It’s obvious that the modern Church has failed. It’s not obvious how, if you ask most people, which is unacceptable. We know how humans behave, right? We know for what purposes the Church exists, right? Then this should not be a hard question.
And it isn’t. Like most of Christianity, it’s not hard to understand. It’s hard to accept.
I won’t keep you hanging. The fix that the Church needs is GET RID OF THE WOMEN. Boom.
There can be a womens’ auxiliary or something. What there cannot be, is female intrusion into the male space of studying and worshiping God. That is not woman’s work. Women should study and worship her husband.
(No, I did not say “worship her husband as God”.)
Let’s thump a Bible.
1 Cor. 14:34-38
Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.
Here’s a radical thought: what if God meant what He said here?
Here’s an even more radical thought: what if God pre-threatened the people who say He didn’t, over the next three sentences?
Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? If anyone thinks they are a prophet or otherwise gifted by the Spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s command.
Ow. You cannot be a prophet of God… you cannot have ANY gift of the Holy Spirit, UNLESS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT WOMEN ARE TO BE SILENT IN THE CHURCH.
And then, God gives us a clue why He is so absent in modern life:
If anyone ignores this, they will themselves be ignored.
Maybe the reason that miracles and prophecies have ceased in Current Year, is because our women are helping.
Maybe there are implications to the fact that Man was created for God, and Woman was created for Man. 1 Cor. 11:7-9
Maybe, when God told women to enquire of her husband regarding God, He meant it as a kindness, as the female-appropriate alternative to enquiring of a pastor, in order to prevent the servant from having two masters.
In keeping with my experiment of not going ad hominem on potentially well-meaning allies, this opinion won’t be sourced. It doesn’t need to be; you’ve heard most of it before; but let’s do it one more time, remembering my proposed and Bible-based solution to why the Church, as it welcomes women like never before, is failing like never before.
Singleness in the Church
By Author, 6 February 2024
By now, we should all be aware that Western marriage and fertility rates are an unmitigated disaster. These circumstances raise a lot of questions. Among them is how Christians ought to talk about singleness in and out of the Church. Given the existential nature of this crisis for the West, the question may not be as urgent as “how can we teach fruitful chastity again,” but it’s certainly a valid one. There are a growing number of singles in our congregations and our mission fields. Many will not emerge from this societal collapse married. Some may have become unmarriageable–whether by circumstance or by their own actions. Others may simply never find success. Either way, such situations testify to the fact that we never really get over some hurdles this side of Paradise.
Problem: the Church doesn’t know how to turn unmarried men into married men. Let’s ask some experts for possible solutions.
“Anything but that”, such as… pretending the reason there are no young, marriage-minded virgins is very obscure and complicated in ways that are hard to describe.
Yeah, right.
I don’t even want a solution. Not yet. It would be enough for Christian pundits like Author, to simply admit the truth. Once the truth is welcomed, solutions tend to happen.
But worthy though the question might be, the popular answers leave a great deal to be desired. As I’ve written before, the typical attitude is a vainglorious one: singles (especially women) are said to be the unsung heroes of the Church, and voices need to be raised STAT. Marriage, we are told, is just too highly esteemed–a peculiar point of view given how our culture despises it–and singleness needs to finally receive its due.
But while the topic is timely, Concordia STM student Jacob Rhodes’ presentation, “The Never Married: Developing a Vocabulary for and about Singleness,” does little to improve the discourse. It at least attempts to avoid the common pitfalls while solving the problem he perceives. However, it’s hard to overstate how badly it fails in that attempt or how much Rhodes inadvertently undermines his own thesis.
I agree with Author’s assessment of Rhodes… no need for that link, either… and fault Author for also failing. Author should know better by now but Rhodes does rather well, considering the lies he’s probably had to deal with.
Rhode’s Argument
According to Rhodes, the Church has become ensnared in a narrative it received from society rather than from God. If one considers the beginning, middle, and end of a normal life, family characterizes the end, and preparation for family the middle. While the Church puts its own spin on the first two stages, she nevertheless still makes holy matrimony the centerpiece of earthly life. The fruit of this narrative is the ubiquitous attitude that marriage is the normal state of a healthy and mature adult.
Rhodes claims that the consequence for those who don’t qualify as normal in this sense is to be “othered” by church and society alike. We treat singles as though something is missing in their lives. We place them in singles-only ministry ghettos. They are unrepresented among church leadership. They are implicitly unwelcome at events like family picnics. They have to endure endless familial anecdotes or Biblical instruction for spouses and parents from the pulpit. They feel lonely, alienated, and even fearful of what their communities might think about their lack of a mate.
