How Singleness Teaches Us, with Mike Chu - Episode 101

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I am with Mike Chu, and we are going to have a conversation singleness, but I want to make sure that Mike gets a moment to tell us about what's going on with the Awakening School of Theology, because they have switched models so that you can access their classes. I want to give him a moment so that we can see how that's going in the last couple of months. Mike. How are you doing today?

[00:00:42] Mike Chu: Hi, Carey. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me back. Awakening has gone through a major transition. We've moved from a sales model of selling courses to now offering all of the courses in the Awakening School of Theology for free for anyone who signs up with an account and can take courses immediately without any wait or delay.

[00:01:03] The model that we have switched to requires that we are now completely operating on a donation based model. The goal for the last couple of months was to encourage folks who have been students in school or who want to be students in the school to consider partnering with Awakening and becoming a monthly vision partner. We were aiming for about 700 or so people who would donate about 40 a month, and that would be enough to cover all of the logistics, our overhead, the cost for streaming the courses, and course creations, enough to create four courses a year.

[00:01:43] And so we're at about 84 percent of that donor based model that we'll need. We have had folks who have donated large some for a yearly amount, which is great. But to have that sustainability, we are still hoping that we will hit the 700 number of monthly vision partners by the end of this year. We are grateful that we definitely have enough to continue operating for a year or so, but we are looking to get to that point of 700 vision partners for 40 a month. It doesn't have to be 40. It could be lower. It could be higher. It just needs to average out to around that amount.

[00:02:20] And we have a couple of interesting courses. I actually got a chance to interview a pastor, theologian, practitioner, that we're dreaming and talking about a potential course that he could teach that I think will be very helpful for a lot of us who are in that space of being a teacher, but also being a pastor and being a counselor and helping people who are whatever stage of life that they are .In. The traumas, the hardships, the difficulties that they may encounter that we hope that we can provide a resource for folks like that to assist and to aid our congregations.

[00:02:57] Carey Griffel: That's wonderful. I'm really excited to hear that it's going well I pray that it will continue to go well and that your growth will continue. Everybody check out the Awakening School of Theology. They have an amazing set of courses.

[00:03:11] But for today, we are going to get into the topic of singleness again. I am married and I have kids. Mike is married. He doesn't have kids. So neither one of us is really coming at it from the perspective of singleness at the moment in our lives. But there is some nuance that we can bring to this conversation as well and I'm excited to get into that with you today, Mike. So when you read this book by Danielle Treweek, The Meaning of Singleness, how did that impact you and what did that start percolating in your mind?

[00:03:48] Mike Chu: So I guess I would say that the reason I began wanting to read this book was because of a conference I was at last year where she was able to do a seminar, like essentially in one of these conferences sessions, she had a seminar room where friends who had also read her book did a theological reflection and provide papers that they presented at this little mini seminar in response to some of her points in the book. It was a very intriguing thing, because I had heard of the title, because it was just recently released, but I didn't know exactly what was she going to be talking about.

[00:04:25] One of the presenters, had pointed out that the book was proposing this idea that while marriage and singleness are both good, marriage is apocalyptic. It's part of the fading world order that we're currently in. It will one day come to an end. Either our literal marriages will come to an end. Hopefully, long, lived marriages. But we all know that they will come to a physical end.

[00:04:55] But, singleness is eschatological. It's the final state of an individual human being. If that's the end, then singles today, are getting a taste of what is to come of the new age. That was was enough to intrigue me. I was like, I'm getting this book. It was not even an urgent need to read. I just wanted to process and think through it. The topic of singleness and marriage has been a very interesting kind of up and down waves, because in my faith journey, I grew up in a Chinese heritage church. And if anything about Chinese Christian culture is that marriage is super emphasized. Marriage, family with kids, everything about the church, is centered and oriented towards the service of taking care of the families with children probably because it is a Chinese and Asian high value that everyone in the church is treated as family and even the ways that we refer to one another in our dialect cultures, whether it's Cantonese Mandarin or Toysonese, even if they're not technically in your blood family, you would still call one another, this is uncle so and so this is auntie so and so this is brothers, you know, Mike or sister Ruth or whoever. And your children was also cared for and taken care of by all the other aunties and uncles within the church community. It was not even something explicitly taught. It is just part of this Chinese immigrant culture that has been brought in. Even amongst non Christian Chinese families, older adults, friends, family friends, they're treated as though, that's uncle so and so, that's auntie so and so. There's still always this kind of idea of, you're somehow still connected to me in a familial kind of bond.

[00:06:54] But the question about singleness always bothered me. Because as good as all those things are within a Chinese heritage church background, sometimes a side effect of that is singles were treated as, well, they are conveniently the default babysitters While they have all the ample time, they can do all the ministry stuff in the church. Don't bother the parents with small kids, especially because they don't have time. They can't serve, go to the singles.

[00:07:22] Ultimately when you start having that kind of thing, there is a potential risk of folks feeling like being single sucks. Like, I don't feel I am being treated or given the same honor within the culture or within the church community. And it's never meant to be that way, but I think it is an unintended side effect when churches place a huge emphasis on family ministries through sermons or Sunday schools or Bible studies, they implicitly center it towards your goal, yes, it's to bring glory to God, one of the best ways of bringing glory to God, find a spouse, get married, have children, and then become part of the larger family of communities.

[00:08:08] One of the phrases I have been saying is, sometimes it does seem like churches have a tendency to become a coalition of families and not be the family of God. It's about making sure that the needs of the families are met in the church, thus we create this coalition, this connection with one another. We have these shared needs, but we don't necessarily see each other as one church family together to care and love one another.

[00:08:37] And then that is something that I am not always like just being annoying, but I do care about it. And I do want to see that even a glimpses of that being played out in life in experience at our church community.

[00:08:52] Carey Griffel: it's interesting to hear your story about your perspective on the upbringing you had in your culture and society because Treweek comes from that Reformed perspective, she brings out a whole bunch of Reformed people who say this and that and all of these problems from her area, but you saw it in your culture.

[00:09:12] I saw it growing up in the LDS culture and this whole emphasis on one thing rather than the other is very dangerous. Now, that doesn't mean that everything is damaging. It doesn't mean we should fall into the opposite ditch of the road. And that is my concern with some of what she brings out. But at the same time I see the need for some voices to balance out the equation.

[00:09:43] Because I think you're right that this overemphasis on marriage, and this is the only way you can be, is very harmful. It's harmful for young people. They fall into bad marriages because of this, because they think, well, I have to get married so the soonest opportunity they have, they just take it instead of considering all the options instead of thinking, well, you know, I do have an option of just waiting and seeing and living life a little bit more, maybe.

[00:10:12] The different ways that we see this are very impactful to young people, to the people who are older, who are kind of settled in, well, now what do I do, or things aren't going the way that I wanted and nobody is seeing the value of me because I'm not coupled with someone. It's a really hard thing to find a balance between not overreaching into one side and overbalancing the equation.

