“I didn’t know anything different”

By Rev. Tom Tuura

Pastor of Christ Lutheran Church

Today we have 18 year old’s that never knew what it was like not to have cell phones, or even “High Def” TV. They might say, “we’ve never known anything different.”

There’s some other things that are that way too. Namely dating and relationships. I suppose it won’t be long before a young person would say about online dating for example, “I didn’t know any different.”

Marriage is no longer the majority type of household. The rising percentage of single Americans has been headline news for a long time. That includes counting of unmarried households with children. There are counts of unmarried mothers, and unmarried fathers, just to name a couple of the not so new categories. It raises the question, what does singleness mean? The U.S. census, CNN, Washington Post, and many other news outlets and periodicals, have written about this phenomenon.

Guess when the number of married households in the US peaked...some put it as early as 1950. They tell us it has been basically declining ever since. I have an article that I saved from the Atlantic 6 years ago that said, that by 2042 marriage will hit zero. Of course that won’t happen, but if you extrapolated the line it would.

A whole generation “never has known anything different.” But I’m not as pessimistic about this. Marriage is more resilient, even in these generations I’m referring to here. In spite of this data, many young people are choosing to accept more traditional values.

So whereas when I was a kid growing up, the people you knew, including your relatives, and neighborhood were either married or single. If you had kids, you were married. Living together was a scandal. There was the occasional single mom. A single person was either a bachelor or bachelorette. We learned what widows and widowers were. Divorce was something somewhat rare—but it did affect our family. There was out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and “Hanky Pancky”, but it was kept quiet and considered shameful—not always handled well either. They covered our ears—but we still heard about it. But I’ve watched it change every year of my life.

What does it mean to be single then? Today we have what I’ll call the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner generation—at least that is what is promoted. What about sex? Should I date? How do I find a date? Who should I date? It is my choice. Or it’s in my DNA. I can’t help it. I have a sovereign decision over my life. Who am I attracted to? In this mindset everyone who looks in the mirror young or old may ask, if they are gay or straight, trans, or something in between. This is my identity—right? I’m a part of evolution, and a product of the “Big Bang”--right?

Once you’ve become a couple, (whatever that means) the first question is not living single until married, but cohabitation, or moving in together and then possibly considering a family, and maybe marriage.

Childbirth. Anyone can be a parent. It’s your choice. Or a child can be terminated as a mistake or inconvenience. Other boxes that they can check are “partnered” or unpartnered”. Single people are deciding to have a child and remain single in this worldview.

But the Bible teaches God created you for His purposes as a single individual—you are his. He is our loving Father who gives us meaning and purpose in something outside of ourselves. Biblical singleness is a unique universal gift. It involves your attitudes and opinions about your relationships, as you grow through adolescence. It is learning to strive for purity and chastity. It is learning self-control over all things, including our inner desires. It is learning that we are not capable of these things without grace.

But instead the sexual revolution plows ahead at full steam. Growing up in the 1960’s when so many things appeared on the horizon, I can only look back and now realize that those were really radical times. I didn’t realize it, because it was my world. Though it didn’t begin in the ‘60’s, it certainly came into the current form. It is characterized according to various definitions, as “the liberalization of established social and moral attitudes toward sex, particularly that occurring in western countries during the 1960s, as the women's movement and developments in contraception” and another basically restates the same, but adds emphasis on the pill, “...helped by the introduction of the Pill, an easy and reliable method of preventing pregnancy.” This introduces the term “non-procreative sex”. This is also revolutionary. For the first time in history, sex has been basically reliably separated from procreation or the possibility of pregnancy. Think of it.

In 1971, folk singer, Carly Simon sang this song: “That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be” which illustrates the “real”-ities of the life for so many then and now. It is the hopeless realities of the world void of God.

“My father sits at night with no lights on, His cigarette glows in the dark
The living room is still I walk by, no remark

I tiptoe past the master bedroom where--My mother reads her magazines
I hear her call sweet dreams, But I forgot how to dream--

Chorus:

But you say it's time we moved in together, And raised a family of our own, you and me
Well, that's the way I've always heard it should be--You want to marry me, we'll marry.

My friends from college they're all married now; They have their houses and their lawns
They have their silent noons, Tearful nights, angry dawns
Their children hate them for the things they're not, They hate themselves for what they are
And yet they drink, they laugh Close the wound, hide the scar--

You say we can keep our love alive, Babe all I know is what I see
The couples cling and claw, And drown in love's debris
You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds, But soon you'll cage me on your shelf
I'll never learn to be just me first By myself--

Well okay, it's time we moved in together, And raised a family of our own...We'll marry.”

