Could you elaborate on your distinction of marriage as an ultimate good and singleness as something that “becomes good” in certain contexts? Doesn’t marriage also become good in certain contexts as opposed to others? Or is it simply because marriage is a picture of the church and Christ that makes it an ultimate good as opposed to derivative?
My next comment is directed at some of the comments rather than the article. As a single woman in her mid 20s who wants to be married and is in a situation similar to Julia’s daughters, I am tired of the refrain that marriage is the most sanctifying thing we can experience. I read something by Lore Ferguson Wilbert that has comforted me and turned that notion on its head: whatever situation God has placed us in, that is what will most sanctify us right now. Understanding sanctification that way helps keep singles from feeling less than/incomplete or blame themselves for their singleness, as well as rightly takes their focus from discouragement about their current state and refocuses it on how God is sanctifying them through unwanted singleness. Marriage isn’t “leveling up,” but statements such as what I have referenced have that hurtful tinge to them for singles.
As always, you've given us alot to think about, both philosophically and practically - thank you!
I admit that growing up with all brothers and now having all daughters has shifted my perspective on this topic. As a guy, the "control" over dating was really up to me - if I wanted to date a girl, I should ask her out. Having daughters in a Christian context, however, is different; propriety dictates them waiting on being asked. And so, has a girl "failed" if she is single, yet never asked out? If you believe that God's best for you is marriage, then it's hard not to think that. I mean, I come from a subset of Christianity where heading off to Christian college meant getting a degree AND getting a spouse. That thinking may not be as pronounced now, but I do remember the very real feeling of failure when my 22 year old peers finished their undergrad degrees only to come home single.
Perhaps then, it's this sense of "God's best" and "success/failure" that haven't been taught very skillfully - or biblically - in the church. I've yet to meet a single person in my young adult group (part of my pastoral oversight in my church) who doesn't want to eventually get married. For some, it's laziness; for others, it's fear based on past (bad) experiences. But they do want it - they just don't know how to get there from where they are now. Personally, I cringe when I hear well-meaning older saints openly ask these young adults why they aren't dating anyone. Maybe I should be more comfortable with these questions; but the insinuation is that the single person is failing by not dating. And in the case of young women, this is a "failure" that seems largely out of their control (unless they are really pretty, at which point something must be wrong with them, since guys would TOTALLY ask them on dates all the time, right?).
To me, then, this is where the theology of spiritual family is so attractive and applicable. This Western pathway to marriage can be encouraged while not promoted to the status of spiritual success, or worse yet, spiritual completion. Marriage and its intrinsic value can be extolled publicly, but not as the recipe for your best life now.
Great writing, Samuel - and thank you for engaging with us, your readers. This is time well spent.
"If a church finds itself in a situation where there are numerous single people in its membership who are both ready for and desire marriage, but the church itself cannot help them meet that desire within the congregation, then leaders of the church need to seriously consider how other gospel-preaching churches in the area could help realize this desire...I am saying that churches that believe in and preach the intrinsic, gospel-displaying value of marriage should take it seriously enough to admit when members may need a different context to experience it."
One possibility, as weird as it might sound on the surface, would be for different churches of the same or similar denominations within a given area to organize singles get-togethers. Particularly for people like Julia's daughters, who don't want to do online dating (and I don't blame them), and people who go to small churches, that could be extremely helpful.
I will also note that while I know that "churches with single women but few single men" is apparently the norm, it is something that I have experienced the exact opposite of. Of the four churches I have attended in the past six years (not church hopping, just moving around some), three of them have had more single young men than single young women, and I'm not sure about the fourth. I will note that these churches were in rural and remote areas, so there may be a geographical component to this disparity, one I'm not sure could be overcome. Again, coordination between churches would be key here; given the congregationalist tendencies of American Christians, even among more hierarchical denominations, and the issues inherent with starting long-distance relationships, however, I'm not sure if that would necessarily work.
