Please see below for the latest case in point.
Look, this tweet is nothing new. I dare say we have all heard it before. Many times, in fact. It goes something like this:
“Adam was sad and lonely without a wife. Which means marriage is the solution to loneliness and loneliness. Which also means singleness is bad.
But, well, it’s awkward. You see, 1 Corinthians 7 exists, and that chapter of the Bible makes it challenging to keep insisting on the badness of singleness. I mean, here we are having decided that singleness isn’t good and then comes the apostle Paul who not only says singleness is indeed good, but perhaps even better. Horror!
What is the solution to our quandry? Hmmm. Let’s think about this for a bit. What if we… maybe… yeah! That works! Paul was talking about “Celibacy”, not “Singleness”. Singleness is bad. But “special singleness” (i.e., celibacy) is good. Problem solved!”
Patridge’s tweet is just another version of the same old, tired singleness narrative that courses through our evangelical veins. And so, I wasn’t any more surprised to read him saying it than I was when I heard John Macarthur or Albert Mohler or Mark Driscoll or Doug Wilson or [insert your name of choice here] say the same thing.
But here’s the problem
Our familiarity with this narrative can tempt us to miss how deeply unbiblical it is. We can be so used to its insistent retelling that we fail to recognise how it is both propped up by and itself props up a range of foolish assumptions about God’s character, his actions towards us, what it means to have been made in his image, and ultimately the gospel of grace.
We’ve dug ourselves in to a deep, dark hole on its way to nowhere. And the worst of it is that we don’t even realise that we’re neck deep in the dirt.
And so in the words of Chief Wiggum, it’s time for us to “Dig up, stupid”… one shovel load at a time.
“Your singleness is a gift” is one of the biggest lies in the church. I haven’t met one Christian single who wants that gift. - Dale Partridge
Dale has never met one solitary unmarried Christian who wants that gift?! Really?
Dale, my friend, you need to get out more. Or, more to the point, you need to look at the single Christians around you and really see them as 3D dimensional individuals.
More to the point though, he argues that because he’s never met a Christian single who wants the “gift of singleness” (more on that in a moment), then it cannot be true that their singleness really is a gift.
But why is something only considered a gift if someone wants it?
Picture this. It’s your birthday. You’ve just blown the candles out and are enjoying an exceptionally fine piece of chocolate cake when your spouse, a good friend, your parents, a sibling, take your pick, approaches you with a beautifully wrapped gift. They tell you “I thought long and hard about what to give you. It may not be what you are expecting, but… well, here’s my gift to you”.
You open it, take one look at what lies inside, scoff and say “Ha! You’re right. I wasn’t expecting this! Why did you think I would actually want it?! You call this a gift?!”
My goodness. The arrogance.
Gifts are gifts because they have been given to us by someone else. By their very nature, they are things we have not selected or obtained for ourselves but which have been bestowed upon us by a gift-giver.
And the ultimate—indeed, the perfect—gift giver is God.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with him there is no variation or shadow due to change
(James 1:17).
Imagine God—the one who knows us inside out and upside down—gives an unmarried Christian person the “gift” of being unmarried, only for that fallible, fragile, fallen person to throw it back at his feet, scoffing “You thought I would want this?! I don’t want it! And because of how I feel about it, there is no way this is a gift!”
How we feel about any gift God has chosen to give us has nothing to do with whether it is indeed a gift from the divine giver of all perfect gifts. To think otherwise is to assume a position of absolutely appalling arrogance.
It’s time to start digging up.
1 Corinthians 7 is not teaching that singleness is a gift but that celibacy is a gift. - Dale Partridge
We will take a closer look at the “celibacy” shovel in a moment. But for now, let’s just assume Dale is right (he’s not) and that 1 Cor 7:7-8 is talking about some special spiritual empowerment to contented and godly sexual abstinence in singleness (it isn’t).
In other words, let’s take it at face value that “celibacy” (i.e., “special singleness”) is a spiritual gift.
