Even though there is no way we can top yesterday’s post (at least I hope not!) I thought we’d keep the theme going and look at another dumb thing the HA teaches about marriage.
I can’t point to a particular audio recording, but I know I’ve heard this teaching multiple times (let me know if you’ve heard it too). It goes something like this:
“If you really want to get married, you are not ready to start a relationship. You should be totally content with the Lord and free of a desire for marriage – and then God will bring you a spouse.”
Let’s take a look at how this squares with Scripture. We might as well go back to where it all started, the first marriage in the Garden of Eden.
Every day of creation, God finishes his work, looks around and says, “This is good.” Then he creates man and puts him to work in the garden. But then he says, “This is NOT good.”
The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Gen. 2:18
If God was like Dave Hasz, He would have said, “Hey, Adam, you need to be content with me! Aren’t I enough for you?”
However, surprisingly, God recognizes that He alone is not sufficient to keep us from loneliness. He created us to be in intimate relationships together.
Let’s fast forward to the New Testament and see what Paul has to say about this.
But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. I Corinthians 7:9
Good thing Dave Hasz isn’t writing Scripture, otherwise this verse would say:
“But if they cannot control themselves, they should not marry because it just proves how immature they are. Instead they should seek contentment with the Lord and wait for Him to bring a spouse.”
This kind of ethic runs throughout TM, i.e. “If you really want something, it means that desire is from the flesh and you should deny yourself and lay that desire down.”
So, why is this a big deal? Surely, its an innocent theological disagreement and/or mistake.
Here’s why its a big deal:
1) If you embrace this kind of thinking, you are saddled with a perpetual feeling of never being good enough because everything you want is somehow bad, just because you want it.
This plays out not only in the marriage realm, but everything else as well. Some intern says, “I want to be a worship leader.” They might be immediately grilled about this desire – is it because they want to be up front? Are they driven by ego? Is this just their flesh?
Of course, those questions are not bad in themselves, but the way they are wielded is unhealthy and defeating. Instead of celebrating and encouraging an intern in the desires God has placed in their heart, they are grilled and confronted.
2) If you embrace this teaching, you become deathly afraid of making decisions. You are torn because you know what you want to do, yet you’ve been told that doing something because you simply want to do it somehow makes it bad. You want to pursue a particular career, or a particular relationship – yet you are paralyzed with fear over whether you will make a mistake and be out of God’s will or whether you will elevate that desire over God.
The truth is that God has created us with certain desires, passions and skills. It is not wrong to value those and to pursue them. In fact, I’d say its wrong to deny the way God created you. There is nothing in Scripture that encourages us to eliminate every desire we have, except our desire for God. Of course, God is to be top in our affections, but that does not mean that we have affections for nothing else. The goal to eliminate all desire is more akin to Buddhism than to Christianity.
As St. Augustine said, “Love God and do what you please.”
22 comments:
RA–
THANK YOU for this one!
can i even tell you how much i struggle with this and didn’t even realize it??
there’s this great guy who has been steadily pursuing me…and he’s fantastic. truly. but the idea of commitment sends me into a near panic-attack…i only recently cut the whole thing off because i couldn’t deal with how real it all felt [per your #2–deathly afraid of making decisions–especially big ones].
not to say that i’m now all fixed–but this post has given me a lot to think/pray about.
“love God and do as you please”…AWESOME. i’ve heard it before, but it rings true again today.
it also provides a stark contrast to a specific teaching of ron’s that i recall disagreeing with at the internship. (and me…disagreeing with something…it must have been off! ha.) he was talking about how as a baby christian, it’s like flying a small plane. the instrument panel is complicated, but there aren’t THAT many knobs or dials or instruments to keep tabs on. he said as you mature, you move up in plane size until eventually you’re flying a 747 with many many more instruments to guide you.
it just seemed off. it still does, whenever i think about it. perhaps i’m remembering it wrong, but it seems like with maturity, things get simpler. (perhaps he wasn’t referring to spirituality, because it seems that perhaps there are more factors we are aware of and have to consider when making adult decisions…but i don’t think that necessarily reflects spiritual maturity?)
RA, I can’t wait for you to get to RL’s teachings on intimacy– which I sent you links for. I listened to part of one last night and was disgusted! It reminded me of how incredibly long-winded RL is.
He talked about how God and his “minions” (though he used something else) designed sex.
Also what was most interesting is how the interns giggled at nearly every time RL used the word sex… which is reminiscent of being a middle school kid hearing “sex” for the first time.
AlumnusMTer – Unfortunately, I think your reaction is really common. If you like this guy and He is marriage material – why cut it off? You don’t have to commit to marriage yet, just get to know each other and see how it goes! I promise its not a sin!!
@gc1998
Oh Ron Luce and his non-sensical allegories.
I saw this crazy old cat lady once at a vet hospital, she was waiting for her appointment in the lobby and sitting next to her were seven cages, each cage containing two cats. When anyone would ask her the names of her pet kitties, she would say something like, “ohhhh that’s mr. butterbowl there, and that’s lady lillypad, and the orange one is hotpocket….” and so on, till she’d named all fourteen cats. I was sitting in that lobby for two hours (with my own cat) and everytime someone new asked her the names of her cats, she’d give each one an entirely different name than what she’d said before. Mr. Butterball became Tiger, Lady Lillypad was Purple Bear, Hotpocket now Rambo… she just pulled that names seemingly out of the air. But she named them with such a fierce passion and love that, if you hadn’t been sitting there listening for two hours, you would have believed those cats were her best pals in the world and not a bundle of strays she’d picked up at a garbage dump.