Wonderful and full agreement. I was purposefully introduced to my late wife at a church she and I were both visiting (in England - Paulette was American) by Mark Dever, who was then on that church's staff. It was a deliberate matchmaking exercise by Mark. And it worked! Paulette and I got married (Mark preached at our wedding) and she and I were happily married for just under 27 years, until she died of Parkinson's Disease. What was wrong with that? The church that Paulette and I attended for 25 years had a vicar who always hoped that his staff would intermarry, which they did, and to magnificent success, Stephen and Emma Witmer being just one happy example. Pastors: go for it!
Hi Samuel - I got to your piece via Aaron Renn's weekly link roundup, and really had my interest piqued at the paragraph that starts with "In my experience, many singles in the church desire marriage very much and don’t know how to obtain it."
A few months ago I was thinking about this and outlined what local churches might do to help. Here's the short outline, and there's a much longer one available if anyone's interested:
1. Get together with other similarly-minded congregations in your area and start organizing singles events for young Christians.
2. Require the people interested to answer basic questions of interest to a potential mate (height/weight, fitness routines, career path, desire for children, etc.). Your goal is just to get them thinking about this stuff, not to use in pairing them off.
3. This part is vital: curate your invite list for each event to ensure an even balance of men and women.
If each congregation has more single females than males, how could you curate the invite list for each event without giving great offense to the excluded females?
The least bad way that I've thought of is 1) any woman who brings a single guy that she can't date (e.g. her brother or cousin) gets in automatically, and 2) a lottery for everyone else.
Excellent writing as usual brother! Thanks very much for diving in again on these important topics! Below are some quick thoughts that hopefully give a bit more context and maybe some useful takes on some of the issues about singles, marriage, family and the local church.
My perspective may be kind of unique – never having been married and having been an active member of churches and singles groups of all sizes - from small to mega-church. Also BTW, I’ve found Barry Danylak’s book, “Redeeming Singleness,” to be the best serious and most accessible study of the Bible’s description and “teaching” about singleness.
As with you, I also believe the local church is the best, true hope for the Kingdom’s footprint in this world. It defines the community of all believers – as both Paul and Peter noted and Jesus assumed. Each believer, married or single, is a “brick in the wall,” mortared with application of spiritual gifts. To me the question of marital or family status should be secondary and not a litmus test, in terms of church structure. The local church was not meant to be built on a matrix of family units – the family is not the lowest common denominator.
In terms of relationships, marriage is certainly different from other types of relationships! It is truly special and culturally common! But I don’t believe it is the best one, that every believer should strive hard for it – nor is it mandated by Scripture for everyone in the world, or in the church… Given, as you note, its temporary place in human history this side of history, this should influence the choices one makes or the actions one takes.
My perspective on your 2 reasons sketched out in the 3rd paragraph.
1. Both marriage and singleness are equally accepted as normal choice or behavior in the context of the local church. Why? Because we have the example of Jesus, Paul, John, Timothy, Titus, Jeremiah, Elijah, Daniel, etc. in Scripture to show the integrative reality of single person contributions – it is assumed in practice. For something that has become SO central to most evangelicals today, there is precious little prescriptive detail, or even good marriage examples to point to, in Scripture. Lots must be read in or extrapolated from Scripture to support the vast amount of teaching, parachurch ministries, books and conferences that has proliferated over the last 50 years.
2. Also I don’t think it’s necessary to introduce philosophic language to describe the “nature” or “design” of marriage in Scripture. Scripture assumes marriage and family as a given, but we don’t see it weaponized to the point we can use in our American culture wars. Of course, Paul uses marriage as one illustration to describe Christ’s special loving and leader relationship to his Church – but not as a Gospel component per se. To me it seems marriage is so often dragged in to do duty far beyond its Bible “brief.”
