Why vow?

I was talking to someone recently about celibacy, and whilst they understood my reasons and inspiration for being celibate and could see examples of fruitful celibates in the church, they were a bit unsure about the vow. The questions was, is the vow a man-made thing? By making a vow are we going further than God intended? Are we making a rod for our own backs with that kind of “legality” when the whole thing could be done informally with a load less intensity.

To start with, God is into vows. He makes many vows or promises to the people in the Bible, and expects them to pledge themselves to Him in return. God takes vow making and vow breaking seriously, there is blessing from vow, and there is judgement for breaking vows. It is a serious thing to make a vow but I think we are poorer people if we avoid vows because of fear of commitment. But anyway, this is about celibate vows rather than the whole topic of vowing, so here goes...

If you take celibacy as an equal yet opposite thing to marriage, you could say that both states should be vowed because they are serious life long commitments. But then where did marriage vows come from?

In the Bible a couple were considered married if they had intercourse. That's why there are sentences like “so and so took knew so and so and she became his wife”. To “know” someone meant they had sex and that physical thing united them as man and wife. It also says a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one. So the intimate physical union is seen as a permanent "vow”. The marriage ceremonies came in later, with all the rules about betrothal and so on. The ceremonies were a public sign of what had (or would) go on in private.

When Jesus talked about celibacy he talked about eunuchs. He said some were born eunuchs (people who could not have sex for physical reasons), some were made eunuchs by men, and some made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (the equivalent of celibates now). Without putting it too bluntly- becoming a eunuch meant a bloke chopping his bits off. It was a physical thing and most definitely a permanent thing. To be a celibate does not mean we have to go through physical mutilation, but the sentiment is still there that what we are doing is a permanent thing. So... in the same way that a marriage vow is a public sign of a permanent personal thing, so is the celibate vow.

Keeping on the thread of a celibate vow of the same nature as a marriage vow, when people make their marriage vows they are promising to love that person only, to be true to them, and to renounce all other loves. This is not that different to the celibate vow. We promise to be true to Jesus, to renounce any other relationship for the sake of having particular intimacy with Jesus.
In the wedding vows it also talks about raising children and building family. The celibate will raise spiritual children and build church family.

It is true that you can have a relationship and not have to get married. It is true you can live as "just single" all your life and not make a celibate vow. But in all honesty I think you would be a poorer person to live without the dedication/devotion of the vow and the endurance and character strength it takes to work that out. Going back to the beginning, God is into vows and He brings blessing with the promises that we do not experience any other way.

P is for Celibacy

We had a meeting for the celibates in the church recently, several people talked it was well inspiring. When I thought back over it I realised a lot of the stuff shared, and a lot of the stuff that inspires me, also happens to begin with P. So here it is.... P for celibacy

Purpose
Celibates are a people with a purpose, which is to build the Kingdom of God. As one person put it, their call is to “populate heaven , not earth”. The celibate man or woman is a spiritual parent, teaching and training those who are younger in their faith.

Passion
Celibates are passionate. They see the Kingdom of God and choose to put it above their highest joy. They are prepared to renounce “normal” and “acceptable” things for the sake of something higher/bigger. Think about sports stars, they are passionate about what they do, they have to train and discipline themselves to achieve their goal, likewise celibates choose to make the sacrifice to gain something they could not gain any other way

Path
Celibacy is not an aim or a goal in itself, it is the path we are on. Celibacy shapes your character, it gives you the tools for life.

People
Celibacy is about people. Because we choose to stay single does not mean we will stay isolated and cut off from people. A celibate is free to give themselves in a variety of friendships that a maried person cannot. (for example, when we have a visitor stay for the weekend they share a room with the other single folk). A celibate has chosen not to belong to one particular person, in order to belong to everyone (eek- that's well hard!)

Purity
Obviously the aim of celibacy is to be pure, to be holy in body and spirit. Not that being married means you are impure 'cos that is a different kind of purity. A celibate does however choose to set themselves aside to be dovoted to God in a particular way.

Prophetic
In heaven we will all be celibate. Jesus taught us to pray “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” and celibacy is one way to do that, to prophetically show the life of heaven on earth. It is not the only way to do this, but a pretty good way to try to show people now something of the single-hearted worship of God that there will be in heaven.