Friends, in 1 Cor 12 and 14, what does Paul say is the purpose of the gifts God bestows on individual church members? I’ll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with helping the individual Christian live what they think will be their happiest and most contented life.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good
(1 Corinthians 12:7)
That verse summarises everything chapters 12 and 14 say about why God has apportioned “spiritual gifts” amongst his people. It’s not so we are empowered to have a right merry time of life ourselves. It’s not so we can flourish in our individual situations. It’s not so we can live our very best lives.
No, it is so that individual members can build up the body of Christ to maturity. Gifts are not given for the individual good but for the common good.
And so, even if we do take 1 Cor 7:7-8 to be speaking about some special spiritual gift (it’s not), the question of whether I want, desire or am happy with that gift is utterly redundant. Because the gift isn’t for my sake. It’s for yours.
It’s time to start digging up.
1 Corinthians 7 is not teaching that singleness is a gift but that celibacy is a gift. - Dale Partridge
I’ve written a three-post series about the (so-called) “gift of singleness”, here, here and here. I won’t rehash all the details, but in a nutshell:
Before the Reformation, the “gifts” (NB. plural) of 1 Cor 7:7-8 were thought to be the situations of being married or unmarried.
Key Reformers (such as Luther and Calvin) decided that the gift of 1 Cor 7:7-8 was a special spiritual empowerment to sexual abstinence. This was because they had determined humans are biologically compelled to have sex, and so if the long-term unmarried person was not going to fall into heinous sexual sin, they either needed to marry and so they could have sex, or they needed a special booster shot of the Holy Spirit to help them withstand sexual temptation indefinitely.
In this vein, the contemporary evangelical church has started talking about ungifted singleness as “singleness” and gifted singleness (i.e., special singleness) as “celibacy”. Keep your eye out for it. It’s everywhere.
But there is nothing in 1 Cor 7:7-8 that urges us towards that reading. And no, 1 Cor 7:9 doesn’t take us there either. In fact, such a reading flies in the face of lots of other parts of Scripture that talk about sex having been made to serve the purpose of marriage (rather than humans being made to have sex and marriage being the way they get to have it) and the importance of us being people who exercise (sexual) self-control.
Friends, here’s what the bible says about having or not having sex:
If you are married, have sex with your spouse because God has designed sex to serve the purposes of marriage. Get on with serving Jesus.
If you are not married, don’t have sex. Exercise self-control. Get on with serving Jesus.
I mean, it’s pretty straightforward, right?
This notion that there is ordinary “singleness” and then there is a special spiritually empowered type of superior singleness called “celibacy” is unbiblical.
Let me say it another way. The notion that there is this mysterious other thing out there called “celibacy” that a special few unmarried Christians are gifted for/called to… and then there are the rest of us poor, tragic, doomed singles is not biblical. It is man-made nonsense.
Are there some singles who have a lower libido? Absolutely! Is the fact that they don’t endure the same depth of sexual temptation as other singles a blessing for them in their pursuit of self-control? It sure is! Do some people choose to remain single? Yep!
But are they a special breed of singles? Do they have “more” of the Holy Spirit? Are they wonderfully set apart above and beyond all the rest of us ordinary unmarried Christians? Are they called to some sort of superiorly different life of singleness than we are?
No.
All of us who are unmarried are compelled by the same gospel of grace to live sexually obedient lives of self-control. It’s the exact same call for all of us.
And guess what? The good news is self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23)! And guess what else? The extra good news is that the same Holy Spirit dwells within each and every one of us (1 Cor 3:16).
So tell me, why on earth would the same author who wrote both Gal 5:22-23 and 1 Cor 3:16 suggest in 1 Cor 7 that being able to exercise ongoing sexual self-control means we need something more than the very presence of God himself dwelling within us? Why on earth would Paul claim that some get an extra special dose of the Holy Spirit? Where does he say that singles can be divided into those who are “specially gifted” and those who are not? The elites and the plebs? The singles and the celibates?
He doesn’t.
It’s time to start digging up.
In Genesis, God said, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” When Adam was lonely, God didn’t say, “I’m enough for you, Adam.” No, he gave him a wife! - Dale Partridge
Honestly, I’m just so done with this argument. It is just so shallow, self-serving, and silly.
