that the purpose of marriage is to start a family, not to have a whiskey tasting, novel-appreciating, and bitcoin investing partner.
This sounds like an example of the spouse-as-best-friend category error that bedevils marriage these days. For most people their spouse isn't and can't be everything to them. Men also need male friends and male spaces, and women need female friends and female spaces too.
Many rural areas do not have a viable economy. Additionally some, by rigid zoning restrictions, also have painfully expensive housing. Hence the young people who can, leave.
I read Aaron because I’m interested in understanding today’s culture and how Christians can disciple younger generations since I come from a different time and America culture.
I’m not trying to change the culture because I know I can’t. But the more I read what is linked or what is said, the more discouraged I become.
Today’s young are sent off to figure out dating, men-women relationships on their own. They look to influencers when they should be looking to their parents who God gave them. While I know many may not have parents that are good role models or are around I have not seen one article that mentions parents.
Now maybe I have missed it, but to me this is a huge gaping hole in what is being presented.
Your point about us being “on our own” in relationships is painfully true. My parents never volunteered advice on relationships, nor did I ever ask. Not that I would have taken it to heart—due to their dysfunctional marriage and bitter divorce, I’ve never considered them good role models in marriage and b) I no longer share their religious beliefs or lack thereof. I should ask my recently-married brother if he went to Mom and Dad for advice.
I’ve instead sought the aid of Godly friends and trusted church leaders—all of whom have successful marriages—but rarely get more than a sympathetic ear and a “Good luck, keep praying and put yourself out there” admonition.
My apologies if I seem flippant about my parents. They still did almost everything right!
I’m sorry to hear that. I have no illusions that many parents are not the ones to go to for marriage or dating advice. And the fact that your Godly friends and church leaders who had successful marriages did not assist is also disheartening.
But I would suggest that if thought leaders like Aaron and those he references would make that appeal many would step up to a Godly discipleship role. But I have not seen that anywhere - other than me repeatedly posting it. Perhaps because I’m a so-called “boomer” my advice is considered irrelevant.
Anyone who begins advice with "Back in my day..." is probably not going to give good advice (No, I'm not saying you would do that). Boomers are notorious for that sort of thing.
I am definitely not saying that, because back in my day parents didn't talk to the children about marriage and dating. What I'm espousing is timeless biblical wisdom. God tells us in the book of James that He freely gives wisdom if we ask, but not to doubt it because many times to us it does not appear to be wise. Later on in the same book He tells us the difference between Godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.
When we raised our children, it was a Biblical focus that parents - particularly the father - who was responsible for helping them mature and to assist them in finding a lifetime mate. Today this is dismissed as the evil patriarchy. Worldly wisdom tells parents that their job is to prepare them for life by getting a good career and education and hands off when it comes to selecting their spouse - which is vastly more important than a job or education.
I have three daughters - two of which are married with children of their own giving my wife and I nine grandchildren. They were discipled from a very early age to be wives and mothers - not in pursuing a career. I also discipled both of their future husbands before their marriage, and we had frequent discussions with their parents to ensure they were ready for marriage. My third daughter had a serious boyfriend whom they both said they wanted to marry, but after several incidents we told them (both my wife and I and their parents) that they shouldn't marry because they did not make each other better and they would be a wrong fit leading to disaster. However, I still meet with the former boyfriend virtually as he is in a different state now to disciple him - which he has asked for.
If we had had sons instead of daughters, we would have raised them in the same manner with their goal to be husbands and fathers. Careers and education are secondary and a means to the end of marriage and fatherhood.
My issue is this is seemingly never discussed anywhere that I have seen. This is not my personal opinion, but a Biblical approach to dating and marriage. All I have seen here is laments on how the dating scene and marriage environment is messed up and a lot of worldly wisdom on how to address it. Parents have been given the fundamental responsibility, and they are ignoring it because they have been told it's none of their business.
I will admit that this Protestant tendency to stick "Biblical" in front of any notion they wish to sanctity is very alien to me as I am not a Protestant.
The Bible is the book of our salvation testifying to the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ by which and in whom we are saved. Beyond that we have two millennia of Tradition, the wisdom and advice of the saints, and the Grace of the Sacraments to guide us. Though often it is true as St Paul said, We see through a glass darkly.
I can understand that. I was raised Roman Catholic when the church did not allow members to even read the Bible. When I became a believer in my mid thirties I read the Bible for the first time. Since then I have read it several times, studied it and taught it. In it contains all things for Godly living. If you are in a church that does not believe that the Bible is the word of God, then you are susceptible to what man says.
Many of both the mainstream conservative intelligentsia and the anonymous online accounts live in urban left-leaning cities. Source: met a lot of them here in NYC, and know that many others live in LA. They romanticize the image of the “trad” rural town because they don’t really know what it’s like.
I found the advice presented in the article to be laughable. Even though I landed in a region where small towns are (relatively) thriving due to agribusiness and industry, it’s still a place that young people leave rather than return to. Also, if you’re not from there, if you have to build a new social circle, you’re years behind the curve.
That last sentence is all too true.
Analysis: true.
Yep. I grew up in it and it is far off from their idealization. It was hilarious watching that kid go on his roadtrip last summer. A. M. Hickman (the guy who made the tweet that kicked it all off) was just completely full of it. Meth, alcohol, and the destruction of the businesses and industries of small-town/rural America have just absolutely ravaged these places. No more wholesome diner waitresses and no more Waltonesque families despite what urbanite rightists say.