[00:10:39] I don't know if a society can really get to a point where everybody feels completely equally valued. I mean, eventually in the eschaton we will, and maybe that's part of the point, but, you know, it's really interesting how overwhelming it has been in modern times, this emphasis on marriage.

[00:11:01] Mike Chu: As I was going back to Treweek's book and finding the materials again and the pieces that I highlighted and what I thought was really something I wanted to return to and think about more, one of the things that did come back to my mind was when she said the unmarried form of life is not a foreshadow of eternity, but an actual, albeit partial, foretaste of it.

[00:11:24] Years ago, as a young Christian, I viewed my singleness as a curse. Get out of it as fast as you can. it took one Christian writer that I was reading that actually pointed out it isn't a curse. Adam was created single. He was not less of a man before his wife was created.

[00:11:45] Carey Griffel: He was the image of God, right?

[00:11:48] Mike Chu: Exactly and so was his wife when she was created. She was also fully created as an imager in the image of God

[00:11:57] Carey Griffel: But let me push back on that for just a second too . This was also a point that I noticed in her book. She said that singleness is inherent to humanity because we begin single.

[00:12:12] And I thought, well, okay, but we also begin immature. Does that mean we stay immature? I mean, I'm valuing her impact and what she's saying here. But at the same time, is that not a bit overstatement? Because we are created to be in relationship. And if marriage is an example and a push towards us, and she brings this out too, and others do as well, that our sexuality in particular is a push towards relationship to others. One of the things that I struggle with, is the idea of what she even means when she says that singleness is eschatological.

[00:12:58] I think I understand it, but she also goes back and forth in so many ways that I'm not sure the point she's making is adequately coming across. If singleness is eschatological, what does that mean?

[00:13:12] We go back to what Jesus says about the angels and people in the resurrection not being married. Well, what does that mean? Does it mean that we don't have social connections? It can't possibly mean that. We don't have covenants with one another, and she brings that point out in particular. She says that we do not have a particular covenant with one single human being, and what Jesus's point would be is that your vows and covenants with individuals in human society are broken upon death. You have to have that to some degree, because otherwise, how are you going to get remarried? Right? You know, if your spouse dies, if the culture is going to say it's okay to get remarried, then that previous bond needs to have been broken. Otherwise, it's still in effect, and what are you going to do then, right?

[00:14:08] So there's that, but I think a bigger point is the procreation aspect, right? So there's all of these little pieces, and where you're going to land on how you're thinking about it is going to depend on your emphasis.

[00:14:24] Mike Chu: She says it in the beginning is a theological retrieval. This isn't purely a biblical theology focused book. And you mentioned it in that episode, right? It's, it's not where we're taking a couple of verses, we're digging really deep down into ancient context and culture and grammar and historical material. It's using some of that, but the greater amount of the material is reflection and systemization.

[00:14:51] I think part of what's going on here is that when she talked about yes, you don't have that covenant with one exclusive person, but you're going to have this now greater connection.

[00:15:03] She's not saying, at least this is how I interpret it. She isn't saying that somehow we don't have any connection anymore. Instead, she actually uses this phrase in Latin, Communion personarum, this idea of personal communion. She even frames it as teleological, which is our way of simply saying the eschaton of the end that we're facing towards a giant human personal community as the eschaton.

[00:15:31] So, it's not that human connections and human relationships are gone. It's the covenant exclusive version that is known as marriage that will fade away. Singleness is the final state in the eschaton, and a lot of that is a theological retrieval of other theologians who have reflected on the fact that Jesus entire life ministry, his entire life, was single.

[00:15:57] Which is radical in the culture of his day and time. Rabbis typically were married. Rabbis typically would already have children. Part of what it means to be a rabbi, is that you need to model to the community what it means to be a good husband and a good father. Jesus was none of those technically.

[00:16:18] And this even goes into why when Christians are theologizing and looking back on the Old Testament scriptures and they're reading Isaiah and they're reading the part about how he is like a shoot that bears no fruit that, he dies ultimately the suffering servant dies without any descendants.

[00:16:37] And yet. He will still be able to see his children, which is a confusing line when you think of that. It was like, so he's going to be like a shoot, which is strong imagery for something that will never bear fruit. And yet he will still see his children. Like, what is that supposed to mean?

[00:16:58] Ultimately what we're getting at in the greater fulfillment and the revelation of the New Testament, we see Jesus as the suffering servant who ends up, because of what he had done, and the ongoing work he is still doing, there are now, countless children of God that are now connected, not by blood, but by allegiance and, the shared commonality in the work and the life and death of Jesus.

[00:17:25] one of the things I read years ago when I was trying to address questions in my papers about same sex marriage, for example, in the church was the importance of Jesus was a Jewish human man. He had all the physical, biological things of a man.

[00:17:43] What does that mean? The Evangelical Church, in general, has done a terrible job at reflecting on the reality that our Savior is Jewish, He is a man, He was single, and we don't contemplate that long enough to wonder, so what does that mean?

[00:18:01] If we just pause, and that's part of what theological retrieval requires, is the pausing and , chewing of the cud. If I were to say it in a more agricultural way of saying it, thinking and contemplating on that, does it not be an implicit affirmation that yes, there's something good about singleness ? Jesus as a human being did not shun the reality that he was going to be a single man and die as a single man and was raised as a single man and from all of what we can tell even in Revelation, however, you read it, his appearance is still a single man. There is no wife by his side. There is only a throne that he sits upon but there is no queen.

[00:18:47] The church is technically the bride of Christ, but we also note that's metaphorical, right? we are united with him as though a husband and wife are united. And so something about that and that's why it didn't bother me as much because I already had in my past the theological reflection and retrieval. I hadn't thought about Jesus being a single Jewish man, never married, never children knew that his death would mean, physically, the line of Joseph is gone, and yet he will still see his children. What in the world does that mean? If we take that purely literal, and this is part of why literal hermeneutics sometimes kind of fail us.

[00:19:28] Carey Griffel: When I started this whole series on sexuality, one of the things early on that struck me, as opposed to the way that you normally hear about things, as Treweek points out, and as most of us in evangelical Christianity will see very clearly, that major emphasis on marriage in the church, and then talking about sexuality and then you look at Jesus and he is the embodiment of what we should hope for.

[00:20:00] And early on I had the thought, does that mean that nobody should get married? That everyone should be single? You know, all of these kinds of thoughts. And that's really not what Treweek exactly pointing towards, but like you said, the suggestion that it can still be good. The suggestion that there's nothing wrong with it. It's seen as strange and abnormal and what's wrong with you if you're single, and so we need to shift that and say, well, there's nothing wrong.