I spend a whole chapter exploring and exploding this myth in my forthcoming book. So for now, I’ll keep it simple.
Genesis 2 says absolutely nothing about Adam being lonely. He may have been lonely. He may not have been lonely (eg. how do you know you are lonely if you’ve never known anything but being alone?). We don’t and can’t know.
Simply put, Genesis 2 doesn’t give us any insight into how Adam was feeling. It is God who diagnoses the not goodness of the situation, not Adam and his feelings.
The not goodness God diagnoses was not that Adam was feeling lonely. It was that Adam was alone. Adam was literally the only human person in creation. But because God made humanity in his own image, Adam was never meant to be human alone. This is why his aloneness was not good.
God solved the not goodness. Not by “giving Adam a wife”. But by making Adam a helper.
A key part of the way Eve fulfilled her role as a helper was as a wife to Adam. But she was more than just a wife to him. She was a friend, a colleague, a partner. Likewise, her female descendants were much, much more than just wives to men.
God’s answer to Adam’s aloneness was not marriage. It was human community. Yes, marriage is a fundamental aspect of human community in this creation. However, it is not the total sum or the definition of human community.
And so… for the (literal) love of God can we please stop saying that because it was not good for Adam to be alone, singleness is bad?!
This shouldn’t need to be said. And yet, apparently, it does.
I’ve always been single.
But I’ve never been alone.
I have a rich, vibrant, wonderful relational life.
So, stop telling me that I’m alone.
Because I’m not.
And you insisting I am makes you a fool.
It’s time to start digging up.
Yes, be content while you wait, but don’t be content being single. - Dale Partridge
Let me parse Dale’s comment for you:
Be content while you wait to no longer be single.
But don’t you dare be content while being single.
It is precisely this kind of nonsensical comment that leaves me utterly convinced that the (invariably) married male pastors and leaders who utter such nonsense do not actually see, know or understand the single people in their churches—and especially the single women.
So let me introduce you to one of them. Her name is Edith.
Edith has always wanted to be married. Like most young girls, she grew up dreaming wistfully about her wedding day to come. In her teens, she found it exciting to daydream about the young guy God might have set apart to be her husband. She and her friends secretly shared their crushes with each other.
By the time high school drew to a close, one by one, all of Edith’s friends had started being asked out on dates. Then, one by one, they announced they had a boyfriend. Then, one by one, they announced they were engaged. Then, one by one, they sent out their wedding invitations. Then, one by one, they had their bridal showers. Then, one by one, they made their vows. Then, one by one, they went on their honeymoons. Then, one by one, they came home to fill their new house with all the wedding gifts people had given them. Then, one by one, they announced their pregnancy news. Then, one by one, they did their gender reveal. Then, one by one, they had their baby showers. Then, one by one, they made their birth announcements.
But Edith was never one of those ones.
She prayed. She waited. She tried online dating. She prayed. She waited. She tried “lowering her standards”. She prayed. She waited. She tried being set up by her friends. She prayed. She waited. She tried not to want it too much. She prayed. She waited. And. It. Never. Happened.
And Edith hurt. And she wondered if her time would ever come. And she wondered what she was doing wrong. And she wondered what was wrong with her.
All the while, people offered her sage advice like “It’s when you stop trying that God will give you a husband”, and “Don’t worry, God still has someone in store for you, I just know it”, and “I just don’t understand why a lovely girl like you is still single!” and “Have you tried XYZ? It worked for my cousin’s best friend’s sister”. And Edith nodded and smiled and then went home and cried.
But despite this, Edith still found the courage to actually turn up at church, alone, week by week. She listened to the endless talk about marriage courses, couples retreats, family events. She sat through sermons full of illustrations about husbands, wives, and parents.
And then, on the exceedingly rare occasion when her pastor did make some sort of comment about her situation as an unmarried woman it was this:
“Be content while you wait for marriage. But don’t be content being single”.
And that’s when Edith knew her pastor did not see her. Or know her. Or even particularly care about her.
For Edith’s sake, it’s time for us to start digging up.