While Christians value marriage in and of itself, he claims we put no such value on singleness… we define singleness solely in terms of deficiency–the lack of a mate which a person is supposed to have.
There is no way to square that circle, “How can the haves and have-nots get along?” Matriarchy is so deeply wired into the Church, that it makes sense to divide the men between married and single.
The solution is to remove women from Church. The term for that is “male space”. Church should exist for men to worship God and help each other. It’s great if you have a family, but family is not the Church’s business. Family is the father’s business. The Church’s business is, at least in USA, historically speaking, to be the conscience of society. That sometimes requires helping the men who are persecuted for righteousness, for example, the fathers who refused the Jonestown Jab. I’m not anti-family. I’m pro-men.
The Church’s business is NOT free day care and donuts on Sunday, as if it was a Planet Fitness gym. It is NOT for the benefit of domestic life.
“Friend, what are all the physicians, apothecaries, and attendants in comparison to God? Should that not encourage one to go and serve a sick person, even though he might have as many contagious boils on him as hairs on his body, and though he might be bent double carrying a hundred plague-ridden bodies!” -Martin Luther, who chose to stay in the Bubonic Plague-stricken city of Wittenberg with his pregnant wife.
Do we want to have Christians like him today? Serious question.
So long as the Church is family-focused, single men will INEVITABLY be lesser-status. They will not benefit from participation. Like me, when I briefly had an Obamacare medical plan (which California still does). They wouldn’t cover even painkillers for sprained ankles, but the kids I didn’t have could see the dentist for cheap.
I also got free mammograms. For $400 per month.
It was like going to church. Everybody benefited except me. Nobody was grateful. The only decision I was allowed to make, and it still required permission, was to quit.
The Church is feminized to the point that it categorizes men by the degree of female influence in their lives. MAYBE WE SHOULD CHANGE THAT.
So if Rhodes considers this the problem, what does he propose as a solution? In short, he asserts that all Christians should find their identity in Christ and in Christ alone. Appealing to Galatians 3:28, he suggests that just as there is no longer any Jew and Greek or slave and free, neither is there married and unmarried. In that “end” stage of life, we need to replace marriage with the eschaton–eternal life in a world where marriage is (perhaps) obsolete.
Rhodes was wrong, but he was commendably close to Correct.
…He includes specific suggestions as well: Teach Christians how to live the Christian vocation of singleness that they already possess, rather than teaching them how to prepare for marriage.
Please do not call NoFap a vocation. The fact that men are teaching themselves to quit sex forever, is the second greatest condemnation upon the modern Church. Second only to the Church’s refusal to notice their suffering. That refusal is not based on ignorance. They know what men want & need, and like Author here, are playing dumb because the alternative is admitting the truth:
Women should never have been active in church affairs.
[He recommend we] Include more single people in church leadership positions. Families should invite singles to their meals and celebrations so they won’t feel lonely.
I realize that married men have very different lifestyles than bachelors, by necessity, but Christ is where all men should be finding common ground. We aren’t going to find it by marrieds inviting bachelors to dinner because they need a mommy-figure in their lives until a marriage “fixes” them.
Churches should develop singles ministries which aren’t judged by their ability to make singles married.
What else should a Church do, besides family?
*crickets*
*because the alternative is politics*
If a church today were to be bold for Christ, and preach against perversion, hypocrisy and the synagogue of Satan… would it be a good idea, if it also made a point of including wives and children on its membership rolls?
Leaving the vulnerable outside the Church can work to keep them safe, because the Lord’s Work is not safe. Now more than ever. Evil might target a man’s family regardless, but even Normals would then recognize it as hostage tactics.
There was a time, when a man’s family was considered off-limits because men did not allow their families to participate in man-world. When men kept their women out of the halls of power, it protected her.
Welcome to Man’s World, Barbie. If you can’t take the heat then get back in the kitchen… and sales receipts for antipsychotics don’t lie.
And in general, churches must reduce how often they have family events and reduce family-oriented instruction in favor of more inclusive practices.
What do bachelors and husbands have in common? Not family events. Organized resistance against tyranny, one hopes.
Also, poker nights. Married men need male spaces, too.
You’ve no doubt noticed a number of issues with this argument already, so lets just get into the details… is the alleged focus given to marriage an inappropriate one in society or even the church?
To Biblically answer the question, what have been the results of family-focused Churchianity?
