Singleness, Marriage, and Wisdom

Should I or should­n’t I?

Indeed, if the coun­sel sin­cere­ly offered by Pas­tor Thomp­son is cor­rect, the impli­ca­tions for Ted’s mar­riage deci­sion are very sobering:

1. In all the world, there is either no per­son or only one per­son who is eli­gi­ble to be his wife.
2. If God wants him to remain sin­gle and he mar­ries any­one at all, he is out of God’s will.
3. If God has a par­tic­u­lar wife cho­sen and he mar­ries some­one else, he is out of God’s will.
4. If the woman God has select­ed for him mar­ries some­one else, he can­not enjoy God’s will not mat­ter what he does.
5. If either of the pair mar­ry out of God’s will there is noth­ing they can do to reverse the deci­sion and return to the cen­ter of His will.  They are per­ma­nent­ly strand­ed in the bar­ren ter­rain of God’s “sec­ond (third, fourth,…) best.”

Chap­ter 17: Sin­gle­ness, Mar­riage, and Wis­dom — Pg 283–284, Deci­sion Mak­ing and the Will of God, A Bib­li­cal Alter­na­tive to the Tra­di­tion­al View, 1980, Gar­ry Friesen with J. Robin Maxson.