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Puritan Board Freshman
I am a 55 year old single male. The fact that I am unmarried has more to do with struggles I have had with a chronic illness than anything else, I certainly did not anticipate being single this late in life when I was a young man. Anyway, older singles inevitably confront the issue of delayed marriage and begin to wonder whether it is worth it at this stage of life. Why marry? God leaves it up to us to decide, but he is clear that we must produce progeny of some sort, either biological or spiritual. For the past 25 years I have been doing what I can to cultivate spiritual children, but I have been confronting a few things about myself (and all men) that is leading me to seek a marriage even at this late stage of life. There exists in every man a drive to preserve his line through the fathering of a male child. Some men suppress or sublimate this drive, but it is a general truth that the man who dies without a male heir is considered a dead line. Consider the emphasis placed on preserving the line in the Old Testament. I am going to presume to write from the female perspective for a moment now. A women also has a drive to produce a child, but not so much from the desire to preserve her line as to give her husband what he wants, a male heir. HOWEVER, at the back of every woman's mind at every stage of a pregnancy is the fact that this act could kill me. God knows both of these facts. That is one of the principle reasons he gave us monogamous heterosexual marriage, to address these concerns. The married male can preserve both his line and his culture in his children and the married woman has a MUCH greater chance of having a healthy pregnancy with her husband there to help. Am I discounting the shear pleasure of the act of making love by this analysis? No. I have read the Song of Songs to both myself and others on several occasions because it is an idealization of the male/female relation that gives us the patience to hold out for the good stuff as well being a curative for those who have stumbled or deviated in this area. Now I am not stating any truths here that have not been said before, but like any salient truth it deserves to be restated for the sake of repetition as well as being cast in modern parlance. I welcome any comments or discussion that elaborates on the woman's perspective on this issue.