The reason they attack marriage as an idol is to protect the real ones in our day - careers, degrees, status and attainment and affluence and more... especially for women - aka, the idols of feminism, which the church has by and large bowed every knee to and every tongue confesses.
Saying to women that want to be married that their affliction is somehow a “gift”, and then accusing them of making it an idol and to suppress their idol with a career is cruel. Time to delete this Ligonier
“Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach;”
— 1 Timothy 5:14
I made a bit of a tone deaf comment on this post, and a couple of Twitter bros called me out on it, rightly so. This woman says people can make marriage an idol, and I replied, people can make anything an idol. As Calvin said, the human heart is an idol factory. But what I was thinking when I wrote it was, what a stupid thing to say, not that I agreed with her. Of course marriage can be an idol, but that's not the point in an age of marriage rates going through the floor. One of those replies to me was by @Texasnacho, and it was spot on:
Anything can be an Idol, but if you look at our culture, we don't have a problem with marriage being one of them. We have the opposite problem that marriage and children are held in such low regard, even within the church, that we are on the precipice of demographic collapse. God's first commandment to mankind is "to be fruitful and multiply." Anything that goes against that is from Satan.
The idols of our culture is education, degrees, and careers.
I wrote a post on, "Marriage and the Great American Baby Shortage," so I'm on the right side in this debate. I'll link to it in the comments.
@Ligonier Our cultures problem is not young women idolizing marriage. It is them taking her advice. Rejecting acting like they want to be wives as it’s an idol. Going to college, becoming boss babes, loading up debt and poor decisions. The mindset she is encouraging is high risk.
SINGLE WOMEN SHOULD BE FRUITFUL
The question is *how* they should be fruitful.
The below clip from @Ligonier warns single women against idolizing marriage, and encourages them not to simply wait for it, but rather to go be fruitful with other things in the meantime. This fruitfulness is then exemplified in three categories: career, church, and family. In that order.
The reactionary feeding frenzy in the comments seems to miss the obvious point – that we are talking about what women are supposed to do until they get married, not recommending that they don’t get married. The comments yell that young women should get married as if young women can just go to the local husband store and order up their favorite model in their price range.
Finding a godly spouse really can be difficult. Certainly, no one should think that single Christian women should literally sit around and do nothing until prince charming shows up at the front door. It is good and right for them to find ways to be productive.
However. With great respect for Ligonier, I think the clip’s advice misses the mark pretty heavily.
1. Single women should absolutely bear fruit in the meantime. But we should encourage them to bear fruits of godly womanhood. Frontloading the importance of a degree and a career is a mistake. A degree and a career are calibrated to take the heart of a young woman who wants to be married and redirect it towards something else entirely.
This sort of advice encourages young women into debt, out of the protective care of their fathers, and into a worldview that is not easily compatible with a Titus 2 view of womanhood. Once a woman has her degree and her career, that’s a lot to give up to “just change diapers.”
Just look at the statistics for college educated women. Is this really what we want to encourage?
2. Rather than frontloading college and career, encouraging young women to be fruitful in the feminine arts – ministering to church community, to extended family, developing homemaking or home economic skills – this would be much better advice.
(This is completely compatible with continuing to *learn.* A woman can be very well educated without having a college degree and a career.)
Some young ladies may need to get a job, and that’s fine… But that’s very different than encouraging them to go start a career. If they can pour their feminine glory into the relational needs of their community, this is a much better form of fruitfulness for women, and will transfer much easier into being a helper suitable for a husband.
3. The warning against idolizing marriage is… A little weird. I guess theoretically it is possible to idolize marriage, if you have no joy without it and it is your all-consuming passion.
But that’s not the same thing as really wanting to get married. Actually, most people *should* to want to get married. Scripture literally tells younger widows to get married (1 Tim. 5:14) and builds its counsel to women around marriage and the family (Titus 2, 1 Tim. 2).
Pursuing marriage is not idolizing marriage.
Much better advice was given by RC Sproul himself: “Those seeking a life partner need to do certain obvious things such as going where other single people congregate. They need to be involved in activities that will bring them in close communication with other single Christians.” (Thanks to @jonharris1989 for this quote, go read the whole quote on his timeline.)
Our message to Christian single women should not be “this is a wonderful season, a gift, enjoy it, go start a career.”
It should be “Have godly advisors, remain in your father’s house, throw yourself into godly feminine fruitfulness, and find ways to get to know good single men. Follow the example of Ruth. You can actually pursue marriage.”
@nisafeminista@Logoleptic@godlywomanhood Get ready to have your mind blown.
No one’s A$$ can read. You read with your eyes and mind. You should have paid attention in biology class.
Low class, hood rat.
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@Logoleptic@godlywomanhood That’s a fascinating statement. …do not apply”
So if 9 out of 10 redheaded men you met r@ped you, you would not start avoiding redheaded men?
Truly amazing how willing liberals are to absorb harm and to invite harm to the society they rule in order to signal their own virtue.
@Logoleptic@godlywomanhood You seriously can’t make the connection? If med school spots are a limited resource, men in those spots would lead to more hours of medical service being provided.
Are you a bot? So much for ai being smart
@AFpost Statistically if one black is in the jury pool it will be a hung jury. Libs convinced them they are victims and now they can always find a way to justify bad behavior.
"ALMOST THREE TIMES as many children drown in bathtubs annually as die from ALL firearm accidents combined — including adults. And forty more drown in five-gallon water buckets. The kind you buy at Home Depot for $4.99. I have given this information at talks and watched jaws drop, because people genuinely believe the number is in the thousands."
@Eric_Conn A point you miss as that as the women get more and more educated, the pool of men they, on average, are willing to accept gets smaller and smaller.
@Logoleptic@godlywomanhood I understand you’re not very bright, so let me try to help you.
Pretend there is only 1 med school spot for your tribe. If spot is filled by a man he will provide services for 40 years. If by female she will retire in 25. You know you will need care in 30 yrs.
Who gets it?
@Logoleptic@godlywomanhood What do you call the last place position in medical school graduates? Doctor.
Point is, DEI in fields like medicine, are a terrible disservice to society and if we want more hrs of med service, preference should be given to people who will be practicing longer.