I don’t see that teaching marriage is an absolute good is helpful in the context of the local church or Scripture. As we see in Scripture, marriage is not the best cure-all for our broken society and solution for people problems, despite “just-so” studies – Jesus is. Instead, such an over-focus leads to denigrating or relegating singleness to second-class membership. How could it not? If singles are generally seen as incomplete and non-normative, why not encourage and push them to join the common marital majority. And this IMO leads to the local church distorting its Gospel mission and message to our culture. The RCC gets a lot of things wrong, but they and other denominations over the centuries have had far more respect and support for singles than the average American Evangelical church.
And adding more to the pile, the Evangelical culture of marriage and family has led to an expanding culture of easy and multiple divorce and remarriage that mirrors the world, despite all efforts to promote a happy and stable family world. No matter how much resource flogging from parachurch ministries, books, conferences and just having conversations about it, singles and marrieds still struggle with divisive social currents As Jesus and James noted, the local church must reject an attempt to build a “social pyramid,” based on status, or today, marital status.
To me, Paul’s teaching in I Cor 7 is very clear in his acceptance and promotion of singleness as the pathway that allows believers to best prioritize their walk with Christ – esp. in the light of long eternity, where earthly marriage and family bonds will dissolve as unnecessary. As Jesus noted in Matt. 10:37-39, believers must be willing to meet the challenge of prioritizing the work of God ahead of family, if push comes to shove.
IMO Paul and Jesus never taught that marriage and family are not one of the various lists of gifts activated in believers upon conversion. They certainly are great blessings and can be the good of the local church, no doubt! But they are blessings to enjoy IN ADDITION to serving per gifting in the local community. The reality is, across the Evangelical landscape, for many across the Evangelical landscape, marriage and family becomes distractions from or substitutes for church service.
You recount the despair of one person experienced in trying to find positive relationships with opposite sex, let alone a romantic relationship, in the local church. The better solution is Jesus, not marriage – plus this would seem to be a perfect time for those more mature and alert to reach out to and come alongside the struggling – these situations take time and lots of grace. For many, marriage is hard but glorious – but it must not become a “false summit” or the settled standard for the Evangelical view of the Christian life. To over-promote it and make it the peak of the social pyramid in the local church is a recipe for disaster IMO.
Sorry for the long-windedness! I've been thinking about this for decades!
Ah, my friend, wait till you start sending single people on the rounds of the various churches in the area and discover that the situation is the same in all of them.
Really appreciate this series Samuel! In so many ways I have contributed to this problem. But also the church has helped me to pursue godlinss in singleness even when I probably should have been dating. And so many church members (mainly husbands) have helped me see the great and joyous benefit of finding a spouse. A gift that is the creational norm for most Christians.
I have been discussing the topics from this brief series a lot among my peers (both men and women) and its been encouraging how its resonated with us.
Good thoughts, Samuel. My own particular church network runs a Bible Institute where people can come for anywhere from a month to a year to study and grow. Anyone can go, but especially young people fresh out of high school are encouraged to go there for a term or two.
A secondary benefit is that it serves as a place where young men and women from our churches can meet each other. I met my wife there and we married after dating long distance for about a year.
Excellent work, and I'm glad to see someone pointing this out. It seems perfectly clear that God intends marriage for his children, both as a means of procreation and a means of sanctification (those two are linked by the way). I can't help but wonder if the "controversy" that comes with making this observation isn't so much about the observation itself, but more a product of not wanting people to feel inferior for not being married, whatever their reasons or circumstances are. Which is a fine thing to want! But it won't do to pretend that marriage doesn't provide something God wants his people to have in the normal course of life. A pastor put it to me this way before I got married: "Marriage is like God giving you a holiness lab partner. You work it out together, through him, and you're holier for it." After more than a decade of marriage, I completely agree.
Thoughtful and persuasive, Samuel. If you haven't yet, I recommend the book Marriage: Its Foundation, Theology, and Mission in a Changing World. It's an excellent resource for much of what you're talking about here, and dives pretty deeply into both the theological basis for marriage and its practical realities for the church.