[00:20:32] Mike Chu: This is how people get nervous whenever we talk about singleness. I've said this phrase several times with you privately and with other friends, even at my church as Protestants and Evangelicals, we carry the emotional baggage of Martin Luther. It's funny seeing how Martin Luther went from one end of the spectrum in his opinion about marriage to all of a sudden, sex is just as necessary as water and food, an opposite extreme reaction.

[00:20:57] That was also his tendency as a person. He did also flip really, really fast and hard one way or the other, and in some sense, we carry that legacy as well. I think, one of these interesting things is that, yes, there is always that potential that we could overemphasize singleness. And certainly the church, at least the Western church, has definitely made an overemphasis about that.

[00:21:22] And that also entails how Mary, Jesus's mom, was treated as well. Like, oh, she was perpetually a virgin. I personally don't necessarily agree with that because I do think that the brothers and sisters that appeared in trying to get Jesus to stop preaching because they thought he was crazy, I think they were the children of Mary and Joseph from early church records like Eusebius, it seems like they were the result of that union.

[00:21:49] And so you have this interesting dynamic, right? Because the Church is trying to look for examples within the Scriptures to explain to their pagan counterparts why they are different, why they act different? Why are they not super obsessed and concerned about getting married? Making sure they marry anybody and everyone because it's all about making sure your property, your finances, everything would get passed on to the next generation. Why is the church people, these weird Christians, why are they not caring about this stuff?

[00:22:22] Why do they not care if they die? Because if you die, what happens to all your possessions? What about the people under your care? the Christians are simply reacting with, Well, if I die, the family of God, the Church, will still take care of my literal bloodline people. They will take care of them. What about these orphans? The Church will take care of them. What about older people who never had children, the childless couples in the Church, who don't have children, who will then take care of them in their old age? The Church will take that place.

[00:22:52] That is a hard thing for us as modern evangelicals to even hear. One of the things that Treweek mentioned in her book was how childless couples used to be able to also look at one day, I don't have any kids. And that was the one way to guarantee that was your life insurance, your medical insurance, your horse insurance. Because you had kids who would eventually have jobs and eventually take care of you. If you are a childless couple, what is going to happen to you when you grow old, when you can't work a job.

[00:23:21] Carey Griffel: What you're saying strikes me as really interesting because you have that sense of inheritance, the family line, who's going to care for you when you're old. You still hear many people say, well, if you don't have kids, who's going to take care of you? Treweek's point, which is an excellent point, is that the church should be doing these things by large. It's no longer the burden of only your family line.

[00:23:50] That's the whole idea of the family of God. Even childless couples, even people who have children, the true inheritance is something else. But we have largely lost that narrative of we're supposed to take care of each other. The church is supposed to be this. The inheritance is the family of God rather than our individual families. We've gone back into our little nooks and crannies of, We have to be sure we have kids and we have our 501ks and we have all of these things in order or else we're not going to be taken care of.

[00:24:25] And from the time of Christ onward, it was supposed to be, we take care of each other. We take care of even people who don't have family. I think that's a necessary thing for us to hear.. Right now, a lot of people are very concerned about their futures, really worried about what's going to happen and how am I going to survive. If we band together, a larger group is going to have way more material and resources than an individual family.

[00:24:55] Children can be very burdened by taking care of their parents if they are the only ones doing that, especially in this day and age where life is just such a different thing. Few of us can take our parents into our homes. Because our homes are not designed like that. Our homes and communities don't have that focus on the extended family as we used to.

[00:25:21] Mike Chu: That's part of the hermeneutical work that is done and part of theological retrieval. We are living in different cultures. We understand the biblical culture. We understand their context in time, and the core meaning and the messaging that's being said. How do we take that same messaging and make it understandable and applicable in our modern context? That's the work of theological retrieval and doing this hermeneutical bridge.

[00:25:49] A lot of times we feel kind of helpless of how do we even do that, right? Because it just seems such a disparity between our culture and the ancient biblical culture. Sometimes people don't even want to try or if they do try they do it in a very literal way.

[00:26:03] They try to force it so that it matches exactly to what the biblical picture looks like. The reality is you can't effectively and really in a very flourishing kind of way do that well, right? That actually is beneficial and it's not more harmful than, than good.

[00:26:21] And so there is this acknowledgement, right? We live in families that, yes, if you can, if you're wise with your finances, you don't have debts, you get a 403b for your kids, you try to find ways to take care of your immediate blood family, but at the same time, the church has forgotten the reason why we have this history of banding together and taking care of one another was because the church in the first, second, third centuries was going through waves of persecution where they no longer had those guarantees.

[00:26:53] And if they're going to lay down their lives for Jesus as king, because Caesar is not Lord, then who can I depend upon except my brothers and sisters in Christ, who are in the family of God, in the body of Christ, right?

[00:27:10] I think of Paul's final instructions to Timothy. It was about how young men need to look up to the older men as though they were fathers. Young women need to look up at the older women as though they were mothers. You, Timothy, need to treat the older men, even though they're not bloodline , as though they are your father. Like that was Paul's instructions, but it was all in this context of, this is the greater family of God.

[00:27:34] It was all familial language. And I think sometimes we're reading books like Treweek, if we don't have that in our minds, that the family of God is the overarching picture of how God operates, then it is very easy to just say, well, yes, single in the sense that we are now connected to one another as brothers and sisters in the giant family of God.

[00:27:59] Carey Griffel: But here's my question. How much does singleness as a concept really speak into that. Why couldn't we just go into the brother and sister language, the family of God language? Why dwell on the concept of singleness? What would be the point and intent there?

[00:28:23] Mike Chu: I think dwelling and pausing, on the concept of singleness has its most important value in the here and now, within the expression of the body of Christ in the here and now. On the practical ministerial level, that's where I see the most powerful value of this reflection on the fact that singleness is eschatological.

[00:28:46] To me, this theological retrieval is just as important as when Athanasius theologically retrieved what does the incarnation of Jesus actually mean about human creation and human flesh? That it forced a person who grew up in a Greco Roman mindset where flesh and physical matter is inherently seen as evil and wrong and yet has to ask the tough question, The fact that God became incarnate as Jesus the Christ in a human body... does that not mean, then, that the human body is a vessel that is inherently worthy to contain the very presence and the holiness of God?.

[00:29:29] That was his theological retrieval, to see the value of human flesh and the human body, and the beauty of human creation in the image of God. For me, the idea of dwelling on the singleness of Christ is actually a very important moment of theological retrieval because this actually does affirm the idea, you are whole and complete. You are a full imager of God. You are worthy for the very presence and this aspect of Jesus's life, his singleness to the world, that your completeness is not from a spouse or a partner or a boyfriend or girlfriend or whoever. Your completeness ultimately comes from your completeness in Christ.

[00:30:15] I hope that at least gives one perspective of an answer because his singleness was important that that was a detail that was very noticeable by everyone in anybody right to such a point that conspiratorial theories would come up say no, no, no, he wasn't, he wasn't single. No, no, there was something between him and that Magdalene girl. it was such an incomprehensible thing like, how can this guy be single? It was so anti culture.

