Singleness: Season? Gift? Or . . . ?

Have you ever told someone or had someone tell you that singleness was a season?

How about a gift?

Likely you were trying to encourage someone, or they were trying to encourage you if you answered yet. It was meant with the best of intentions.

But, what if I told you that neither of those were helpful or encouraging?

In fact, they don't line up with what Scripture says.

Let's start with the idea of telling someone singleness is a season. This actually starts with a massive assumption on our part. It assumes that the person you're talking to will get married one day. For it to be a season, there has to be an end to it at some point.

Joy Beth Smith puts it better than I can in her book Party of One:

"The problem with viewing singleness as a season is that we relegate our time here as something to be endured, not celebrated. . . . Singleness is not a season with a guaranteed end in this life. And we can't spend our days trying to wait it out, constantly looking for what we hope is coming next."

We talk about seasons where we struggle as being hard seasons where we hope the end will come. And, even if we don't like how the season ends, we can count on it having an end. But, that's not always so with singleness. We go through the various seasons of life - both hard and joyful and everything in between - while we are still single. Single isn't a season that lines up with what we're talking about when we say this.

So, if singleness isn't a season, is it a spiritual gift?

Again, this makes an assumption that marriage is the norm and that remaining single requires some sort of special dispensation from God.

Too often I've seen singleness put on a list of spiritual gifts alongside others we would see in 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, and 1 Peter 4. But, this doesn't fit. All the gifts in these passages are for the edification and building up of the church, and for reaching out with the message of the gospel. I'm not sure how singleness fits on that list. If we're putting singleness on this list, then we should be putting marriage on the list as well, but that never seems to happen.

This also says nothing of the practical and very struggles for many singles with being single and people calling it a gift.

"Two problems arise if we continue to think about singleness as being a special kind of calling. First, it will make large numbers of single people feel as though life hasn't started yet. They're single but don't perceive themselves as having the gift of singleness. They're in a situation they're not designed for or called to. Life feels as though it is in limbo until God notices he's accidentally 'misfiled' us as being single and fixes things. That's when things will feel like they've finally got going, but until then they're just kicking around.'

Second, it causes undue pressure to get married, especially for those single people not perceived to have that gift. If you're single and don't have the 'gift of singleness,' then you're not pulling your weight. You should be married by now." (Sam Allberry, 7 Myths about Singleness)

By telling someone singleness is a gift, we put people who don't feel like they have the gift of singleness in an awkward place to be.

So, maybe we need to handle singleness like we do marriage. As one of many facts about a person, rather than trying to assign it some sort of special significance.