The church wastes a great deal of financial and spiritual resources in patching up the fallout from the shoddy Socio-Sexual/Marriage Marketplace.  These energies could be much better spent on education.

Readership: All; Church leaders; Parents; Those who hope to be parents;

Introduction

In a previous post, Parenting is for the elite. (2020-3-16), I discussed how being a married parent tends to be an exclusive status among the elite.

However, there are two groups of women who do not enter into the blessed Inner Circle of the Parenting Elite.

  1. Women who commit abortion.  (No children.)
  2. Single mothers.  (No marriage.)

Obviously, these women have the potential to join this elite group, but for some reason, they choose not to join the parenting federation.

Their reasons are varied.

Although many of these women claim that they prefer to remain unmarried and/or childless, I have my doubts about how honest they are being with themselves.  If it’s true, then I would presume they prefer to remain single because they can earn a decent income on their own, and they cannot find a man worthy of their standards, who earns more, and who is also willing to commit to marriage.

They might think they’re elite, but there is something important missing.

 

Women who Commit Abortion

Concerning the first group, the church teaches us that we should love and accept those women who have had an abortion (should they ever be found out).  But laced within this stance, there is an implicit assumption that God’s design for women to be mothers isn’t optimal enough for them.  No, every princess needs to have a “season for singleness”* while waiting for a wealthy (or otherwise high quality) man to be her husband, or none at all.  We would never deprive a Christian woman of her opportunity to live wild and free in the process of “discovering herself”* if she so wishes, simply because she isn’t beautiful nor wise enough to attract an elite man’s commitment in marriage.  As a consequence, a woman having an abortion, for whatever her personal reasons, has come to be accepted as the norm, even within the church.  However, this is a topic that tends to stay within the women’s circles, and the men never become aware of this implicit treachery of procreative potential.

And… the church continues to teach us that we should love and accept those women who have had an abortion!

* It is fairly well known that all too often, a “season for singleness” is merely a polite euphemism for riding the carousel and becoming jaded (AKA “discovering herself”), but it is also implied that this “season of singleness” must not be interrupted by the inconvenient duties of childbearing and childrearing.

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Single Mothers

Concerning the second group, I’ve met some women who actually preferred to have an independent lifestyle and have a child with a man of their choosing.  Often times this is a sugar daddy who is already taken.  It seems that there are some women who don’t care too much about commitment as long as their lives are comfortably numb and ostentatiously secure.

Likewise, the church teaches us that we should love and accept those women who are single mothers.  But laced within this stance, there is an implicit assumption that God’s design for mothers to be married isn’t optimal enough for them.  No, every princess needs to have a wealthy (or otherwise high quality) man as her husband, or none at all.  We would never deprive a Christian woman of her opportunity to have a child, even out of wedlock if she so wishes, simply because she is neither beautiful nor wise enough to attract an elite man’s commitment in marriage.  As a consequence, a woman having a child out of wedlock, for whatever her personal reasons, has come to be accepted as the norm, even within the church.

And… the church continues to teach us that we should love and accept those women who are single mothers!

Something smells fleshy…

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Confusion over Cause and Effect

For those women who wish to join the ranks of the married, parenting elite, there is no other way to do so, except to remain sexually chaste until marriage.  This usually requires women to marry while they are still young (< 25-ish).

There are many ways that the church has skirted around the unpopular teaching of chastity, but ultimately, the only real solution is for us to make the following crystal clear to young people…

  1. That chastity (i.e. true sexual purity) has value for many reasons.
  2. That young women can have a clear choice about how their lives will turn out.
  3. Most importantly, the steps young women can take to precipitate that choice into reality.

In sum, the church needs to focus on the cause-and-effect relationship between the two broad choices of (1) chastity and contentment in marriage and family, and (2) sexual promiscuity, dissipation, and a less favorable life outcome.  But these cascades are not properly and adequately addressed in church catechism, and I don’t believe it ever has been.

Instead of emphasizing these fundamental concepts of procuring spiritual excellence in living, the church teaches us to love and accept those women who have fallen short of the target (i.e. by choosing to have premarital sex, committing abortion, or having a child out of wedlock).

But while this goal of extending unconditional love and forgiveness is indeed scriptural and necessary, it has replaced the goal of reaching towards the upward calling of Christ.  As such, it has become a self-reinforcing feedback loop which propagates these same bad behaviors.  That is to say, since these behaviors have become the acceptable norm, there remains no motivation for young women to exercise self-control and remain chaste.  No matter what mistakes they make, they will always find kind, loving church folks who will totally ignore how badly they have screwed up their lives while serving up casseroles and cookies.

Gynocentric government policies and court systems that are generous to disobedient wimmin only serve to exacerbate the longitudinal failure to discipline.

Is the need for introspection and repentance even a thing anymore?

Or is it only for when she fails to stick the landing and is certain to lose the rewards for being obedient?

No, it’s too late by then.

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Conclusions

Parenting is for the elite, but it shouldn’t be.  Not all (would-be) mothers are elite, but many more of them could be.  The church might increase the yield ratio by going back to the basics of why sexual chastity is of value, and why a timely marriage may be the best option for many young women.

At some point, it needs to be made undeniably clear that illicit sex is morally unacceptable and that it has long term consequences.  But few church leaders have the balls to spell out all the negative consequences of extramarital sex.

As a consequence, church staff and parishioners consume vast amounts of their time and energies, as well as fiscal and material resources in fighting the fires of sexual promiscuity, dealing with the consequences of abortion (e.g. counseling guilt and difficulties in subsequent relationships), and meeting the needs of single mothers.

The bottom line is that a great deal more spiritual efficiency could be achieved if the church focused its energies on preventing fires, rather than fighting them.

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