The week started with Valentine’s day, and a post called “The Gift of Being Single.” A reader responded with a helpful critique of my comments, and I posted her remarks in another post, “Is It Really A Gift to Be Single?” This post also received comments, including a comparison between being married and childless to being single and a comparison of “contentment” in singleness with contentment in suffering. But I also received an email from Beth Bailey, a reader who feels God has called her to be single. She has reflected upon this calling on her own blog in a post called “Addressing the Elephant.” Beth writes:

I always thought I would end up married. It’s part of the deal, right? It certainly seemed so if you were to take a look around our Christian culture. Being a wife was an assumed (and maybe even necessary?) part of being a Christian woman- and so naturally, I thought that I would step into that role right as I stepped out of college, or at least shortly thereafter. 

However, I started noticing some things in Scripture, particularly when I came across 1 Corinthians 7 in my daily reading schedule. I read this chapter and my only response was…“What?” I think I actually reread it several times to make sure that I was understanding what Paul was saying. The basic gist, and crushing blow of it summed up in just a couple verses-

And the unmarried woman 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 restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

So Paul, if I am reading you correctly, marriage is actually a threat to my devotion to the Lord and therefore should be avoided if possible? Again, what?