Division and internal strife.
Abdication/loss of moral authority.
Women being twisted into men.
Men being twisted into women.
Absence of the divine presence.
And worst of all, merit-based salvation. “You must be this fertile to be a real Christian.”
But hey, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Correlation implies coincidences! Those are not reasons for the Church to forsake worldly ways! Those are just problems we’re having “for no reason at all”! Let us continue to assume that single men are disposable, as evolution teaches, and ask ourselves how we can make them more welcome in church without having to tolerate their complaints of neglect. /sarc
If so, Christians have a real problem on our hands because the Bible itself treats singleness as “other.” Marriage is very much treated as the norm in Holy Scriptures. Rhodes might complain about too much family-oriented instruction, but God told us to “be fruitful and multiply” before literally anything else.
Then Christ is not our Savior and the Pharisees missed a gold-plated opportunity.
You cannot handwave away Christ as an exception to God’s plan for human living. Christ came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it, so if God’s will is for every single person to marry who can, then Christ sinned. If you argue instead that Christ was never temped via sexual desire, then He did not face the same temptations we do. Which would also invalidate Him. Ditto if you argue He wasn’t allowed to live a normal life prior to the start of His ministry.
Christ lived a perfect life AND died a virgin, so QED, marriage is not mandatory.
“ He also made sure to explicitly reiterate it after every global disaster like the Fall or the Flood.”
Only those two times. Both were when a tiny group could end all humanity just by refusing to have kids, AND HAD GOOD REASON TO DO EXACTLY THAT.
If Adam has not had children, billions of souls would have been spared an eternity in Hell. It would only have had him and Eve, and they deserved it. The rest of us inherited his sin. The only reason Adam having kids was not humanity’s worst evil ever, is because God ordered it.
Speaking of evil, Noah had witnessed humanity embrace wickedness to such a degree that God Himself decided to exterminate the species… excepting only his family. One could hardly fault Noah & sons had they decided God was right. They were thinking it. Remember what Noah did after he got off the Ark? He planted a vineyard, made wine and got wasted-drunk. That’s not the behavior of people with optimism for the future.
Humanity is no longer… hmm… not currently in danger of extinction.
Just as the Bible presents marriage as the norm, it presents celibacy as “other.” Rhodes might object to the church treating singles as though something is missing, but that’s exactly how God Himself treated Adam in a perfect world before creating Eve from his side. “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Meaning, “don’t hump the dog.” It's not good for man to not have sexual relief. Don’t pretend that a married man cannot be alone… remember that Proverb about living on the roof instead of with a nag… and how come you marriage types never admit that a man with his male friends, is also not alone?
“It is not good for man to be alone” should be driving the Church to push girls towards marrying young and being devoted to her husband, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what modern, family-centered churches do.
Because “family-centered” is code for “matriarchal”.
Family life is the domain of women. Public life is the domain of men. The Church’s mission is sabotaged when its public missions of conscience and righteousness, are swapped out for domestic concerns.
When Jesus and Paul talk about celibacy, they treat it as an exception that people aren’t generally equipped to handle… Jesus and Paul neither need nor command any special accommodation for their “singleness,” but simply take the sufficiency of God’s gift as already given.
Okay. Fine. You win, Author. In fact, you already won. The bachelors have already left the Church, leaving behind only the breeding pairs. Just like God wanted on Noah’s Ark! The Church across the world, has prioritized female empowerment, err, family life, like never before in its history. Those useless, sexless, disposable men are gone, gone, GONE! The Church’s only agenda is healthy families, 24-7.
One problem, however…
There’s no “fruit and multiplying” happening.
YOU LIED, AUTHOR. EVERY DENOMINATION, EVERY CHURCHBOX THAT PRACTICES WHAT YOU PREACH, IS SPIRITUALLY AND DEMOGRAPHICALLY DEAD. IT’S TIME YOU NOTICED.
The Real Issue with Singleness
Rhode’s case is not only at odds with the plain sense of Scripture, but also with itself. He accuses the church of falsely claiming there is something incomplete about singleness. But consider his own testimony on the subject.
“I hate to admit it, but one of the loneliest times of my week is Sunday morning. Sitting alone in a pew amidst a sea of happy couples and families, I listen to sermons about how to be a more god-honoring spouse and parent and announcements about church-wide family picnics I won’t attend because as a single, I’d feel too out of place. When we had communion a couple of weeks ago, it was served by the deacons–and their wives. As I sat staring at the lineup of smiling couples across the front of our church, I wondered where the single leaders were. And I stopped going to church singles groups because they’re usually too ‘meat-marketty’ or too depressing.”
