We Need a Good Theology of Singleness

What is your theology of singleness?

Did you even know you had one?

The truth is, we all have one. 

And it's been largely shaped by the teaching on it in the local church you're part of. Or, more likely, by the lack of teaching on it in your local church.

The lack of teaching on singleness causes us a big problem in the church. Single adults for a host of reasons, are a growing segment of society as a whole and of our churches. Yet, we lack of understanding of what the Bible says about singleness, and it says a lot more than we think.

As I've been on the journey of studying and writing about singleness in the church over the last five years or so, I've been saddened by the lack of resources available to help me on this journey. There's an abundance of books, articles, and studies on marriage and raising kinds, from many different perspectives. 

But, for a topic that is relevant to an ever-growing number of people sitting in church pews each week, there is woefully little that is written from an evangelical perspective; it's almost all written by the Catholic church. Most of what has been written, unfortunately, undervalues the single experience and sees it as little more than preparation time for marriage.

The western evangelical church is in desperate need of a better understanding of both the current theology of singleness we preach in our silence and what the Bible actually says.

Before you think I'm crazy or you think I'm talking about something above you, let me explain what a theology of singleness actually is.

Theology isn't something only for pastors and biblical scholars. It is simply "the study of religious faith, practice, and experiences." (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). Our theology is what we believe about God and what the Bible says.

We all have a theology of many things about our life as Christians. In some areas, this is well-developed and understood. In others, it is not. This is often a place filled with assumptions about Scripture and about experiences.

A good theology of singleness doesn't stand in opposition to a good theology of marriage. A good theology of singleness includes a good understanding of what the Bible says about marriage and values marriage. But, it does so without making marriage the ultimate goal for everyone and the only thing anyone should work towards in life.

In many ways, I understand why the church has had such a focus on marriage and family. We want to be sure that, in a society where marriage is undervalued and attacked, there is a message of hope and God's vision for marriage being declared. We want to support godly marriage and strengthen them. That's a great thing.

But, we need to learn how to do that without pushing singles to the edges of our churches - often only valuing them is they take all the "extra" time we're thought to have and use it to serve the church.

Over the next little while, I'm going to go back to where I started when I first started writing on singleness. I'm going to be exploring again what Scripture says and what we need to do.

Change in Friendships

 I've been thinking a lot lately about how friendships change over time. They change in many different ways. And lots of the time, that change is a good thing. It means we're not staying stuck with no growth as individuals.

This has been on my mind because of a message I got from a friend recently. She was sharing some exciting news for her, and I was genuinely excited for her and with her. At the same time, I knew this news would bring a change in our friendship.

It's a situation I've found myself in many times. This mixture of excitement for a friend and some sort of grief over what is lost. It's always a challenging thing to walk through.

This friend and I have both been single for a longer than either of us thought. We've talked about it. We've celebrated and encouraged each other as we've sought to live full lives in the midst of circumstances we didn't plan on. And there's been an understanding that many of my other friends don't have about singleness.

This understanding of the reality of being single isn't going to disappear just because she's getting married. The conversations over the years don't just go away, as if they've never happened. That all remains.

But, I also know it means some things do change. The decision to go home via a two hour detour to stop for a coffee together on the way, does possibly change. There's another person to consider in that decision. 

The times we do still see each other, there's another consideration in the decision. Not that we won't see each other, but there's more to consider.

Hear me on this: I don't have a dislike for marriage. I'd actually like to be getting married myself one day. I love to celebrate all of my friends. And, I'm incredibly grateful for the married friends I have who welcome into their homes and families all the time.

But, it is different when the friendship is with another single person. There's a flexibility in things with a single friend, that just cannot factually exist when there's a spouse or kids in the mix.

For me, this is a recent example of how friendships change over time. There's other things that can bring change in friendships. 

That's when we have a choice of what we do. 

Do we keep putting effort into the friendship? Do we stay committed?

Or do we use it as a way out?

I'd say, more often than not, we need to make the choice to push through the change and hang on. We need to value each other and hold onto it.

But, that's not always what our culture tells us. When it becomes hard, our culture tells us to give up. That it's not worth the effort anymore.

But, maybe we need to choose to hold on anyways. To push through the challenge of the change and keep pursuing the friendship.

The Group We Call Single

 I started a list the other day of the different descriptors that can be added to single and describe people who fit into that category. Never married, no kids, widowed, divorced, and on it goes. It's an incredibly long list and I'm not going to attempt to write an exhaustive list.

People are single for all sorts of reasons. There's one fact that groups them all together, and many that indicate different circumstances.

Looking at my attempts at listing it all, I knew it was probably incomplete. It also made me wonder if I've done a dis-service in all my writing about singleness. If the diversity within that group is part of the reason why it's so difficult to find people who have written well on the topic.

But, I've realized that the same could be said for those who are married or have kids or pretty much any other external life circumstance we could describe. And that hasn't stopped people from writing about those topics.

I think it's a good reminder why we must be careful not to let these categories define what we see as everything about a person. They describe one aspect of a person's life - not everything.

We like to look for labels for people. Boxes we can put them in so we can assume we know everything we need to know about them. But, people are way more complicated than that. Those words describe only a part of who they are. And we miss out on so much when we use those characteristics to define people. We don't get to know the richness of who they are.

So, we need to learn to go beyond the labels we give. The labels are helpful sometimes. They're not always bad or wrong. They can help us. But, we can't stop there. They're only a starting place for getting to know someone.

Whatever group you're looking at, remember, they're more than just one thing you see or know about them.