I really appreciate your thoughts here and it gives me much to consider as my wife and I consider how to shepherd our children.
I also appreciate much of what you write regarding the perils of the distorting effects of internet/social media on many facets of life.
With that said, are you aware that the writer you recommended via email a couple of days ago uses language that should be quite offensive, if not blasphemous, to a thoughtful Christian? I only read a portion of one of their most recent articles and was surprised and dismayed at their invoking of God's name in such a banal manner.
I am sure some would take issue with my taking issue with this and argue that I am being too sensitive, but I try (sometimes more successfully than others) to be mindful of what I'm filling my heart and mind with and was caught completely off guard when I read his article after such a glowing recommendation from you.
I do not want to take away from the insights on this topic as well as others that you provide, but I wasn't sure how else to reach you as I'm not big on social media and I wanted to at least point it out in case you were not aware.
It's within that response that I found the objectionable/offensive language and what struck me as an obvious lack of reverence in general.
Thanks for your prompt reply and I hope my comments serve their intended purpose and do not come across as though I consider myself "holier than thou" in any respect.
Freddie deBoer (full disclosure, I once cohosted a podcast where he was a guest and we talked about his then-current book) isn't publicly a Christian, and is irreverent toward pretty much everyone and everything - including the metaphorical sacred cows worshipped by those who ostensibly share his secular Leftist politics.
Definitely not the sort of guy anyone should turn to for spiritual edification, but I think a Christian with a well-developed sense of discernment can learn something from observing who FdB criticizes and on what grounds.
Thanks for the reply. You might be right, but my observation is that most people, myself included, drastically overestimate how developed their sense of discernment truly is. There is much that professing Christians are willing to ingest that is of no benefit at all, let alone spiritual benefit, which simply scratches an itch the world, the flesh, and the devil convinced them needs to be scratched.
Could you elaborate on your distinction of marriage as an ultimate good and singleness as something that “becomes good” in certain contexts? Doesn’t marriage also become good in certain contexts as opposed to others? Or is it simply because marriage is a picture of the church and Christ that makes it an ultimate good as opposed to derivative?
My next comment is directed at some of the comments rather than the article. As a single woman in her mid 20s who wants to be married and is in a situation similar to Julia’s daughters, I am tired of the refrain that marriage is the most sanctifying thing we can experience. I read something by Lore Ferguson Wilbert that has comforted me and turned that notion on its head: whatever situation God has placed us in, that is what will most sanctify us right now. Understanding sanctification that way helps keep singles from feeling less than/incomplete or blame themselves for their singleness, as well as rightly takes their focus from discouragement about their current state and refocuses it on how God is sanctifying them through unwanted singleness. Marriage isn’t “leveling up,” but statements such as what I have referenced have that hurtful tinge to them for singles.
As always, you've given us alot to think about, both philosophically and practically - thank you!
I admit that growing up with all brothers and now having all daughters has shifted my perspective on this topic. As a guy, the "control" over dating was really up to me - if I wanted to date a girl, I should ask her out. Having daughters in a Christian context, however, is different; propriety dictates them waiting on being asked. And so, has a girl "failed" if she is single, yet never asked out? If you believe that God's best for you is marriage, then it's hard not to think that. I mean, I come from a subset of Christianity where heading off to Christian college meant getting a degree AND getting a spouse. That thinking may not be as pronounced now, but I do remember the very real feeling of failure when my 22 year old peers finished their undergrad degrees only to come home single.
Perhaps then, it's this sense of "God's best" and "success/failure" that haven't been taught very skillfully - or biblically - in the church. I've yet to meet a single person in my young adult group (part of my pastoral oversight in my church) who doesn't want to eventually get married. For some, it's laziness; for others, it's fear based on past (bad) experiences. But they do want it - they just don't know how to get there from where they are now. Personally, I cringe when I hear well-meaning older saints openly ask these young adults why they aren't dating anyone. Maybe I should be more comfortable with these questions; but the insinuation is that the single person is failing by not dating. And in the case of young women, this is a "failure" that seems largely out of their control (unless they are really pretty, at which point something must be wrong with them, since guys would TOTALLY ask them on dates all the time, right?).
