It is a funny thing how I will listen to a catholic or Anglican and my life will be changed by that experience. Maybe not an enormous change, but one that challenges my beliefs about people, and how God wants me to live.
I was listening to the BBC version of All Things Considered and they were talking to a monk. What the monk said about love was incredible. He said that the priest or monk has the ability to love more people because they are not married. And that resonated with me. this is not my usual diatribe about marriage but instead an understanding of how people love. In a marriage the couple feels an intense love for the other person. And they should not feel that type of love for anyone else. That love reaches a passion other people will not be able to see. I will never claim to know the kind of love that can exist in a marriage because I am not married and I doubt I ever want to be married. So in marriage there is the love that is deep but for only one person. But a single person can love many people at the same level. There is no intimate connection binding them to one person. The love they express for others can go as deep as possibility with infringing on a relationship ordained by God. So the single person may never know the intensity of love in a marriage they can share their love with many people unfettered.
Both obviously have good points and bad points to them. for a long time I wondered what is the real role of a single person in the church. Everyone expects me to get married and I get the question of if there is someone special in my life or not. The reason I do not think I am going to get married is that every time I get involved with someone it ends up wrecking me. I get used emotional or something else. Since it really does not seem to by God’s plan for my life I have the freedom to start exploring loving others in great depth. Those who know me well see how funny this statement is. It is something I am looking forward to exploring. Maybe I will finally get my theology of singleness sorted out.
Eureka, I've done it! (Fin)
13 years ago
1 comment:
Stan Grenz in his _Sexual Ethics_ has some promising beginnings of thinking through how the single people can serve the people of God in ways others can't. I'll let you borrow it. If you let me keep halo 3 longer.
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