Singlehood: Living the Hidden Life

Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. 1Co 7:27 

It is that subject which you will never hear being preached in church, unless it is on a wedding day, and where it is always mentioned in a most contemptuous way. Weddings or dowry celebrations are those places where a single person feels most lonely. The singles are usually derided, ridiculed and generally made a laughing stock. If you are single and you are invited to those places, you need to pack your sense of humor to the hilt, but if you don’t have it don’t go, because it will depress you.

But first let us admit the obvious: it is not normal, and the first instinct a person gets is that it is a rebellion! It doesn’t matter that it is scriptural, but tradition rules against it. Here in Africa it is usually placed in the same category of behaviors which are regarded as ‘western rot.’ And even today many church goers believe Solomon’s Song of Songs found its way in the Bible by mistake. How, they ask, a book containing salacious words like ‘kisses’, ‘breasts’, ‘thigh’ ‘bed’ and ‘sleep’ be included in God’s Most Holy Book? But thanks be to God. If the Bible were wholly a work of man’s own inspiration, all the characters in it would be angels! The information which we would miss from such a Bible would be staggering.

Celibacy is not Paul’s Original Thought

A lot of people assume celibacy came with Paul… but no, it is just that Paul, being celibate himself, devoted a whole chapter to it (He may have been married before in his earlier life, or he may have been widowed… but the Bible is not specific on this matter... And celibacy though synonymous with abstinence, but they do not exactly mean the same thing). In this letter Paul had been answering questions raised by the Christian congregation at Corinth concerning many topics, and celibacy is just one of them. So Paul gives that direction, but being very careful to differentiate between what is his own opinion and that ‘of commandment.’ And he begins by his own view: ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman…’ The rest is an expansion on this theme, where he delineates the merits and demerits of the same, and which he sums up in the following statements, ‘For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that… Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called…for it is better to marry than to burn’ (1Co 7:1, 7, 20, 9b).

And so Paul lived what he preached, and the one thing which consumed him most was the return of Christ… For him, it was very imminent, and there was no time to waste on anything else in life, even rejoicing! ‘But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not’ (1Co 7:29-30).

‘As unknown, and yet well known’.

The life we live is an epistle not written with ink but with our lives, wrote the apostle… and yet (and for most) that life is very much hid with God in Christ, as he extolls elsewhere… (Col 3:1-30). We don’t see faith, but we know it is there, we don’t see hope, but we avow it, and we shall love, though it be but a rose full of thorns…

So we may feel like we never quite know Paul well, or Christ, or God…these we may feel them distant sometimes, as if something existing only in the periphery… and we may have lost that original fervor and power, but we pray we shall not lose so great a salvation… ‘which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?’ (Heb 2:3-4).

No, though we don’t conform to the traditions of this world, though we be ridiculed, though we be hated, maligned and regarded as old fashioned, but yet we shall not give up in ‘contending for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.’ As it is written, ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed… As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things’ (2Co 4:8-9; 2Co 6:9-10). For to lose this is to lose everything, ‘But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul’ (Heb 10:39).  Paul fought a good fight, he finished the race, and he kept the faith, and shall we not fight a similar battle up to the end?

And so we passed through death into life… we forgot what we had known all our lives to embrace a life which no one had seen… We know Golgotha, and we know the garden and the empty tomb, but we shall not dwell here forever… we shall move on to Galilee now, for that’s where the new life really starts. So where have you been called to go? I know there is a wedding in Cana, and it is good, and we shall probably return there some day… ‘Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.’