The New Center Shelf Space
Well, dating apps have taken center shelf space now as the staple of how couples meet. With the breakdown of civil social groupings, people look to online dating to find a match.
Tinder is by far the largest dating app. Launched only in 2012, yet downloaded 630 million times, it claims over 97 billion matches. Yes, billion. Though Tinder cannot, and does not, say how many of those “matches” become happy marriages, they do see 50 million users per month. And 74% of online users of dating apps say that they are looking for commitment, not just hookups. Likely, you know (or are!) a couple who met online.
As I said in my book on dating, using a dating app is fine so long as we consider well the features of the medium. Every date on a dating app is a blind date. We start out lacking that crucial element of a person that we need to actually know them: context. We are who we are through relationship.
Later Lasting Unions
It is also true that people who do marry are marrying later. 27 (for women) and 29 (for men) is now the average age when people get married. Millennials are the group at the end of that range (currently aged 26-41). Those of them who have dating apps spend an average of 6.8 hours/week swiping on them. This age-at-marrying average is much later than it used to be, yielding a kind of twenties twilight zone.
The zone spooks up problems for those living through it. For one, it contributes to the disastrous Western birth-rate. Moreover, personally, it makes for many frustrated, distracted and detoured young adults.
Popular accountings explain the twenties twilight zone as people putting off marriage for their career, which may be true for a small, socially upper-class segment of the population. But I think a larger factor in the delay is simply the modern difficulty of getting context on another person.
By context, I mean how someone is in his or her close relationships. Those relationships tell us so much, and so much of what a dater needs to know to evaluate a match. Many people have picked up my dating book looking for rules to follow when dating. They are disappointed because I only give them the principles to ask and answer the right questions when dating. Yet I do give readers one rule of dating. I announce it with fanfare as the must-do in all dating enterprises. I put it smack dab in the middle of the text and call it an interlude: Meet the family! As early as practical and decorous, expose yourself to the other close, or sadly broken, relationships in your date’s life.
Trinitarian Traces
Why would this context be so important? The reason reaches deep into the Triune nature of God. God is Who God is only in eternal relations. He is not a block in the sky. He is not even an old man in the sky. Rather, He is Three Persons in a relationship of love with Each Other. Do you want to know why Jesus is so great? Meet the family! That will give you the context to throw yourself into a match with the Almighty….
…A match made in heaven.