[00:30:42] Carey Griffel: In the Old Testament, you have that emphasis on tribe. You have that emphasis on bloodline. Again, not as DNA, but as inclusion into a place where you can have your inheritance taken care of. You can be taking care of yourself in times of need. And there's that interdependency in this tribe and that tribe and family.

[00:31:08] So maybe we could say that part of the importance of the switch to looking at singleness is to dismantle some of the ideas that are overly embedded into our earthly realm . And we need to dismantle a little bit of that so that we can see the larger family of God and our place in that.

[00:31:35] Do you think maybe that is a little bit fair?

[00:31:38] Mike Chu: I think that's more than fair. Because I think, a lot of times when folks get into discussions about marriage and singleness people like to bring up this idea of well, we're all married. Right. Because we're all the bride of Christ. We're gonna be married to Jesus. And, that's fine, especially for my sisters in Christ. But, for me as a guy, there's a gear that shifts. I'm like, okay, we're going down to third gear right now.

[00:32:01] I need to, get that concept. I think we have to always pause whenever people bring that up we should be fine. We're all gonna be married. It's like, yes, metaphorically . We are all members of Jesus' body. But I am not a literal, intestine of Jesus, right. I'm not, his thumbnail. It's a metaphor about the interconnection ness.

[00:32:25] But I do think there is something about it when you mentioned how it's a dismantling because the Book of Revelation does go out of its way of pointing out to central Asian Christians going through a lot of persecution, especially through a particular emperor, there's probably at best a thousand or maybe a few thousand of them. And then they get this vision from John telling them what he was receiving from the Spirit. And there's this multitude of all ethnicities, tongues, languages, tribes, all together praising and longing for the wedding with the Lamb.

[00:32:57] That same group is ultimately called the Bride. All of our, former ways of differentiating each other are being dismantled and unified under the bride. But I think there is, there is something that's like a yes and a no, or it's an and and both because yes, you got the dismantling. Ironically, the dismantling is happening by this acknowledgement of the goodness of singleness. And also the acknowledgement of how beautiful marriage is in that, yes, Jesus is being exclusive in a relationship by the inclusion of multiple single people in the same space to him as one bride.

[00:33:40] Even Treweek's book talks about that we need to reach a space ideally one day where marriage and singleness are held in equal esteem. Not one or the other. Her strength in the argument of her book, seems like she's trying to say singleness is better, in that, yes, singleness is the eschatological state.

[00:33:59] But it is in the tension because singleness in the here and now, is different from marriage. We need to embrace the fact that there are good things that singleness provides in perspectives, connection, relation, and even theology that makes sense of what we see before the new chapter of humanity and God begins. And I think that is a worthwhile project.

[00:34:21] How do we strive for where marriage and singleness in a day in day out reality in our church communities is lived where both are honored and even desired to be in.

[00:34:34] Like I want to reach a space one day where, when I am single again, if I'm the one that survives, I would want to be a man that actually embraces the singleness. I grieve the loss, but I embrace the good of what this new life season means. Right? And I think, you know, I'm coming from the fact you know, Carey, year and a half of losing my sister and she lived as a single woman all her life and one of the things that I have come to appreciate and am still in awe at times is when people learn of her story, without ever like being preachy or purposeful, somehow her life encourage them in their own struggles or, or wrestling with the concept of being single themselves, of is there actually fruit that could come from a life in celibacy, in purposeful dedication to Christ, without trying to pursue getting married, not becoming obsessed with the mission of becoming a married person.

[00:35:40] They see the life testimony of my sister, it ministers to them in ways that I know I cannot do with just mere words. It's, it's lived out practice life of over 50 plus years that has its ups and downs, yet was a clear joy and a blessing to so many people. It's a very interesting thing of seeing my sister not ever intended to live this life, but she lived it and she embraced the ultimate goodness that comes from that life.

[00:36:12] So I think that's part of the challenge, for the Evangelical Church to realize there is goodness that comes from this season and from this type of life that is actually worthy. That is actually not a bad thing to go for but a good thing to go for just as much as marriage if you are blessed with children marriage with children is a good thing to pursue. But they should never be seen as one is better than the other.

[00:36:39] And when we do that, I think it was Turbrick who said it that's an expression of our own selfishness, essentially, sneaking out in our theology, in our own approaches and behaviors that is harmful to other people within the body, within the family of God.

[00:36:55] Carey Griffel: That is some beautiful nuance. Thank you, Mike. I think that is a different way of saying things that I have learned or that I'm still learning in my own adulthood, in my own marriage, in my own relationships with other people, the idea that if you wrap up your identity in your marriage and that's who you are, that's very problematic.

[00:37:21] You have things like psychological enmeshment, problems of becoming your own person and being able to state who you are because you are too tied to another person and their opinions. I did mention differentiation in my previous episode and the need for us to understand who we are and be able to stand up for who we are without giving too much weight to somebody else's opinion.

[00:37:46] Not that we shouldn't care. Not that our spouse's thoughts and needs aren't important and primary to us but when we put other people in front of ourselves as, This is who I am. That's a problem. And that's the case whether we're talking about marriage, whether we're talking about parenthood.

[00:38:08] It's a massive problem that I see with a lot of my mom friends. You have a baby, the baby is completely dependent upon you. And there's a tendency to lose yourself in that. And you'll have that same kind of thing in marriage. It's a very hard thing to balance until you've lived things and realized, Oh, you know what? It's not good to be enmeshed. It's not good to not promote my own life and live my own life and make my own choices.

[00:38:38] There are just different ways of saying these same things that are really helpful to individuals and to the society at large. Because if you can provide your best self to other people and your unique self, and you can be your own person who is not just tied to your family, your spouse, your children, and you can go out and be friends with somebody just because you're going to be friends with them, that's a valuable thing.

[00:39:07] But it's hard when everything that you are doing is wrapped up in that identity of marriage and children.

[00:39:13] So I want to make sure we touch on being a childless couple and having all of this information speak into that kind of situation.

[00:39:24] Mike Chu: Yes. and thank you, Carey, for that. I absolutely agree. There's nothing I can add to what you mentioned there. It's the concept though, like for finding your identity in your spouse or partner, or just becoming so intertwined. But that's a narrative that is so often seen in secular descriptions. And in many ways, the evangelical church here in America has really bought into that romanticized idea, right? The whole entire Jerry Maguire moment of you complete me, or, you know, maybe for more recent folks, the Joker saying it to Harvey Dent. You have to watch The Dark Knight. It's a great movie, but it's a play on that idea , that you are incomplete unless you find the person that will complete you.

[00:40:08] And that idea runs right against reality. And for me as a husband who has no children, that is something that most people never want to think about. My wife and I are a childless couple. And that has to do with a lot of medical difficulties, medical issues that have happened over the past decade or so. The worst of it was about five, six years ago when we discovered that my wife had a particular form of cancer. Ultimately the treatment made it very clear we will not have our own biological children.

