Contradictory Messages About Single Blessedness

Rachel Nichols, , 1 Comment

It’s good for ministers to preach about how the single state can be used by God. How it can be a blessing to everyone around the unwed Christian just like marriage can be. How it is okay if the Lord lets you stay single forever.

Yet these sermons frequently contain contradictory messages that undercut what the preacher is trying to say. Here are some examples.

  • Referring to the “season of singleness.” This goes against the message that singleness may be lifelong. It also conveys the mentality that “this is just a season/brief period” to be rushed through–or enjoyed–since “it will be over all too soon.” This rings false to those of us growing old alone who do not have nor want the carefree, hedonistic lifestyles of secular SM influencers on Instagram.
  • Quit grumbling since it will make you unattractive to a potential spouse. Wrong motive. Grumbling is a sin that angers God.
  • Seek Biblical wisdom and advice from married Christians about singleness. Why? Married people don’t go to singles for marital or parenting advice. Those who married straight out of college or a year after high school have no idea what singleness is like. Especially the extended kind. This also conveys that being married automatically equals spiritual maturity or superiority. Go to an older single or widow with a reputation for godliness among the rest of the church. He or she will mentor you in serving the Lord as you are called.
  • Following it up with “Don’t give up hope!” And deliver some gushy anecdote about your sainted great aunt who wanted to marry but could not and watched her friends marry, raise families, have lives…while staying joyful and godly and caring. Blah, blah, blah. Till her best friend died and her dead friend’s widower started following her around immediately after the funeral. And kept following her everywhere till he pulled out a note from his dead wife begging him to marry her friend and tearfully urged Aunt Saintly not to dishonor the wishes of her dead friend, so she married the doddering, manipulative geezer (“At sixty-five! For the first time!”) and was so happy to serve as his free live-in nurse till he died. Maybe Great-Aunt Saintly was happy. Good for her. But that should not be what our hopes are based on. That scenario described is not the kind of hope that sustains. Heaven is. And that great-aunt did stay single for her entire adult life for all practical purposes. She never had a family. Since all she did was tend the sickbed of some poor, pathetic elderly man in his dying days. They never had a real marriage or any life worth speaking of together. I wonder why she didn’t just arrange a bake sale. I guess the sickly, frail, old man was too poor to hire an LPN.

Of course, there are others–younger people with lives ahead of them–who won’t like this. There still may be a spouse and kids in their futures. Or sentimental idiots in denial of realities such as death and old age- (dizzy women my own age or near it) who cling to the Great-Aunt Saintly’s “love story” as their greatest hope.

There are plenty of YT sermons, pep talks, and life coaches eager to pump them full of hopium. More power to them.

Contradictory Messages About Single Blessedness

Heavenly Comfort

Rachel Nichols, , 9 Comments

It is quite useless knocking at the door of heaven for earthly comfort. It’s not the sort of comfort they supply there. ~C.S. Lewis

 

I’m lonely so much of the time. My health is poor and I hurt daily. I was already poor, on a fixed income, and now the price of groceries has doubled.

I never married (probably won’t and why bother this late?) and will never have offspring. Nothing to look forward to in this life except everything continuing to get worse. I’m only 49 but might as well be dead as far as doing anything with my life or having any positive changes. 

It was that way–for me–before the world went rabid and the devil took over everything here. As one of life’s worthless losers I’m sure everything will just get worse. And absolutely no one is looking out for me either.

As a Christian, I have faith in either one of two (good) potential outcomes. Death by natural causes or murder. Or Christ returns and takes His followers to Heaven. A lot like painless mass deaths. (No real difference between the “Rapture” and quick, painless death if you think about it. Why do so many get the biggest thrill out of the “Rapture” and consider death the worst thing ever? You wind up in the same place anyhow according to the Bible.

My faith is being severely taxed. It’s not my head or reason giving me problems, but my heart.

As a college student I occasionally read articles and books about “Faith versus reason” yet nothing was said about where my doubts all came from. “Faith versus feelings.”

In my agony of loneliness–alone all day and night sometimes–I’ve wept uncontrollably. Tried to console myself with thoughts of Heaven. But it’s not working.

When it comes to Heaven my imagination doesn’t work. While I continue to believe I feel no comfort or sensation of hope.

I read a lot of joyful comments about the “marriage supper of the Lamb” we can all look forward to. In my narrow empty bed–alone forever–I tried to imagine it. But the all-too-literal images I conjured up were horrifying.

