This post is the second in a four-part series on a Biblical view of singleness. You can read the first part here.
Unfortunately, despite the Scripture’s presentation of singleness as a status of exquisite worth and unparalleled usefulness, the modern church sometimes fails to appreciate the value of singles. Single believers regularly face the questions, “When are you going to get married?” and, “Why are you still single?” Sometimes, these questions come from people who are very happily married and simply want singles to experience the same joy that they have experienced. These people’s motives need not be impugned. The effect of such questions, however, needs to be examined. Often, the effect of these inquiries is to undermine the contentment that the surrendered single already feels with his or her social status. If the single is content with God, he or she need not be made to feel that something is inadequate or inferior about his or her social status. Repeated questions that suggest singleness is to be abandoned create an emphasis that is difficult to square with the Apostle Paul’s words, “For I wish that all men were even as I myself” (1 Cor. 7:7a) or, “But I say to the unmarried and widows: it is good for them if they remain even as I am” (1 Cor. 7:8). These Spirit-inspired words reveal that singleness is not bad, but valuable. To push a single to abandon a position of valuable service to God is a subtle way of grieving not only the spirit of the surrendered single but also the Spirit of God. Despite the Apostle Paul’s Scriptural counsel, singles consistently get asked questions like, “Don’t you know that people are never going to take you seriously until you get married?” or, “What’s wrong with you that you have never been married?” These questions assume that singleness is a negative social status with less value than marital status. Worse yet, insensitive questions snip the cords of commitment that a surrendered single has woven together by years of decisions to serve God without distraction or division of heart.
The church’s tendency to push singles to abandon singleness and pursue marriage sometimes seems to be culturally driven rather than Biblically driven. In some cultures, young people are told that it is their family duty to marry. Thus, failure to marry tends to be considered a failure to honor one’s parents. Essentially, singleness becomes viewed as sin. This unscriptural view of marriage as an obligation, as a God-ordained duty, has spread into many churches and shaped the way many Christians view singles. Saints influenced by such a view might consider single believers to be disobedient people upon whom God is frowning rather than favoring. In other cultures, people sometimes hear alarming statistics about the breakdown of the family and low birth rates, so these societies sometimes reason that they need singles to get married and thereby help solve the national epidemic of broken homes and sub-standard population growth. In essence, marriage becomes a social or patriotic duty. As important as nationalistic concerns might be, the Scripture does not contain a negative word toward any single saint who chooses to bear spiritual fruit rather than physical seed.
The tragedy for today’s church is that her overvaluing of cultural arguments promoting marriage and her undervaluing of the Scripture’s examples affirming singleness have created a perception that singles are irresponsible and married people are mature. In such a comparison, Hapless Joe Single always looks foolish against Reliable Roy Married. The logical fallacy is that all singles fall into the irresponsible, hapless category and that all married people fall into the mature, reliable category. The truth is that the stereotype does not always reflect reality; in the real world, some singles are mature and some married people are irresponsible. Biblical history presents numerous examples of sacrificial singles (i.e., Miriam, Anna, Lydia, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and Barnabas) and unreliable married people (i.e., Gomer, Jezebel, Samson, and Nabal). It is easy to paint any group of people in a positive or negative light if society compares the best of one group with the worst of the other group. To avoid false comparisons and lazy stereotyping, Christians simply need to take the Bible’s balanced approach of advocating singleness at its best and marriage at its best. Single Christians in all societies around the globe should feel free to take their stand on the Word of God and be unashamed of living a single life singly devoted to God.
Next Week: Does the Bible Encourage Singleness?