[00:40:45] This is not part of what we're focusing on, but I will say just from practical experience, saying to folks in the midst of infertility or a childless couple stage, Well, there's always adoption.

[00:40:58] Please, for the sake of your friends who are in that season or struggling with infertility, don't say that. Adoption is a beautiful thing. But it is not a panacea for infertility. It is not something that is lightly treaded into, like as though you're walking into a CVS and grabbing a bunch of vitamin C.

[00:41:21] It is not an easy process. It is costly. It takes research. It takes time. It takes sacrifice, and it will take years often, depending on whether, you want to adopt locally? Do you want to adopt internationally? If you adopt internationally, do you go for which countries? If you adopt locally, do you want a super healthy person or are you willing to deal with babies who are coming from really dysfunctional backgrounds? All these are tough questions. And so I say this as lovingly as I can, if you have given that kind of advice, pause and rethink, because for the person who's receiving it, that is not an easy solution to dive into.

[00:42:04] I've seen married couples where their marriages have been burned almost to the ground, because they went into adoption without knowing the costs. Sometimes these stories end where the couples break apart, but they now have adopted children that they had brought into now what has become a broken marriage. That was not the goal of why you pursue adoption to increase the size of your family, not to splinter. Out of a plea of practical ministerial theology, don't toss out adoption as a panacea for a solution to a problem that you don't necessarily are comfortable with listening to.

[00:42:46] But moving on with that, I think it took about 2 years for me and my wife after all the medical stuff was dealt with, we were pretty sure in the 90 percentile range, it was not coming back.

[00:42:58] That was part of my journey of why I came to love the book of Job, but one of the things as well, in short, I thankfully encountered an article from Christianity Today from an author named Sheridan Voicy. in this article is his own reflection and his own acknowledgement that he and his wife, Meredith, are a childless couple. They had gone through a decade plus of trying to go through infertility and trying to do every possible medical procedure and even adoption.

[00:43:25] And every one of those things completely failed. So what now? They are married. But they're not young. They're not old. They never had children, and they will never be empty nesters. They found themselves in this liminal space. They don't fit in any category in a typical evangelical church. They're not part of what pastors mean when they say all the families, because when they say all the families typically means all the parents with children, not the young married couples.

[00:43:56] No, no, no. The young married couples who got married a year or two ago, they know, oh, this doesn't apply to me in the announcements. All the elderly couples whose children have moved out, they know that doesn't apply to them. But all the families who are childless couples, we implicitly also know this event doesn't apply to us, does it?

[00:44:14] Part of my own struggle in wrestling and processing through the trauma and the pain and all this. There was an article once that the Babylon Bee put out. It's a tongue in cheek moment. They interviewed this married couple that discovered that they are pregnant and they're going to have kids. The husband in the article simply says now finally we can enter into the upper echelons of the church community. Finally being on the in crowd within the church.

[00:44:41] It was so tongue in cheek. I still remember it though because it expressed a feeling I definitely was experiencing. And I think that's something of, you know, if any encouragement, I would say, you're not alone. And a lot of the feelings and struggles that folks who've gone through and are childless couples, it's actually normal. And it's an unseen group, a population within the church that really still needs ministry too.

[00:45:10] And I think that's part of our journey is still figuring out how do we fit in? How do we work within the body of the community that we are in? And I think one of the blessings that I had had because of Sheridan's work was just simply reading his own journey. It's not a deep theological work. He had two books that he wrote Resurrection Year and The Making of Us. They're essentially memoirs of their journey, the ups and downs, the victories and failures and the lived out reality of two people who are lovers of Jesus, who wanted to be faithful to him and also to one another, but to now have to acknowledge this dream of becoming parents is gone. What now, what does this mean? Is there worth in still being married and yet have no children?

[00:45:59] And so, I think this is partly why, you know, the Meaning of Singleness connects along in this theological journey I have been going through because there is this acknowledgement, you don't have children, you won't have people who will take care of you later on. That means you have to think of life in a different way. You have to plan for your life in a very different way. And in many ways, you need to look at the church and the family of God in a different way. It has to be different in order to live out well what God has shown in his scriptures. And that's the journey that I've been on.

[00:46:32] I can't say I would agree with everything that Treweek says. It is part of the theological remapping in my mind of how to understand the family of God. And I embrace that now. It's an important aspect because those of us, and I include myself and my wife who are in this kind of narrative where it is not the typical American story of having a house and a picket fence and kids and a dog and we won't become empty nesters because we never had a nest.

[00:47:02] I think I shared this with you, before, Carey. In the Great Divorce, a book written by C. S. Lewis. There's a lot of interesting encounters in this, theological dream that C. S. Lewis has. I return to that book every so often because it's such a beautiful expression of fiction with theology.

[00:47:20] One moment is where Lewis is essentially the main character. He's walking around the highlands, sort of this in between liminal space between heaven and earth. He sees this woman surrounded by all these people who are hugging her saying hi crying and they're all embracing. And he's like, who is she? She seems to be a very important person. It's like, oh, that's just, you know, so and so and those are all her children. It's like, oh, wow, and he's like looking, it's like, there's like at least 200, 300 of that, what in the world, like, how could a woman, one woman possibly have that many children? Are these, some of these are adopted? Like, what's going on? Well the tour guide simply responds back with, No, those are all her spiritual children. She was never married. She was single. But these were all the people that she took care of and raised to love the Lord. She's their mom.

[00:48:15] And so I returned to that these days because that spoke to a deeper reality I hope one day Sophia and I will find a lot of children that came from under us that we never knew were actually our children. And I would hope the same for many other childless couples within the church who sacrifice and give of their time because they do not have their own physical children, but they want to disciple mentor and grow the family of God, not just in number, but in depth.

[00:48:41] That's a hope. And I think that is a beautiful hope because I have seen glimpses of that with my own sister who passed away of how even her death and the life testimony bless one of our closest friends now in our church. I cannot explain that. I could not predict that. I could not plan that.

[00:49:00] And so, go back to your original question. What is the worth of meditating or thinking about singleness as eschatological? I think that's part of the worth. It's not all the worth. I can't give an exhaustive answer. But I think the very fact that our Savior is single, and there was a goodness to it. A wholeness in him as a man that is not married and yet complete. That says volumes to everyone who lives in societies where your worth is based on how many children you produce. Jesus stands in direct opposition by just his life. He never even had to say it out loud. I'm a single Jewish man. Everyone looked at it, everyone saw it, everyone felt it, everyone wondered about it, and there was no way to get around that.

