Dave the Hedonist: June 2009

I've posted a couple YouTube videos here. I have always been a little ambivalent about it, not so much because of the videos, but for the community that grows up there. It is, of course, the same one we live around day in and day out, with the daily life masks off, our basest ways exposed under the mask of a username. Comment debates are interesting sometimes, but frustrating also; you get a few hundred characters to make a point, and when you are trying to discuss something like this, it's easy to give over to the quick knife to the throat in favor of something more meaningful to keep under that 500 character limit.

So in the name of trying to make a meaningful point, to avoid saying things I regret in moments of aggravation, and most of all to be as thorough as possible, I'm addressing a discussion in the comments on the issue of marriage and what the Bible's view of it is. We have one individual that holds out that all Christians are supposed to be striving for singleness, and is apparently devoid of any sense of humor when it comes to preaching. Nothing wrong with the latter in and of itself, and that's why there are a lot of different styles of doing life as a church. I love the Village for a lot of reasons; one of them is that when I hear Matt speak as he does in that clip, it reminds me of what I have and continue to struggle with, and of the things in my life that do stir my affections for God: a straightforward desire for what is true, combined with good humor and a little sarcasm. To others, that's offensive, or at least off-putting, and there are bodies where that's not how they do church. Not a thing on Earth wrong with any of that--unless you start trying to say that it's wrong to do it any other way. (and the same would apply to every style, including the Village's)

Now, I am replying to the comments:

"He never compared marriage with dinner.
He compared pursuing dinner to pursuing women."

That too is irrational. First off, I hope you mean A woman and not women. Of course, if you think women are like dinner than I can see the confusion. Secondly the goal of both "pursuits", as you say, (though I cant say I've ever pursued dinner) is as I originally stated. If you listen to the context it is clear that he is talking about marriage(37-45 sec).

Peace. God bless as you pursue HIM above all.

and

Sorry, you must have missed my main two points:
1. comparing marriage with dinner is irrational.
2. Seek God above all.
I try not to sugar-coat or water down truth as much as I possibly can. For that,and other reasons, i don't expect to be popular. "He intended us to pursue a spouse.." Really?Da definitive text for Christianmarriage is 1Cor 7. It starts with: "Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman."and also contains things like "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife." It's a shame that modern "Christians" are teaching the opposite of Scripture in the name of "Christianity". People should be able to find truthful sermons w/o all the heresy. Of course, the Bible warned of all this.

My primary problem with these comments is that they miss the real point and purpose of the passages quoted. Furthermore, they take what was meant to be a freeing message by Paul to a people who had come to Christ out of a life of idolatry and turn it into yet another set of rules for us to follow, lest we make God angry. This is not the intention. The passage in question is 1 Corinthians 7. Here are verses 1-11

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman." But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

By itself, that seems to make the commenter's point, right? He says it right there: married should stay married, single should stay single, right? But that's not what Paul is talking about in this passage. Firstly, context; the first verse speaks about a matter that the Corinthians had apparently written to Paul about: men and women should abstain from sex. Paul wants to clarify this, by saying that it isn't abstinence God is calling for, but rather, the context that He intended for it. Paul says that so they might avoid sexual immorality, husbands and wives should not neglect each other sexually. He puts it in finer terms than that (at least after the translation; one wonders how that comes across in the original to someone alive at the time), but the temptation he calls them to avoid is one of sexual immorality. He also says that one should marry if one "burns with passion," one of my favorite biblical euphemisms.

Are there people who do not have desires such as that which need quenching with a spouse? Undoubtedly. If JesusIsPerfect is one of those people, he has my respect; that is a special calling and one to which admittedly more people ought to aspire, at least in seeking God's calling for them. But I daresay not even a significant minority of Christians were given that particular gift. Paul is one, and he spent his life single and pursuing God's call to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles. Most of Jesus' apostles were not, and they married and raised families as they did their own work in His calling.

Verses 17-24 shed more light on what Paul is discussing, and put it in a context that takes it out of the "here are rules to follow" context and puts it into a context of freedom in Christ:

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.

What is my calling? It is where God has put me in my life--but is that static? Having watched the way God has moved in the lives of people around me, and at the Scriptures and how they address the people who followed Christ, most assuredly not. Peter was a fisherman; Jesus walked up and called him over, and suddenly he was a student learning to become a preacher of the Gospel. Or Paul himself--a Pharisee among Pharisees, one of the best with the brightest future, yet God called him into a life where he surrendered all that for the name of Jesus. My friend Aaron was an airplane mechanic doing pretty well for himself; now he finds himself a missionary.

Me, I was a musician and still am, but my calling pulls me into a place where I am required to trust God fully. Times get dark and I still have to trust Him. And He may some day call me to marry--since I definitely qualify under the "burning with passion" category, I hope so. But what I seek is to, as Paul says here, lead the life that God has assigned to me, to be content in my calling as it stands today, but also to remain daily in prayer and in the Word so that I may know the time that God calls me into something new, whether it's marriage, a new line of work, a new home, or anything. That is all that anyone who has been redeemed by Christ can do.

God created marriage. He established it before sin entered the world (Genesis 2), and He created for Adam a mate, a helper that would be perfect for him. He didn't make marriage as just as place to get desire out of your system, but as a shadow of our relationship with Him, in how it grows and must be cultivated. Jesus frequently used the analogy of a wedding for the day He will return to set all things to rights. Ephesians 5 explains how men and women who are seeking Christ are to live in marriage: men as the servant leaders of their wives, submitting to God in all things, wives in submission to their husbands--not silent servility, but love that is based in God and His calling for both. The moments of pure bliss that do exist between a husband and wife are those moments that show us most what God has intended to make of the world.

Paul is not calling us all to desire a monk-like existence; rather, he's calling us to live our lives by putting our relationship with God first, and interpreting our calling in that way. When the Israelites were dragged out of their homes and exiled to Babylon, God through the prophet Jeremiah told them:

"Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD.
"For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile."

In saying that God was telling the people of that generation and their children that they would never see their home again. God had set aside the people of Israel as His own, to let them be a sign to all of what the people in His kingdom would be like in relation to the world when He established it in Christ. We too live in a place that is not our true home; our hearts belong to the kingdom Jesus established, but for now, until we die or He returns, we are here. And in that time we should continue to do all these things, working for the good of our home and letting our families flourish. All these things are good and righteous in the Scriptures and in the calling God set before His people then and now. I post all this not to attack anyone or to rile up discord, but to remind all involved that the truth of this matter far exceeds 500 characters and exceeds a list of dos and don'ts. Our calling is something we all must seek out daily and individually, in God's Word and in prayer. I'm certainly not one to be a great representative of being good at that, but I still seek it.