A Condemnation of Marriage "Celebrations"
Frieda Fruitcake writes: It pains me to report that I was a sorrowful witness to a so-called marriage "celebration" this past weekend. Indeed it has taken me this long to recover sufficiently to write this post, although I still find myself suffering the after-effects during my night-time slumbers.
A previously lovely young woman from my church has recklessly embarked on a course of marriage with an undeniably smug-looking "gentleman" from another church, thereby destroying a lifetime of undivided devotion to the Lord with the two words that always send shivers down my spine: "I do."
However, the point of this post is not to mourn the departure of the precious Gift of Singleness -- distressing though that is -- but to challenge the church on its hypocritical attitude to this whole messy business of marriage.
The terribly misguided Captain Sensible aside, we all agree that singleness is a wonderful gift that enables us to devote ourselves completely to the Lord in a totally unselfish and undivided manner (time spent on video games, computers, watching sport on television, going to the cinema and watching DVDs aside, of course).
So why does the church insist on celebrating marriage as if it were something good?
Instead, the church should chastise men and women thinking of embarking on this course for their inability to control their passion and sinfully putting another person in the path between them and their Father in heaven.
As has been helpfully pointed our previously, marriage is a hindrance to the Lord's service!
Many a single will need to stop spending every waking moment in prayerful contemplation of the cross, as they currently all do, and instead entertain lustful thoughts of making love, sharing a lifetime of love and laughter and building a home and a future together.
The church simply must stop hypocritically celebrating marriage and re-examine the content of pre-marital counselling courses to make their sole aim to prevent the marriage ever happening in the first place.
The church is of course to be congratulated on doing her best to put stumbling blocks in the way of marriage, and is admittedly doing so very effectively.
But it is simply no longer good enough to make marriage as hard as possible to achieve!
Some couples are still slipping through the net, and I suggest that if they persist in going ahead with their plans, they should be ostracised from the Body with immediate effect upon return from their honeymoon.
And as for celebrating the birth of a child as a wonderful gift from God, it should be seen as a sign that the married couple were not able to control themselves and only study the Bible together at bedtime, but rather gave in to their basest urges, and as such should be shamed and humiliated in front of the entire congregation!
I hope this call to action will receive much support from the vast majority of church leaders who so magnificently extol the virtues of singleness.
But frankly, it has to be said that they can -- and they must -- do better!
A previously lovely young woman from my church has recklessly embarked on a course of marriage with an undeniably smug-looking "gentleman" from another church, thereby destroying a lifetime of undivided devotion to the Lord with the two words that always send shivers down my spine: "I do."
However, the point of this post is not to mourn the departure of the precious Gift of Singleness -- distressing though that is -- but to challenge the church on its hypocritical attitude to this whole messy business of marriage.
The terribly misguided Captain Sensible aside, we all agree that singleness is a wonderful gift that enables us to devote ourselves completely to the Lord in a totally unselfish and undivided manner (time spent on video games, computers, watching sport on television, going to the cinema and watching DVDs aside, of course).
So why does the church insist on celebrating marriage as if it were something good?
Instead, the church should chastise men and women thinking of embarking on this course for their inability to control their passion and sinfully putting another person in the path between them and their Father in heaven.
As has been helpfully pointed our previously, marriage is a hindrance to the Lord's service!
Many a single will need to stop spending every waking moment in prayerful contemplation of the cross, as they currently all do, and instead entertain lustful thoughts of making love, sharing a lifetime of love and laughter and building a home and a future together.
The church simply must stop hypocritically celebrating marriage and re-examine the content of pre-marital counselling courses to make their sole aim to prevent the marriage ever happening in the first place.
The church is of course to be congratulated on doing her best to put stumbling blocks in the way of marriage, and is admittedly doing so very effectively.
But it is simply no longer good enough to make marriage as hard as possible to achieve!
Some couples are still slipping through the net, and I suggest that if they persist in going ahead with their plans, they should be ostracised from the Body with immediate effect upon return from their honeymoon.
And as for celebrating the birth of a child as a wonderful gift from God, it should be seen as a sign that the married couple were not able to control themselves and only study the Bible together at bedtime, but rather gave in to their basest urges, and as such should be shamed and humiliated in front of the entire congregation!
I hope this call to action will receive much support from the vast majority of church leaders who so magnificently extol the virtues of singleness.
But frankly, it has to be said that they can -- and they must -- do better!
posted by Captain Sensible at 3:12 PM
1 Comments:
Frieda:
Here is the scary thing-- I have actually heard ministers say that the better goal of premarital counseling should be to make the couple break up or postpone marriage for a later date, if that. Yes, I have heard this from a pulpit, namely because the minister was so tired of dealing with divorces. I thought how absolutely tragic-- this man would rather dissolve and/or sow doubt in perfectly good unions just because he did not want to deal with divorces. What about messy singleness-- secret fornication, mini-marriages of revolving door relationships, loneliness, etc. when marriages don't happen because of the GoS or pastors planting unholy seeds of doubt in germinating unions-- who is going to minister to that? And that's the best part about pastorally redirecting the herd back into singleness-- it lightens the load of the pastors who can dismiss singles with the shrug of failing to be content with their lot and suffer its infirmities and imperfections. In the end, the pastoral load may appear lighter, but the body is weaker for it.
Debbie Maken
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