My cousin Jonathan has created another excellent blog post. He does a good job of talking about something which is so normal in our culture that 98% of us are oblivious to it. What I’m speaking about is how we’ve over-emphasized marriage and “romance”, expecting them to be the ultimate, saving experience in our lives.
Tag: singleness
Problems With Spouse As Best Friend?
It seems that most people maintain that their spouse is and should be their best friend. I like the sound of this. I really do. It’s so… well, romantic. It sounds good and I don’t think it’s wrong. But… I’ve also developed some question for which I don’t yet have answers. Where does this concept
Shane Claiborne on Singleness, Marriage, and Community
…our deepest longing is not for sex but for love and that what we really long for is community. You can live without sex, but you can’t live without love… I still believe there is tons of work to do in the Church—and the world in general—to support celibate singles. So many champions of our
Friendship Between Men and Women: Sacred Friendship Gathering, Part 2
Part 1 One point of emphasis from the conference was in the need for people—Christians especially—to understand that friendships between men and women are actually possible and healthy. One single woman shared about how she had kept men at a distance in order to try and “guard her heart”. She later realized that she was
Book Review: Singled Out, Part 2
(In this second part of the review, I summarize the paradigm contained in the book Singled Out.) It would be difficult to argue that “love” (romance) and sex aren’t the primary values in our culture today (only challenged by money and power). We know virtually everyone deeply desires to be loved, and we believe the
Book Review: Singled Out, Part 1
Singled Out is the best book I’ve read in years—I can hardly say enough good about it. It directly addresses a couple of issues most fundamental to those of us living in our western culture, and does so in a way no one else that I am aware of has done. Beyond that, the conclusions
Rethinking Friendships and “Romance”: Initial Thoughts
The main idea I took from the
Differing Attitudes Toward Friendships With the Opposite Sex
I recently read a blog post by Dan Brennan which I thought was very good. (Unfortunately, at the time of this writing I have not yet had a chance to read his book, “Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions” though it is high on my list.) I wanted to take the time to unpack my explanation of
Choosing a Mate
(Note: my writing here has to do with my wrestling with what the reality of matter seems to be, not what I might think is an ideal.) A while back I was wondering how people choose who they want to marry. This may seem obvious, and of course there are the people who say, “You’ll
Singleness guide
There’s something that I’ve become acutely aware of here recently. As I’ve gone through my life and encountered different experiences, I’ve realize that a lot of things haven’t gone the way that I had been lead to expect they would. One of those areas is certainly the area of love and relationships (and/or lack thereof).