Pioneering
Celibates are people without the ties that natural family life brings, so they are people who are free to pioneer- to try new things and go new places for the sake of the gospel. (Again, not an exlusivly celibate thing, but try moving to a new area with kids in school...)

representing Jesus

On Sunday afternoon I looking through a book that contained various pictures of Jesus painted by famous artists. What I found was actually quite sad, though the "blond hair and blue eyes" version of Jesus was (thankfully) missing from this collection, I still found the pictures showed a rather weak and feminine Jesus. A couple of the pictures could have been a Pears soap advert, and some showing the adolescent Jesus definitely looked to me like an 18 year old girl with long wavy hair.

Now, what I am saying is not to knock the great artists, but it did make me think about how we represent Jesus.

To me Jesus was fully man and fully God, and we should not be scared of either of these "identities". As a man I think he would have been strong. I think he would have been a man of emotion and passion. As fully God he would have had insight, compassion and love far beyond what a human could understand, but it would have been sensitivity with strength. Jesus interacted with normal people and was not vague, aloof or untouchable.

There are of course no pictures from the time of Jesus to show us what he looked like so, whatever image we come up with, it can only be speculation. What we do have is his church which is made of up people created in God's image, is made up of people filled with the Holy Spirit, is made up of people being transformed more and more into Jesus likeness. So for the world around us, we are Jesus.

So, does Jesus look like this?

Bad things happen to good people

I have recently read "The Atonement Child" by Francine Rivers It was a book that really made me think about what I would do in the same situation. Basically the plot is that a Christian girl, with a Christian finace who attends a Chrsitain college is raped on her way home one night. She does not take the morning-after pill 'cos she is in a state, and she is sure her finace is so anti-abortion that he would not accept the use of an abortion agent, and also she is so sure God wouldn't allow her to have got pregnant. All the characters have to deal with “why did God allow this to happen?” and “is this God's will, or God's judgement?”. Then she finds out she is pregnant, and as several characters say “no-one would judge you for having an abortion in these circumstances”. So she has to decide what she believes is right, and what she will do. There are complications to the story- such as the college does not allow un-wed mothers to continue as students. I won't tell you what she decides- that would spoil the story!

It made me think along a few different trains of thought – and I have by no means come to any satisfactory conclusions in my own conscience...

How right is the preconceived idea that a child conceived by rape should automatically be aborted? Surely to say so is to say that the children of rapists do not deserve to live? Or that rapists should be sterilised? Is a child a “monster” because they were conceived in such circumstances? Or what about the children of parents who do other awful things? Or are all babies innocent?

It is possible to say that a certain situation is not “right” or is not “God's ideal”, but we don't live in an ideal world, and things do happen that we are not prepared for or don't know how to cope with. So, how do we cope in such situations? How prepared are we to put away the text book and deal with individuals with compassion and sensitivity? Is is OK to “break the rules” sometimes?

How does forgiveness work when someone has done something that is totally, obviously wrong (a rapist)? Or has done something that is legal but we believe is wrong (a doctor in an abortion clinic)? Or has come to a different conclusion to ourselves in a moral dilema (a woman who choses an abortion, or the boyfriend who advises her to do so)?

In one bit in the book, one of the characters says that the situation is a perfect case where the church/Christians can show compassion, but they do not, and how can the church bring healing to a hurting world when it is too busy shooting it's own wounded?

That really made me think. What is the balance between compassion and correctness? Does it matter what the world thinks? How important is it to restore the victims and the sinners in the church as well as those in the world around us?

Jesus' compassion and love is endless, and ours gets stuck with moral dilemas such this story (and many more). The Bible does not directly address modern situations, but the truth we live to is in there, so how do we let it out? How do we put life into the words and humanity into the theology?

I pray to God I will never be in the situation described in the book. But for now I think my answer to all this pondering is in something written by sister on our prayer-shed wall after the very worst thing she ever had to go through had happened in her life.

“It might look like the devil has his way in situation/circumstances, BUT Jesus is Lord of the outcome”