“Yes, I get in a dating state, but that’s boarding school for you – starved of male company for years, still now, when a bloke says ‘hi’, I think, nice spring wedding!”
Miranda S1 E5, ‘Excuse’ (2009)1
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| Nice spring wedding. Disclaimer: wedding may actually be in summer, autumn, or winter; nothing in the picture makes the season at all clear. |
Her: So,
I gots a proposition for ya…2
Me: Oh
no, really? Another one?
Her: Just
hear me out, OK? What do you think of … this particular male human of
roughly your age with whom you are vaguely acquainted?
Me: Um.
Well, I suppose he seems all right based on the limited information I’ve been
able to gather from our vague acquaintance – though ultimately the answer to
the question of what I think of him is best characterised by the fact that I
don’t think of him very much.
Her: That’s
something I can rectify.
Me: It’s
not something that needs rectifying, actually. I have no need or desire to
think about this guy with any more regularity than I do already.
Her: I
disagree. Look, let’s face it, honey, you’ve only ever been genuinely
romantically attracted to one guy in the whole of your life so far, and I’m
afraid that that’s just not normal or healthy –
Me: Assertion!
On what do you base this outrageous claim?
Her: On
almost every piece of popular media you’ve been greedily consuming since you
were old enough to know how. I’ve done digging, honey, and that seam of
understanding – that regularly forming romantic attractions towards other
humans, at least until you’ve managed to attach yourself to a specific one by
means of formal commitment, is simply The Done Thing – extends way deeper down
into your consciousness than you like to admit. It constitutes a large part of
the reason why you ever pay me any attention.
Me: I
have no need or desire to ever pay you any attention.
Her: I
disagree. And anyway, tough cookies. You can’t shut me up, and besides, this is
for your own good.
Me: For
my own good? All you ever do is try to occupy my thoughts with romanticky
notions about guys I don’t actually feel romantically attracted to. The whole
thing is just a complete embarassing waste of my time. How on earth can that be
construed as for my own good?
Her: Because,
as I say, you’ve only ever had one real crush in your twenty-two years of life –
and even that one came crashing all the way down to nothing within mere days of
it becoming clear that there was no chance of anything happening between you –
and, as we’ve established, that’s just not normal or healthy, and so logically,
honey, the only plausible conclusion is that you need just a little bit of help
in this sphere.
Me: You
really think what you do is a help to me?
Her: Yes,
I do, and one day, when I have at last succeeded in my purpose, you’ll
recognise as much too. The ugly truth is this: in order to stand even the slimmest
chance of ever having a romantic relationship – which, might I remind you, is
something you have never had one of in your sad little life – it is an
unavoidable necessity, according to the customs of this day and age, that you
are going to have to form a genuine romantic attraction to another human being.
And if I might extrapolate from your life so far, you seem to form such
attractions of your own accord less than once per decade,3 which is
not a rate that looks particularly encouraging as far as your chances of not
remaining single your entire life are concerned. Therefore, my poor little
pumpkin, I have taken it upon myself to help you by trying to build the
occasional romantic attraction. You’ll notice I only pick ones that I think could
stand a chance of growing under their own steam if the circumstances were
right. I never suggest anyone who isn’t a Christian, for example. All I’m
trying to do is give your natural ability to fancy people – which is, as has
been proven, there, if generally very inactive – a little bit of a boost.
A kick-start. A catalyst, if you like. I provide a question with different
parameters – not ‘do you fancy this guy?’, but ‘could you imagine yourself ever
fancying this guy?’, and lo and behold, the activation energy needed for a
positive response plummets.4 From there we can start building.
Me: Except
that I don’t want to start building. Even leaving aside the stupidity of
your solution, what’s more to the point is that it’s completely unnecessary.
You’ve concocted a bad remedy for a problem that isn’t even a problem.
Her: Gosh,
your hypocrisy is frustrating. There you are insisting that your perpetual
singleness isn’t a problem, but don’t forget, honey, I know you better than
that, because I live in your head, and in truth, you really like the idea of
having a romantic relationship. You long to be uniquely special to someone in
that way. You’d love to have someone to be yours and to be with you in
everything, to have a kind of claim on that sort of devotion from someone and
to give it in return. The Christ-and-the-Church commitment of marriage makes
you go all gooey inside. And let’s not forget that you’re very curious about
sex.