[00:49:50] And yeah, it could lead to those ditches that we end up with when wheels get stuck and they turn and then you have a Martin Luther who gets very upset and angry about being stuck in the ditch. I get that, but I think that's part of the theological risk and is part of theological retrieval to see those mishaps and to realize, okay. We need to come up with better guards, because obviously the scriptures don't point to that extreme. So how do we make sure we don't fall back into that extreme? And the answer, I don't think, is just to go full tilt into just like marriage. Everyone has to get married. Marriage is the only normal. Because that leaves a lot of trauma and harm as well.

[00:50:32] Carey Griffel: I think there's also a sense in which you measure your marriage in relation to those benchmarkers as well. If you don't have kids then how do you relate to your spouse and to other people outside of your own small family? Then what then becomes the value of marriage? How do we see marriage in this life and understand its worth to us without placing the emphasis on you have to have kids, or, you're going to be married forever, or this is the only way to do it.

[00:51:06] How do you navigate that kind of situation? Where is the value and meaning?

[00:51:12] Mike Chu: I think one of the things that our secular society in the West has done is that we have made friendship part of romanticized love. And I believe Treweek did talk about this, too, of this mixing in and assumption that you have to become best friends with your spouse. I'm not saying that's wrong and in many ways I know I am blessed I do look at my wife as one of my if not my best Bestie, right? She is my BFF, but it is not a guarantee. And in reality, that does not mean that she is the only friend that I will ever have.

[00:51:53] That is a danger, especially, statistically, as a guy in Western societies. That's unfortunately what happens. So many of us men in the West end up being extremely lonely, emotionally because we forsake our other friendships for this one relationship. It's an important relationship, but we assume that is the sacrifice that is needed.

[00:52:17] We don't see that in the scriptures. We don't see the call to forsake every, friendship and relationship to just be with this one person. The ever present reality of the not yet the marriage will end. Culturally they would not have thought of yes, my spouse will die But I'm still in my village. I'm still with my community. I still have my other relatives, but also my neighbors. They will know what's going on, they will check in on me, like all of this is still in play in their minds, not so much in our western, suburbanized, isolated, individualized culture.

[00:52:54] Carey Griffel: Complete with the idea that gender and sexual differences don't matter, right? You don't need female friends. You don't need male friends. But who is going to emphasize with me as a mother in my femaleness, right? Unless it's another female, unless it's somebody who can relate to that. And there are psychological differences. There are differences in the way that we think. If your friendship is only with your spouse, then you are depriving yourself of a whole network of people who can support you in unique ways that your spouse cannot support you in.

[00:53:34] Mike Chu: Yes. And I'm definitely not saying I am the best at it. People are always usually surprised, but I naturally, I'm actually an introvert. When I'm in front of people and I'm teaching some reason, I have the gift of gab , for some reason. So that happens. But you know, when I'm in my safe space or with people I feel safe with, like you, Carey, I can just talk on and on, you know, friendships are harder for me as an introvert to make, because there is that need of feeling, are you in my safe zone? Are you in my safe bubble? Such a natural thing for introverts to have.

[00:54:09] One of the things I have been very conscientious of is making sure I still maintain friendships or as another Christian author, Wesley Hill would say, same sex friendships, because you need to have that connection.

[00:54:23] And Treweek even alludes that idea that your spouse should not be your only friend. She means a deep friend, a friend who actually understands, not the superficial, like, how's the weather? The friend that actually knows who can call you out when you're lying to yourself. The friend that can actually sit down with you and be absolutely okay, that there is nothing said, but just be in the presence of one another, hanging out, sitting in the car, traveling on a road. And yet, just being in the presence of each other is nourishing, that kind of friend.

[00:54:58] This was part of my

[00:54:59] own part of the healing process, especially after I had read Wesley Hill's spiritual friendship book, was his challenge. We don't say the words in the church often enough of saying to these deep friendships with brothers and sisters of the same sex. I love you. To actually say that to make that real concrete in actual audible terms. And with one of the closest friends I have, he was one of my groomsmen. I was sharing about this and I said right to him after explaining this little precursor. I love you. And without missing a beat, with maybe sand in both our eyes, he responds back, I love you too Mike. We had known each other for nearly two decades. Bond of friendship and also of being Christian brothers. I love this guy. I am not ashamed to say that. But for some reason, because of our culture we are afraid to say that because we're afraid it would get misconstrued into some sort of romanticized love.

[00:55:57] And that is a tragedy that our society has done to itself, it has made it almost impossible, without awkwardness, to express affection and love to another person, without romance, without sexual desire. Unfortunately, the Evangelical Church has fallen into that same lie, and it's only more harmful to our ability to connect at the communion personarum as Treweek would say.

[00:56:24] It prevents us from actually deeply connecting with one another as singles, as single individuals but we are connected by the blood of Christ as a family. And to have that intimacy as brothers and sisters because of the blood of Jesus And that is what I want more of in my life. Because I think that is the best expression of the family of God. Whether I will one day have children through adoption or not. What lasts in the end are these deep friendships and bonds that will continue into the eschaton. That's amazing.

[00:57:02] Carey Griffel: That's so good. We have the idea of friendship, as you said, that's intertwined with the concept of marriage, love, and romance. Sexuality is always about these things. If we can dismantle those narratives, then marriage becomes not that one single unique thing that you're going to have to put all of your eggs in your basket in because when you marry somebody, you don't even know them, right?

[00:57:30] You grow together. You grow to be, hopefully, together in unique ways. That's part of that covenantal bond that you make when you get married. And so if we see marriage as primarily this idea of yes, it's a covenant. Yes, hopefully for most people there's going to be children and all of these associated trappings that we've always had with marriage, but we're not placing undo burden upon it to make it something that it shouldn't be. To make it something that it, a lot of times, cannot live up to, and even if it does live up to, we have that tendency to make it into, I hate to use the word idolizing it, because everybody loves to throw that word at anything that we, particularly like, but you are making it something that it shouldn't be right?

[00:58:27] The lack of differentiation, the lack of ability to connect with other people because you've put everything into this one single relationship. So if you can dismantle some of that, then the marriage relationship can become healthier in that you are not requiring your spouse to be everything to you.

[00:58:49] Mike Chu: Exactly. And I think a lot of people hear that, and theoretically, it's like, yeah. But emotionally, our culture tells us, oh no, you need to completely intertwine and enmesh to such an unhealthy degree. And the church, unfortunately, has bought into that narrative a lot of the time.

[00:59:10] And it is interesting as one of a childless couple, you see that reality more clearly. We went down the typical narrative, which is not a bad narrative, but when you do eventually have children, a lot of the time, it's understandable, your attention will be focused on them.

[00:59:30] And the person that can most understand the burden of your children is your spouse. There's always that wonderful blessing of community the friendships allow you to come back up to the surface and breathe and see the greater vision of community. Families are beautiful with children. But that doesn't mean they are the most beautiful in comparison to any other type of relational status. There is an affirmation from the scriptures of these different stages of life that there is nothing deficient about them.

