Dear LadyLike: What about remaining single?

Dear LadyLike,

What do you say to a young woman who doesn't want to get married? Is this biblical? Or is it sinful? Related to this: Is there room for single adult women in the life and work of the (LCMS) church? I would really appreciate any thoughts and counsel you have on this topic. 

Dear Lady,

"I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I." 1 Cor. 7:8

1 Corinthians 7 is the go-to passage about the reasons for getting married or not getting married. The bottom line is that most people find that it is not good for them to be alone and make their way through life better if they are married. But some people do not have an inclination to marry built into them. There's nothing wrong with that.

"There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband." (vs. 34)

Remaining celibate is placing one's care in the things of the Lord rather than the things of the world. That is a noble and blessed way of life. It is an act of trust and an investment in one's own spiritual well-being, and a testimony to the intrinsic value of each individual life. A secondary benefit of this is that a person who does not need to be available to an immediate family can be more available to the church.

The form that a single person's service to the church takes is wide open. Other Christian traditions have a system for celibate people to formally devote their entire lives to the church. Lutherans pretty much don't have a thing for that. Loehe's deaconesses were virgins or widows (and left deaconess work if they married), but that is no longer the case.

If this is a deficiency in Lutheranism (and I think it is in some ways, as the lack of formal recognition or position may imply that single people lack a place in the life of the church), it is made up in the Lutheran theology of vocation. A single woman doesn't have to be a nun to serve the church, or even a deaconess, teacher, or managing editor of The Lutheran Witness. She could be a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker. A Christian geologist has at least as much to offer the church as a Minister of Religion-Commissioned. A person who works in a non-church-work field has a non-church-work income from which to tithe, a much better situation for engaging non-Christians than people who work in a church building all day, and evenings and weekends on which to come to church and volunteer. And if a single lady is better at cleaning gutters than she is at teaching Sunday School, that aptitude is no less valuable or welcome. Churches have gutters too.

You just plain don't have to get married if you don't want to. There are a number of costs and disciplines built into that decision. The long term benefit is having forgone the icon and its built-in distractions for the sake of preparing for the real thing: eternal union with the true Bridegroom.

Gertrud von le Fort's book The Eternal Woman includes a profound treatment of the station of virginity. I recommend it for anyone interested in the topic. I also recommend the thoughtful posts of Heather Judd at Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife.

Thanks very much for this question. LadyLike



UPDATE: After posting, I received this valuable correspondence from a reader who gave me permission to reprint it.

Single Christians serve the Church and their neighbors--and I would emphasize, they don't live for themselves.  In our secular culture, you stay single (or get divorced) in order to live for yourself.  (Or if you do get married, you avoid having children, or too many children, in order to keep more of the pie for yourself.)  Both single and married people should understand this, that in whatever state one is called, one is to serve, and we are not to judge one another in this matter.  It is not right for a person to avoid marriage simply so one can have the whole pie.  St. Paul makes it clear that the single person should care for the things of the Lord, in contradistinction to the things of the world--even if one is cleaning gutters, or making tents, for a living.  But we Lutherans should do more to honor and value the vocation of celibacy, as well as make it clear what this calling is for.  Hopefully the tide is beginning to turn in that direction. 

But what about the girls? Thoughts on acolytes

Perhaps you have heard of some zany churches where only boys serve as acolytes. The rumors are true. I've been to such churches. I am OK with it, and I think we all could be on account of our forefolks were and maybe they weren't so dumb. Roman Catholic Rachel Lu recently put up an article on the topic, which I encourage you to read and think about.

Boys being boys.
I stole this photo from Redeemer Lutheran Church, 
Ft. Wayne IN

I'd add this practical point to Dr. Lu's arguments: acolyting in most Lutheran churches asks very little of those who do it, while granting the appearance of commitment and involvement. Lighting the candles is visible and impressive (robes! fire!), but requires virtually no time or effort. It's the easiest way to prove we're involved at church without really being that involved at all. The family can still walk in two minutes before the service and walk out two minutes after, and then not show up until the next time a kid is on the schedule to throw a grungy robe over his/her shorts and trip on up to the front. Naturally we want this wonderful opportunity to be offered to our daughters as well as our sons.

