The Cost of Mentioning the Unfashionably Obvious
September 24, 2005
It’s quite interesting to read the reader responses to “The Cost of Delaying Marriage” on Focus on the Family’s Boundless website. To her credit, Candace Z. Waters knows what’s what and goes over this mail, dividing the legitimate points from the lunacies. However, I find her (and evidently Al Mohler’s) construction of celibacy as a gift rather than a discipline more than a little superficial. Does this mean that if one does not have the gift but is not yet married, then some amount of “slipping” is to be expected?
Mohler says one is “called” to celibacy if one can answer “yes” to the question, “Can I go the rest of my life without sex, without the companionship of marriage, without having children and without being bitter about it?” You may as well ask, can you get married, have children, or do anything that requires labor done chiefly for the good of others–without being bitter. Without ever being bitter? Without a bad patch now and then? Without the foreseeable risk of such a bad patch? It seems I know a lot of old married couples who may have been called to be celibate.
One encounters this logic frequently in the decadent West–that a “good choice” will be one that results in smooth sailing, at least in terms of one’s ability to cope with challenges that arise. No regrets, no bitterness or resentment to struggle with. No risk of failure and significant sin. Conversely, there is the dire fear of making a “mistake” or a “bad choice” which means finding oneself in a situation where one is “unhappy”–most often because one is unwilling to deal with regrets, bitterness, resentment and all manner of spiritual corruption regardless of the cause.
I have a mind to write a book like Quentin Skinner’s Liberty before Liberalism called Marriage before Modernity. Or maybe Happiness before Modernity with sections on marriage and lifelong celibates.
This is The Cost of Mentioning the Unfashionably Obvious in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Traditional, Faithful, Mainstream, Representative, Typical? | Next: The “Christian Lifestyle” of Evangelical Surrender Monkeys | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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