Some Thoughts on Advice and Love, and The Perceived Marriage Bias Within the Church

Before I get to what I actually wanted to talk about, I want to mention why I have not written a blog in a really long time.  Truth is, I have just been taking a step back and thinking.  

 Thinking!  Huzzah! No? Oh. Okay.

 

You see, a couple of months ago I was browsing around some Christian blogs and websites, which is something I enjoy doing.  As I did, it hit me that there was a common theme.  They all were filled with articles telling people what to do and how to think.  You’d have a movie review here, or a news story there, but they are sparse.  Almost everything out there is one big theological Op Ed.  

I understand this in part, as I am an ENFP, a champion.  When I learn something new, when I gain something I believe to be wisdom, I really do yearn to share it.  It has nothing to do with thinking I am better.  I just want to help.  If you are in a maze and you figure out how to get out, it is a natural thing to want to start shouting the directions out to those back in the maze.  

However, I also hold this belief that Christianity isn’t just some niche thing.  It is supposed to encompass life.  In that, why then is it that all we can do is share wisdom?   Tell others what is good, what is real?  I believe that is a huge part, but is it really all we have to share?  Somehow, it came across to me a feeling smug and shallow, as if we as Christians are incapable of loving in other ways.  

There is this very weird line in serving as a Christian.  If you go and serve people physically alone, never sharing the gospel then there is ultimately something missing.  Same though is true if you are so focused on sharing the gospel that you don’t know how to live with others, how to love them.  Advice is one small part of helping.  When I am hurting I want someone to hurt with me, sympathize or empathize.  I want them to give me real physical help.  Spend time with me.  If all someone does is give me advice, then I have no real affection or respect for that person as a helper.  

This is definitely how I felt during the healing part after being left by my wife and going through the divorce process.  

As such, I have just been kind of letting it all sit inside me and trying to focus and think about what it means to really love.  I don’t know if I have anything great to share, I just know I want to be someone that does more than give advice (which again, in love and in the right time and place, aka tact, is essential).  

Hopefully that makes sense.  I don’t have any answers.  It’s just what I have been thinking about and pondering.  Maybe I am a fool.  I don’t know.  That is just how it has felt to me.  I’d like for us Christians to be more broad, and better about speaking to people’s needs instead.  I feel, perhaps wrongly, that there is a lot of self-service going on in this advice giving.  I suppose that’s true about anything.  Whatever the case, that is why I have been silent. 

What I actually wanted to touch on was a little bit of what it is like to be a divorced person in church.  Dabble a bit, as there is much to be written.

I have posted quite a few articles on how people whom are not married are treated in the church, whether single, divorced, widowed, etc.  The most recent, and my favorite is by Christena Cleveland.  I recently had a friend ask me if I had actually experienced this, and if so, what it was like?

Sadly, I most assuredly have.  For starters, there is no unilateral response.  I have received both love and bitterness, trust and leeriness, understanding and prejudice, burdens both light and heavy, all within the church.  Everyone is different.   

Each church is different… accept with marriage.  This point alone I think is a strong indicator of the prejudice toward marriage and having kids.  If you are married and have kids, you can feel safe knowing you will be accepted if not celebrated in 99% of all mainstream churches in the USA.  You don’t ever have to walk through the doors wondering what this church believes or that church believes, or whether you’ll be welcome as a married person with kids.  

However, those whom are single, for any of the reasons above, there is a question.  Will there be anything for me?  Will I be alone?  Singlehood is, as Christena Cleveland put it, often viewed as junior varsity to marriage being varsity.  I’ll go a step further and add this.  It is freshmen football.  Being married is junior-varsity, and being married with children is varsity.  Seems you aren’t really considered whole, adult, mature, trustworthy, until you have been married with kids.   I felt that prejudice when I was married, and many of my married without kids friends did too.  

Any Church I go into I wonder what they are going to believe and think about singleness and divorce, as it varies much, and I have been treated both amazingly and poorly depending upon the theology and attitude of these different churches.  It is a big deal for me.

Having been married and left I feel confident in my singleness, even if it does not last.  I also have been a part of this, by the way, talking to singles as if I had achieved something.  Looking back I feel a certain shame, especially since my marriage failed.  Yes, I know that does not nullify wisdom.  Many of the things I said were true and good.  It still stings, whether it should or not.  It is in that brokenness that I now know something though.  It is that being married does not make you better.  Married people share more with other married people.  In that confidence over the years I came to see that very, very many of Christian marriages are stretched, fraught with turmoil like mine during the end.  These marriages may carry on, but the point is that my life was not better as a married person.  I was not closer to God, more righteous, wiser.  It was just different, much like the author of the article said.  It is a different sport, one that, as far as we know, Paul, every single apostle, and some guy named Jesus all saw the right path for them to take toward righteousness.  

Marriage is great, and something I have would like to possibly be a part of again, but I wonder if we haven’t made it more than it is, much like we have with children.  I wonder if in our desire to preserve the family we haven’t overstepped like those who were so afraid of drunkenness that they imposed a false burden of complete abstinence where there is freedom.  Perhaps?  

Again, this is one man’s perception.  It is one shared by many people.  That does not make it true.  Take it for what it is worth.  I’d love to hear any thoughts or experiences you’ve had.

