Marriage: Does a Man Really Need a Wife?

My lecturer once said that women can live without men. In an article I read about evolution, it was said that within the next one thousand or so years, men will be extinct. Many psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and related disciplines have documented in various occasions that for survival of humanity, it is the female species that is important. But when viewed from religious especially Christian context, it is understood that the well being of humanity is dependent upon the life of man (or male species of the Homo sapiens.)

Going into the Christian understanding of the role of man in the survival of this important living organism generally known as man, it is documented in the book of Genesis chapter one that God created the earth and everything in it in six days. Creation was done in special sequence, starting from what is understood to be lower organisms of life forms (ideally creation started from the lifeless) to the upper or complicated forms culminating in the creation of the most complicated living organism known as man.

In creating other complicated organisms, the bible records that they were created two by two, and that they were commanded to be fruitful and multiply. But when man was created, he was first created a man, then later on a female was seen to be fit (in order to cover his loneliness) to be a help meet for him. But in what was the female to help man for?

Wash the dishes? Sweep the compound? Arrange the furniture in the house? Or was the female help the man in naming the other forms of life and non-life creatures that had been made before him? What exactly was the help meet needed?

Consider this scenario. A single man can effectively wash his own clothes; make his own house neat and pleasing. He can organize for his time coming back home at a time of his pleasure. According to me, a single man is free to do things he ought to do, without pressure of consultation and thereby making a joke I once read to be more realistic; that "a spouse is anyone who has compromised in order to share and solve problems, he/she could not have had if he/she was single in the first place".

Back to our discussion of creation, if it is true that a man is freer when single than when married, able to perform his duties faster than when there is a consultative alternative availed, then in what area(s) did man need a help meet for him? I believe man needed only help when it came to child bearing. It is only in this area that man could not perform alone, accordingly to the way his Creator made him incomplete thereby making him half thus "the two shall become one" is valid only in the field of recreation.

The command that man and woman be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth is also seen as to be valid as long as the earth is not full. Now the resources on earth do not seem to satisfy the occupants (there has been pressure from most governments to family plan procreation) but still there is need for people to get married. Why then should we go on encouraging marriage from the Christian perspective? Is there any other reason as to why "the two shall become one" and that woman was made as help meet for man other than reasons for childbearing?

I believe that there are. But such reasons, whether for childbearing or otherwise understood to be implied in the statement made when woman was created, do not in any way mean that a man need a woman for help in his life (other than in those areas that a man can perform poorly but faster) if a woman is not a help meet. So, dear fellow man, for a success in life, if such success does not constitute being a manager of other fellow men and women called own children, it is better to be single. But as the bible says in 1 Corinthians 7, better marry if you would be engaged in acts meant for childbearing.