Me: Fine.
I can’t see the point in trying to deny any of that.
Her: There!
You admit it. And do you see the disparity here? You harbour a desire for a
romantic relationship, but you’re not prepared to invest any special effort in
achieving the sine qua non of ever having such a relationship, namely a
sense of attractedness to a specific human being.
Me: Do
you really think that’s something you can artificially construct?
Her: Honestly,
I don’t know. But to put it bluntly, we won’t know unless we try, and I can’t
see a whole lot of other options, can you?
Me: Not
if I accept your premise that it’s more desirable to be in a romantic
relationship than not to be.
Her: Were
you paying attention just now? You literally just admitted that you find the
idea of being in a romantic relationship desirable.
Me: That
I grant you. But I think you’ll find there’s a very significant facet of this issue
to which you haven’t been paying any attention.
Her: Oh?
Pray tell.
Me: The
idea of being in a romantic relationship is an appealing one, certainly – but so,
and no less so, is the idea of remaining single my whole life.
Her: You
must be having a laugh. Nobody thinks that.
Me: Maybe
nobody in all that popular media you were talking about earlier thinks that –
see, I was paying attention – but you know I try to shape my way
of seeing the world after more reliable sources than popular media. One more
reliable source in particular.
Her: Not
going to work, honey. We both know that my end-goal is valued as highly in
Christian circles as anywhere else – in some ways more so. The kind of romantic
relationship you harbour a longing for is, after all, an inextricably Christian
one.
Me: I
said one source. Go on, have a look:
I wish that all were as I myself am. But
each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the
unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I
am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is
better to marry than to burn with passion … If you do marry, you have not
sinned, and if a maiden5 marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who
marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that … I want you to be
free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord,
how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things,
how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman
or maiden is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and
spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please
her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon
you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the
Lord … So then he who marries his maiden does well, and he who refrains from marriage
will do even better.6
That’s a few chunks scooped out of 1
Corinthians 7. I think it’s pretty obvious here that Paul considers singleness
a more desirable option than marriage, don’t you?
Her: That’s
not how people talk about it in church, though, is it, honey?
Me: Not
usually, no. I’ve met a number of people – all of them, if I recall rightly, married,
interestingly enough – who would claim that Paul actually describes the two
options as equally desirable. But frankly, I can’t see that in this passage.
Obviously Paul’s keen to stress that marrying is no sin, that it’s better to
marry than risk falling into sexual immorality, that one who marries does well –
but then he explicitly states that one who refrains from marriage does better.
And why? Because not having a significant other frees up the time and energy and
mental preoccupation which one would – rightly – spend seeing to said
significant other’s wellbeing, so that it might be spent instead on doing the
work of the Lord.
Her: Well,
that’s all very worthy, I’m sure, but can you honestly say it’s a prospect that
actually appeals to you?
Me: You
know what, I can. Suppose I never have a romantic relationship –
Her: Do
I have to?
Me: Yes,
because despite your best efforts – most of them rather misguided – it might
well actually happen. Suppose I never have a romantic relationship: just think
of the worldly anxieties I’ll be spared. I’ll always be able to make decisions
about my life by myself, without having to consult this other person all the time;
I’ll be able to choose what I do and where I live and so forth without having
to allow for how it fits in with my significant other’s life. I’ll always be
responsible for myself and myself only, with no awkward extra layer of concern
and authority hanging about between me and God. I’ll always be able to pour all
my time and energy and mental preoccupation into serving Jesus, more and more
so as the Spirit shapes me after his likeness and I get better at it. Just
think of what good use I’ll be able to make of what God has given me if I
remain the only one who can really claim a say in what I do with it – if pleasing
him, and no one else, is increasingly my sole priority. You know I’m not lying
when I say that such a prospect really does appeal to me. It’s a very
exciting one, actually.
Her: I’m
confused. Earlier you admitted that you’d really like a romantic relationship,
and now you’re saying you find the prospect of functional nunhood an exciting
one.
