Still More Shoveling

Hang with me friends. This gets even better.

Singleness is no gift. That's right. I'll say it again. Singleness is no gift. It is nowhere found in Scripture to be a gift. No other Christian culture considered it to be a gift. Celibacy, or the removal of sexual desire in a minority of people is and was considered a gift (see 1 Corinthians 7 and Matthew 19.) We have been taught in the modern church that cultural or circumstantial singleness and celibacy are the same thing, but they are not. The singleness position currently endorsed in the contemporary church is faulty and erroneous.

Maybe the use of a Bible and dictionary would here prove to be helpful.

"However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if the do not have self-control, let them marry." - 1 Cor. 7:7-9

"Celibate - 1. One who abstains from sexual intercourse, especially by reason of religious vows. 2. One who is unmarried. Usage Note: Historically, celibate means only "unmarried"; its use to mean "abstaining from sexual intercourse" is a 20th-century development. But the new sense of the word seems to have displaced the old, and the use of celibate to mean "unmarried" is now almost sure to invite misinterpretation in other than narrowly ecclesiastical contexts. Sixty-eight percent of the Usage Panel rejected the older use in the sentence He remained celibate [unmarried], although he engaged in sexual intercourse.

So, let me break that down. She says that singleness is not a gift but celibacy is. But, the definition of celibacy is, get this, singleness. And then she goes on to condemn the logic of others? Also, the passage in 1 Corinthians (and Matthew 19) does not indicate that sexual desire was removed for the "celibate." In this instance, Paul is permitting marriage for whom this desire can not be controlled.

As she goes on to command a robust "return to Biblical thinking" she starts to talk about theology and God's will. She says that in the way many people view things,

'God's will' becomes the blanket answer to any legitimate questioning of the way things are.

I found that to be incidentally amusing given the number of instances that a girl has denied a date request or broken up with a guy and when probed for a reason it was "because she just didn't think it was God's will." The irony continues in a more direct way.

Think about the controversy over homosexuality as a lifestyle. This kind of thinking argues that because people struggle with homosexuality, God must have made them that way on purpose. Because such desire exists, it must be God's will. Not!

And yet, that is the very same logic she applies to marriage. Since people struggle with loneliness and sexual desire, marriage must be God's will. I assume she would point to divine revelation to excuse her inconsistent logic.

Because of the inclination to find seemingly relevant Scripture and apply it out
of context, we have been reduced to equating singleness with celibacy.

Yeah, either that or we read a dictionary and are using the conventional meaning of a word. But even stepping aside from the language debate, just because you experience sexual desire does not mean you can not control it and therefore must immediately marry an available party. I wonder how flattered this author would feel if her husband told her, "I married you just because I really needed sex and couldn't control myself any longer."