Instruction to Widows

A Consideration of Riches, St. Paul’s Instruction to Widows, and the Irreplaceability of Spouses

Now growing up, we read a lot of books on how to get rich. All of them kind of sucked, not because their contents were bad, bur rather because we were bad at implementing their advice. Forgive me, for we were kids then, but we used to have a lot of limiting beliefs regarding how money was received. You had to be this tall, you had to be this old, you needed money to make money! All rabble, it is.

Before we go any further, here’s a tip. If you want to get rich, listen to people who are actually rich. It’s said (by we) that 95% of people who give financial advice are from the lower classes. So most advice you get are going to come from people who haven’t reached your goal. This said, most of the advice given by rich people are formatted into books so they themselves can get more rich. Such is the case. However, those books are worth more than their weight, and are like a rope for those wishing to climb to that peak where more friends await. The advice of rich men and women are highly appreciated, and we are grateful to have read from their ranks. From biblical kings to Ferris, Trump, and Hill, they all offered us practical advice to follow, the best advice being think like a rich person rather than a poor person. And when you start thinking like a Solomon or Kind David or Moses, or Buddha, or Jesus, life gets much, much easier in some respects and much, much more difficult in other respects.

Being a Christian rich man is like having access to endless nights with all the supermodels in the world yet choosing to spend endless nights with the one supermodel you chose for the faith of heavenly reward. Thinking like a rich man, we make the conscious decision to withdraw ourselves from worldly baubles to live life the way we truly want to.

This may be a bit cruel to say. In some conditions, we consider poverty to be a crime. Actually, never mind. Poverty is fine, so long as it is a wealthy poverty.

Hmm, what was the point of this thought. As a scientist I may have become a bit dysfunctional. It is weird for me to go into detail on why God likes monogamous models of romance more so than polygamous models. If you want to know then go ask Adam about it. To think that someone could consider you as indisposable, irreplaceable. When that feeling’s so genuine that you’d damn the whole world over it, why, there’s a reason why Jesus prayed, “I pray not for the world, but for those in the world.” It’s probably because of this feeling that the Prince, despite his studies, finds the thought of commanding men harrowing. When fathers die, they leave behind widows, crying children, children who saw their dad leave the door and never come back. When young men who have never been betrothed, who never knew love with a woman dies, there are happy families who have never been. They are all given to God, perhaps against His wish as it not His will that men should die vaingloriously over worldly affairs. Maybe it is a good thing for the brain to forget some memories. There may be nothing more cu—Arthurian than dying in a war just so another man can come home and marry the woman you left.

“I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” (1 Corinthians 7:8)

For a celibate monk, St. Paul knew a great deal on matters of romance. “—, my love, my husband/wife. My time has come. I’ll see you again.” Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thought like that before you die? “I’ll see you again.” The problem is, for the person widowed young they’ll never see their beloved again for a long time, possibly, can’t say whether or a car will run them over. Guess St. Paul, ever mindful of heavenly things, wanted Christians to consider, if a widow took another spouse would the old spouse want to see them again? On this, I know Jesus’s answer about the woman remarried seven times, but even if we’re to be as angels in Heaven, would it not be better to not remarry at all? King Solomon had a thousand wives. What first husband or first wife would want to see a spouse who remarried a thousand times? See, that’s the quaint thing about Song of Solomon. It was addressed to one woman. Perhaps after Ecclesiastes and the final proverbs he sung, King Solomon tried to write a make-up song?

“I charge you, O daughters of Jersalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please.

Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved? I raised thee up under the apple tree: there thy mother brought thee forth: there she brought thee forth that bare thee.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.” (Song of Solomon 8:4-6)

One can only imagine house jealous a woman may be if she were the first in the line of a thousand wives.

Now, all of this is just conjecture, but in India, in some tribes, they have a practice where the wife of a widowed husband would jump into the funeral pyre to burn to ash with their deceased husband. This is a perversion of biblical principles, and most people of that post-modern era called this practice out as rightly barbaric. However, barbaric though it may be, they never really thought about what made the practice romantic. To join your husband (or wife for that matter) in Heaven rather than remarry to another man? Personally, though I would not recommend it to my own spouse, since suicide has a higher chance of none of throwing a soul into Purgatory or Hell, I would appreciate the sentiment, but only that, the sentiment that the woman would rather spare her dead husband the sight of her being married by another.

Back to St. Paul, his recommendation of celibacy for widows, this intention on the biblical model of love which people of post-God worlds choose not to comprehend, the gift highlighted here are mutual feelings of indisposability. A wife, so much as a husband, should be considered irreplaceable, and to treat them as replaceable either through remarrying or divorcing then remarrying would be adulterous.

Speaking of disposability, suppose that was one factor which urged us. As men, never in our lives did we ever want to be counted as disposable. Poor men are drafted as cannon fodder. Rich men are spared in their positions. Who’d want to be a husband and watch as your wife thinks to upgrade to another man? Who’d want to be a husband whose wife loves you because God told her so? Suppose there’s a vice versa to add, but we get heart pangs just thinking of it, that disposability.

Disposability, disposability—what an ugly word. We will always say that life could be a lot less painful, a lot less risky if we treated people as mere disposable objects. One wife dies, you get another. Juliette dies, oh Lord, Romeo, just get another. There are more fish in the sea you could stick your fins in. Yet, there is a feeling in our beating heart which tells us that God would not approve of moving on so quickly. We ourselves could have just taken lovers for our choosing. One woman leaves, you just get another.

Yet fundamentally, how is anyone, any person, any two people who cleave together, how are they supposed to raise a family with a mindset like that? My spouse died? Time to get another. Our single child died? Let’s throw out the rue tea and make another.

It is the lives of people who we deal with. It is of God that we should consider the people who we love as irreplaceable souls. To treat as replaceable or irreplaceable? There is always a choice for everyone. It may be wise for me to consider other works. The heart pangs writing through this one.

Nobody besides God could have understood us on this point. Actually, no, only people who have lived through these experiences could understand, anyone who has come to consider it all. Loneliness, that of yesteryear, oh how could it be right to prescribe loneliness to a young man or woman? They are not eunuchs. And, who besides God is sympathetic to their cause? What harm is there in one who wanted to be rich? You judged me because I asked for wealth? Why, is it so wrong to receive our daily bread! Why do you assume that I don’t lay treasures in heaven? Christendom is falling apart, and you’re holding a revival meeting in what could have been a warehouse for crackheads! Excuse me, forgot what I… I… I… I… I… we, forget what we said.

In all our lives, we knew that which was, and is true. We are irreplaceable in the hearts and minds of all we know: my spouse, our children, my family, friends, and so on and so on. That’s something. That ringing outside the ear. We are grateful that God speaks to us. And, we are grateful to have known the love, and continue to know the love, which we have asked for.