BUT IF ONLY BOYS CAN ACOLYTE, WHAT ABOUT THE GIRLS???

See, her article and my paragraph didn't help at all. Sigh.

Here are some things girls can do:

--Assist the Altar Guild

--Sing in the choir or play an instrument

--Visit or write to long-term or temporary shut-ins

--Be one of those people who does whatever those people who are always in the church kitchen do

--Volunteer for one of those jobs that always needs volunteers (church cleaning, grounds work, holiday [un]decorating, etc.)

"If only we could have been acolytes!"

--Assist in the nursery or for Sunday school and/or VBS

--Be a pew helper to someone who needs one (a person who needs help getting up/down or in/out; a family with young children; someone learning to navigate the hymnal; etc.)

--Be one of those people who understands that getting up while everyone else is still zonked so she can change the grave clothes no one know will got changed is a job worth doing.

--Am I really having to make a list of stuff people can do to help out at church?

Nothing you didn't already know. But the point is that these tasks require more of the people who do them than the task commonly referred to as acolyting in most Lutheran churches. The trouble is that they are less visible than acolyting (since the reason we do jobs at church is so people can see us doing them). Many of them also demand much more of the parents of a girl too young to drive herself places.

In a church that only ordains men (which is to say, The Church), the argument that "girls will feel left out" doesn't hold water. If adult girls can handle not being pastors, child girls can handle not being acolytes. In fact, that practice is good . . . practice. It allows us to trust our small ones with something small so that someday they will be trustworthy with what is great. I have heard proponents of women's ordination argue that telling girls they have to stop appearing in vestments in the chancel once they reach a certain age is confusing. I totally agree. I call that bluff. Even though there is no "Thou shalt not have girl acolytes," we would be wise not to.

As for those who don't want female pastors but do want female everythings but pastors: women's ordination is not a litmus test for right thinking with regard to Scripture's teaching on men and women. Opposing women's ordination but seeing no other implications in Scripture or our holy God's Creation for the lives of Christian men and women beyond that is facile; it amounts to a test not of faith, but contrived and manipulative partisan loyalty (If you love me, you'll carry this pebble in your pocket every day just because I asked you to).  Itemizing women's ordination from the man/woman thing and then opposing it as a platform issue is simply jumping through a social or intellectual hoop to gain admission to a certain segment of the Christian population.

The real matter is this: It is impossible for men to take what women have by nature. It not impossible for women to take what men have by nature. A faithful man takes up duties he is not materially required to perform, and thereby gains their honor (a faithless man abdicates and shrinks). A faithful women yields honorable duties she is not materially excluded from performing (a faithless woman extorts and arrogates). So y'all live right.

Finally: feeling left out is a real feeling. But real feelings can be wrong. "I want what he has!" is coveting, and feeding a grudge over other people having good things is a sinful sickness. Women of all ages who are afflicted with this sin need loving catechesis, repentance, and forgiveness, as do men who resist truth and wisdom because they fear God less than they fear women.

I speak bluntly, as to people of careful thought. I am more than aware, as a mother of young girls and boys, that living out these things requires the greatest of care. Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail; in Him do we trust, nor find Him to fail

even through loads of glumpy junk like this.

That lesbian hymn

Well, girls, it's that time again, the time when we all stand in church and sing how it's totally no biggie if this world takes our wife. Maybe it just felt silly once, but these days it's almost kind of weird, no?

We good Lutheran females are used to it, though! We've been reciting for years how we shouldn't covet our neighbor's wife. I guess neighbors' husbands are fair game for coveting, huh? ;)

But, OK, what does this mean, this language we find in our Bible and catechism and hymnal? Our time tells us it is exclusionary, a relic of a past the present can only see as cruel. But this is silliness. The children of Israel and the children of Wittenberg knew as well as we do that husbands are as off-limits as wives, and that a woman can't have a wife to lose. What does this mean for the Tenth Commandment, "A Mighty Fortress," and all the other formulations we've been trained to hear as discriminatory?

