In our society we are obsessed about relationships. Of any sort. This has led to a coarsening of nature, because sex is seen as a way to entrap men by women… as Alte comments.
I was at my daughter’s ballet recital last winter, and I was waiting in the lobby surrounded by the teenage friends of the older dancers. I was one of the thinnest and prettiest women there. That was shocking. I’m old enough to be their mother, so they should easily be more attractive. But they were fat, poorly dressed, slovenly, hunched over, loud mouthed, etc. One of the girls next to me was eating something and talking and it was just revolting. But every guy in the room was scoping them out. Fresh meat, just well-marbled and needing a good wash. Men don’t really care. Put a bag over her head. It’s all good.
They do it because it works. If it didn’t work, they wouldn’t do it. It’s taken me years to figure that out, as I’ve been baffled the whole time. I’ve always thought, “Why don’t they put their best foot forward?” Why? That’s a marital habit, not a promiscuous one.
The conversation then went and derailed, but not before a certain troll decided to call a bunch of fairly strong willed and intelligent women sluts, misreading that they were talking about behaviour they had seen.
As have I. When I visit the daughter I often help the family out by getting the next seasons clothes. Grand daughter is tall, a dancer, and pretty. She is also seven, and wants to dress like a dancer on TV. We find getting feminine and modest clothes difficult: it might be the army base or it might be the Manitoba, but I can find nice things here easily… but not there.
As she is built like a basketball player (both her mother and me are naturally tall and muscular) we are already having to look at junior high clothes… which makes it worse.
But this strategy does not work. Alte is married, happily so. So are most of the commentators, and most of them know the how to dress attractively… They are being counter cultural.
And part of that Christian counter culture is remembering that marriage, romance and relationships is for this life. It is a phase in our existence, It is not forever.
18Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, 19″Teacher, Moses wrote for us that ‘if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.’ 20There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; 21and the second married her and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; 22none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. 23In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.”
24Jesus said to them, “Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? 25For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.”
Now there are some people who are simply not interested in relationships. But for the rest of us, this statement from Christ is not that easy to understand. We can live single. We may end up living single. But we actually like being married. We want to be married. If we cannot due to circumstances, then the pain is abundantly apparent.
Yet Christ says this will end. And Paul advised against marriage, because it would lead to stress — you must think of your wife (or husband) and you cannot concentrate completely on the Lord.
Among our Orthodox, Anglican and Catholic friends there is a solution here. It is called a monastery. A Lady comments here wisely
I think, and yes, some of this can be laid at the door of the Reformation, that when you take away a perfectly fine means for reformed harlots to recover (convents) and push marriage for all, you have a pretty mess left of what to do with women who are damaged, who are repentant, and yet who might not be best suited to the calling of marriage. Spitting on them and declaring that you are ‘calling a spade a spade’ is not a great substitute for the loss of that option. It’s not even righteous, loving rebuke. It’s just petty and mean.
For that matter, a lot of 30something and 40something virgins are also not suited to the calling of marriage, but their physical ‘purity’ often comes with sins of envy, lust and pride rather than the holiness that might have accrued (and often did) in a more friendly setting (like a monastery or convent).
So?
We need to be gentle with each other. But it is a false charity not to point our errors. If we do so, we must allow some means of support and recovery.
There are other sins than sexual ones. A Lady has named some of them. If we are standing correctly in one area, we may be falling down in another. We cannot count on our own righteousness, because we easily deceive ourselves.
But that is not the end. For there are the means of Grace, and there will remain faith, hope and love. And the almighty.
I’m inclined to agree with A Lady, and even amplify and expand, to say the counterpart, for men, monasteries, were equally valuable for men who for whatever reason, were inclined to permanent bachelorhood. I said as much here. I think the Reformers went overboard, in abolishing monasteries and nunneries.
The reformers needed to resurrect at some point this kind of shelter. It is what L’Abri in part was trying to become, and what functional families should be — protecting and sheltering the bachelors and spinsters.
I know many churches where the young people flat together to provide that sense of community. In male only and female only flats.
And let’s face it, the Old University did act as a secular monastory, particularly that for years you could not be a professor @ Oxford unless you took holy orders in the Anglican church and were single.
I didn’t know that about Oxford; interesting. Shame it isn’t still that way with universities today; also, a shame they’re co-ed, and let in far too many people…