Lutheran Witness Article

[JTornado1]

http://witness.lcms.org/pages/wPage.asp?ContentID=1129&IssueID=60

I just got the November 2011 issue of The Lutheran Witness. On page 10, there is an article called "Children: Good for Families." The writer said, "We were created to marry and to have children even as we were created to have dominion over the earth. When Christians lack a spouse or children, the Holy Scriptures count them as enduring a cross as unnatural as death itself. Crosses, of course, are used by God for good, but it is not how or what we were created for."

Although the majority of people do get married, it is not for everyone. I'm not married and I don't consider that a burden or a cross to bear.

The writer is also ignoring that fact that in much of church history, monastacism was popular with devout Christians of both sexes.

Is the writer a little off base or am I just plain weird or what?

 

[Ruiz]

http://witness.lcms.org/pages/wPage.asp?ContentID=1129&IssueID=60

I just got the November 2011 issue of The Lutheran Witness. On page 10, there is an article called "Children: Good for Families." The writer said, "We were created to marry and to have children even as we were created to have dominion over the earth. When Christians lack a spouse or children, the Holy Scriptures count them as enduring a cross as unnatural as death itself. Crosses, of course, are used by God for good, but it is not how or what we were created for."

Although the majority of people do get married, it is not for everyone. I'm not married and I don't consider that a burden or a cross to bear.

The writer is also ignoring that fact that in much of church history, monastacism was popular with devout Christians of both sexes.

Is the writer a little off base or am I just plain weird or what?

While there is a call to singleness, this is the exception and not the rule. Monasticism often went to the other extreme in favoring singleness, but the rule is that marriage is a great good. Most of us are called to married life.

The past few years there have been a small uptick on those who equate adulthood and marriage in an unhealthy way. Like this article, they take a normative truth and expand it beyond where truth should go.

However, normally there is a missing element when an adult is not married.