Tag Archives: celibacy

Lies Single Christians Believe

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The last couple of blogs I’ve been writing about the idea of not lying.  It’s funny even to type that.  But as we’ve been discussing, this is not always as simple as it seems. We’ve talked about not lying to ourselves, not lying to others, and not lying to other singles.

In the world of Christian singleness there are a ton of lies.  There are lies that the church has told singles, lies the enemy has told singles, lies that singles tell themselves, and lies that our current culture tells them.  I’ve written a lot about these over the years.  Rather than try to sum up that many posts in one new one I’m going to just list some and link to places where I’ve tried to be more honest and straightforward with the truth.  The list is not exhaustive and in fact if you think of more put it in the comments.  I’d love to see what I’m missing.  So here we go.  Lies singles have been told, thought and/or believed:

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Suffering In Singleness

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One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of suffering.  This has not been brought on because of personal suffering.  I am in a season right now where I don’t feel a lot personal suffering.  But I have had many seasons where I have.  This was especially true when I was single.

What has brought on these thoughts is that I have friends who have suffered and I’ve seen a lot of confusion in the singleness arena about the idea of suffering.  For example there is the idea that celibacy is too great a cross to bear.  That it is unfair that we are asking those who are not called to Celibacy for the Kingdom to suffer.  The idea that it is unfair to ask those who are unmarried and wish to be or those that are celibate due to the fall of man, to remain celibate is to ask them to suffer unfairly.

I want to offer a few thoughts here about suffering in general and then bring it back to singleness.

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Nuclear Family vs. Nuclear Family Idol

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I have spent a lot of time here railing against what I have called the Church’s Nuclear Family Idol.  What I’m realizing is that there are a lot of people in certain corners of the church that are railing against that idol but in a different way.  Therefore I feel the need to clarify two things – 1. What I’m speaking against and what I’m not and 2. What is the rightful place of the nuclear family in the church.

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The Costs Of Reformed Romance

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In my last post we discussed the utter fiction of what I’m calling Reformed Romance.  The idea and mindset where we take the secular culture’s idea of romance and chivalry and combine it with Calvinism.**

Today I want to talk about some of the price we are paying for this.  I can’t cover it all in detail as that would be more of a book than a blog post.  But there is a cost to getting all of this wrong, not only for those of us in the western Christian culture but also for the rest of world that we live in.

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Same Sex Attraction And Celibacy

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We have been looking for the last few posts at celibacy with what Jesus teaches in Matthew 19 as the background.  We have looked at the overall picture, those that are born in a way that makes them celibate for life (either physically incapable or without the mental capacity for marriage), made that way by the fall or those that choose Celibacy for the Kingdom.

Last time we started to look that the second category – those “made that way by the fall of man“.  In that post I promised a post about those that are attracted to the same sex but remain celibate.  Today that is exactly what I want to talk about.

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Celibacy Because Of The Fall Of Man

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Today I want to talk about the second of the three groups of people that Jesus talks about in Matthew 19 who are unable to marry.  You can see the general overview from the initial post here.  But as a quick refresher, Jesus said that there were three ways that a person could end up a eunuch (unable to marry).  The first was that they were born that way (physically or mentally unable to marry).  The second was those that were made that way by man (which I am suggesting can include those that end up there because of the fall of man).  The third, which we will discussed in the previous post, are those that choose celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom.

Today I want to focus on the second group, those that because of the fall of man, because of sin, end up celibate.

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Celibacy For The Kingdom

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In my last post, we began a discussion based on Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19.  In that Scripture Jesus discusses three groups of people that are eunuchs (unable to marry).  There are those that are born that way (either physically or mentally unable to marry), those that are made that way by men (which I’m suggesting includes those made that way by the fall of man) and those who choose of their own volition to remain celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God.  Today I want to focus on this last group.

Before we go any further it is important to realize how completely revolutionary this entire conversation would have sounded to the disciples who were listening.

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The Three Eunuchs

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One of the things we have to do is our Christian culture and language is rescue the idea of Celibacy.  I’ve tried to write quite a bit about this in the past but I realize that we need to talk about it even more.  The good news is that more people are talking about it.  The bad news is that a lot of us don’t realize what we are talking about including most of our “leaders”.  We are going to need a more full theological and biblical understanding if we are going to lead in this conversation.

Most people tend to start in 1 Corinthians 7 where Paul talks about marriage, celibacy and the gifts.  But I believe a better place to start is Matthew 19 where Jesus discusses the three eunuchs.

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Holiness Is Not The “Point” Of Marriage

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One of the recent trends in that I see in much of Christian culture is the idea that marriage makes you holy or that the point of marriage is holiness.  In fact, as you look back over the last few decades (if not centuries in Protestantism), you see some groups state that it is the path to holiness.

Some of this was a reaction to celibacy for the kingdom previously being seen as more holy than the domestic life.  But I see this idea of marriage as the path to holiness all of the time and frankly it’s not helpful as it views the whole frame in the wrong way.

Here are a couple of ways that this plays out in our culture:

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You Are Not Just An Animal

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It’s funny the things that you remember from college classes.  I remember one of my favorite classes was an introduction to philosophy.  I loved this class because the professor was very unbiased and we got to write some really cool papers.  (One of my papers was: Is the judaeo-Christian ethic sufficient for handling environmental issues.  The answer was of course yes – which I proved rather convincingly I might add).

One of the great moments of the class that has always stayed with me was a video in which a female pastor of some kind said, “The thing that separates humans from everyone else is our ability to sin.  Nothing else on earth can sin.”  That, friends will preach.

I bring that idea up today because I want to look at a couple of important things that we have sort of accidentally gotten backwards in the western church when we talk about singleness, marriage and sex.  That is, that you are just an animal instead of a person.

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