Some kind of communal mass wedding with countless men, women, and children–all wearing bridal gowns and veils. Including the men! Or–a more grotesque image–of some bridal collective. Meaning a mass of innumerable men, women, and children fused together into the body of one giant woman in a bridal dress and veil. This giantess steps down the aisle to marry a four-footed barnyard animal, smelling of lanolin rather than cologne.

Swap it out with Hebrew customs if you like. The effect is much the same. Collective Frankenstein type giantess goes through marriage ceremony with a sheep.

Speaking as someone who has been celibate all her life–nearly half a century–I don’t know how the idea of such an abstract metaphor is supposed to comfort me. How does such a “marriage” even work?

If I go to a concert or performance I really enjoy and really like the performer and a bunch of other people are there we may have a good time and even bond with others there. But that does not make us all married to the man on the stage.

How is admiring the Throne of God anything like marriage? I realize we’ll be waving branches and shouting or singing instead of just standing. Still more like a concert than a wedding. Let alone a life of marriage and family.

My images sound heretical. So I discarded them. But they go along with the comforting phrases and platitudes I keep hearing.

And the idea of embracing and kissing Christ the way I would a man who loved me romantically disturbs me. Obviously it’s a metaphor not to be taken literally.

But that leaves me with nothing but emptiness. I believe in God but find no comfort in any promises about Heaven because none are concrete or literal enough to soothe me. Mere abstractions and pretty metaphors aren’t helping. My heart is breaking and my soul overflows with grief.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!

Heavenly Comfort

Symbolism in Maxwell’s Rules

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I recently joined a reading club that meets by Zoom. We discuss symbolism versus allegory.

The problem with allegory is it breaks down too easily. Especially when it comes to religious allegories. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is partly an allegory but not a true one. It’s long and contains too many elements that don’t fit into the Crucifixion and Resurrection story.

There is a reason that Jesus’ parables were so short. The more complicated the story the harder it is to convey The Message without sounding preachy. Preachiness is essential to sermons, it can work for other kinds of nonfiction and religious songs and poetry. But for plays, movies, novels you can’t convey a simple message. The length will make The Message rattle around like a single marble in a cathedral.

You can lead the audience through the cathedral and yell, “Here’s the marble!” And have people throw it around in front of them. But it would be best to draw attention to other things in the building. Especially things put there on purpose by the designer and builders. Not thrown in as an afterthought.

In “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka, Gregor’s transformation symbolizes a sudden disability or illness. I read it as a college freshman just after “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Tolstoy and was surprised at how much the works had in common despite one being realism and the other surrealism/magical realism.

In my novel Maxwell’s Metamorphosis Curt’s transformation is humiliating and even disabling–in certain ways. Though Gregor could walk on the ceiling. But unlike Gregor Sampsa’s new form as a giant beetle, Curt’s renders him weak and insignificant rather than monstrous.

Curt’s shape is neither ugly nor terrifying. His biggest torment is his inability to frighten others.

Curt attracts a great deal more sympathy and compassion than Gregor the Roach. The humiliation comes from being forced to rely on others even though they usually give him what he wants. Due to his cute, pathetic appearance.

Dr. Maxwell’s metamorphosis symbolizes his spiritual weakness and powerlessness over his character flaws. And his transformed status as a minor symbolizes life under the law. Unknowingly he chose that life by refusing to repent and insisting he could live under the Rules he had set up for all to obey.

As a legalist Curt has never put childish things behind him but continues to think, speak and reason as a child. He lives childishly under the law rather than a mature adult under the New Covenant. Love has not had much influence over his life. Nathan, the angel symbolizes the Law.

I guess you could see the novel as a broken, imperfect allegory–or one containing allegorical elements of a soul being saved. But it also portrays interesting characters and a timeless view of moral conduct.

The theme is one of Salvation. But it does not contain Salvation as a message. (Acts 2 holds the message of Salvation.)

My goal in writing both the novel and Anemia was to entertain but also “baptize the imagination” of my reader. Every day before composing the rough draft I prayed that I could write in such a manner. Not to inform the reader’s head (Though there certainly is a time and place for that. Especially now.) but to inspire the heart.

You can read a condensed version of Maxwell’s Rules for free in serial form on Substack. “Maxwell’s Metamorphoses.” The first 3 chapters are up. Expect 9 more.