Singleness can be hard. But it is not a tragedy.
Singleness can be painful. But it is not a pity.
God’s word calls the unmarried life a good gift from a good God. So tell me Dale, who are you to say otherwise?
Dig up, Dale.
Dig. Up.
Post 1: The importance of ensuring the gospel remains our foundational lens and framework
Post 2: The growing tendency amongst some Christian leaders and commentators to turn to sociology as an authoritative guide for ethical “solutions” (especially regarding marriage and singleness)
Post 3: Several reasons why such a move ought to be recognised as highly problematic
In this final post (yes, I promise this is the last one!), we’ll consider a case study that shows us just how much goes wrong (and just how wrong we get it) when we rely on sociology rather than theology to determine Christian ethical “solutions”. The case study in question is the Nationwide Study of Faith & Relationships report published by Communio. The report can be downloaded for free here.
Before we dive into the actual report itself, we need to understand its broader context. Don’t skip this bit, thinking it is just boring details that don’t matter. As we will see, they do matter. A lot.
According to their website:
Communio is a nonprofit ministry that trains and equips churches to share the Gospel through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and the family
[…] Communio partners with churches across all Christian faith traditions to build out Data-Informed, Full-Circle Relationship Ministries®. Every partnership starts with a comprehensive diagnostic of the relationship health quality of the church – and the community. That data informs the development of a ministry strategy…
[…Full-Circle Relationship Ministry® helps churches provide] vision, community, and skills to individuals at each stage of a relationship – leveraging 21st century tools of predictive analytics and microtargeting to reach out to those in your community most likely in need of help.
Communio developed out of the Culture of Freedom Initiative at The Philanthropy Roundtable, which “raised and spent $20 million over three years in three different states seeking to identify the most effective strategies to boost marital health, family stability, and church engagement.”1 Communio believes that “family decline drives faith decline”.2
In summary, Communio is an American Christian non-profit which partners with American churches to develop ministry strategies based on the findings and analysis of sociological data for the sake of sharing the gospel through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriage and the family.
Ok, so why do all that context setting?
Well, because we need to recognise that there are a set of pre-existing commitments that compel Communio’s activities. These commitments are:
Training and equipping churches “to evangelize through the renewal of healthy relationships, marriages, and the family”.3 As put it elsewhere, Communio “serves you to make marriage central to your church”.4
Doing this by helping churches develop ministry strategies that are informed by sociological data, analysis and targeting.
In other words, Communio has an agenda.
Now, that shouldn’t be read as a controversial or even critical statement. All organisations have an agenda—a range of existing assumptions and goals that drive their strategic and operational focus. Communio’s Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships report is responsive to and informed by their specific organisational agenda.
Right. Let’s turn to the actual report itself (again, you can download it free right here).
The Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships (NSFR) examines the interplay between faith and relationships amongst churchgoing American Christians. The data in the report is drawn from:
…more than 19,000 completed surveys […] from 112 evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic congregations in 13 different [American] states. The survey was deployed by churches through mobile devices during in-person services or liturgy on Sunday or Saturday evenings.5
There is a lot of information, discussion and analysis in the report. But I want to focus on just one particular aspect—the report’s findings and conclusions about loneliness amongst (American) churchgoers.
The report offers some information about the rates of loneliness in American society—namely that somewhere between 40-58% of all Americans today consider themselves lonely (p.11). It continues:
“Loneliness has been defined by experts in psychology as a state of mind with the perception of being alone and isolated. Being considered lonely has been found to shorten lifespans having the same public health effect as smoking 15 cigarettes per day” (p.11-12).
While we are on the topic, let me take us out of America for a moment and say that we’re seeing similar statistics in my own country. According to this fact sheet from Australian research and public policy organisation, Publica:
30% of Australians say they never, or rarely, feel close to people (p.1)
38% of young men and 68% of young women reported feeling lonely some of the time (p.4)
18% of young men and 24% of young women said they felt lonely often. (p.4)
Loneliness is a serious problem in today’s Western societies. Indeed, many social commentators talk about an epidemic of loneliness.
But what about loneliness in the church? Well, heading back to the NSFR, it’s good news!
