This is mostly an echo post of my wife on marrying young. There are of course many issues to deal with on the surface of this statement. There are those who have not been afforded the opportunity, who may think this is a dig on them. There are those who lack the maturity, despite the willingness to be married. That is what I would like mostly to address.
Many influences on Christian young people strongly push to avoid marriage, and after that children, until one has reached certain goals. Generally they are financial. And there is also the push to have gotten out to see the world and, possibly, learned who they are in some sort of mystical way. But these encouragements tend, I think, in inhibit the growth of the church through mature Christian adults living God-honoring lives.
It’s true that one should be content with what they have been given where they are in life. But it is true too that maturing means doing things, acting on convictions and taking risks. A mature person does not sit inside hoping to avoid work and the fruits thereof, nor does he run from it by finding meaningless tasks.
The simple point I would like to make is that God has made men and women for a purpose, and has made them designed to help each-other, in an intimate one-on-one manner, to act out that purpose. Be fruitful, multiply, and take dominion. To many young people avoid that calling, and are encouraged away from it by well meaning older Christians.
I was married fairly young, but I wish that I had been ready much earlier in life than I had been. I have never been so blessed as I have been within the marriage covenant and in raising a family for the Lord. It is also the hardest thing I have ever done. But I would not trade it for all the world.
“Poetry is not made to be sucked up like a child’s milkshake, it much better sipped like a precious malt whisky. Verse is one of our last stands against the instant and the infantile. Even when it is simple and childlike it is to be savoured.” – Stephen Fry
Life… is like a grapefruit. It’s orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
– Douglas Adams
As I drove home tonight, I passed a church, as I often do, that had one of those tacky one-liner supposed-to-be-catchy phrases on the sign. You know to reel in the souls of the random passer-by. This one said, and I quote, “It is never to late.” I wondered to myself, as I continued on my merry way, who, then, it is to?
Who, or what, is the Church? I hope to not so much definitively answer the question, as much as to address it. There is, among modern Christians a tendency to ignore the idea of the Church. Church is a place to go to see other Christians. To see the Church as an “entity” is to the modern evangelical mind something very Roman Catholic. But the Church is an entity. The Bible tells me so. And she will prevail against the gates of hell.
The first question in what, or who, is the Church is, what, or who, are Christians? There is a simple answer to this, and it is not about a personal relationship. Christians are those who have received a baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Some might say Christians are those who have a good relationship with, or really love Jesus. But that is too ambiguous and subjective. Others say that Christians are the elect. I’m a little more comfortable with this, but again, how can you know? You can’t. But I can answer both of those with baptism. If you are elect, you will love Jesus and want to have a good relationship with Him. If you love Him, you will keep His commandments. One of which is, be baptized. Â But what if someone is neither elect, nor loves Jesus, but is baptized? Then he is one of the seeds that took root, but not deeply, and died, or was choked by weeds. God will root him out, either through the normal activities of the faithful Church, or on Judgement Day. But, if someone is baptized and in good standing with the church, I have no choice but to treat him as a brother, encouraging him in love.
So the Church, perhaps, is a collection of baptized Christians. But that can’t be all, because when I have my Christian buddies over, we are not the church. We are members of the church, meeting outside the church. The church is, as Paul tells us, the body of Christ. We, being baptized Christians, are members of that body. Like little fingers and pinky toes. The church extends in time both ways. It is both historical and teleological. But while all Christians are part of the historical church, and we pray for the future church, we are in the present church. The messy one with real people. Being members of a body naturally means having a hierarchy. The pinky toes are not in charge. They are in submission. It is through this submission that we learn to lead, which is to say, to serve. Essentially, the simple answer is that Christians are covenantally bound to the God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to one another. There is a lot tied up with that; fellowship, accountability, putting up with strange people, compromising opinions that are held as beliefs, dealing with other people, obeying elders, making vows and keeping them, loving one another. Â
So, the church is, through time, a group of people, repentant, believing, and covenantally bound by baptism to God and one another, submitting to the hierarchy of authority put in place by God, and extending the hand of fellowship to those who would repent, believe, and be baptized. The church, as the body of Christ, teaches us, feeds us, and gives us rest. It is not possible, where the church is present, to be bound to Christ, and to be at odds with His body, the church.
I don’t know if it was Spring just itching in peoples bones, or if someone was passing out free psychotropics down the street, but something was just a little off kilter downtown today as I got off work.
The first sign was the clueless panhandler. His first mistake was that he started with the finishing line. As he first walked by, sporting nice pants, a designer-esque shirt, and a cute dog on a leash, he flashed me a yellow toothed smile and wished God’s blessing on me. All good beggars know to save the blessing until later in the game. Then he told me about how cold it was last night for his dog, (who had not lost her winter coat, or winter’s reserve of blubber). I really did feel sorry for the guy. I was about ready to give him panhandling lessons.
I had only barely gotten rid of him when I heard singing down the street, and coming closer. I looked and there before my eyes is a thin, middle aged man sporting salt and pepper hair, a classic olive suit, latex gloves, and a school-bus-yellow hard hat, swerving down the entire width of the road on a mountain bike. As he went he circled a group of jay-walking college kids, sing-songing, “My bike is cheaper than your bike! My bike is cheaper than your bike!” Baffled, I continued loading my tools.
Eventually a couple of my coworkers came out, and we began conversing. I pointed out the ecstatic bicyclist who was making mad circles around the square. As we laughed this up, an odd couple, he looking very much like a monkey, and she possibly carrying all her worldly possessions in a backpack, stopped to question us on the nature of the construction project ($1495 a month loft apartments). After hearing a goodly portion of her life story, they left us. No sooner, a new couple walked by, whose timing could not have been written better by a Hollywood screenwriter.
They were an elderly couple. She was pushing him, he having neither leg below the thigh. It could have been a touching picture. But just as they rolled by, we got a snapshot of their conversation. We had to go back inside after that, unable to contain our gleeful reaction to the effects of what undoubtedly must have been the weather.
He spoke reminiscently. “I one-time peed on the steps of a library.”
“Oh, God, Leroy,” she sighed. “Sweet Jesus.”
Afraid the general atmosphere might be catching, we retreated.
Nathan is constantly amazing me. It hasn’t been long since he was completely immobile. Now he crawls quickly across the floor, stopping periodically to clap his hands and cough, “haqck, haqck”. (The ‘q’ is of course there to imply the gutteral quality.) There is, of course, nothing wrong the silly fellow. He just knows, inately, that noise is the way to get attention. Right now he says, “haqck”. In a couple months he will say, “momma” and “daddy”. Though he won’t know why we are excited and giving him attention, he will know that we are. There is a progression there.
I’m sure it is much the same with most boys. First you have gutteral noises, and then words, and then back and forth for different periods of time. Boys make no random noises. They are all calcualated to achieve maximum attention. Eventually the noises get strung together, as sentances are found to more affective, if not repulsive (repulsion is one of the highest forms of attention giving). But still, boys always fight the temptation to growl, roar, or walk into a room and blurt out the biggest word they know. “Anti-oxidant!”
I myself am subject to the same urges and instincts. Why, only yesterday I was standing around, with no one to listening to me, and I had to fight the urge to just scream, “Super-lapsarianism!”
Who knew? In other news, the I am Legend story comes to life in Austin…
As we go into the new year, there are many uncertainies. But one thing is certain. The Lord God Omnipotent reigns heaven and earth. He is taking all things under His dominion, until His enemies are made His footstool. It will be a good year.