I cut loose with the ironic snarky humor since you can get away with more in a shorter work. https://renichols.substack.com

Symbolism in Maxwell’s Rules

My latest project: and why I may be archiving this blog pretty soon

Rachel Nichols, , , , 4 Comments

I’m writing another book. A work of nonfiction. The Snake that Ate the World. Yes, it’s nonfiction. It’s being published in serial form on Substack.

The newsletter itself is called Consumptive Chronicles. A play on words. Consumptive is how one describes a passive consumer. It’s also an old fashioned word for someone with advanced TB or a similar disease. Though I mean it as a metaphor for our spiritual death. Both as a culture and as individuals–but for God’s grace.

https://rnichols.substack.com

I no longer trust anything Google and will be using my gmail account far less. And I think this blog has served its purpose, so I’m moving on to something tighter focused.

In spite of everything I remain hopeful. God put us here in this time for a reason. It would be so wonderful if His people around the world would awaken to the perils around us and their true nature. If we could unite in Christian love and testify with the boldness of the First Century Church!

Even if we “lost” it would be such a glorious thing to see. And it would please our Master so much!

Not all my readers are Christians. But if you are a real Christian I know you share this dream. Please pray with me every day for its realization. With God all things are possible.

My latest project: and why I may be archiving this blog pretty soon

What the “Left Behind” Series Got Wrong: How a One World Government is Now Possible

Rachel Nichols, , , 7 Comments

Back in the nineties the Left Behind Series became popular. I was afraid to say so at the time, but the very plot description sounded dull. It had been done to death–and I had sat through many of its predecessors like a good Christian girl was expected to.

I had already choked down that awful pot boiler 666 by Salem Kirban, and sat through the first of that groovy Thief in the Night Series where the cast is dressed like members of the Brady Bunch with similar dialogue. Badly written, but free from swears. (The acting is more wooden.)

I never bothered with Left Behind since it seemed to promise more of the same. But for those who have forgotten or don’t know the premise–here is how it goes.

Every Christian in the world–or child of under 12–is zapped out of their clothes. Raptured to Heaven. So at more than a third of the world’s people are gone. I read the Fred Clark summary–which contains numerous quotes from the sources–and he points out how weird everyone’s acceptance is. And how there is no real disruption to the economy or social fabric with all the children in the world suddenly vanished. https://patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/11/05/left-behind-index-the-whole-thing/

All the sudden (I guess out of desperation over the mysterious disappearances though that is not given as a reason. It would make too much sense to point out the NWO exploiting such a convenient crisis. The writers don’t do much with that.) Nicolai Carpathia–a sexy, thirty-three year old ginger from Romania since the “anti christ” is supposed to be linked to Rome somehow (why not Italy?) comes to the scene. Nicky is repeatedly described as charming and charismatic as well as handsome. But the dialogue I have read conveys neither quality.

Nicky wows the UN by reciting the names of the countries who are members. Overwhelmed by such an example of breath taking eloquence and wit all the nations in the world immediately give up their sovereignty. Including the United States.

The whole scenario is ridiculous. The lack of world building is not helped by it supposedly being set in the real world.

But here’s how a real world takeover could happen. We wouldn’t even need a charismatic figure at the center.

Forget the concept of a central monarchy ruled over by a celebrity type figure. The best means of centralized government is a thing called technocracy.

One man (I make an exception for Jesus in His glorified form) could not successfully take over the whole world and establish a universal currency to force upon everyone as a stamp. But a small group of unelected experts can. Assuming they have enough money.

Assume a severe crisis happens. Followed by many others.

And the national governments respond horribly. Not just brutally to their citizens but stupidly as well.

Many skeptics dismiss this poor response as due to ineptitude. Others–mocked as conspiracy theorists–openly speculate something more sinister is afoot. Inept as bureaucrats are, if it is all due to bungling, why are they bungling the same way? Why do they all fall together in lock step?

The majority insist that the experts advising the national government they are under (“normies” tend to be short sighted) know what they are doing. If only everyone else would follow the experts’ advice things could get back to normal and everything would be fine. Tempers flare and people lose their minds. Especially those assiduously obeying the bizarre, ever changing, self contradictory advice of the scientific experts.

Free debate is stifled. In most places assembly is restricted if not banned. Using a prolonged state of emergency as justification. Online censoring goes along with this. Worth noting only a few people control most of the social media interactions now. They are called Big Tech. They also control other things online.