You Know What Assuming Does Don't You?

The memory of Ms. Bronk teaching us the true meaning of the word assume is one of the most vivid I have of high school.  I can see her standing on that podium at the front of the band hall.  Someone had, foolishly, used assumption as an excuse for why they hadn’t done something.  Ms. Bronk asked if we knew what assuming did.  Either none of us really knew, or we could tell by the expression on her face that answering would only draw her frustrated gaze upon on us.   A couple of seconds passed before she broke the silence.  “No?  Well, let me show you.”  The chalk clicked and clacked against the shuttering blackboard behind her as she swiftly wrote out the word “ASSUME” in all upper case.   She continued, “Assuming makes a…”  BOOM, her hands covered all but the letters ASS.  “…out of…”  BOOM.  Then they covered all but the U in the middle.  “…and…”  SHHHH she slid her hands over to reveal on the the letters ME.  It took me a second to say it altogether.  To assume makes an ASS out of U and ME.  I wasn’t the only one that took time.  The delayed collective chuckle said as much. 

Assuming is a dangerous action.  Not only does it make and ass out of you and me; it also usually hurts you and me.  Assumption’s sting is always profound on the back end once we’ve been shown the consequences.  Assumption’s acerbic bight comes from the knowledge that with just the slightest bit of inquiry, if we had only kept an open mind, a dash of humility even, we might not be reaping the current drama our assuming had sewn.  We think, “All I had to do was ask… or seek a little more.” 

Now, assumption isn’t filling in the blank.  I’m a writer, a storyteller.  My mind fills in blanks.  Watch Castle.  His storytelling mind helps fill in those blanks the cops can’t, and that’s why New York is a safer place, people.  No, I don’t think we can help hearing news like, “Hey, did you hear that Sally left Johnny?” without having out minds instinctually fill in the blanks.  Why?  Was he abusive?  Were they that unhappy?  Was there another man?  All of this happens in the blink of an eye. 

Assumption is when we take those fleeting thoughts and actually believe them.  You don’t know Jack, and until you do, you should act like it.  Have the humility to admit you don’t know.  Hard part is that our beliefs are rarely spoken.  Right?  Us and our American passive-aggressiveness.  It’s in our non-verbal language we let people know what we really think, while our mouths flap out something sweet.  That southern influence lingers. 

Example: being left by my wife brought out all sorts of assumptions, and almost none of them were spoken to my face.  People talk.  I’d have a friend come up and tell me they heard about me being left and they’d begin to tell me how they heard I was “this awful thing” or that I was “terrible in this way or that.”  My eyes would widen, and I’d try to calmly explain what ACTUALLY happened.  Then their eyes would bulge as they’d realize they had just spread a… yup… assumption.  Somewhere along the way, someone who knew nothing talked to someone as if they knew something, and voila… two asses were born, and in the end I was deeply hurt, and my reputation was scarred.  It hurt greatly knowing that people were going to assume I had to do something terrible if my wife left me, that I must be awful, that something must really be wrong with me.  There are things wrong with me, but in truth, nothing out of the ordinary for a human.  Another assumption made about me would be revealed when I would first tell someone about my being left and being divorced and their faces would look not sad but grim, disgusted even.  When it was their turn to speak they would share how they were disappointed in me, that they thought I loved God, how dare I that I would go through with a divorce.  They’d start spouting scripture on how God hates divorce, and blah blah blah.  Again, their faces would change when I was able to share that they held an assumption that many people hold, and that is that it takes two to get divorced.  It doesn’t.  If someone wants out, the state of Texas will let them out.  They didn’t even check.  They just… assumed that it took two, and so held in their minds false information about me. 

Sad truth is that it happens a lot, particularly in divorce.  So many people who have gone through what I have shared the same experience.  People judged them based off of nothing.  There was a blank in the narrative and they filled it.  Thing is, that blank is there because it’s not your business.  Not everything is meant for public consumption. 

It is in humility and patience we find the maturity to say to ourselves, “I don’t know what happened, and I am okay with that.”  Then, when someone asks if you’ve heard about how Johnny left Sally you can say yes.  You’ll start talking about how sad it is, how you wonder what happened, and here is where victory is had… at this moment you’ll already have admitted you don’t know, and that’s what you’ll say.  “I don’t know.  Could be a lot of different reasons.”  And you leave it what it is.  Then when they say what they think, you can ask them where they got their information.  You won’t just take it as gospel, because for all you know they are falling into the same trap of filling in blanks, of assuming.  When they say they just think so, or they pieced it together because of blah blah blah you can just say, “So, you don’t actually know?”  When they admit they don’t you will have loved your brother or sister well.  Not only will you have protected the one being gossiped about, but you’ll be blessing the one gossiping by ending the line of destruction their assumption was blazing.   Your thoughts hold value in your brother’s and sister’s eyes.  I cannot tell you the damage done hearing the third hand assumptions made about me during this past year.  It broke my heart, and made me feel sub-human.  To say that I did not feel loved was an understatement. 

Don’t be an ass (the donkey-kind, not the other).  Don’t assume.  Love your brother and sister.  Assumption is judgment based on ignorance.  We condemn someone based off of guesses.  How could that ever be a good thing? 

Proverbs 16:28

“A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends.”

Proverbs 26:20

“Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.”