[01:00:02] They're actually good. Culturally, they may face people who think it is deficient. But it doesn't seem to be that God saw that as deficient. He even commended prophets like Jeremiah. Don't get married, because I know what's coming. The grief that will happen to you, if you had a wife and had children, when Jerusalem falls, it will destroy you emotionally. God knew the single life for Jeremiah is more than enough ' cause God was gonna be more than enough. God was gonna be the supply that Jeremiah had to clinging to through the nights of weeping. And crying over, Oh, Jerusalem, right?

[01:00:41] These are things, a theological retrieval I want to see in my own church. In the beginning of this year, we did a series on human sexuality. We went into the questions of, same sex marriage, sexual attraction, sexual orientation. A lot of people came up to my pastor who struggle with these attractions. They want to live out the Christian sexual ethic as they understand it from the scriptures. They want to honor God with their bodies all the way. But it means they are going to be single if they are going to live that ethic out with joy. Their response to the series to him was, thank you. It encouraged them, it reminded them there is actually a goodness in this.

[01:01:18] And that even their attractions can be used ultimately for the glory of God. It may not be lived out the way that the world tells us and the flesh would desire to see fulfilled. But to use and channel that energy into something that is actually for the kingdom of Christ. That's the challenge, and that's the hope that can be done. For me, it's an important key. If I am able to stand up one day at the pulpit and tell, single, married, same sex attracted, not attracted at all, whatever stage of life, they still have a place in the kingdom of God that is coming and that there is a wholeness to them.

[01:01:59] God can still use whatever they can bring and offer. I want to have the integrity of saying that. I want to have the theological grounding to say that with integrity and consistency.

[01:02:13] Carey Griffel: So in other words, there is value in every station of life, in every kind of living this out, right? As far as doing it in the way that God would have us do it, to honor him, to glorify him, to work together in the different ways that we are called to do so. There is actually meaning in all of it.

[01:02:36] Mike Chu: As much as her book seems like it's leaning towards let's raise up singleness yet, but that's the beauty of actually, I thought when I was rereading some of these again, it's like, this is actually kind of funny thing is that you think that's part of what she is and I'm like, she's grinding against the machine. We got to come up with another definition of singleness. And In the end, she says, singleness is connected to the fact that it is not married. And the scriptures don't provide us that excuse of elevating one above the other. They both have their place.

[01:03:05] They have their purposes, and their goodness. Embrace that. Any moment we idolize or emphasize one over the other, that's an expression of our flesh, is that not? And, and when that happens, that harms people. And so, let's balance that and let's be consistent in our ethic in how we love one another.

[01:03:27] And that means a lot of rewiring about how we view relationships, marriage, singleness, friendships within the body of Christ. To be such a strange and attractive community that to reflect back of what the first, second, third century church was to the Greco Romans who looked at this weird bunch of people who did not care about what social class they were part of, what ethnicity they were a part of.

[01:03:54] And yet they were still worshiping the same king who was not called caesar. Those were the things that ran through these people's minds in looking at the Christian community and the strangeness.

[01:04:06] Carey Griffel: I think that's a wonderful presentation of the nuance that we can bring to this discussion, because there is so much tendency for people to just go one direction or the other, and to make it a new set of laws rather than seeing this broader picture of individuals in their particular situations, what they're called to do, what they're able to do, and valuing themselves as members of the body of Christ as themselves, instead of you're only a couple, and you're only a set family.

[01:04:46] Mike Chu: As I was reflecting it reminded me of a memory. My wife and I, when we started dating, it was when we were still going to my Chinese heritage church. The experience of that the first couple of months was difficult because what initially happens almost like the unspoken rule is you become a dating couple.

[01:05:06] All of our friends sort of implicitly backed away, sort of like, give them time. But, you know, there's also, there's a lot of attraction and a lot of physical attraction. And then, so it was like, this is hard. This is really hard. And eventually, you know, different reasons or whatever else, we started checking out a church plant in the city of Boston and got plugged in eventually we decided, Hey, we want to be part of this. We want to help them out. It was the first time being in a multi ethnic kind of background and without knowing it, all these people, because it was just this ragtag amount of people doing this young, church plant, or all these people , we became friends with, and they and us injected ourselves into one another's lives, including our dating relationship. Friends, in that church would come up to us individually and together. How are you guys doing? How are things? And just actually, it for some reason made the attraction to temptation to do more manageable. All of a sudden, we were in a community that was rooting for us. Yes, we see you guys, we see that you look good together as a married couple, possibly one day, we want to affirm that.

[01:06:21] Their involvement made it so much easier. I mean, like, I don't know any other word of saying it, but so much easier to handle the typical temptations that dating couples face. Then all of a sudden didn't become an obsession. It was just like, huh? Well, I absolutely don't want to do something weird or inappropriate because I know my friends are going to check up on me. It would just naturally come out. I'm going to be a friend and I'm not trying to hide things. Then I have to have some integrity. I never even thought of that concept of community can help with accountability and integrity. And it was a beautiful moment and a taste of what I think ultimately we will see in full in the eschaton.

[01:07:00] At our wedding, our pastor says, the words, welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Chu, and whatever else, and we turn to the congregation. The majority of the people there besides family were friends from our churches who had rooted for our relationship and were a part of our dating relationship. They knew us as singles, they knew us as dating, they knew us now as married. And there was something so beautiful about seeing that. They just weren't there just to eat the hors d'oeuvres. They were there because they were celebrating something they had been watching for a year and a half and more. This is what the community of Christ brings to the table when it comes down to the most personal and most intimate type of relationships one ever would want and hope for. And yet, It became communal in my mind, not just private and personal. It was actually part of the community.

[01:07:54] And so, I just bring that up these little stepping stones are also shaping my own theological retrieval as I continue to grow.

[01:08:03] Carey Griffel: Thank you for sharing that story. That is a perspective of a new couple, they get together, they get a little bit obsessive about each other, as is natural. If friends pull away and you no longer have that sense of support and community, then the obsession and enmeshment can happen far more easily.

[01:08:26] That's a good reminder to us of how we can support other people, how we can be involved in community, even as we are involved in individual relationships.

[01:08:36] Mike Chu: I look fondly back at that time. I did not grow up in a Christian family even up to our actual wedding day, some of those friends were also mentors. I still treasure those moments with some of those guys who talked with me and shared, this is what you will encounter once you are married. Now you're in a different stage of life. No one tells you this stuff. And you're just like, okay, this is not wrong. It's good, but it's also unspoken.

[01:09:04] More often than not, you're just kind of left out there to hopefully discover it. You may not even know that you discovered it, or ever process it. But I was blessed by the fact that I had older brothers who were married, who still reached out to me like a brother, and shared with me, Mike, I want to let you know, if you have any questions, ask me about this stuff.. Like, what does it mean to be a husband? What does it mean to do this? Like, to actually ask these kind of questions, that you're like, can I ever ask this stuff? That's a glimpse, again, of family.

