God said it is not good for man to be alone
Paul said it is better to remain unmarried
The church must become a place of family and community for the single
In the context of the garden of Eden, before the fall, God said it is not good for man to be alone. It would seem God has created us in such a way that we cannot be complete without other people. God has chosen to not be able to supply all our needs without using other people in our lives. We must therefore be vulnerable to relationship not just with God, but also with his people, and even the people of the world. We must not modify the American myth of the rugged individual to say that I (with God) can conquer anything on my own; I can, with none but God with me, take on the devil and all his wicked schemes. Certainly should you come to the place where God is your only source of strength, he will show himself mighty; certainly he is sufficient. But he has chosen to work through mortals. When we turn our back on them, we turn our back on God’s help. We cannot ask him to join us on our Lone Ranger missions.
When God first said it is not good for man to be alone, he provided a woman as the initial solution to the problem, for indeed, in all of creation, a woman is best fitted for single-handedly completing a man. But this was not the end of God’s intended solution; God intended that from man and woman family come, and from families communities. If we believe that one woman and one man are able to make it on their own, with none but God, we buy a lie, only slightly less hurtful than the former.
When Paul speaks of it being better to be single than married, he is writing at the dawn of the period of time when the weight of God’s call and blessing to be fruitful and multiply has shifted its focus from physical begetting to spiritual begetting. Indeed physical children are still a great blessing from the Lord, and to best experience that blessing one must be married. But perhaps greater blessings still are spiritual children (truly blessed is the parent whose physical and spiritual children are one in the same). In many cases to most effectively beget spiritual children one must not be married, though one certainly must be joined to Christ and his bride the church. As Paul says, “An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs–how he can please the Lord. 33But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world–how he can please his wife– 34and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world–how she can please her husband) (I Cor. 7: 32-34).
Unfortunately the church has made herself a difficult partner for the single on a mission to beget spiritual children. Many motherly women in the church ask the single how his or her love life is, instead of asking what he or she is doing to serve God. The church encourages the single to ignore God’s call to be single, to frown on the blessing of singleness.
Is it possible that the church has lost sight of the value of children both physical and spiritual?
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