To me, then, this is where the theology of spiritual family is so attractive and applicable. This Western pathway to marriage can be encouraged while not promoted to the status of spiritual success, or worse yet, spiritual completion. Marriage and its intrinsic value can be extolled publicly, but not as the recipe for your best life now.
Great writing, Samuel - and thank you for engaging with us, your readers. This is time well spent.
"If a church finds itself in a situation where there are numerous single people in its membership who are both ready for and desire marriage, but the church itself cannot help them meet that desire within the congregation, then leaders of the church need to seriously consider how other gospel-preaching churches in the area could help realize this desire...I am saying that churches that believe in and preach the intrinsic, gospel-displaying value of marriage should take it seriously enough to admit when members may need a different context to experience it."
One possibility, as weird as it might sound on the surface, would be for different churches of the same or similar denominations within a given area to organize singles get-togethers. Particularly for people like Julia's daughters, who don't want to do online dating (and I don't blame them), and people who go to small churches, that could be extremely helpful.
I will also note that while I know that "churches with single women but few single men" is apparently the norm, it is something that I have experienced the exact opposite of. Of the four churches I have attended in the past six years (not church hopping, just moving around some), three of them have had more single young men than single young women, and I'm not sure about the fourth. I will note that these churches were in rural and remote areas, so there may be a geographical component to this disparity, one I'm not sure could be overcome. Again, coordination between churches would be key here; given the congregationalist tendencies of American Christians, even among more hierarchical denominations, and the issues inherent with starting long-distance relationships, however, I'm not sure if that would necessarily work.
Wonderful and full agreement. I was purposefully introduced to my late wife at a church she and I were both visiting (in England - Paulette was American) by Mark Dever, who was then on that church's staff. It was a deliberate matchmaking exercise by Mark. And it worked! Paulette and I got married (Mark preached at our wedding) and she and I were happily married for just under 27 years, until she died of Parkinson's Disease. What was wrong with that? The church that Paulette and I attended for 25 years had a vicar who always hoped that his staff would intermarry, which they did, and to magnificent success, Stephen and Emma Witmer being just one happy example. Pastors: go for it!
Hi Samuel - I got to your piece via Aaron Renn's weekly link roundup, and really had my interest piqued at the paragraph that starts with "In my experience, many singles in the church desire marriage very much and don’t know how to obtain it."
A few months ago I was thinking about this and outlined what local churches might do to help. Here's the short outline, and there's a much longer one available if anyone's interested:
1. Get together with other similarly-minded congregations in your area and start organizing singles events for young Christians.
2. Require the people interested to answer basic questions of interest to a potential mate (height/weight, fitness routines, career path, desire for children, etc.). Your goal is just to get them thinking about this stuff, not to use in pairing them off.
3. This part is vital: curate your invite list for each event to ensure an even balance of men and women.
If each congregation has more single females than males, how could you curate the invite list for each event without giving great offense to the excluded females?
The least bad way that I've thought of is 1) any woman who brings a single guy that she can't date (e.g. her brother or cousin) gets in automatically, and 2) a lottery for everyone else.
Excellent writing as usual brother! Thanks very much for diving in again on these important topics! Below are some quick thoughts that hopefully give a bit more context and maybe some useful takes on some of the issues about singles, marriage, family and the local church.
My perspective may be kind of unique – never having been married and having been an active member of churches and singles groups of all sizes - from small to mega-church. Also BTW, I’ve found Barry Danylak’s book, “Redeeming Singleness,” to be the best serious and most accessible study of the Bible’s description and “teaching” about singleness.
