7 Myths about Singleness

by Sam Allberry

This defining by negation reinforces the idea that there is nothing intrinsically good about singleness; it is merely the situation of lacking what is intrinsically good in marriage.

We’re a body. We belong to one another. What happens to part of us therefore affects all. If some struggle, it hurts us all. We’re invested in one another, and therefore I need to know what the Christian life is like for you in your situation, and you need to know what it’s like for me in mine.

He never married. He never even entered a romantic relationship. He never had sex. Jesus was not calling others to a standard he was not willing to embrace himself.

He is the most complete and fully human person who ever lived. So his not being married is not incidental. It shows us that none of these things—marriage, romantic fulfillment, sexual experience—is intrinsic to being a full human being. The moment we say otherwise, the moment we claim a life of celibacy to be dehumanizing, we are implying that Jesus himself is only subhuman.

To say that it is dehumanizing to be celibate is to dehumanize Christ, to deny that he came fully in the flesh and that his humanity was a “real” one.

The temptation for many who are single is to compare the downs of singleness with the ups of marriage. And the temptation for some married people is to compare the downs of marriage with the ups of singleness, which is equally dangerous. The grass will often seem greener on the other side. Whichever gift we have—marriage or singleness—the other can easily seem far more attractive. Paul’s point is to show singles that there are some downs unique to marriage—some “worldly troubles”—that we are spared by virtue of our singleness.

I think being unhappily married must be so much harder than being unhappily single.

Single people are unmarried, while we would never think of married people as unsingle.

If we balk at the idea of singleness being a gift, it is not because God has not understood us but because we have not understood him.

Think about it: if singleness requires a special spiritual superpower just to survive it, it must be really terrible.

For those who are single and unhappily so, this thinking can be a way of writing off the contentment others may have in being single—“they obviously have the gift of singleness, whereas I don’t.”

He is one. He is perfectly integrated in all he is and says and does. His Word is never contradictory. Acceptance of one part of it never, ever involves denying another part of it. Obeying one word never involves disobeying another.

If there is a “gift of singleness” that enables only some to thrive as single people, there is no reason to say there is no corresponding “gift of marriage” that enables only some married people to thrive in their marriages.

Thinking that singleness uniquely requires a special gift masks the extent to which marriage is also very challenging to sinners like us.

There is a need to challenge those who defer marriage for ungodly reasons without demeaning those whose singleness is either not their choice or has in fact been chosen for the sake of the kingdom.

Marriage is not the sole answer to the observation, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18).

A brother is stuck with you. A brother is obligated to be some kind of safety net. That is what family is for. But a friend chooses you. When someone loves you at all times, good and bad, and they don’t have to but they choose to—that person is a friend.7

true friendship is the least jealous of loves.

By its very nature friendship is a wonderful form of intimacy.

It’s not always easy to foster close friendships when you’re established as a family, but it’s a vital discipline to open up family life to others around you.

Jesus isn’t sensitive to good marketing; he just says it like it is.

Whatever relational cost our discipleship may incur, however much family we may lose in the course of following Christ, Jesus is saying that even in this life it will be worth it. Following him means an abundance of spiritual family. Nature may have given us only one mother and one father; the gospel gives us far more.

But the fact is, it’s actually deeply challenging, because we’re the families of Psalm 68 in which God is placing the lonely. We are the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and sons and daughters that Jesus is promising in Mark 10.

When God draws people to himself, he draws them to one another as well. The people of Jesus Christ are to be family.

Sometimes it’s actually not making a fuss over a visitor that can make them feel more special and at home.

Too often what we’re really doing is not hospitality but entertaining.

We must never underestimate what can be achieved for the kingdom of God around the kitchen table. It is a place God loves to use.

No parents are going to get every aspect of it right, so kids having the input of other people in the wider church family is not a luxury but a necessity.

It takes humility to realize it, but your children stand a much better chance of becoming well-rounded if it’s not just you they look to in life.

While having the wrong sort of input is a justifiable concern, so too is having no other input at all.

we treat any natural position we’re given in life as a means of spending ourselves for the good of others rather than ourselves.

Genesis calls humanity to make more people, but Jesus calls his new humanity to make disciples (Matt. 28:19–20).

What matters most in ministering to marrieds and parents is not personal experience but faithfulness to Scripture.

I suspect that many churches that gladly have Paul as an apostle would not have appointed him as a pastor.

If the primary examples of the Christian life that many of us see in church are always married ones, it can reinforce the idea that being married necessarily accompanies Christian maturity.

Provision by a church family for the singles on staff needs to go beyond mere remuneration.

Alter marriage, and you end up distorting the gospel it is meant to portray.

If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency.

Being platonically dumped wouldn’t be so bad if people would acknowledge you have the right to be platonically heartbroken.

If no one enters into our world, we can feel like mere accessories in others’ lives.

“God doesn’t play that game. He doesn’t inject hypothetical grace into your hypothetical nightmare situation so that you would know what it would actually feel like if you ever did end up in that situation.”

“Remember one is given the strength to bear what happens, but not the 101 different things that might happen.”

God knows me more than I know myself. God loves me more than I love myself. God is more committed to my ultimate joy than I am. So I can trust him.

The key to contentment as a single person is not trying to make singleness into something that will satisfy us; it is to find contentment in Christ as a single person.

as a Christian, there isn’t anything ultimate I am missing out on by being unmarried.

That an unchanging God manages to somehow keep surprising us probably says far more about us than about him.

The question is not what seems to be enough to avoid sin but what is the most we can do.

God sees our sin. He also sees every striving to be pure and godly.