(a satirical conversation between two demons, in the tradition of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters)
Senior Demon loves preventing singles from getting married, and teaches Junior Demon how to do it right.
This is intended to be comedic rather than doctrinally perfect. Please don’t derive doctrines from comedy, but only from God’s Word 🙂 .
Junior Demon: Teach me how to wreck Christian marriages, and ruin their children.
Senior Demon: You don’t need to know that. There’s a much easier way to obtain the same results. Just promote prolonged singleness at Christian churches.
Junior Demon: What does singleness have to do with destroying marriages?
Senior Demon: It’s a pre-emptive strike that prevents Christian marriages from happening in the first place. That way you get the same outcome: no godly marriage, and no children to ruin. You do that by glorifying prolonged singleness.
Junior Demon: How do you do that?
Senior Demon: In the 20th century our leader Satan, the father of all lies, invented the “gift of singleness,” which doesn’t even exist * (1) (scroll to the end of the post for details). He taught Christians that this gift is the same as God’s gift of celibacy (Matthew 19:10-12, I Corinthians 7:7-9 being a eunuch, or like a eunuch, with no sexual drive, or a sexual drive so low that it doesn’t bother you).
We demons have been conditioning Christian singles to believe they have the gift of singleness, and that they dishonor God if they don’t enjoy this “gift.” This little present from us that goes against God’s natural design of the human body made for sexual expression in marriage to form families.
We demons have been conditioning Christian to make singles feel guilty about their God-given desire for marriage and children. We convince them that their godly desire is a most sinful desire. We teach that they’re dishonoring God by seeking to fulfill His design in marriage.
We condition singles to not actively look for a spouse, to be content in their barrenness, and to just wait for God to drop a spouse from the sky.
We’ve trained everybody in the church to give unsympathetic contentment lectures when singles tell others about the loneliness of not having a spouse. As a result, singles believe that if they were more godly they wouldn’t have this longing for marriage.
In the past when people heard that a single person wanted to be married, they would offer practical help. They would introduce them to eligible singles they knew, and point out places where their friends could meet other singles.
Parents would often help their daughters find eligible suitors and guide them toward marriage.
Now, thanks to our successful campaign, singles don’t get practical help, but a judgmental lecture on how they should be happy to be single, alone, and barren. In the Bible barrenness is considered an undesirable state (Deuteronomy 7:14, Exodus 23:25-26), but we taught Christians to call it a gift!
Junior Demon: Wow. This is great.
Senior Demon: As a bonus we also have many singles who are bitter at God, because they think it’s His responsibility to bring them a spouse. We successfully conditioned them to believe that it’s not their responsibility to go out and seek a spouse.
Next we might condition them to believe the equally foolish notion that it’s not their responsibility to go out and seek employment either. That it’s God’s responsibility to bring them a job while they wait doing nothing. Hahahah!
Then the rate of joblessness will be as high as the rate of singleness, which is the highest it’s ever been in American history thanks to our successful campaign.
Some singles still love God and aren’t bitter, but that doesn’t bother me much as long as they don’t look for a spouse. I want them to live a life of protracted singleness with nights void of the comfort of their own spouse.
I want them to have no legitimate outlet for their God-given sexuality, to live alone in old age, and to die alone in their apartment, and for the neighbors to not find out until it smells.
Junior Demon: That sounds wonderful.
Senior Demon: Yes, this is our gift! And we make them feel guilty for not embracing this dark gift with joy and contentment. The only problem is some married people encourage singles to get off the couch, and proactively look for a spouse.
Junior Demon: No!
Senior Demon: Oh, how I hate godly singles who pursue Christian marriage with a clear conscience! When two of them get married, what do we have on our hands? Another couple who reflect the relationship between Christ and the church. We’ve got to destroy that! We’ve got to destroy that before it even starts!
(end of the demon conversation)
Forbidding marriage is a teaching of demons (I Timothy 4:1-3). That Bible passage proves that demons are hostile to marriage.
It makes sense that demons would influence people to forbid marriage (or to discourage marriage, make it harder for people to marry, shame singles for desiring marriage, encourage divorce, or use any tactic to decrease the rate of marriage, which is what is happening in the Western world today) because marriage symbolize Christ’s relationship with the Church like no other relationship does (Ephesians 5:22-32).
This satire is something I wrote for myself in 2009 after reading part of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. I’m now sharing it with you, in the hope that it will help you not feel bad about your desire for marriage.
With love and encouragements,
*(1) The gift of singleness doesn’t exist, and it’s often confused with the biblical gift of celibacy, the rare gift of sexual containment, the ability to be celibate without burning with passion and romantic desires.
For more about why “the gift of singleness” is not a biblical concept but a man-made concept based on a wrong interpretation of Bible verses, please read these articles:
A Focus on the Family Ministry, Boundless: Rethinking the Gift of Singleness – Is singleness really a gift?
GotQuestions.org: Does the Bible teach that there is a gift of celibacy?
Tim Challies’ blog: Getting Serious About Getting Married
CrossWalk.com: A Serious Conversation for Christian Singles
Christian Pundit: Singleness Is Not A Gift (this single blogger posts many links at the end that support that the ‘gift of singleness’ as taught by most singles ministry doesn’t exist)
Albert Mohler the ninth president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote in “Looking Back at The Mystery of Marriage” about the gift of celibacy:
“In 1 Corinthians chapter seven, the Apostle Paul writes specifically about the gift of celibacy, offering a clear teaching for those who are given this special gift in order to be liberated for strategic Gospel service. (. . .)
“Second, the Bible presents celibacy as a gift–apparently a rare gift–that is granted to some believers in order that they would be liberated for special service in Christ’s name. Paul’s discussion of celibacy indicates that this gift is marked by the absence of lust and sexual desire that would compromise or complicate ministry as an unmarried person. ( . . .)
“By any calculation, the statistics indicate that young adults are marrying much later in life than at any time in recent human history. As a matter of fact, demographers have suggested that this new pattern of delay in marriage has established a statistical pattern that in previous generations had been most closely associated with social crises like war and natural disaster.
Quick Online Dating Tips: For the chaste, godly woman who wants to be married in the near future.
