Sunday, February 24, 2008

"You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!"

Captain Sensible writes: Hmm, ignoring the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply, in favour of following our culture's pattern of extended singleness?
Jesus' words here in Mark 7:9 seem particularly apt...

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Interesting...

Captain Sensible writes: Following on from previous posts regarding the different faiths and their rates of marriage, I was interested (but sadly, not surprised) to find out that for Christian social events, it is a common occurrence to see "Female places sold out" for weeks or even months in advance, but "Male places still available" generally right up until the very night!
However, a dating site with Muslim socials, has exactly the opposite: "Males places sold out", but "Female places still available".
When is the church going to take the problem that single Christian women, uniquely, face?
Or perhaps more to the point, when are single Christian women going to stop allowing the church not to take it seriously?

Friday, February 15, 2008

Stop super-spiritualising singleness!

Captain Sensible writes: Looking at the various websites regarding singleness amongst Christians, I am again horrified by the super-spiritualising of singleness, which is in complete contrast to the Bible where it's a straightforward "go ahead and get married" approach.
Single women are told to check themselves over and over again for signs of discontentment, signs of making an idol out of marriage, signs of wanting marriage "for all the wrong reasons", signs of who knows what!
I wrote about this towards the end of last year in the post entitled: Minutely examining the vacuum cleaner to solve the problem of why the washing machine won't work.
Single Christian women, there is only one thing you need to "check" for.
Do a head count of the number of single men, compared to the number of single women in church circles.
If there is an imbalance in the numbers -- and there almost certainly will be -- then that's where the problem lies.
It's really not with you at all, so please stop all your spiritual navel-gazing, because it is only an unhealthy distraction which gets you no nearer to your Godly goal of getting married -- even though it misleads you into thinking it does.
Hence, it's another tactic of the deceiving enemy.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

"Maybe I'm not enough?"

Captain Sensible writes: I think one of the dangers of Valentine's Day for singles is that they feel they are "not enough". That somehow they don't deserve a husband or a wife and children of their own. This is simply not true. God's blessings don't work that way.
Don't let a sense of inadequacy keep you from seeking, finding and keeping the love of your life.
Enjoy this lovely little track by my favourite band of the moment, The Feeling. It's not the official video, but it is very poignant. Remember, you are "enough" and you are worth loving and worthy of giving love back.

The Feeling: Fill my little world

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Why are we Christians so stupid?

Captain Sensible writes: Really. It's a serious question. Sometimes it can be easy to forget, when you are having an otherwise apparently reasonable conversation, just how stupid we are really being.
Can you imagine a Muslim woman being scolded for wanting to be a wife and mother, and warned that she is "making an idol" out of marriage, and how she should just forget about marriage and babies and learn to be content?
Can you imagine Islamic leaders allowing the mosques effectively to be run by women, for women, and focusing their main weekly activities on fun and games for the children?
Honestly!
It makes you wonder how many contemporary Christians it would take to change a lightbulb.

Three women to wonder whether or not it is God's will for the lightbulb to be changed.
Two women to argue that we should just wait on the Lord, and he will provide a working lightbulb in His timing.
Two women to advise that we should just pray about the situation.
One hysterical woman saying that we should learn to be content with the "gift of no light" as God must be trying to teach us something whilst we scrabble around in the darkness.
One man to freak out in fear at the thought of having to actually do something that might be a little bit scary.
And one woman who decides that she really cannot be doing with this any longer, and so takes herself off to another room where there is a lightbulb that is, actually, working!
(Frieda Fruitcake adds: "This sinful sister is obviously trying to get ahead of God's perfect timing for the "gift of light", and is impatient with what God must be trying to teach her in this "season" of darkness. As she has taken her focus off the Lord and is instead "making an idol" out of lightbulbs, she will miss out on "God's best", which may, or may not, mean living her entire life in the dark. Thus sayeth the contemporary church.")

Debbie Maken on Kingdom expansion

Captain Sensible writes: The below quote forms part of an interview with Debbie Maken, conducted about a year ago, with Spiraluniverse. In light of the Archbishop of Canterbury's recent remarks, it seems appropriate to highlight it here. We Christians really are shooting ourselves in the foot by ignoring the creation mandate and inventing a "gift of singleness". (And it's not like we're doing a great job of evangelising either, what with ignoring men entirely and focusing on children's playtimes and women's coffee mornings...)

