Churches can unconsciously give the message that singleness is second best - Andrew Bunt shows why youth and children need their parents to consciously push back against this mistaken take on relationships
‘It’s such a shame he’s still single’.
I still have a vivid memory of hearing those words as a child. I don’t remember exactly how old I was. I don’t even remember the exact details of when or by whom they were said. But I remember them clearly.
I do know who they were said about. They were said of a man in the church I grew up in, who was in his mid-30s, and, unlike most of his peers in the church, was single. Looking back now, he obviously wasn’t the only single person in the church, but I remember his singleness being a defining feature about him in my mind and, judging by things that were said, also in other people’s. I guess that’s because it was so unusual for a young man in the church to reach his 30s and be unmarried.
What I also remember clearly, is the thought process that went on in my mind when I heard those words: ‘Of course’, I thought, ‘It’s such a shame, because singleness is bad and marriage is good, and so he’s missing out.’ I’ve no doubt that was part of what led me to grow up assuming I’d get married, and probably fairly young. That was clearly the right and good way for things to work out, and it was ‘a shame’ when that wasn’t what happened.
I’d absorbed the message that marriage is good and singleness is bad
That was fine until I reached my teenage years. It was then that I first began to experience same-sex attraction, and that experience remained pretty much static as I went through adolescence (just as it has ever since). I’d been taught that God reserves sex and marriage for lifelong unions of a man and a woman, and as I looked into it for myself, I found that is indeed what the Bible teaches and what pretty much all Christians have believed for the past 2000 years. Marriage to a woman didn’t feel like it was likely to work for me (just as it doesn’t feel plausible to me today) and so I began to realise that following Jesus was likely to mean singleness, and that my singleness was likely to be for life.
That was clearly a problem. I’d absorbed the message that marriage is good and singleness is bad. ‘It’s such a shame’ when people reach their 30s and haven’t got married. I looked around me, and it felt like pretty much all the ‘good Christians’ I knew were married; certainly all the church leaders I knew were. It seemed I was going to be one of those people whom others felt sorry for, one who would miss out by being single, one who couldn’t live ‘the good Christian life’ like everyone else. It seemed like a bit of a bleak situation.
singleness doesn’t have to mean a life of loneliness and isolation; singleness is compatible with, and can even give greater opportunity for, a relationally rich life full of intimate friendships and deep experience of church as family
Thankfully, I came to realise that that isn’t the case. I learnt that singleness is a gift – not in the sense of a rare superpower some special Christians are given to endure an otherwise awful situation, but in the sense that the state of being single is a gift, just as the state of being married is a gift. (That’s the only way what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:7 works – there are only two gifts and we’ve all always got one or the other.) I learnt that this gift is good, so good, in fact, that the Apostle Paul could wish that everyone could be single (1 Corinthians 7:7). I realised that Jesus was a single man, and so it must be possible to live ‘the good Christian life’ as someone who is single. And I came to see – and to experience – that singleness doesn’t have to mean a life of loneliness and isolation; singleness is compatible with, and can even give greater opportunity for, a relationally rich life full of intimate friendships and deep experience of church as family.
I’m hugely grateful that I’ve learnt those lessons, but I wish I’d learnt them earlier. Helping children know and really believe that both marriage and singleness can be good is one of the best ways we can prepare them for embracing whichever of those two gifts God gives them at any one point in life, and to love and support others as they also experience those gifts.
I suspect that for most of us, the bigger challenge will be helping our children to grow up believing that singleness is good. Here are three things we can do to help our children in that.
1. Believe that singleness is good
It has to start with us. We can’t help our children believe it, if we don’t first believe it ourselves. And if we’re honest, I suspect many of us don’t really believe that singleness is good.
One way of taking stock of what you honestly believe about singleness is to consider what you find yourself wanting and praying for you children. Do you find yourself wanting them to be married and worrying about what will happen if they never marry? When you picture them as adults, is it always with a spouse and children? If so, what does that reveal about your view of singleness?
But if both marriage and singleness are good – as the New Testament teaches – our desire for our children should be that they receive and enjoy whichever good gift God has for them at each stage of their lives and that they faithfully follow and enjoy life with him whether married or single. If that’s not how we’re currently feeling, we may need to bring that to God, consider why we struggle to believe that singleness would be good for our children, and ask God to help our hearts to change.
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2. Say that singleness is good
Words are powerful, and that might be especially true when those hearing the words are children. We probably all have examples of words we heard when we were young that have stuck with us.
We need to speak positively about singleness and single people. That means watching those throwaway comments that might reveal our doubts about the goodness of singleness. (And that’s why the first step has to be our own believing that singleness is good, so we don’t instinctively make those comments.) It means thinking carefully what we say about the single people in our lives. And it means watching what we say to our children about their future and our hopes for them.
3. Show that singleness is good
One of the most important things we can do is to make sure our children see good examples of singleness around them. Chances are your church already includes those examples. But often, we overlook them and our children may not get to see them.
Why not befriend some singles of different ages in your church. Involve them in your family life. Involve them in your children’s life. Let them become honorary uncles and aunts. That will be a blessing to you, a blessing to your children, and a blessing to those single people. And it will allow your children to see first-hand that you can be a grown-up who follows Jesus and is single, that marriage isn’t the only way to live ‘the good Christian life’, and that not getting married doesn’t have to be ‘such a shame’.
