After last night's rather pointed discussion and my obvious stay of great patience I feel I should solidify this whole thought; for the benefit of posterity (or posteria) and the peeps that didn't hear this first up, I shall now cast my pearls before swine.
We live in a highly connected world. It is replete with media: Internet, TV, Radio, Print etc. Literally zillabytes* of info demanding attention. A great bulk of this is devoted to a relational discourse; let's face it poets, songwriters and gossip columnists would be out of a job. The only logical conclusion is that we have an inbuilt need. How then is it possible on a planet of 6 billion people to feel utterly alone and isolated?
Society fuels this even further and even the church (in my well paid opinion) inadvertantly does so too. There are civil ceremonies for marriage, there are counselling services for divorcees but seemingly nothing for the "chronically" single.
What opened this discussion was a simple comment namely: "What's it like to still be single after all these years?" my reply rather defensively framed was "I don't know. What's it like to be married after all these years?". This caused a great deal of offence and I really have no idea why, it is in essence the same question. At what point did it become socially acceptable to insult singletons to their face and not expect a right of reply.
The ABS tells us that for whatever reason about 6% of the population will never get married or live de facto. Now presumably most people will have gotten married or have been in a serious relationship by age 30 which means that immediately there is a societal predjudice.Now with regards this the church is very strong to enforce the "no sex before marriage" rule (and rightly so), but by the time you actually are that point when the 8:30 movie on a Friday night is the reality this rule actually has the amendment "well you're still not allowed, so there". I've also heard all of the wishy-washy statements like "maybe you have to wait" or even that great line "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will grant the desires of your heart". In my feeble experience, God aint a vending machine and especially surrendered rights under submission will not instantly guarantee some magical reward.
Here's the bizarre twist, generally most pastors will have been married so are no longer the authority on what's it actually like to be alone. The second twist is that there is a subtle difference to being alone and being lonely. There are occasions when I'll need for instance to be alone and some would say that that's a good thing, but the premise of being lonely is more a mindset.
Now I'm not about to suggest that I'm necessarily content with my lot and perhaps looking across the fence where "the grass is greener" may be an issue but the heart of the matter is that we all have an inbuilt need to connect with people and especially our God. When a need isn't met for some reason it tends to create a great deal of grief.What I tend to find that's almost a paradox about life is that when I look beyond the four walls of my own mind, I somehow actually draw more beneit from helping other people. Though my own needs for connection may never be met (which could in theory be a distinct possibility) there will always be someone who needs what I have more than I do - it just happens to hurt when I get attacked over an expectation that may or may not be realised; I can't tell what tommorrow... or the next 50 years will hold. To presume that anyone other than God is in total control and knows what is best is quite literally a fallacy and shows up my selfishness more than anything.
*Zillabyte: (invented 01-03-05 by me) literally a zillion bytes. Some ridiculously large quantity of information.
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