A Thought Or Two On Singleness And Sanctification

My sweet, encouraging sister-in-law and I had a really good conversation last week, in which she said something I don't think I've ever heard a married person say, at least not quite in that way.  She actually told me that singleness was sanctifying me, not just in one area, that of patience, but in my whole life as a Christian.  Single folks don't really hear that a lot.  Sojourn does a better job at addressing this than many churches, but I imagine it's tough to work in a lot of exhortations to singles, especially single women, when you're a married guy like all our elders are.  So this isn't a post where I call people out and tell them to get on the ball or anything.  It's just thoughts.  Thoughts: I has them.


As is typical for me, I'm finding it helpful lately to see the whole concept of how we talk about sanctification as single people on a continuum, with error at each end, and a range of orthodoxy in the middle.

So: at one end, you've got the idea that singleness is a less-than-ideal circumstance for sanctification, and that marriage is not just normal but normative.  Few people actually teach this (although... I can tell you from experience, they're out there).  But a lot more people sort of accidentally teach it, or at least imply it.  The error here is reading the Scriptures and seeing marriage described as sort of socially and culturally normal, as well as good, and that probably most people described in any detail in the Scriptures are married, and drawing from that something that's normative.  It's a common interpretive problem, confusing descriptive and prescriptive aspects of Scripture.  Plus, marriage "has a verse on it" as we say in the South, the lovely and oft-read-at-weddings passage about the mystery of marriage referring to Christ and the Church.  We seem to think that means that singleness is just one tiny step down from marriage, because singleness doesn't have a verse about Christ and the Church attached to it.

Here's where you get marriage just hammered on from the pulpit, and talked up, and praised, and presented as the furnace of sanctification, without any notion that we're failing to give people a vision of what godly celibacy (which, in case we've forgotten, is our eternal future state) looks like.  Instead we're telling people to direct all their energies toward something that's temporary, and discouraging single people from pursuing sanctification because we're implying that it all will just happen automatically and effortlessly once they get married and start having kids (insert collective snort of disgust from all my married readers).

(Incidentally, and just as a little side rant: why are we ok with denigrating the lives and experiences of single people by constantly saying that marriage/child-rearing is "harder" than singleness?  I'm positive that it's harder in some areas, and it's definitely a different kind of hard, but, married folks, please.  Stop telling us that we've got it easy.  /rant.)

At the other end of the spectrum is a view that's totally foreign to us Protestants, that celibate service is spiritual and, in fact, that married folks (basically, in most cases) disqualify themselves from vocational ministry.  We can't get our brains around this.  So because we can't get our brains around it, we mostly don't provide a path for celibate service, and we retreat all the way to the other end of the spectrum.

In Case You Were Wondering Where That Howl Of Fury and Protest Was Coming From...

It was me.  When I read this article.

What a load of utter, middle-class-guilt assuaging, white man's burden, condescending, collectivist, furrowed brow, think-of-the-little-people nonsense.

First, why is it my business to raise other people's kids?  Help them, yes.  Care for them, absolutely.  As a Christian, reach into their problems?  For sure.  But consider them FIRST, over my own doggone (hypothetical, future) children?  That gets a big HECK NO.

Second, why do I get to choose between 1) hurting those poor poor children, you arrogant and probably racist jerk, and 2) helping those poor poor children by sending my smarter, richer, happier, more psychologically balanced offspring (oh, the irony) to whatever public school my municipality in its infinite wisdom decides to shuttle them off to?  That, boys and girls, is called a false dilemma.  With just a leetle dash of straw man thrown in.

Just imagine with me for a moment that there could be -- miracle of miracles -- something like... wait for it... a third option!  What?  More than two options?  No way, man, we're American, we can't give people more than two options!  Not in public discourse!  Hahahaha...

OK, More Linkage

Pastor Lance, a black Reformed minister in West Philadelphia (born and raised!), has written an appropriately scathing critique of what he calls The Baal Network (TBN). Seriously, welding helmets and HazMat suits need to be in place before you read the full article. Just a taste:

And why did the Lord of glory endure such grievous pain and death? So that you could sow your seed offering, claim your blessing and have yet one more thing to put in your Public Storage locker.

Folks, enough is enough. These people aren’t in error, misguided or confused. They’re deliberately prostituting scripture, the cross and Jesus Christ to engorge their own debauched greed.

Pour it on, brother, pour it on.

"...of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."

Michael Jensen has written a pretty hilarious post on the "writing of many books" over on his blog... I feel his frustration. Check it out:

Further, this tendency [to write and publish capacious, encyclopedic commentaries] heightens the impression (long fostered by those in the field of biblical studies) that expert knowledge is utterly indispensible for any comprehension at all. It is just impossible for a non-specialist to get accross it all - you could give a life time just to reading commentaries on the book of Romans written since 1980! In addition, the experts are under pressure to come up with some new way of reading in order to make their name professionally and so get a nice job and some recognition.

[snip]

And to preachers: stop purchasing the things! They aren't helping your sermon preparation - and they certainly aren't helping your sermons. They are high-cost high redundancy items. Find the absolute classics in each book and stick with those. Buy some theology instead, or read a novel or two, or a biography, or philosophy. Make your Greek better and read the text for yourself! Spend more time in prayer even...

Go on over and read the entire article, why dontcha?

Theme: Crybaby / A Rantgent

There's a theme developing here: I am more sentimental than I would care to admit. Or, as I like to phrase it to make myself sound better, "tender-hearted." Anyway, semantics aside, I was flipping through the Baptist Hymnal. Wait.

Tangent/rant: who put that puppy together? There are some flat-out theologically bankrupt songs in the Baptist Hymnal. "Let Jesus Come Into Your Heart"? If there's a tempest your voice cannot still... Yeah, because salvation's really mostly about taking care of the issues you can't handle on your own. And that's not the only stinker, even in that section. God bless Ralph Carmichael, but "The Savior is Waiting"? Receive him, and all of your darkness shall end... blech. I want to know when this fixation on "receiving Jesus" and "asking Jesus into your heart" started. Mom or dad, any ideas why folks started using that particular phrasing and it stuck? And you know how people criticize "modern" worship music as being too me-focused? Or trite? How about "Here am I" or "I want to be a Christian" or "I want Jesus to Walk With Me" or, get this, a hymn called "Thanks-living"?

Anyway, rant/tangent (rantgent?) over. I was flipping through the Hymnal and plunking around on my keyboard when I came across these lyrics which brought tears to my eyes (the songs can't be all bad, statistically):

Unless Your grace had called me
And taught my opening mind,
The world would have enthralled me,
To heavenly glories blind.
My heart knows none above You;
For Your rich grace I thirst!
I know that, if I love You,
You must have loved me first.