The emergency measures taken cause other emergencies. Economic, social, and civil. All convenient for the technocrats and other elitists who have been calling for a one world government for decades.

After a large portion of humanity has conveniently died–sad for those who value individuals but not the collectivists including all technocrats–they officially take over.

The most convenient number would be 6,000,000,000 of us dead. But if the technocrats got nervous or impatient they might settle for fewer than 2,000,000,000 casualties. They would build a bunch of “smart cities” with surveillance apps everywhere.

Everyone willing to surrender allegiance to the global technocrat state will receive a universal basic income. Through a chip–supplemented with a tattoo etched into the skin of the hand or forehead with tiny needles–they will upload a cashless unit of the new global currency. How big the allowance is depends on how loyal and unquestioning the obedience to the New World Order.

They wouldn’t pull this off all at once. While in the process of undermining the populace’s trust in their national governments, they would establish some sort of pass system. One linked to unquestioning obedience to the government.

The chief key to pull off this global coups would be modifying human behaviors for a few years beforehand. I will write about possible ways the technocrats could easily pull this off in my next post.

What the “Left Behind” Series Got Wrong: How a One World Government is Now Possible

Dumber Than Sheep

Rachel Nichols, , , , 4 Comments
Photo by Jonathan Borba on Pexels.com

A lot of people have been mocking others by calling them “sheeple” recently. As for themselves they are not sheep, but wolves or lions.

King David–the “alpha male chad” of his time–implied that he was a “sheep” in his most famous psalm. But he was a proud sheep because of who his Shepherd was.

My name “Rachel” is Hebrew for ewe lamb of God. I always liked the idea of being a lamb as a child. (Children and sheep have a lot in common.)

Sheep are weak, easily frightened, helpless, and–above all–stupid. But there are a few survival strategies they have.

  • Stick with the shepherd. When he’s not nearby, stick with the flock.
  • Know the shepherd’s voice and come when he calls.
  • Bleat loudly while running from danger so the shepherd may hear and save you.

The shepherd looks out for you and will protect what belongs to him. The stupidest sheep are the loners who wander off to get into mischief doing their own thing.

Staying with the flock is important for two reasons. First there are benefits to numbers. Especially among mild-mannered herbivores. While they can’t take on predators, but scatter, they can take on the elements as a team. There have been cases of flocks lost in snowstorms who survived by huddling together so their combined fleeces and body warmth staved off the cold. And sheep function best together. Secondly when you stay with the flock that makes it easier for the shepherd to protect you.

Knowing the shepherd’s voice and coming will help him keep you safe from thieves and predators.

Bleating will help him find you–even if you wandered off or got lost when the flock scattered.

Here are some behaviors so dumb that even sheep won’t do them. (At least not the four-footed kind.)

  • Mistake the baying of a wolf for the shepherd and go running to him.
  • When wolves attack instead of just panicking and scattering from fear, hold down fellow sheep in the hopes that they will be eaten and you spared.
  • When you’ve strayed from the flock, and wind up hungry, lost and injured you may hear the shepherd’s voice calling your name. Don’t bleat. Not like you are that helpless, needy or weak after all. You have the situation under control. You are an Alpha Sheep.
Dumber Than Sheep

Free E-Book

Rachel Nichols, , , 1 Comment

I wrote a collection of four flash fictions. All but the first are under 1,000 words.

A humorous story, “Covid Carin'” is told in excerpts from a mommy blog. Told from the POV of a meddling, image obsessed, shallow woman living in a gated community while everyone else struggles around her. To her credit, she does her part, by lecturing others on SM, and calling the police for minor infractions…till she gets hers.

“Christopher Moon” is a creepy pasta about a cowardly young man hiding in his grandma’s attack. He lives in terror of the virus/death. Until one day he leaves home for avocado spread, and meets the Reaper at a big box store.

In “Kevin’s Mask” a husband fails to learn the importance of good hygiene by masking up.

Mrs. Scrubb finds a safe place to spend the rest of her existence hiding from disease carrying humanity in “Behind the Masks.” A mysterious apartment complex provides her a sterile room to stay in, a screen to stare at, and beans with lukewarm water to sustain herself. What more could anyone ask for?

Here’s the book in PDF format.

 

lockdown-heroism-1-4Download
Free E-Book