A few things.

1. The truth stands outside of subjective human experience, so the commandments and our hymns do too. They are not about us, they are about the truth. If we can expect someone without a donkey to confess the Tenth Commandment, or someone with no children to sing hymn 656* stanza four, we can confess and sing right along with him even if the particulars do not match our situation either.

2. Wives are valuable. Why covet something that isn't? Why care if something worthless gets taken away from you? This confession is a wall of NO to the idea that women were an ancient/medieval/Modern/everytime until the 19th Amendment version of paper plates, either in terms of their importance to the household economy (where they rank first in #10) or their esoteric worth (as comparable to life or reputation in st. 4). It is wives, not husbands, who were so valued as to receive explicit attention in Scripture and the derivative catechesis and hymnody.

Lutheran ladies sing about their wives.

3. Humanity is oriented in a certain direction. Christ is our head, and the body sees through his eyes. What does he see? The Church coming down out of heaven as a bride beautifully dressed for himself. This vision is encouragement to each member of the Body to remember that she is fit for such pure glory by the blood of the Lamb. Here on earth, the husband is the head, and the family sees through his eyes. What does he see? His bride. She figures so prominently in his personal piety as to appear in his commandments and hymns. Her gain in that prominence (for they are her commandments and hymns, too) is encouragement toward worthiness of the honor. The view is no accident. We cannot switch out wives for husbands in commandment ten or stanza four, because our eyes are in our Head. That is just the truth. It has nothing to do with any one person's sex, or his past, current, or desired marital status. So we all sing it.

Sing out, ladies. We've all got a place in the whole life of the Church. It is given to each of us to sing every truth of God, wherever life has landed us in relation to it.

Using the Treasury of Daily Prayer for a group Bible study

In an earlier post, I talked a little bit about using the Treasury of Daily Prayer for the women's Bible study group at our church. Jennifer asked on FB what it looked like, so here's the basic idea.

Before the class, I look at the three Scripture readings and write down a couple of questions for each one. Basic question ideas are comprehension, where we hear the same thing in Scripture/the liturgy/the church year, something about the people or situation covered in the reading, a paraphrase or summary, etc. (We don't do What does this mean to you? or What's the giant in your life?) For example, here's what I'm going to use for September 14:

Psalm 38:6-16

Whose prayer is this?

What parts of the passion story are heard in this Psalm?

2 Chronicles 33:1-25

How bad was Manasseh (vs. 9)?

What did Manasseh's repentance look like?

Colossians 1:24-2:7

What does it mean that Paul is “filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions” (vs. 24)?

What is “the mystery hidden for ages and generations” (vs. 26)?

(And then a shout out to Holy Cross Day)

I print this out for everyone because my crew likes writing down answers. :)

Then I have to clean 1 1/2 rooms of my house, which is terrible. I make coffee but, like I told Jennifer, no cookies. They just wouldn't eat them, so I gave up.

Ladies start showing up, and we all sit around and talk for 5-25 minutes. Sometimes three people come, and sometimes nine do. Nine is big here. :D

Then we all joke about how Pastor is going to give us an F if we don't get serious. I pray the prayer included in the lesson out loud. If any specific petitions are indicated from talk time, I slot them in as Lord, have mercy on . . . s just before the end of the written prayer.

Someone from the group reads the Psalm out loud, and then we talk about and answer the questions. I ask if anyone has any other questions from the reading or anything we've talked about, and I write down everybody's questions.

Then we read the OT lesson individually because they're long and have weird names no one wants to say. Usually around this time the kids upstairs have started jumping out of the middle level of the triple bunk and making the dining room light rattle and blink. Everybody likes that a lot and we talk about what a great job Pastor is doing with the kids. We go through the questions, and I write down anything anyone else asks about.

If we still have time (depending on how long the local report ran), I read through the NT reading out loud for everyone, and we talk about those questions.

We might talk a little about the Writing selection, but a lot of these are more highfalutin than my ladies are really into so we don't sweat it.