The point it, I am being satirical. And Ron Luce doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
One of my favorite verses is worth quoting here (not least because it was very meaningful to me just before I got married):
“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)
Of course the Lord should be our source of delight above anything else. But far from removing, repressing, or sublimating all our other desires and delights– God grants that we can have them.
John Piper fans know what I’m talking about: our desires for everything else, properly understood, are expressions of our desire for God, so why would God want us to eliminate them? Rather, He wants us to use the fulfillment of our desires as occasions to delight in Him even more.
This seems to be one of the threads that is weaved throughout my life. I hate it. This makes me so sad how I have treated alot of former potential mates because a year or two after my year at TM I had a fabulous Christian guy pursuing me. I didn’t know what to do. He told me I was not opening up to him so instead of just seeing how things went I told him I wanted to get all of the important people in our life to pray and hear from God whether or not we were meant to be together before I would pursue a further relationship with him. I ended things with him. 🙁
I also had a connection with a guy at the HA go bad when the summer after our year there he had been living in the “real” world and I was still stuck in Legalistic La La Land. He basically got turned off by how legalistic I was and didn’t want to pursue a relationship anymore.
Then when it finally came down to it I married someone who my heart didn’t truly love because I was too afraid to break up with him and was too afraid to follow my heart in the first place.
This type of thinking and teaching can ruin one’s life decisions. I am proof and am still afraid to follow my heart.
RA–
my head knows that what you’re saying is true–but the paralyzing fear doesn’t always want to agree. things are getting fuzzier the longer i’m out, so i can’t remember if this was preached from the front [it probably was. but i can’t remember for sure], or if it was one of those “unspoken” rules that we all lived by–by the overwhelming feeling was that dating was a sin. we were supposed to KNOW that the person was who God had for us, and if we didn’t, we had no business being in a relationship. tie that into the whole “matching visions” ordeal [aka you must have your entire lives planned out from the very beginning].
so while i KNOW that those things are false…i understand…at least in my head, the idea that dating isn’t a sin, and that i don’t have to have everything all figured out RIGHT NOW…i can’t seem to get past it. paralyzed is totally the right word. whenever i think about it…even the idea of dating…i freeze up. because i have that ridiculous mental tape playing in my head–“you should KNOW already if he’s the one…if you don’t, you’re wasting his time and yours. if you don’t KNOW, you could fall into the WRONG relationship…God may have someone else for you, and you’re just not listening hard enough.”
MTer – Well, at least acknowledging this puts you on the path to recovery. It makes me angry that they’ve taught you that the normal maturing and discovery process is somehow wrong, sinful or not God’s best. They set the bar at levels that are so super-spiritual they aren’t even in the Bible…the reality is that we are HUMAN and that is actually ok! God has designed relationships and decisions in such a way that we proceed a little bit at a time and things become clearer to us over time. Of course, some people do recognize their spouse, career, etc. right away – but that is not the normal or only Christian way to do it…
For a long time after the HA, I felt bad about the limitations of my humanity. I thought super-Christian is what God expected of me. Thank God, that is not the case at all.
RA and MTer- I would agree.
Something that turned me off from Christian literature and the like was the whole “I kissed dating goodbye” fiasco of a book and phenomenon. It was reiterated at the HA through Character development classes and the like.
Anon @11:26 – I’m so sorry that you ended up marrying someone that you didn’t love. The crazy teachings have had an effect on all of us and I’m so sorry the way it affected you.
LOL Layne- I totally wanna name my cat hotpocket now.
But anyway, I feel like I’ve heard this kind of preaching before…I can’t quite put my finger on it though. It might have been when I was at the HA, but I was only there for five days.
Thanks RA for posting that, for some reason I’ve had this beat into my head. It might have been at my former church…I dont know. Just shows how much I need to start reading the bible regularly to discern poor teachings.
I rather, enjoyed Ron’s romance series. I use some of those teachings as guide line for my own life. I don’t agree with it all of it, but none of if is too out there.
really any teaching there at Ha are simply guidelines, not doctrine.
as for Heath’s teaching, yea it seems kind of on weird side. but I won’t say anything bad about it, b/c I wasn’t there in the room listening to him or even heard the teaching to get where he is coming from.
Jeremy, there is a link to the audio above.
As for RL’s teachings, they are out there as well.
@Noelle – I will be naming any orange creature that walks through my house ‘Hot Pocket.’ lol.
@Layne – I think that definitely top 5 post’s I’ve seen on the blog. (Yes the cat names do make all the difference) Well done! 🙂
Layne,
I can’t tell if that story is true or not, but I really hope it is. I am laughting just thinking about it….
Hmmm….”free yourself of all desire to truly connect with God and reach spiritual fulfillment”…where have I heard that before…oh that’s right. Buddhism. I wonder when the HA staff converted…
Candor-
This is anon 11:26. I just wanted to say thank you for reaching out and your empathy. It means alot.
I think I disagree that everythign at HA is merely “guidelines” vs actual “doctrine.”
It’s their warped doctrine that leads them to these warped guidelines for life. You will NEVER hear Matt Chandler, John Macarthur, John Piper, or C.S. Lewis making statements like these.
@ annon 11:26,
I know what you are talking about…we are in the same situation. I married a guy that I didn’t truely love because I was too afraid to cut it off and too afraid to follow my heart as well. It makes me sad frequently. I have learned to love my husband and we had a great foundation as friends, but it should have just stayed that way. I feel like I missed out on knowing a true love.
Anon 8:36 – That is heartbreaking.
Whoa, I had just the same problem. I got to this point where I thought my wants couldn’t also be God’s wants. I mean, Mother Teresa WANTED to help orphans in India, but obviously that was just the flesh, because SHE wanted it and not GOD.
Then how can you hear what God is telling you?
I am so confused with Teen Mania.