Doing Life Together Even When the Way it Looks is Different

Freindship.

It's something we all need.

But, I think out culture's current view of friendship has had a damaging impact on the church. Friendship has become a matter of convenience and if something happens we don't like, we just drop the person and move on.

As Joy Beth Smith put it in her book, "Party of One":

"Singleness and intimacy are not at odds despite the messaging we've received." (pg. 57)

We see singleness and intimacy as being at odds because we're limiting intimacy to being almost exclusively sexual. But, in doing so, we've missed out on what I believe God intends it to be.

Whether we're single or married, we need people who really know us and who we really know. And it needs to be people from all walks of life. I don;t just need other single Christians in my life. I need other Christians - married, single, old, young. This is how we're supposed to live.

Joy Beth Smith has a helpful description of this in her book:

"Community is only as rich and deep as it is diverse. When we limit ourselves to a whole bunch of people who are exactly like us, we're limiting the refining power of community not only to meet needs but to sanctify." ("Party of One", pg. 53)

We not only need friendship and intimacy, we need it with people who are different from us.

And while:

". . . the church needs to see itself as an institution that values and honors friendship as much as it does marriage." (Christina S. Hitchcock, "The Significance of Singleness", pg. 137),

I'm not so sure we actually do that well. We tend to go to church and stay with the people just like us who know us and then go home to hide again. What we should be is a diverse community that values and promotes friendships that cross the lines we usually draw.

Up to this point, you could make the argument that this doesn't really apply specifically to singles in the church, but rather that it applies to the church as a whole. And you would be correct in that. So, here is where it gets specific about how it applies to singles in the church.

In many adult Christian circles, there seems to be an aversion to allowing a single adult to join the group if everyone else is married. For whatever reason, people seem to be hesitant or even outright opposed to it. This often leaves single Christian adults struggling to find community and friendship, and it leaves us vulnerable to attacks from our enemy.

The truth is, as adults who are trying to live as Christians, we have a lot in common, even if some are married and some are not. We're all trying to honour God in how we approach our work and our money; we all struggle to balance work and life; we all have good times and hard times. Yes, there's one obvious difference in our lives, but there usually is in most friendships.

We all need people we can do life with. People who come alongside us in good times and in bad times. It's how we were made to live. We all need people to pray for us and encourage us, to challenge us and to call us on stuff. None of these things are dependent on whether our marital status is the same or not.

So, lets stop using marital status to define who are friends are -what our community looks like. Lets welcome people who might be different than us to do life with us.