Setting aside the impropriety of deacons’ wives distributing communion…
No, Author, let’s not. If the Church is all about families, then why shouldn’t deacons’ wives participate in church operations? I swear, it’s like you think the reason senior church leadership is reserved for men, is because it’s an obsolete rule in an archaic fairy tale about a sky god.
…Think critically about this confession and consider the implications. This isn’t a normal response for those who are truly called to celibacy.
Now, I want to be clear that it doesn’t feel like envy to our suffering singles, but that’s because envy never feels like envy… there is clearly a great deal of bitterness at work among Christians singles today.
If Rhodes is exposed to the sins of envy and lust when he goes to church, that’s not Rhodes’ problem. It’s that church’s problem. Rhodes must still control himself, but in a Christian setting, he shouldn’t normally have to.
Generally speaking, forcing men to be around women promotes lust and other intersexual problems, such as #MeToo and senior pastors making headlines for straying. Make your church a place where sexual temptation doesn’t exist: make it men-only.
The Real Solution.
All of this said, we cannot stop there… There are at least two ways the Church is instructed to deal with deprivations.
The first and most obvious is to assist those in need… We must recover the lost art of match-making. Parents must prepare their sons to be good husbands and their daughters to be good wives so that they may fulfill these natural longings in one-another.
Too late.
The young men right now, who need agreeable wives right now? Those wives don’t exist. They’re already toxic, careerist, skank-ho feminists.
We cannot freeze time so another generation of women can be raised to meet demand. As if Churchian daddies have given up on raising daughters to be men.
So… how can Church become a welcoming place for both husbands and men with no marriage prospects? By doing the work of God, in the manner that God laid out, with the womenfolk busy at home instead of church.
The only thing the Church ought to do regarding the health of marriages, is organize strike teams to punish adulterers until we get legitimate governments who resume that duty. It doesn’t matter how rocky your marriage is at the moment; it will pass, so long as both sides understand that divorce is not an option.
[The other idea:] As I wrote back at the beginning of this piece, not every single Christian is going to emerge from this crisis married. Despite our best efforts, not every injury is going to be healed in this life. Not every belly will be filled. The Church must help the poor, but the poor will nevertheless always be with us. The same is true of singles–especially now.
If despair is a mortal sin, then was that paragraph attempted murder? “Give up. You will never truly belong in church, because you never got a girl like I did. God Himself thinks you’re a failure because you can’t be fruitful and multiply. Maybe some day, some family will adopt you, like a stray cat or overgrown man-child. Anything you do for sexual relief is a crime against God. And remember, don’t envy me because I won. Envy is a sin.”
Or, we could try men-only churches like God wanted. Like God reserved the gifts of the Holy Spirit for.
But our course for such men and women should also be clear: mourn with those who mourn.
Don’t offer pity. Don’t offer more talk. Let’s -TRY- something instead, something radical, like putting hats on women as God commanded. Such a burden! but mayyyybe God knew what He was talking about.
Maintain the divine order…
Keep women safe…
Prevent sexual immorality…
Erase the tension between married and single…
Invoke the presence of the Holy Spirit…
And possibly, increase Christian fertility…
By trusting God and obeying His Bible, by reserving the Church for men.
'GREAT post GUNNER!
It reminds me a lot of Balista74's(unofficial chronicler of the 2010's GBFM saga ) first blog AKA Society of Phineas before he deleted it over that ''Obama won because of the slut -vote'' post that got him and his blog too much attention in November '12.
'Christ came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it''
i remember a certain fellow years ago ,preaching that at a certain blog where he was often ''castigated ,impugned and censored'' because of it too , you might have a clue of who i speak of perhaps brother?😉
I visited a local church this last Sunday. It is a Pentecostal church. I am not sure what I was hoping for. The people seemed nice enough, but the first problem is the main worship leader is a woman and she preached at us. I did not bring my wife and children with me and I don't wear a ring - I expect they probably assumed I'm single. I left them on Sunday not much more sure of what they are as a group than when I arrived.
I will tell you this, GunnerQ: as a married man who has seen all these same things, and suffered as you wrote before I was married: it is the same, now that I am married. All things are about my wife and children now. Every man has his wife glued to his side. I either arrive without my wife and am "single", or I arrive with my wife and she becomes the locus of activity around me and I remain alone.
I agree with you 100% about what must be done in the church. But how can I accomplish this?