Singleness

From Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today's Church by Christine A. Colón and Bonnie E. Field:

Page 208:

In her [Laura Smit] discussion of Paul's view of singleness in I Corinthians, she remarks,

"It does seem…that singleness must be the default choice for a Christian, given the clear preference for singleness expressed in this text and in Jesus' teachings. In other words, the burden of proof is on the decision to marry, not the decision to remain single. Christians should assume that they will be single unless and until they have a godly reason to marry. Christians should never marry out of insecurity, fear, a desire to escape the parental home, a need for affirmation, or a search for financial stability. Christians should only marry those who enhance their ability to live Christlike lives, those able to be true partners in Christian service, those who give them a vision of the image of God and the glory of Christ."


Page 215-216:

Developing this "larger capacity for love" is essential for today's evangelical church, which, too often, is so concerned with preserving its families that it ignores many who desperately long for the Christian community that the church has the potential to provide. In her discussion of this issue, Laura Smit equates today's Protestant church with an example she draws from Langdon Gilkey's book Shantung Compound in which the author records his experiences in an internment camp during the Japanese occupation of China. She states,

"Most of the missionaries were detained with their families, and their care for their families trumped their sense of obligation to the rest of the community. No one had enough space to live with much privacy, but some families who had arrived earlier than others had two small rooms for their family of four or five people, whereas the later arrivals had only one. Gilkey was in charge of housing assignments, but when he tried to get some of the missionaries who had two rooms to rearrange themselves to make the space allocation more fair, he met complete resistance. No family was willing to sacrifice anything for the good of the community, and several parents appealed to their moral duty to look out for the good of their families as a defense for such selfishness."

What stands out to Gilkey and to Smit is that in contrast to the Protestant missionaries who separated themselves into distinct family units and placed their families above everything else, the Catholic priests who, as Gilkey records, "mixed…made friends with anyone in camp, helped out, played cards, smoked, and joked with them…were a means of grace to the whole community." Without family ties, the priests had the freedom to express their love beyond family boundaries to include everyone within this newly formed community.