[01:09:34] Carey Griffel: Another example of why we need each other as female and male. Because we have different experiences and don't understand the other side fully. Because we aren't in those kinds of physical bodies, and that's why my emphasis on embodiment and that we are who we are in a physical sense matters because that is part of our experience.

[01:09:59] Well, thank you, Mike, for having this conversation with me. I think it was very interesting, very enlightening. I hope that everyone enjoyed it and that it gives another level and layer of viewpoint on this stuff, because it is so necessary that we start thinking about it in different ways. You know, as Tim Mackey says, the Bible is Jewish meditation literature, and we should be meditating on it. We should be changing the way that we think and letting the Bible speak into that, because however we're thinking, it's probably in need of adjustment of some sort..

[01:10:36] We are affected by so many different ideologies, so many different concepts, and we don't realize it. The Bible can bring wisdom, growth, life, and goodness into our lives in ways we do not expect, and sometimes we fight against those things. That's why we need the voices in the church. That's why the idea of theological retrieval is really crucial, especially from that evangelical Protestant perspective.

[01:11:08] Mike Chu: I think it's a worthwhile project, especially if we want to properly love and care for our brothers and sisters within the body. Whatever life experiences that we have all come with, to do this work has the pay off in blessing and bringing about healing and life to people.

[01:11:27] And so, that's why I cared. And that's why, like, when I heard that last episode about Treweek's book, like, Carey, I have thoughts. I absolutely have thoughts. So, thank you. Thank you for inviting me back and just be able to have this discussion and just share.

[01:11:44] Carey Griffel: Yes, it's been wonderful and I really appreciate the fact that you're bringing forth these ideas of different twists and different things that we don't typically think of married people in the concept of singleness and how those things can speak to one another. I really appreciate all of your thoughts. Did you have any other resources or ideas or thoughts that you wanted to end on?

[01:12:09] Mike Chu: If folks are interested in checking out the materials that I've been chewing on for the last couple of years, definitely check out The Meaning of Singleness by Danielle Treweek. it's a great book.

[01:12:21] I would also encourage folks to check out the works of Sheridan Voicy. It's Resurrection Year, and The Making of Us. The resurrection year book was essentially the chronicling of the 10 year journey. Both of these are memoir type books, right? They're reflections on his actual history and past, but with a very decidingly evangelical Australian and British evangelical perspective. And the comprehension of like, what do you do when you encounter this type of, you know, season of life and reality of life?

[01:12:56] And the making of us was more about his own personal journey because a lot of his personal identity he realized was grounded in being a former Christian personality radio host in Australia.

[01:13:11] In resurrection year they moved from Australia to England, where his wife could flourish. In her laying down the dream of becoming a mother and having children enabled her to reembrace the dream of digging down into research and becoming the best researcher at Oxford.

[01:13:29] And so he found himself back in England, but not now as a radio personality. That was his chronicling and his own journey and reflection on how does God work in the here and now when everything seems foggy? In the aftermath, for him, letting go and laying down and putting to rest the dream of becoming a father. What does that mean?

[01:13:53] It's a fascinating journey and something that I find very rare within evangelical readings and resources. I would also recommend the work of Wesley Hill. He is same sex attracted or gay, celibate Christian Anglican priest. He wasn't always Anglican. He was, I think, Presbyterian or Baptist. But he has gone through his own journey and even one of his more recent talks was what it means to still be in the process of being celibate, being single. Because of his particular perspective, he sees the value of friendship and decided we have to dig back into this ancient rich resource that the church knew. It knew the importance of friendship and retrieve that back for the modern day, because it's necessary for him.

[01:14:42] If he's going to live out the Christian sexual ethic, then from all perspectives, from the outside world, even from within the church, he won't succeed because he would never get married. He would never have his own children.

[01:14:54] And it was a strange thing for me when I read his initial work, which was Washed and Waiting, and this is in the aftermath of discovering the cancer and starting to realize we're probably not going to have children. And I'm reading his book for a paper and trying to retrieve material for it. And I hit his mentioning of a fear. One day he will walk into his apartment, 65 years old, no one's there waiting for him. He will wake up in the morning, make some coffee and sit down at the kitchen table. And there's not someone there reading a paper next to him.

[01:15:30] I, as a person that does not struggle with same sex attraction, found myself empathizing and realizing I have the same fears. I had the same fears of one day losing my wife, and being in that same stage in life. I found connection with him.

[01:15:47] These are not necessarily going to focus on, making an exegetical case for singleness or exegetical case for the Christian sexual ethic. It presumes, this is where I'm coming from. This is my background. This is what I am holding as value. Now journey with me from there.. For me, it has been an amazing journey. I would recommend those works for folks to check out.

[01:16:09] Carey Griffel: Thank you very much. It's really helpful to have those kinds of recommendations and ideas for reflection because we are the body of Christ and we should be listening to one another and we all have valuable things to say and these kinds of things can help guide us on different paths of thoughts that we wouldn't have otherwise.

[01:16:32] I really appreciate that. But thank you again, Mike, for joining me for this conversation. And I want to make sure again to remind everyone about the Awakening School of Theology and their courses that are available to you. Go check their course catalog out. See what kinds of things you want to delve into first because it is just a smorgasbord of amazing content.

[01:16:57] And keep in mind that they have gone to that donation model, and how essential that is for the propagation of new classes and new material, and providing this for not just yourself, but for other people as well. And just giving that layer of learning and accessibility to scholarly material to the layperson.

[01:17:21] And we are all about that here. So thanks everyone for listening. Thanks for joining me for this conversation and for the whole series on sexuality and ethics and all of these conversations have been enlightening and interesting to me. People reach out to me and say, Oh, this is a difficult thing.

[01:17:40] And it is, but it's also something that it doesn't have to be this boogeyman thing. We tend to make it into this scary thing that we can't talk about. I don't think that should be the case. We need to bring it to the forefront of conversation, not necessarily in explicit ways, not always in the same ways.

[01:18:00] We need to have openness on personal level sometimes so that we can have more explicit conversations and treat things less as this sacred cow that nobody can talk about, and more as, there is something here that we can learn from each other, but we need to do it in proper ways. So we need to do it in community, and all of these things can foster growth and provide a situation where we can see each other better, where we can appreciate where each different position is, and the difficulties that we all experience, because we all have struggles.

[01:18:38] We all have insights that we can also share with one another so good stuff I hope that you guys have all enjoyed that. Thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing these episodes and Thank you for those who help support me. You help me get the resources that I need to do this podcast. And so thank you guys. If you are interested in signing up for my newsletter, you can do so at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com. You can find blog posts. You can find guest profiles, where if you go to the guest profiles, you can find Mike's name right there and find all of the conversations I've had with him. And they have always been so valuable. So I really appreciate Mike and his contribution in his work for the kingdom.

[01:19:25] But that is it for this week. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.