As with you, I also believe the local church is the best, true hope for the Kingdom’s footprint in this world. It defines the community of all believers – as both Paul and Peter noted and Jesus assumed. Each believer, married or single, is a “brick in the wall,” mortared with application of spiritual gifts. To me the question of marital or family status should be secondary and not a litmus test, in terms of church structure. The local church was not meant to be built on a matrix of family units – the family is not the lowest common denominator.
In terms of relationships, marriage is certainly different from other types of relationships! It is truly special and culturally common! But I don’t believe it is the best one, that every believer should strive hard for it – nor is it mandated by Scripture for everyone in the world, or in the church… Given, as you note, its temporary place in human history this side of history, this should influence the choices one makes or the actions one takes.
My perspective on your 2 reasons sketched out in the 3rd paragraph.
1. Both marriage and singleness are equally accepted as normal choice or behavior in the context of the local church. Why? Because we have the example of Jesus, Paul, John, Timothy, Titus, Jeremiah, Elijah, Daniel, etc. in Scripture to show the integrative reality of single person contributions – it is assumed in practice. For something that has become SO central to most evangelicals today, there is precious little prescriptive detail, or even good marriage examples to point to, in Scripture. Lots must be read in or extrapolated from Scripture to support the vast amount of teaching, parachurch ministries, books and conferences that has proliferated over the last 50 years.
2. Also I don’t think it’s necessary to introduce philosophic language to describe the “nature” or “design” of marriage in Scripture. Scripture assumes marriage and family as a given, but we don’t see it weaponized to the point we can use in our American culture wars. Of course, Paul uses marriage as one illustration to describe Christ’s special loving and leader relationship to his Church – but not as a Gospel component per se. To me it seems marriage is so often dragged in to do duty far beyond its Bible “brief.”
I don’t see that teaching marriage is an absolute good is helpful in the context of the local church or Scripture. As we see in Scripture, marriage is not the best cure-all for our broken society and solution for people problems, despite “just-so” studies – Jesus is. Instead, such an over-focus leads to denigrating or relegating singleness to second-class membership. How could it not? If singles are generally seen as incomplete and non-normative, why not encourage and push them to join the common marital majority. And this IMO leads to the local church distorting its Gospel mission and message to our culture. The RCC gets a lot of things wrong, but they and other denominations over the centuries have had far more respect and support for singles than the average American Evangelical church.
And adding more to the pile, the Evangelical culture of marriage and family has led to an expanding culture of easy and multiple divorce and remarriage that mirrors the world, despite all efforts to promote a happy and stable family world. No matter how much resource flogging from parachurch ministries, books, conferences and just having conversations about it, singles and marrieds still struggle with divisive social currents As Jesus and James noted, the local church must reject an attempt to build a “social pyramid,” based on status, or today, marital status.
To me, Paul’s teaching in I Cor 7 is very clear in his acceptance and promotion of singleness as the pathway that allows believers to best prioritize their walk with Christ – esp. in the light of long eternity, where earthly marriage and family bonds will dissolve as unnecessary. As Jesus noted in Matt. 10:37-39, believers must be willing to meet the challenge of prioritizing the work of God ahead of family, if push comes to shove.
IMO Paul and Jesus never taught that marriage and family are not one of the various lists of gifts activated in believers upon conversion. They certainly are great blessings and can be the good of the local church, no doubt! But they are blessings to enjoy IN ADDITION to serving per gifting in the local community. The reality is, across the Evangelical landscape, for many across the Evangelical landscape, marriage and family becomes distractions from or substitutes for church service.
You recount the despair of one person experienced in trying to find positive relationships with opposite sex, let alone a romantic relationship, in the local church. The better solution is Jesus, not marriage – plus this would seem to be a perfect time for those more mature and alert to reach out to and come alongside the struggling – these situations take time and lots of grace. For many, marriage is hard but glorious – but it must not become a “false summit” or the settled standard for the Evangelical view of the Christian life. To over-promote it and make it the peak of the social pyramid in the local church is a recipe for disaster IMO.