Pastor Husband gives us about 45 minutes from start time and then he comes in. I ask him all the questions I've written down from everyone and he does the heavy lifting in terms of teaching. Various ladies feed my kids treats out of their purses and report to Dad about any church business items they're working on. Everyone wanders home at leisure.

So that's the format. My husband likes this setup because the girls talk better and get over being pastor-shy if they've had some girl time. Things that keep coming up: angels, Jews, and the scandal of particularity.

TDP is a big investment upfront compared to smaller Bible studies, but the only person who really needs to have it is the facilitator. Participants can just bring a Bible and look up the selections for the day. But at this point, all of the regulars and occasionals in my group have bought TDP. I also like how using TDP allows people to come as they're able rather than thinking that if they missed a week or two, they're totally out of the loop and might as well just skip the whole thing until we start a new study.

The only trick is that since we always meet on the same day of the week, we'd be repeating selections every year during Lent when TDP switches from the calendar year to the liturgical year. So the first year we met we did the lessons for Mondays in Lent, the next year we did the Tuesday lessons on Monday, etc. I think we'll be up for Fridays this year, although another gut-busting joke we have is that we could do the same lesson every week and it would be totally new since none of us can remember a blessed thing.

Our new season starts Sept. 14, 9:30 at my house. Come on by. :)

Dear LadyLike: How then shall we live in this sick sad world?

Question posted to Issues, Etc.:

In a world that has so feminized men, and masculinized women, where men have gotten so comfortable yielding their roles to women, and women appear so eager to take the reins, how would you recommend that men, and women, go about restoring their lives together to be more what God desires for them?

Christopher

Dear Christopher,

Or a brother sometimes. :D

My recommendation (worth exactly what any person's recommendation is worth) is that we just don't play. Christian boys need to act like boys and Christian girls need to act like girls. It can feel weird and lonely. A lot of it we have to figure out on our own since it's not what most of us are used to seeing, and most other people are playing the "do what you aren't" game.

What does this look like, though?

It means we quit feeling bad and embarrassed about what Scripture teaches.

It means that if there's a board without a woman on it, or a faculty or administration page with all male photos, no men apologize and no women complain (and no women apologize and no men complain).

It means that we quit cheapening the currency of women's talents by stooping to the world's doltish tokenism.

It means women defer to the God-given authority of men, and work always to see and take comfort in the wisdom of the divine order. It means that women confess that our resistance to this is real and sinful. It means that all Christian men and women be willing to receive in trust what our good God has appointed for us.

It means that we work to live out the goodness of God's order without compromising in advance in the name of potential exceptions and abuses.

It means the husband is the husband and the wife is the wife, and no being silly about what that means. We're not so far removed from this experience or memory that we don't really know. But the next generation might be, so we need to be deliberate about teaching them by exhortation and example.

It means that the wife doesn't pull the hurt feelings card when her husband acts within his duties and rights as the head of the family, and the husband doesn't call it nagging when the wife is appeals to him for something. It means no manipulation, and grownups acting like grownups.

It means men run churches, and women don't "step up" and do men's jobs. It means if the pastor can't find a man to fill the vacant elder spot, the team of elders gets one person smaller. It might mean a church closes, or a woman takes her family to another church (the one in Thyatira, maybe).

It means pastors do pastor stuff and the rest of us don't. Anything that looks like a pastor thing is a pastor thing. He conducts the service, he tends the flock. The Good Shepherd says, "I know my sheep." Pastoral duties by which the shepherd comes to know his sheep, and by which the sheep come to learn and love his voice, should never be farmed out to a hired hand (even a generous, willing, capable, Christian hired hand).

Probably some other stuff too. :)

This way of life puts Christians into a kind of prisoner's dilemma. It costs us human esteem and money not to play the game everyone else in the world is playing. But those are things Christians have never been into anyway.

Thanks for a really good question.


LadyLike

Blessed be the Holy Trinity and the undivided Unity

I can't decide which one I like better. Have a happy Trinity Sunday, everyone! :)