Songwriters: Jacob Brackman / Carly Simon

Look at that last line before the last chorus. That’s biblical singleness. God want’s to teach us to be “just me” His way as His child.

What do I mean by “ideals”? It’s the distinction between the real, or reality of life, dirty diapers, the smells and fluids of life on the one hand, and ideals of peace tranquility and joy on the other. Is there such a thing? This is a good place to pause and reflect a bit. Many reading this are like me, who have seen the changes. Others would say, “I didn’t know anything different.” Let’s continue in another issue and call it Part Two, which will deal with God’s plan—a Biblical Sexual Ethic with His ideals and model for the family.

Does God care about the real? Absolutely. He makes lemon-aid from lemons. He has transformative power over the past. Look at Mary Magdalene as an example. God, meets you wherever you are, and says, I have something better. Maybe you’ve never known anything different, that’s okay. Many people don’t even realize that they have, or are in the process of embracing a sinful sexual ethic. Just because “I really didn’t know anything different” doesn’t mean there isn’t something different. That’s the good news.

God created you as a single soul for His purposes—you are his. He is our loving Father who gives us meaning and purpose in something outside of ourselves. There are two very different paths today that are battling for predominance. Which will you choose?

That’s my view from the Blackberry Patch Pulpit

Pastor Tom

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[disregard below]

He is sovereign, not you (or I). (That sovereignty extends over not only your life, but also the whole universe.)

Let’s revisit something else, its called the Biblical Sexual Ethic. And it really doesn’t look very much like what we listed above—at all.

So the big controversial point: Many people don’t even realize that they have, or are in the process of embracing a sexual ethic. Just because “I really didn’t know anything different” doesn’t mean there isn’t something different.

God created you for His purposes as a single individual—you are his. He is our loving Father who gives us meaning and purpose in something outside of ourselves. He is sovereign, not you (or I). (That sovereignty extends over not only your life, but also the whole universe.)

God created, and commands the moral law, which was followed, embraced, instituted, and endorsed by our Lord, which falls upon all people, of all places and of all time, which is the ten commandments.

While the sexual revolution is complex and unforgiving, the Bible is simple and God is gracious, loving and forgiving. But at the same time insistent about His Law.

God made them male and female. (Genesis 1,2)

Singleness is a unique universal gift. What is biblical single-hood? It is childhood—naivety, a type of “innocence”. It involves your attitudes and opinions about your relationships, as you grow through adolescence. It is learning to strive for purity and chastity. It is learning self-control over all things, including our inner desires. It is learning that we are not capable of these things without grace. As were Adam and Eve, it is our solitary identity before God. It is the condition of our soul. We come into the world single, and are judged as single individuals. Many return to singleness at the end of life.

Adam and Eve, literally single man and woman need to become “one flesh” in the marriage bond where they experience the beauty of being one, “flesh”. The souls do not become one flesh.

Marriage is distinctly Christian, (also practiced universally throughout the world). It is a picture of redemption and Christ and His bride the Church. Sexual union within marriage is ideally a beautiful pleasurable bond with an end outside of itself.

Children are a heritage from the Lord. Seen as mere biological “choices” of the expression of rights in the sexual revolution, they are to be prevented, and then possibly eliminated by whim and circumstance.

Instead they are true miracles from heaven, ideally conceived in love, and as David says, “Your formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made...your eyes saw my unformed substance; and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:15)

We spend too much time only looking at the “reals” the hardships of the family, and neglecting the ideals of the family.

There is no “childhood” anymore, because these things are being forced upon children at earlier and earlier ages. Children that don’t even know what “sex” is are being hit with sexual vocabulary and even images. We dealt with that too, but it was in the barnyard with the animals or walking in on aunt Betty, or Uncle Bill in the bathroom. Sadly, there was creepy things done by a few people too, as there is today.

Is there a moral component, a right or wrong to all these ‘choices’ we are categorizing today? Well, again, we have to turn to the pages of the Bible. Emphatically yes.

What we are talking about is the sexual revolution. Albert Mohler is correct when he makes this distinction. The Federalist “Is sexual autonomy worth the cost of human lives?” by Noelle Mering “The promise of the sexual revolution is that sex can be meaningless. Indeed it has to be

meaningless to preserve our autonomy. If it has intrinsic meaning independent of what we want it to mean, then that might signify that we have duties independent of our autonomy.” This society insists upon treating everyone as completely autonomous. Is sexual autonomy worth the cost of human lives?

There are two very different paths today that are battling for predominance. Which will you choose?

That’s my view from the Blackberry Patch Pulpit

Pastor Tom

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Copyright 2019