Me: Of
course you’re confused. You represent one aspect and one aspect only of what
goes on in my mind and heart. You can’t grasp the notion that I might harbour
two totally contradictory desires which both genuinely appeal to me, though
with varying strength at different times.
Her: That
doesn’t make any sense, honey. What about the whole ‘each has his own gift from
God’ thing? I mean, do you have the gift of singleness, or not?
Me: Today
I do. Every day I wake up single I do.7 The notion that every human
has inherent within him- or herself a gift of singleness or marriedness,
regardless of whether said human is in actual fact married or single, strikes
me as a load of rubbish, frankly. I seriously dislike this whole idea of the
category of the ‘not-yet-married’ that they talk about a lot over at Desiring
God.8 For one thing, it (at least implicitly) places this ludicrous expectation
on God, which I have in fact seen explicitly articulated elsewhere,9
that if he’s caused someone to have a desire to be married, he will
consequently cause that desire to be fulfilled. I mean, that’s just silly: one
could say the same about any desire. I have a desire to continue to live in Exeter
for a long time, for example, but it would clearly be inaccurate and sinful to
claim that God somehow owed me the fulfilment of that desire. He never promised
that. And likewise, he never promised that everyone who would like a romantic
partner will get one. Consider what Paul says about widows, that they’re better
off staying single as much as maidens are. I have no idea how people who
understand singleness and marriedness as inherent qualities square that circle:
is the death of her husband proof that the young widow was really destined for
singleness all along, or something?
Her: Well,
that’s a nice gift for God to give you, I’m sure: singleness, whether you want
it or not, and then potentially at some stage in the future – I’m holding out
hope, whatever you say – marriage, whether you want it or not.
Me: You
know what’s a really nice gift God’s given me? The certainty that
whatever happens, it’ll be for my good and his glory.10 And so I do not
need your so-called help to attempt to engineer things one way or the
other. In a way, the fact that I don’t form romantic attractions easily is a
little gift of its own; it spares me a good deal of annoyance and heartache and
means I can put up with singleness a lot more easily than many people.
Her: It
has a lot of disadvantages too.
Me: So
does almost every gift, from a worldly perspective. But the fact remains that each
has her own gift from God, and for each of us, what God gives us will turn out
to be exactly what best facilitates our sanctification. And let’s face it,
honey: that’s better than anything you claim to be able to do for me.
Footnotes
1 Thanks to Springfield! Springfield! for the transcript I
consulted: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=miranda&episode=s01e05.
2 I consider this expression to be a Fairly OddParents reference
(the episode in question being S4 E11, ‘Shelf Life’), but I suspect that’s
probably not its ultimate origin.
3 My Internal Hopeless Romantic here allows for my childhood as
time during which she wouldn’t expect me to be forming romantic attractions.
Generous of her.
4 If you need a quick reminder of how catalysts work in order for
the metaphor to make sense, BBC Bitesize has you covered: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/triple_aqa/calculating_energy_changes/energy_from_reactions/revision/5/.
5 The ESV translates παρθένος (parthénos)
as ‘betrothed woman’ here and throughout the chapter. They most likely have very
reasonable grounds for such a translation, but since I can’t see any such
grounds myself – see also the relevant LSJ entry, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=parqenos&la=greek#lexicon
– I’ve decided to substitute ‘maiden’, meaning a woman who is not and has never
been married. I prefer this to ‘virgin’ because it makes it about marriage
rather than purely sex, and much as I think the two ought to be inextricably
connected, the fact is that in the society in which I live, they aren’t
understood as such.
7 I here owe thanks to the friend who first brought me firmly round
to this way of thinking about a year and a half ago.
8 For example: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/single-satisfied-and-sent-mission-for-the-not-yet-married.
I don’t think it’s a bad article overall – indeed, no negligible amount of the
advice it gives about how to spend one’s time as a singleton well is expressive
of why I find singleness exciting – but I reject the idea of the third category.
9 Assuming I recall rightly, a response to such effect was made
by the owner of the Dirty Christian Facebook page to a comment someone had made
on one of his posts. Said owner is currently taking a break from social media,
but you can still view his previous posts: https://www.facebook.com/thedirtyxian/.
10 Romans 8:28. Obviously.
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