"I believe that you have picked up on something about kingdom expansion that seems almost lost or foreign to this generation of Christians, namely that the kingdom increases by both siring children through holy wedlock and through regeneration of those who would normally be outside the fold. This is not an either-or proposition. Many who do missionary work, and do it effectively, are families. Siring children and raising them in the admonition and nurture of the Lord is not only required to fulfill the 'Be fruitful and multiply' command, but it is one of the most predictable ways to create kingdom members because God honors his covenants, especially the covenant of the family. Converting those outside of the Christian faith is worthwhile, but a more 'hit or miss' event. But 'disciple making' should begin at home and work itself outward.

"The major problem is that Christians are too busy rationalizing protracted singlehood by inviting singles to go down the path of inventive missionary work, when we should be telling them to use this special season of youth/vigor to get married and create children, for the window of fertility is actually quite small, but evangelism can be accomplished in virtually every station of life. The pains of these decisions to misdirect Christian singles will more acutely be felt a generation from now, when the godly seed that is needed to carry on, simple isn’t there, and certain heathen populations have outnumbered us and inflicted their value system on us."

Read the rest of the interview here, but please note, you have to click "Next Question" each time, as it is posted over several pages! Interview with Debbie Maken

Saturday, February 09, 2008

"...the wife of your youth."

"Young Muslim adults were more likely to be married (22 per cent) than were young people from any other religious background...Christians and those with no religion were the least likely to be married – 3 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds in each group."

Captain Sensible writes: Having a "wife of your youth" (mentioned five times in the Bible, I believe) probably means you are both Muslim. You are least likely to be Christian.
So with Muslims getting married younger, and having more children, did the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, receive a word of prophesy when he said that the UK’s adoption of "some aspects" of Sharia law was "unavoidable"? (More on that later when I have got my head around it!)

Read more: National Statistics: Marriage patterns

"As for me and my house..."

Captain Sensible writes: Well, if it's Muslim, Sikh or Hindu, it is more likely to contain children, and less likely to contain just one person...

Read more: National Statistics: Focus on Religion

Monday, February 04, 2008

"Nothing in Scripture negates the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply or the status of children as evidence of God's blessing."

Captain Sensible writes: So says Candice Watters in a Q&A session on the Boundless blog. Her excellent book: "Get married: What women can do to make it happen", again speaks of the creation mandate - which God did not issue with an expiry date!
Getting this message out at a time when marriage is under serious threat from within the church, quite aside from our culture, is crucial, and Candice's brave, counter church-cultural stance is commendable.
Allowing false teaching to be spread through the actual blog, however, is not.
Galatians 2:11-13 shows Paul publicly rebuking Peter for just the appearance of wrong teaching, as he began to separate himself off from the Gentiles out of fear of "certain men":

"When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray."

I hope the Boundless editor, Ted Slater, is not separating himself off from "creation mandators" because of a fear of men?

Sunday, February 03, 2008

"We have managed to transform marriage, the most basic and universal of human institutions, into something controversial"

"In America over the last 30 years, we’ve done something unprecedented. We have managed to transform marriage, the most basic and universal of human institutions, into something controversial."

Captain Sensible writes: That's how the book "The Case for Marriage" by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, opens.
And the church (here in the UK as well as in the States), the Body of Christ that should have been a steady rock during these culturally turbulent times for marriage, has been woefully in error, twisting Scripture to meekly follow our culture these past 30 years.
The book points out that "(V)irtually every study of happiness that has ever been done has found that married men and women are happier than singles".
No wonder then that singles find it so hard to reach that singleness nirvana that is promised to them, if they can only stop making an idol out of marriage!
I have not yet read the book myself, but the editorial review on Amazon, reads as follows:

"The wages of the married are high, commitment is good for the libido, and, despite 30 years of arguments to the contrary, happiness may just depend on reciting the wedding vow, according to Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher. After sifting through the evidence and conducting their own studies, the authors conclude that marriage is beneficial and transformational, and that neither cohabitation nor swinging singledom are all they're cracked up to be. In fact, it turns out that marriage is a public heath issue: being single can take almost 10 years off a man's life, while wifely nagging really is good for his health. Getting and keeping a wife can also increase a man's income as much as an education...So, what does threaten marriage? For one, the insecurity engendered by the cultural acceptance of divorce. Couples are now less willing to invest fully in each other, the authors write, while 'commitment produces contentment; uncertainty creates agony.' Cultural indifference towards marriage is the other big downer. Because marriage is a public commitment, it can 'work its miracles only if it is supported by the whole society.' Not surprisingly, divorce gets a very bad rap as Waite and Gallagher pull out the heavyweight facts, particularly when it comes to its effect on children. The good news, though, is that marriage is resilient -- five years down the road most couples who considered but resisted divorce found that they were happy again."

