Are we dealing with another "spirit of slumber"?
"(According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day."
(Romans 11:8)
Captain Sensible writes: In my Bible reading today, I was particularly struck by the above verse in Romans, which refers to the non-elect of Israel being "blinded".
Time and time again in the battle against false teaching on singleness and the need to outreach to men, I am encountering a level of, well, stupidity, that is utterly incomprehensible on a merely human intelligence level.
I have written before, and would like to stress again, that this battle will not be won by wisdom and logical reasoning alone.
It is a spiritual battle and I firmly believe God has told me that we must pray that "scales will be removed from people's eyes".
For whatever reason, there is a spiritual blindness affecting western Christianity that must be countered with prayer, in conjunction with whatever action we decide to take (and there are some good suggestions for action on the previous post and comments).
Otherwise, all our efforts will be in vain.
How about a 2:1 ratio? For every minute we spend in logical reasoning, we commit to spending two in prayer?
Prayer is absolutely critical, and I just don't get the impression that we (myself included I'm sorry to say) are taking hold of this powerful weapon nearly enough.
NB: I must admit to wondering at times if I should be identifying with this:
A man was driving down the motorway when his car phone rang.
It was his wife.
"Honey, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on the M25. Please be careful!"
"It’s not just one car!" cried the man. "There are hundreds of them!"
(Romans 11:8)
Captain Sensible writes: In my Bible reading today, I was particularly struck by the above verse in Romans, which refers to the non-elect of Israel being "blinded".
Time and time again in the battle against false teaching on singleness and the need to outreach to men, I am encountering a level of, well, stupidity, that is utterly incomprehensible on a merely human intelligence level.
I have written before, and would like to stress again, that this battle will not be won by wisdom and logical reasoning alone.
It is a spiritual battle and I firmly believe God has told me that we must pray that "scales will be removed from people's eyes".
For whatever reason, there is a spiritual blindness affecting western Christianity that must be countered with prayer, in conjunction with whatever action we decide to take (and there are some good suggestions for action on the previous post and comments).
Otherwise, all our efforts will be in vain.
How about a 2:1 ratio? For every minute we spend in logical reasoning, we commit to spending two in prayer?
Prayer is absolutely critical, and I just don't get the impression that we (myself included I'm sorry to say) are taking hold of this powerful weapon nearly enough.
NB: I must admit to wondering at times if I should be identifying with this:
A man was driving down the motorway when his car phone rang.
It was his wife.
"Honey, I just heard on the news that there’s a car going the wrong way on the M25. Please be careful!"
"It’s not just one car!" cried the man. "There are hundreds of them!"
posted by Captain Sensible at 12:11 AM
2 Comments:
It's not just spiritual blindness, it is gross selfishness, denial and avoidance of tackling a serious problem that we face within the churches.
I've come to the conclusion that there are nearly always unholy motives behind not being concerned about the problem churches have with men and marriage.
Among women, I think it can be illustrated by a comment the famous Oxford sociologist and Labour party member A. H. Halsey made to Sue Lawley on Desert Islan Discs a couple of years ago. He said his mother was a poor catholic woman who had 20 children and (obviously) a very hard life. He said since then 'we [society] have emancipated women [which he thought was a good thing - and I agree] but women are much more unhappy, and much more likely to avoid dealing with their problems, and much less likely to actually face them and deal with them'.
Too many Christian women have an individualist outlook on this problem: 'God will bring ME a husband', and if He does (as he did for Elisabeth Elliot and some others), there is no need for such women to care about the plight of their less fortunate sisters.
Such an attitude ignores the communal focus of ethics in the Old and New Testaments. It should be obvious that the Bible is mainly addressed to men because males are on the whole more difficult to bring to maturity and responsibility than females, the reason being that they aren't so closely tied to their own children by pregnancy. The problem isn't just whether an individual woman can find a husband, but whether women in general, and future generations can have a realistic choice of marrying.
As for men who aren't interested in tackling the problem, their motives tend to include: resentment of male competition, not accepting that being rejected for a relationship is a sad but normal fact of life that we must all go through and learn from, problems with sexual identity or self-confidence, etc. which these men aren't always willing or able to deal with via pastoral care.
A LOT of Christian men have problems with sexual issues - and it's not just with homosexuality or porn. The church is literally crying out for mature, trustworthy Christian men to mentor other men so that they can grow up and become eligible for marriage and other adult responsibilities.
The problem is though, are confident men willing to be humble enough to be those mentors, or do they have a vested interest in keeping the low level of male competition for women ?
I know from my own experience of trying to find a Christian man that a lot of Christian men who brag about their masculinity are actually quite insecure, and are the very ones who are least willing to be accountable to other men.
So we need to pray for male discipling and mentoring of men in our churches, and give money to people like Christian Vision For Men to accomplish this ministry.
I understand that 1 Corinthians 7 was written in a context - the foreseeing of famine/persecution, but if one were to read it without knowing that context, can you get the wrong idea that Paul favors singleness at all?
I sometimes wonder if, if 1 Corinthians 7 had not been written, would the false teachings on singleness be so prevalent?
You and I both know that it was written in a context, but I wonder if everyone who is spiritually blind even realizes it. Or is the lack of concern about marriage in the church rooted in a lot more than that?
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