❤ Valentine’s Day, the Church and Single Awareness Day? by J. Storment

❤ Valentine’s Day, the Church and Single Awareness Day? by J. Storment  ❤

I don’t think I am actually going to make a Valentine’s Day post this year ON the day itself, or shortly before.

Valentine’s Day is this Sunday, so you can consider this here post this blog’s annual Valentine’s Day (Singles Awareness Day) post.

Unless I come across a really groovy, outstanding V-Day post between now and then, this is it, then I will consider logging in and making a new post – but I will be kind of busy later this week, so I don’t know if I will have time.

The following is a blog post that covers much of the same ground my own blog has addressed:

(Link): Valentines Day, the Church and Single Awareness Day? by J. Storment (on Jesus Creed blog)

Excerpts:

So unfortunately this year Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday.

I say unfortunately because in most of the churches I’ve seen in life make a really big deal about marriage and families and romance and kids and happily ever after, and rightfully so. Those are good gifts from God in many people’s lives.

But what is so unfortunate about Feb 14th falling on a Sunday this year, is that many (most) churches have gone beyond celebrating marriage and family.

For the past several decades we’ve all but idolized it.

… Stanley Hauerwas points out that when Christianity first was introduced to the pagan world it changed the way they viewed marriage because it de-idolized it. After all, there was no more radical act in that day than to live a life without producing heirs.

… If you were getting acquainted with the Jesus story for the first time, one of the most shocking parts about Jesus life would be the fact that Jesus is single, stays single, even fulfills God’s purposes as a single!

We forget what a scandal it was in 1st Century Judaism that Jesus was not married. As a Jewish man, (especially a rabbi) You had a duty to God, your ancestors, and to your family to marry and make babies. Later rabbis would even say: “Seven things are condemned in heaven, and the first of these is a man without a woman.”

Marriage was so taken for granted that Biblical Hebrew has no term for bachelor.

(( click here to read the entire page – and you should; it’s a very good page ))

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