"Promising as this book seems to be, "The Meaning of Marriage" turns out to be an overly general, repetitive, and flawed treatment of marriage.

At first, I loved the book. Keller starts with an insightful analysis of the motives behind marriage (or the lack thereof) in contemporary America. Unlike previous generations, this generation sees marriage, if achieved, as 'self-realization': a relationship in which both partners are ideal, in need of no character development, and thus able to provide certain commodities such as sex, wealth, social status and the security of having a companion. Interestingly, I noticed how Keller's thesis played out in real life. A movie I like depicts two men (Tall Dark Handsome and Computer Nerd) pursuing the same girl; she chooses Computer Nerd. The webs are filled with people upset about this choice. I couldn't help but think that these fussbudgets are illustrating Keller's thesis for him: Tall Dark Handsome is the very much an ideal: in need of little character development, equally aggressive and gentle. Computer Nerd is arrogant and slightly overweight, though ultimately likeable. He, not Tall Dark Handsome, was the real man with real problems that women have to deal with in real life.

After this chapter, however, Keller's book begins to fall apart. Keller's most obvious problem is his lack of detail. John Piper has been noted as a writer who tends to repeat himself (Indeed, the first three chapters of his book on missions are so exactly alike that I had to put the book down). Keller, who is also a pastor, experiences the same problem: He tends to repeat his main ideas without adding new information or examples to help readers retain the information in their minds. Chapters 2-4 described the biblical perspective on marriage (a solemn vow of mutual help and support, made possible only by relying on Christ), and by the fourth chapter all his material was sounding the same, and I was skimming very quickly.) Nor does he provide sufficient examples: Later chapters on singleness and on sex interested me greatly, but although his ideas were fascinating, he provided few examples to flesh out what his theories look like in real life. As a result, I haven't tried applying anything and his ideas are even now (less than a week after I finished the book) fuzzy. Good teachers will tell you that stories and examples are crucial to helping students retain information, and Keller does not provide those stories and examples.

His first problem is that he says nothing that should be new to his readers. Following his analysis of marriage, he reminds married couples to put each other's needs and desires first. He reminds readers that even the efforts of one person can help heal the relationship. He reminds people to read their Bibles. In other words, he does a lot of reminding. I realize there is value in reminders, but reading a book demands a great deal of time and effort (I took two weeks to read this book) and so the book should offer its readers something new: at the very least, new suggestions to put all the old ideas into practice. Keller does not do this, and as a result, his book is familiar and slightly boring to anyone who has studied Philippians 2.

Perhaps the lowest point in terms of repeating aphorisms is the chapter on gender roles, written by Keller's wife Kathy. I was especially disappointed by this: Gender roles and the Christian interpretation of these fascinates me, and Kathy deals with these in a familiar and even stereotypical fashion. At the beginning of the chapter, she tells her readers that embracing gender roles "did not involve me developing a taste for frilly clothing, nor Tim taking up car maintenance." I was astonished by how outdated these stereotypes were. Very few people still picture all women as having 'a taste for frilly clothing,' and so the reader is left wondering what Kathy's point is. Is she trying to debunk stereotypes that are 60 years old? In fact, Kathy persists in repeating old news throughout the chapter: Her next point is that men and women are inherently different. Even the most ardent feminists (with a few exceptions) celebrate this difference. Kathy's point surprises no one, which begs the question, "Why is she telling us this?" No real answer is given, because the few times that she does address modern problems, she fails to provide real analysis. She repeats common arguments for gender roles as they now exist (such as the argument that male headship does not make women inherently inferior) and refuses to attempt an answer at why the gender roles exist (she actually says that we cannot know).

Finally, there are a few exceptional flaws in Keller's book which I want to point out. What troubled me the most was his treatment of what he calls "woundedness": the feeling of hurt left over by (according to Keller) those who have been hurt in dating relationships, or even emotionally and verbally abused by parents. (Thankfully, he leaves physical and sexual abuse out of the picture.) Essentially, Keller tells wounded people to 'get over it' in order to make their marriage work: He suggests "that woundedness makes us self-absorbed" and that the wounded partner should "determine to see [her] own selfishness and to treat it more seriously than [she] does [her] spouse's". While I believe that Keller makes some good points about not letting past hurts dominate the present and about taking action to heal these wounds, I think he far underestimates the pain caused by hurtful people, and the ease with which those who have been hurt can put their hurt behind them. Especially in cases of emotional and verbal abuse, the wounded person is not simply "making excuses for selfishness"; that person has been hurt as truly as if she were physically wounded and will need just as much care. Keller's treatment of "woundedness" is insensitive and predicts, in fact, future pain and frustration for people who cannot simply put very real wounds behind.

Finally, Keller's treatment of singleness is contradictory and insufficient. At first, Keller points out that the church tries to explain singleness away by saying that those who are single can serve God more fully; he argues that, in fact, this reserves wholehearted service to God as something for a special class of people. By the end of the chapter, however, he reassures singles that their gift is one of "freetom . . . to concentrate on ministry in ways that a married [person] could not." His big piece of advice for singles is to rely heavily on the relationships in their church: While single people lack support and the impetus for personal growth provided by a married person, they can experience this in part, Keller believes, by befriending those of the opposite sex at church. Problem: Very few churches exist like this. As a single woman, I have been to exactly zero churches with a number of single, Christlike and friendly men to build me up. Lest anyone think my experience is abnormal, I live in the Bible belt! I am VERY familiar with the American church. Keller, despite giving some interesting and useful advice on how and when to pursue marriage, ultimately tries and fails to explain singleness. I think perhaps this is because Keller has not lived as a single (he was a college student when he married): As there is only so much help a single person can give her married friends, so there is only so much help that a married person can offer a single one. Without the practical, lived experience of singlehood, the married person will put forward ideas that do not, in fact, work in reality.

Here's why Keller's book is so disappointing: I read somewhere once that all the books published on sex do not indicate that America has a handle on sex; the plethora of books in fact indicates that America has a problem with sex. I see the same thing in books on marriage and singleness for the church: We have a problem, and nobody knows (beyond a few common principles) how to solve it. Timothy Keller does not really understand the solution himself. He understands the problem, but his book does not offer any kind of new solution, or even a fresh or healthy take on the old solution.
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