While loneliness in American society sits between 40-58%, only 22% of American churchgoers are considered lonely (p.3). The rates of loneliness in the church are more than half that in society.
Except… when you peek behind the curtain, well, the story isn’t so good. You see, the report shows that one particular factor plays a very significant role in whether individual churchgoers feel lonely. Do you care to guess what it is?
15% of married churchgoers are considered lonely (p.3).
But 50% of single churchgoers are considered lonely (p.3)
Single churchgoers are more than three times as likely to be considered lonely. This massive discrepancy is well represented in a graph that shows loneliness according to married/never-married status and age.
Look at how much more navy blue there is on that graph than red. And while you’re mulling that over, let me give you some more detailed stats from the report.
68% of never-married men and 64% of never-married women (in their 30s) are lonely (p. 14).
52% of divorced churchgoers are lonely (p.13).
53% of widows and 34% of widowers (under the age of 50) are lonely (p. 13).
And just in case you need reminding, only 15% of married churchgoers report feeling often or even just sometimes lonely.6
That many, many more unmarried churchgoers are lonelier than their married counterparts is not exactly breaking news for many single Christians. They are not at all surprised to see their experience translated into these kinds of startling statistics. There is a loneliness problem within the household of God. And one particular demographic is bearing the brunt of that problem.
Which is why I was pleased to read that the report recognises the significance of this problem:
The very existence of such a significant number of lonely single Christians should convict the hearts of pastors and married Christians everywhere. (p.15)
So, then, what is the solution to this heart-convicting problem?
Well, the report does contain some brief comments about the need for churches to engage singles in broader fellowship (p.15). Indeed, Communio’s website notes that 93% of churches do not offer any ministries for singles. Of course, it then goes on to explain why such ministries are needed: “This is a huge opportunity area to encourage healthy habits around dating or finding the right spouse for marriage”.7 In other words, churches need more ministry to singles to effectively transition people out of singleness.
But, anyway, back to the report. Yes, it does offer a few brief comments about the importance of singles and marrieds developing fellowship and friendship with one another in the church (p 15, 16).
However, there is one solution to the loneliness of single Christians that the report emphasises in metaphorical bolded, underlined italics on repeat. Can you guess what it might be?
The loneliness data for those who have never married reinforces the truth found in Genesis 2:18 that, “It is not good for the man to be alone” […] Far from being an idol, this data on the loneliness gap between single and married church goers reinforces the ongoing importance of marriage as a major solution for what ails the Church and her people (p. 14).
The report concludes that the church needs to rediscover a cornerstone model of marriage in which:
[…] marriage is seen as an essential relationship to construct a happy and successful life (p. 14).
[The cornerstone model] leads to less loneliness, more relationship satisfaction and greater happiness. These survey results show that the alternative leads to epidemic levels of loneliness and suffering among their congregants (p.14).
Delays in marriage […] lead to increases in those who will never marry and ultimately grows the loneliness epidemic (p.17)
And so:
[…] marriage remains an essential ingredient to achieving greater success, avoiding loneliness, and more quickly flourishing as an adult. For those who profess Christ, Christian marriage also remains a vital part of the walk of a Christian disciple (p. 16).
[…] Ultimately, pastors and church leaders must become serious and effective in both increasing the number of marriages and the health of those marriages. It appears revival across our larger society depends upon it (p. 16).
Church leaders must also find ways to balance the gender gap within the pews [… because] a lack of marriageable men, faithful to the gospel’s view of sex inside of marriage, remains a real and substantive obstacle to the cornerstone of marriage. The findings of this study suggest this gap is also a threat to the future vitality of Christian faith (p. 14-15).
Note the language of marriage being “essential” and “vital” for Christian discipleship and flourishing. Note also how gospel revival in our society “depends” upon increased and earlier marriage amongst Christians.
According to the NSFR, the “solution” to the loneliness problem experienced by single Christians in our churches is marriage. If they just got married (young), not only wouldn’t they be so lonely, but they’d also achieve greater success, they’d more quickly flourish and the church’s evangelism would be more effective.
