2022-10-13 A Meditation on Handling Expectations

“Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” (1 Co 7:1–5 ESV)

Christian teaching finds purchase first here and then outside the walls, it finds purchase there. In it the saved soul is a discovering soul, the saved soul is the soul in some sense in dialog, humble dialog, with the Spirit; at least, in humility on that partially unseen track that the Spirit carries us down. So we believe we are those saved, and that in spite of all remedies and popular prescriptions that point elsewhere: “Get married”; “Stop being a sinner”; the exasperated disbelief that, far from secondary matters, it was precisely to heal a church’s marriage culture that Jesus, then Paul, preached.

For we all do seek out, on some level, intimacy; we see our heart warm to scenarios even just of nearness in friendship; yet also we are those who are content, mystically so, with the Presence just of the Holy Spirit of Christ. This is, like Jesus’ fast in the wilderness, a mystery. For, “someone has got to carry on the family tradition”; dear One Who Prescribes: see the progeny we each have in those who have drawn near to our smoldering firebrand of faith. See the progeny of a heart tuned to the reality of Original Sin, yet not downcast, unfrustrated, peace and joy in believing. That Jesus came for us; that Jesus knew what was in a man or in a woman; that Jesus saw our struggles, and wept, and took up His Cross.

So we speak crazy talk about such matters, knowing only this: it was no prescription Paul and Jesus provided, when they said it is better not to marry (Matt 19:10; 1 Co 7:8); rather, it was to clear the slate, to acknowledge the simple realities of what community and our own heart is struggling with, what we seek out, what is our Edenic blessed estate as those rightly signed over unto pairing up.

So this is no diatribe against marriage, but rather a meditation on many topics that may occupy a similar place in our heart: “Will I ever please my father and mother?”; “When can I see this friend again?”; “Who is going to carry the gospel torch today?”. We are. We are not ashamed of the Gospel; we are now fully mature as recipients of a Trust, a praying and oft celibate Church culture, that does often underappreciated service to the community. And we rejoice together in this understanding that, yes, the heart can be free of guile and free of surreptitious desires, wanton lusts being the classic explanation as far as what Original Sin consists of.

Original sin is the awareness that said lust can rear its head in the guise of something easy or familiar, but more than that, it is all-encompassing of sins like selfish thinking, pride, false ambition, jealousy, hatred. All these we do need divine protection from; all these can whirl back to the foreground though our house was for a season cleaned (Matt 12:44). So we dwell near to a place of the cleansing Blood of Jesus. We hear, with ears unfanciful, unexcited, patient, and sage, to the simple love coming through the airwaves.