Ahh, the Christian-DJ paradox rears its head again. I love helping out with this one since I experience it first hand all the time. Let me qualify myself here for a second though, my mother was (and is) a devout Christain and instilled a respect for this in me. My father is an equally fervent secular humanist athiest and is the source of my questioning nature and critical thinking skills. Needless to say my parents divorced in my childhood. However, I do believe in Christ and christian principles, though I would call myself a 'christ-follower' rather than a capital 'C' Christian (especially these days).
I can totally relate to the situation with your pastor and the 'love' sermon. Any coincidence it's so close to Valentines Day? Hmmm,,... Let me give you a frame of reference though. I've found that after attending churches regularly for the last 8.5 years of my marriage that about 90% of Christian men are complete and utter AFCs. Every married guy I know is totally beholden to the whims of his wife's moods and conditionalities, and every single guy I know has an acute ONEitis and soul-mate sickness. I've also expereinced that the church tends to doctrinally encourage this faith-driven ONEitis while contradictionally expecting men to 'be men'. It frustrates the married guys because they see all of this attention and effort going out with little reciprocation from their wives and confuses the hell out of the single guys because all they see is female condtions and expectations as their only means to getting laid in marriage.
I grind my teeth at this regularly because our pastor is equally an AFC that has been married for 13 years. He met his wife at a religious youth camp and they married at 18 & 19 years of age. Whenever he gives a sermon regarding love or sexual relations or the responsibilities of each gender, he consistently depreciates ANYTHING masculine while putting women and every feminine characteristic on the highest, unreachable pedestal you can imagine. I can't watch TV anymore for exactly this same reason, every masculine characteristic is a male-deluded subject of ridicule in every sit-com, every commercial and every kid's cartoon. And while our pastor is terrific and inspirational on pretty much any other subject he teaches on, he always falls back to the AFC sterotype when speaking about men and women.
It's like nails on a blackboard for me when this topic rolls around (usually in Febraury) because I met my wife at a club when I was playing in a less-than-religious band at the time. She and I got after it on our 3rd date and lived together for about 4 months before I decided to propose to her. Both of us had been through horribly damaging previous relationships in our 20's as well as casual one-nighters. We've learned from experience to have healthy and mature expectations from each other. But we didn't meet at church camp and relating this to our church friends is awkward at times because we do have an enviable relationship together. One of my best friends married an (IMO) unappreciative single mother from church and is just now learning what it means to marry such a woman. I made every attempt to get him to man-up and avoid this, but his attitude was of the ONEitis variety and that at 30 he expected himself to be married by this time. Ergo, he settled for his current marriage.
I can tell you that marriage and the regulation it represents to most religious minded people is that of expectation and 'normalizing' a person. A relationship is based on faith and "who God gives you" rather than healthy dating and finding the person by discovering what you're about rather than 'doing the right thing'. My pastor frustrates my sensibilities in this regard because he bases his sermons on his only experience from a very brief period of teenage courtship under the strictures of he and his wife's religious upbringings and a 13 year marriage (too early I might add) with 3 kids over that course. I also get a feeling from his wife that she would like him to man-up as well. She tends to repond more positively to the men in our congregation who do exhibit positive masculine characteristics. Not that I think she would ever express this, and not that I think she's unsatisfied with her relationship either, but I can sense that she's internalized her own expectations and attempts to balance them with the constant, placating behavior that her husband displays since it's the only method he's ever used to get her intimacy within the marriage.
So don't feel too put out by your own pastor's sermon. Try to understand what the church is going to promote in its own interests and try to look with a bit more critical eye at the sources who are giving you this feeling. IMHO most churches lean far too much on the feminine side in many aspects. This is due to women's innate need for security (and there's no security like God) and, at least in the case of most religious men, guys are conditioned to acquiesce to what they think is expected of them as their only means to sex, which is marriage. If you do in fact genuinely hold religious beliefs - many guys use this as an 'in' to women their more comfortable approaching - use the morality rules and expectations to your advantage. Never forget that you are the prize. This is so important under any condition, but even more so in a religious context. Your only access to sexual intimacy is marriage, DO NOT SETTLE for anything less than exactly what you deserve for a lifetime. If abstinence before marriage is the rule you intend to live by, nothing will take you to divorce court faster than settling for a woman who becomes asexual after your first or second child. Demand the best. You are providing for her not only financially, but emotionally and psychologically by accepting her terms for marriage. People will tell you life is short; life is loooong, far too long to spend it with a woman who becomes unappreciative of the sacrifice(s) you make for her for the rest of it.
Also, understand that marriage IS the GOAL for religious women. This is the unavoidable truth about every woman you meet in the christian singles arena. Their security need is met through the same means as your sexual need, marriage. The best thing you can do is set yourself up in your own passions and career because that is what they're looking for. They understand marriage is supposed to be for life so they're looking for the best male able to provide for her and her offspring. The better potential you represent the hotter you'll become. Nothing gets religious women off faster than a man's status, a good paying job and his willingness to agree to her terms (i.e. abstinence) for marriage. It is the ultimate win-win situation for her and the ultimate life-gamble for him. Churches look down on premarital sex for a lot of reasons, but maintaining this conditionality is a big one.