Sorry for the long-windedness! I've been thinking about this for decades!
Thanks for continuing this discussion. I expect it will continue as you respond to further questions and objections.
Ah, my friend, wait till you start sending single people on the rounds of the various churches in the area and discover that the situation is the same in all of them.
Really appreciate this series Samuel! In so many ways I have contributed to this problem. But also the church has helped me to pursue godlinss in singleness even when I probably should have been dating. And so many church members (mainly husbands) have helped me see the great and joyous benefit of finding a spouse. A gift that is the creational norm for most Christians.
I have been discussing the topics from this brief series a lot among my peers (both men and women) and its been encouraging how its resonated with us.
Good thoughts, Samuel. My own particular church network runs a Bible Institute where people can come for anywhere from a month to a year to study and grow. Anyone can go, but especially young people fresh out of high school are encouraged to go there for a term or two.
A secondary benefit is that it serves as a place where young men and women from our churches can meet each other. I met my wife there and we married after dating long distance for about a year.
Excellent work, and I'm glad to see someone pointing this out. It seems perfectly clear that God intends marriage for his children, both as a means of procreation and a means of sanctification (those two are linked by the way). I can't help but wonder if the "controversy" that comes with making this observation isn't so much about the observation itself, but more a product of not wanting people to feel inferior for not being married, whatever their reasons or circumstances are. Which is a fine thing to want! But it won't do to pretend that marriage doesn't provide something God wants his people to have in the normal course of life. A pastor put it to me this way before I got married: "Marriage is like God giving you a holiness lab partner. You work it out together, through him, and you're holier for it." After more than a decade of marriage, I completely agree.
Thoughtful and persuasive, Samuel. If you haven't yet, I recommend the book Marriage: Its Foundation, Theology, and Mission in a Changing World. It's an excellent resource for much of what you're talking about here, and dives pretty deeply into both the theological basis for marriage and its practical realities for the church.
I really appreciate your thoughts here and it gives me much to consider as my wife and I consider how to shepherd our children.
I also appreciate much of what you write regarding the perils of the distorting effects of internet/social media on many facets of life.
With that said, are you aware that the writer you recommended via email a couple of days ago uses language that should be quite offensive, if not blasphemous, to a thoughtful Christian? I only read a portion of one of their most recent articles and was surprised and dismayed at their invoking of God's name in such a banal manner.
I am sure some would take issue with my taking issue with this and argue that I am being too sensitive, but I try (sometimes more successfully than others) to be mindful of what I'm filling my heart and mind with and was caught completely off guard when I read his article after such a glowing recommendation from you.
I do not want to take away from the insights on this topic as well as others that you provide, but I wasn't sure how else to reach you as I'm not big on social media and I wanted to at least point it out in case you were not aware.
God bless.
Greetings, and thank you for the encouraging words. I'm not sure I know what writer you're referring to. Can you specify?
You're quite welcome.
Here is the article which contains a link to his "official response" to feedback he had received.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/my-official-response-to-critics-of
It's within that response that I found the objectionable/offensive language and what struck me as an obvious lack of reverence in general.
Thanks for your prompt reply and I hope my comments serve their intended purpose and do not come across as though I consider myself "holier than thou" in any respect.
Freddie deBoer (full disclosure, I once cohosted a podcast where he was a guest and we talked about his then-current book) isn't publicly a Christian, and is irreverent toward pretty much everyone and everything - including the metaphorical sacred cows worshipped by those who ostensibly share his secular Leftist politics.
Definitely not the sort of guy anyone should turn to for spiritual edification, but I think a Christian with a well-developed sense of discernment can learn something from observing who FdB criticizes and on what grounds.
Thanks for the reply. You might be right, but my observation is that most people, myself included, drastically overestimate how developed their sense of discernment truly is. There is much that professing Christians are willing to ingest that is of no benefit at all, let alone spiritual benefit, which simply scratches an itch the world, the flesh, and the devil convinced them needs to be scratched.