To put it another way, the “essential” solution to the significant loneliness that singles experience within the spiritual household of God is to be found in them establishing their own earthly households and having their relational needs met there.
But do you know what doesn’t significantly contribute to the advice offered to church pastors and leaders in this report on the measures they need to take to improve not only the relational health of their church but the effective spread of the gospel in society?
Substantial scriptural engagement and lengthy theological reflection.
On marriage.8
On the family.
On singleness.
On community
But also on ecclesiology. And also on missiology.
There is no extended theological discussion about the nature of who the church actually is. There is no weighty reflection on the value and meaning of our eternal relationships with each other in the body of Christ and what that ought to mean relationally here and now. There is no substantial engagement with the New Testament’s near constant emphasis on the significance of us being each others’ brothers and sisters within the household of God.
There is no interaction with Jesus’ promise that those who forgo or miss out on significant earthly familial relationships receive hundred-fold spiritual familial relationships here and now (Mk 10:29-30). Such a “remedy” to the kind of loneliness on view in the report is, according to Jesus, not realised through marriage and the nuclear family (those things which have been forgone or missed out on), but in belonging to his body, the church.
Finally, there is no exploration of the fact that God calls people to himself in all sorts of relational situations and does not require them to change their situation to be faithful to the Lord and fruitful in ministry and evangelism (1 Cor 7:17-24).
In summary, this report seeks to advise church leaders about how to do effective ministry within their church family and evangelism outside it. And yet it contains no substantial biblical engagement and no robustly sustained theological reflection on the church, ministry and evangelism.
But…why would it?
It is a report published by an organisation whose mission is built upon its pre-existing commitment to the centralisation of marriage within the church as essential to the church’s health and its evangelistic efforts. It is also committed to the idea that the best way to see this happen is through a sociologically informed methodology.
Friends, I’m not seeking to belittle, dismiss or negate the importance of the sociological insights contained in the NSFR report. In my last post I concluded that such sociological findings have their uses. When collected and analysed responsibly, they can provide us with important and interesting insights into the way things currently are, or at least the way things are currently perceived to be.
I’m not even critiquing the validity of Communio’s specific focus on renewing marriages and families within the church. God’s word calls us to honour, dignify and promote both divine goods. When people do the opposite of this, detrimental personal and societal implications follow. It is, therefore, valuable to have organisations like Communio esteeming and promoting them. (Though I do wish organisations equipping churches to do the same for the good of singleness were even just a quarter as populous and popular).
However, our recognition that sociology is of some value must not replace our commitment to theology as the foundational discipline that guides Christian ethics and informs the church's mission.
The sociologically framed NSFR report concludes that the major, essential, vital way to solve the loneliness problem for singles within the church is for those singles to get married. It proposes that becoming and having a husband or a wife is how their loneliness will primarily be eased.
But biblically framed theological reflection on that same sociological data leads us to a different conclusion. It compels us to recognise that the real problem here is not that the church doesn’t rightly value marriage. No, it is that the church doesn’t rightly value itself as the fulfilment of Jesus' promise that his followers will delight in one-hundredfold intimate relationships in this life. Bringing theology to bear on these stats reveals that the solution to the Christian person’s loneliness is not ultimately found in looking outside the church towards marriage and earthly households (good as both of those are) but in actively prioritising, investing in and loving the church—the household of God
Church pastors and ministry leaders, sociology has (limited) usefulness for Christian ethics and ministry strategy. But sociology is not our lane. Sure, we should feel free to look across to that other lane every now and then. But we must not veer across and start driving down the middle of it.
After all, there is a lot at stake. The sheep entrusted to your care will be best served, loved , equipped and encouraged to follow Jesus if you remain committed to the lane he has called you to.
So friends, let us feel free to engage with the data. But let us be driven by the gospel.
Emphasis added. https://communio.org/about/
Emphasis added. https://communio.org/about/
Frankly, I’m skeptical about this figure. It seems very low to me and may reflect an inability, unwillingness or sense of constraint amongst married Christians in acknowledging and self-reporting their experiences of loneliness.