Smug, "married by the age of 21", Christians may point the finger at the words “cultural indifference towards marriage” and tut, but what else is it that the church has been preaching this last generation? “Singleness is a gift. Marriage is a gift. You must be equally content with either.” If that’s not indifference towards marriage, I don’t know what is. (Debbie Maken gets it right – again – when she pointed out in an interview that the contemporary church is only "pro-marriage" and "pro-family" for those already in marriages and families! It isn't for singles!)
And it's with wry amusement that I note the line: "Commitment produces contentment; uncertainty creates agony." No wonder singles -- women especially, as they are more commitment-orientated naturally -- find it agonisingly impossible to "be content with singleness". I believe it is actually a sin to even try, as it ignores the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply. The contentment in the Lord that Paul wrote about does not mean being content to allow a bad situation to continue when it is in our power to do something about it.
It's also interesting that the authors note that marriage can "work its miracles only if it is supported by the whole society."
But we are now in the desperate position that our culture is beginning to move on and recognise after all the benefits of marriage, while unrepentant pastors are still trying to preach that singleness is a gift!
Toby Young, associate editor of The Spectator, writes: “In a book called The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher point out that 90 per cent of married men alive at 48 will still be alive at 65, whereas only 60 per cent of 48-year-old single men will make it to retirement age. Married men are half as likely as single men to commit suicide and single men drink twice as much. Perhaps most alarmingly — at least for bachelors — a married man with heart disease can expect to live an average of 1,400 days longer than a single man with a healthy heart.”
Hmm – maybe that depends on one’s definition of a "healthy" heart? My post “Not good” for man to be alone shows how the isolation of singleness can lead to an early grave for men: "Pity the poor, lonely bachelor, living in fear of commitment in favour of 'keeping his options open' for decade after decade, and being lied to by Christians who tell him that, contrary to the Biblical command to be fruitful and multiply, he is living a fine and Godly life by remaining single throughout his 20s, 30s, 40s and then, ooops, he drops down dead from loneliness..."

(Ted Slater take note: You are doing neither single men, nor single women, any good by trying to distance yourself from those horrid "marriage mandators" like Candice Watters, and allowing the comments on your blog to spread false teaching. You have been placed in a position of influence where you could do a lot of good. Now is the time to step up and do it. You will not be able to wring your hands and plead ignorance when the day comes that you have to give account of your editorship at such a crucial point in time, when marriage was under severe threat from not just our culture but also the church.)

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Welcome to the new McChurch!

Welcome to the McChurch!
Plenty of fun to be had for all the family! From mums and babies, to tots and teens!And there's lots for the older youth too!
Everyone welcome!
(Except grown men. They're scary!!!)


Captain Sensible writes: Be honest. Doesn't the above sound very familiar? (Except for the last line of course. That's the hidden truth that church leaders like to keep secret. Well it's not a secret any more!) In case anyone thinks the idea of McChurch is unnecessarily harsh, it was actually inspired by the David Murrow (author of "Why Men Hate Going To Church") quotes below. Isn't it true that: "The great majority of ministry in Protestant churches is focused on children, next on women, and then, if there are any resources left, on men...(T)oday's kids-first church is a radical departure from Christianity's historical mission. Keep in mind that neither Sunday school nor youth ministry even existed two centuries ago. In those days, kids were loved, but they weren't the focus of church. Today they are...The McDonald's approach feels right to women because it lavishes ministry resources on her top priority: her children."
Think about it in relation to your own church.
Are you investing in a McChurch?

Friday, February 01, 2008

Be passionate!

"Successful people are not necessarily more gifted; they're just more passionate. What do you pray about? Cry about? Dream about? What are you willing to risk everything for? That's the well from which you'll draw your strength and your strategies when you experience setbacks, when others disappoint you, when the job feels too big and you feel too small."
UCB's Word for Today.