Thank you all for your input on my last post! I just wrote up a post for my blog, including my last post here but adding on a lot more, and I wanted to share it here as well
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hey lindsay. it's been awhile. i wanted to say i greatly enjoyed your post. very good argument. and it's just what i needed to hear right now. i don't believe it's simply what i wanted to hear (though it was), but it was God-inspired and it spoke to me. i especially appreciated your food analogy. good point. and i won't deny that i have been plenty guilty of gluttony in desiring a mate (not just with sex, but with companionship). However, the point is well taken that the need and desire itself is not wrong, but natural, healthy, and in need of being fed. and like food, we need only go after the type of person that will best serve to give us what we need in order to glorify Christ. we do have to wait sometimes and so PATIENCE is the key word. not so much CONTENTMENT. who hasn't had to wait at a restaurant or in a drive-thru for their food? we have to wait sometimes for what we want. but we shouldn't bite God's head off. first we have to place our order to start. "you have not because you ask not." once that is done, we need to let God
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Re: very goodlilyforchristSeptember 2 2006, 03:29:27 UTC
Thank you for your reply! I enjoyed reading your take on it. I think you're right about the issue being patience rather than contentment. I'm glad you got something out of it!
I agree with much of what you wrote. You make many valid points, that are too often neglected. I would only again emphasize the importance of the vocation to the single life, which should not be neglected either, given Paul's words on the matter in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, especially verse 39 where he states:
"So he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do better." (1 Corinthians 7:39 RSV-CE)
Certainly that would not apply to the human race as a whole, of course. Many are called to the vocation of marriage obviously (cf. Gn 2:23-24). But one should not diminish the value of the single life, either, which I have seen others, in their efforts to promote the great good of marriage, have denigrated.
That said, here's one Chesterton quote I like a lot, from his novel Manalive (1911):
"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline."
Obviously, I don't agree with it completely, but I love the quote!
"Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be
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Now I just need to get you reading Chesterton (preferably Orthodoxy)..... :-)
Speaking of which, I just did a Google search a minute ago, and I found an excerpt of one of Elisabeth Elliot's books (taken from Love Has a Price Tag), in which she quotes the following about marriage from Chesterton's book The Defendant ("A Defense of Rash Vows").
Admittedly, it doesn't deal specifically with what you were writing about, but....it's still a good quote about marriage.
I know why vows, not pleasant sentiments, are required. G. K. Chesterton said they are "a yoke imposed by all lovers on themselves. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern [Chesterton wrote more than seventy years ago] sages offer to the lover, with an ill-flavored grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens as the record of his highest moment
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(I'm going to be less verbose here than I was on your last post on this topic- I summed up most of my thoughts on the subject there!)
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"So he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do better." (1 Corinthians 7:39 RSV-CE)
Certainly that would not apply to the human race as a whole, of course. Many are called to the vocation of marriage obviously (cf. Gn 2:23-24). But one should not diminish the value of the single life, either, which I have seen others, in their efforts to promote the great good of marriage, have denigrated.
That said, here's one Chesterton quote I like a lot, from his novel Manalive (1911):
"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline."
Obviously, I don't agree with it completely, but I love the quote!
Reply
From Orthodoxy by Chesterton, "The Paradoxes of Christianity".
"Thus, the double charges of the secularists, though throwing nothing but darkness and confusion on themselves, throw a real light on the faith. It is true that the historic Church has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised the family; has at once (if one may put it so) been fiercely for having children and fiercely for not having children. It has kept them side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty gray. In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolized in the statement that white is a colour: not merely the absence of a colour. All that I am urging here can be ( ... )
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Speaking of which, I just did a Google search a minute ago, and I found an excerpt of one of Elisabeth Elliot's books (taken from Love Has a Price Tag), in which she quotes the following about marriage from Chesterton's book The Defendant ("A Defense of Rash Vows").
Admittedly, it doesn't deal specifically with what you were writing about, but....it's still a good quote about marriage.
I know why vows, not pleasant sentiments, are required. G. K. Chesterton said they are "a yoke imposed by all lovers on themselves. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern [Chesterton wrote more than seventy years ago] sages offer to the lover, with an ill-flavored grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens as the record of his highest moment ( ... )
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