You even see the meth and other issues reach into the larger towns here too. It's something watching someone the same age working at the grocery store you shop at get into meth and lose their teeth over a few years.
You can find good people in rural areas, as you can anywhere. I'm visiting St. Francisville LA next month (Rod Dreher's hometown, which I was introduced to through him) and stopping to see a lady who has become the best and most Christian friend I have.
However when people opine that country folk are generally salt of the earth types they're engaging in a sort of "noble savage" mythology, or maybe "the grass is always greener over the fence". Vergil wrote "Is no place on Earth free of our calamities?" And the answer is, Nope, no place.
Also, even rural areas will have TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. Small town America is consuming the same media content everyone else is. Even the Amish are technologically adept these days.
I’m something of a crunchy con myself, the right really isn’t one thing.
A friend of mine coined the phrase “Heil at Home”, basically the phenomenon of lefties living their personal lives like white supremacists. They talk lefty junk all day but when they’re at home, they wait until they’re married to have children, live in far whiter communities than most conservatives, shoot look at Martha’s Vineyard; when migrants showed up they called up your actual ARMY and had them gone by literal sundown.
Calling them hypocrites has no purchase because their sense of right and wrong is eminently flexible.
Meanwhile conservatives continue to be weighed down by in practice egalitarianism and functional feminism; we’ll talk a big game but the minute “daddy’s little girl” sheds a tear, it’s give her whatever she wants time.
Bill Buckley has gotten some heat lately, some deserved, but the man understood quality control. Keep the crazies out and try to produce actual quality.
RE: finding a spouse in rural America.
Having spent six years in the backcountry, in rural Texas and Montana, I was not surprised by the author's experience. I was in my late twenties, and in both places all of the women my age were either married, had been married, had something very wrong with them, or had left for the city.
Now, for young women, going to rural America to find a spouse isn't the worst idea, but if you're a guy, the cities and suburbs are where the women actually are, and if you're willing to put some work into filtering who you're going out with instead of just swiping right on anyone born with a vagina you can actually find someone suitable to marry.
Honestly it depends on the city. I'm in a metropolitan area of >100k people but finding someone is tough. Maybe itd be easier if I wasnt religious. It seems like all the Christian women found someone in college, the rest must've completely left my state because the singles certainly aren't where I can see them. Or maybe they just don't exist. The trend of more men than women of marrying age in church bears out in my experience. It's grim out here.
There are definitely more single guys than single girls in churches, even in urban areas, or least that's been true of the churches I've been to.
Maybe that would change if I darkened the door of a UMC, Episcopal, or PCUSA church.
Interestingly, I’ve heard it’s not true for Mormons: more young men leave the Mormon church than young women. A lot of it has to do with the higher expectations for the men, since Mormon men have to do 2 years missionary work but women don’t.
I've started attending UMC and even Episcopal churches to find someone who's Christian. Jury's still out simply because I've started to visit them but from what I've seen the trend holds there too. At least insofar as the ones where I'm at.
My experience as an evangelical/non-denominational church regular attendee in a town of 25,000 is this: if an attractive (mentally and emotionally as well as physically) woman shows up, not wearing a wedding ring or with a boyfriend, it’s a noteworthy event. Her being single and interested in a date is orders of magnitude more so.
Best of luck!
Yeah, I see this all the time here in NYC: young women talking about how they left their rural town and came to the big city for college or work. I rarely hear the same story from a young man. I wonder what those excess men in those towns are doing.
Working in farming, ranching, mining, or other blue-collar jobs, mostly.
Just to give you an idea of how bad the gender ratio is in some of these places, a church I briefly attended in Montana had about seventeen young men and four or five young women in the singles group. (While I was there, I was the only one in the singles group older than twenty-five.) I will also note that almost all of these young men were either employed with decent jobs, attending the local state university to get a degree to make themselves employable, or both. No failures to launch there.
Been noticing this for years, I’ve posted elsewhere but for some dumb reason conservatives assume every place and venue is roughly half men and half women with a normal age distribution.
They're out of touch. They think dating is like it was when they got married at 19 or 20 decades and decades ago.
The other problem I've seen is young guys who want marriage but can't break the self-sabotaging habits of urban blue-culture "marriage." They go to suburban churches or rural communities and then they start looking for women who share their interests, their politics, their Bitcoin investing strategy, who are conversant in their tastes in literature or niche television shows, and are shocked to find out that 18-25 year old women without a college education don't share the tastes of 25-30 year old libertarian men in law/tech/business.
Not to say that those matches wouldn't work, given the correct mindset, but not as a blue-culture "companionate" egalitarian match. I want to grab those guys by the shoulders and tell them "You're looking for a wife, not a bro, not a person on which to dump the burden of all your social needs, and certainly not a competitor/rival." We need to be reminding young men that the purpose of marriage is to start a family, not to have a whiskey tasting, novel-appreciating, and bitcoin investing partner.
This sounds like an example of the spouse-as-best-friend category error that bedevils marriage these days. For most people their spouse isn't and can't be everything to them. Men also need male friends and male spaces, and women need female friends and female spaces too.
Many rural areas do not have a viable economy. Additionally some, by rigid zoning restrictions, also have painfully expensive housing. Hence the young people who can, leave.