Get Married This Year! and other lies (from L. Turner’s blog)
(Link): Get Married This Year! and other lies
Excerpts:
- Part of the New Testament that doesn’t get a whole lot of coverage on Sunday mornings is 1 Corinthians 7:9: “If they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.” This has always tripped me up, especially because, as mentioned in Galatians, one of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control.
So if, as Christians, we ought to be exercising self-control and if to exercise self-control means that we need not burn with passion, why do we revere marriage now the way we do?
Why are political figures leaning on historical Christianity to make a case for the nuclear family when historical Christianity has contained multitudes of definitions of marriage we would now categorically reject–polygamy, concubinism, marriage as a purely practical arrangement between families.
This is selective argumentation at its most dangerous, and it contributes heavily to the marriage-crazed culture in which books like “Get Married this Year” is sold next to titles like “If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?”
We have overvalued marriage at the expense of the individual person and the larger community, elevating a unit of 4 or 5 or 6 to a level not enjoyed by the web of connections in which they live and move and have their being. We are products of our families, certainly, but what an anemic definition of family that includes only the few people to whom we are blood-related. My dearest friends, my neighbors, the men and women who have seen me through decades of my life–isn’t the very message of Jesus that these people are my family, too?
… Marriage will not save the world.
Please click this link to visit her blog and read the entire page
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Related posts this blog
(Link): Creepy: ‘Barna: [Christian] Women Value Family Over Faith’
(Link) Have we made an idol of families? by A. Stirrup (copy)
(Link): Do You Rate Your Family Too High? (Christians Who Idolize the Family) (article)
(Link): What Christians Can Learn from The Walking Dead Re: Family, Singleness, and Marriage
(Link): The Deification of Family and Marriage (re: Kyle Idleman book)
(Link): Focusing on the Family Causes Church Decline
(Link): Desire for Marriage is Idolatry?
(Link): Mormons and Christians Make Family, Marriage, Having Children Into Idols
(Link): Family as “The” Backbone of Society? – It’s Not In The Bible
(Link): Another Blog on Churches Making Family Into an Idol and Christian Dating Advice
(Link): Confronting the Idolatry of Family by Janet Fishburn
(Link): If the Family Is Central, Christ Isn’t
(Link): Videos About Family Idolatry by Christians / Desiring Marriage is NOT Idolatry
(Link): American Christians Idolize Motherhood – Mommy Rhapsody
(Link): On the Janet Mefferd Radio Show: Still Too Much Concern About ‘Family’
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