In the Navy...
Submitted by F.O.D. on March 02 1999 at 12:26:46
In reply to I'm not so sure that it is so great.... Submitted by Ben on March 01 1999 at 08:06:47
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...you can sail the seven seas... Hi Ben, that's a good question about this celibacy stuff, about who actually wants it, what it means for God to consider it good and so on. Thinking about it, it seems to me the Bible presents celibacy as ideal because of the present context we find ourselves in, rather than being ideal in and of itself. I mean, it's the difference between war and peace. In peacetime, a man wants to settle down, get a wife and kids, work at his job (a "normal" man anyway). But in wartime, though he may still want to do that, he no longer has that luxury. There's no time for sitting around, there's work to be done! He has to defend his country, or conquer some foreign evil, or some such. He must be a soldier, not a husband. The Bible tells us that we Christians are soldiers engaged in a war, "not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph 5:12). Our task is to advance the Kingdom of God, proclaiming to all what Jesus has down and setting free those who are captive to darkness. So I think that's what Paul is getting at in 1 Cor 7 when he says it's good not to marry. I don't think he is expecting us not to have any sexual desires, but rather he is aware that we have a task to do, and being married distracts us from that task. That fits in with the comments he makes there in v 29-35. "What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short." "For the world in its present form is passing away." "An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs." The same idea comes up in 2 Tim 2:4 too: "No-one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs - he wants to please his commanding officer." What I'm trying to say is that the point about celibacy being a "good" thing, is not at all to say sexual feelings are bad, no! Sexuality and sexual feelings on the contrary are a very good part of God's creation, created before the Fall of Man. Celibacy is to be seen as "good" only in the sense that we have at the moment the job of restoring a broken world back to its pristine pure state (or more precisely, transforming it to a new restored state that is even better than the original), and being in a sexual relationship distracts us from completing that task. I think, when the war is over, "celibacy" will no longer need to be considered "better". We will have time to enjoy sexual relationships properly. Or rather, that will be the time of the new heaven spoken of in Rev 21, and we will be enjoying whatever that heavenly reality is, of which earthly sexuality is but a mere black&white copy. Fod |