On p.8 there are three short bullet points of theological reflection about marriage. But this is hardly a substantial theological interaction on the topic.
In this post, I want to continue that discussion by outlining several reasons why the increased prominence of and reliance upon sociology by some Christian leaders and commentators—especially concerning marriage, singleness and family—is highly problematic.
Sociological data evidences how things currently are. That is, it describes certain realities (or perceived realities) in the present moment. What it does not inherently do is prescribe a particular course of action in response to those realities or perceived realities.
To move from how things are to how they should be, we must apply an external framework of morals or values to the sociological data. This framework allows us to interpret the sociological findings in and for our own context and then determine an appropriate ethical course of action based on that interpretation.
To see this in action, lets consider our topic of happiness in marriage compared to singleness.
As I discussed in my previous post, some recent sociological research indicates that spouses and parents self-report substantially higher degrees of personal flourishing than those who are single and childless. More and more Christians are utilising this data as a kind of proof for what they believe is the obvious way things should be in light of how they currently are. Brett McCracken provides an example of this in his TCG article:
But research shows that getting married, far from a hindrance to financial stability, is one of the best things you can do to gain long-term financial health. Further, as Brad Wilcox helpfully summarizes in Get Married, marriage is positively correlated with happiness, better mental and physical health, and various other measures of flourishing.
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
In other words, because sociological findings evidence that marriage has better measurable outcomes than singleness in our present cultural context, then single Christians (Brett’s focus is particularly on men) ought to be more proactive in their pursuit of marriage and even “pressured” by others towards it. The formula is a straightforward one.
Marriage = Greater all round happiness ∴ Get married
We’ll return to the question of happiness and its prioritisation in a little bit. But for the moment, think about the context in which these sociological findings have been drawn.
We live in a culture (and a church) that has, for many decades and even centuries, idealised romantic and sexual partnering as necessary for personal flourishing and authenticity. (See Chapters One & Two of my book for an extended discussion of this)
We compulsorily participate in an economy that places unmarried people at a very significant financial disadvantage across the course of their lifetime.
We belong to a society whose internally focused and atomised household structures leave those who live alone or do not have close family support, especially vulnerable to worse mental and physical health outcomes.
And so, is it any wonder those most benefitted by that culture, economy and society report higher levels of happiness, financial security and health within it? The logic of the sociological formula is self-reliant.
Furthermore, the increasingly pervasive insistence that singles need to marry if they wish to achieve these higher lives of happiness, financial security, and health only emphasises and exacerbates their diminished level of happiness, security, and health in the present. The sociological formula becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
You see, the sociological findings merely describe that there is some imbalance within the status quo. They don’t tell us is what levers should or must be pulled to change that imbalance. To determine that, we need to bring a value-laden framework to bear upon the findings.
So, let’s reverse engineer the framework, which concludes that if the imbalance is to be rectified, then the obvious lever to pull is less singleness and more marriage. Here are its underlying assumptions:
Increased happiness is the key measurable factor by which we might know whether the imbalance has been rectified (again, more on this in a moment).
We’re content with the fact that our contemporary Western society significantly disadvantages unmarried people (amongst others) in such a way that they are left unhappier than the more advantaged married folks. That is, we’re not interested in adjusting the existing cultural, economic, and societal controls to see if that might help address the imbalance. (Indeed, if some politicians, and even Christian leaders, had their way, singles would be put at even more of a disadvantage.)
Which means there is only one possible lever left to be pulled. If unmarried people want to achieve increased levels of happiness in the societal status quo, the answer is simple—they need to get married.
But wait, because we Christians add an even deeper assumption to that framework.
In the contemporary Western evangelical church, we begin with the assumption that marriage is not only statistically normative for Christians but also morally normative. That is, we generally regard marriage as ethically prescriptive for Christians (unless you can prove yourself a legitimate exception). And so, we apply that interpretative assumption to the data… and then we use that data to confirm our pre-existing assumption. Let me give you an example.
Recently, a (friendly) online interlocutor pushed back a little on my critique of the sociological lens. He wrote:
“It does seem the data bears out what the Bible dignifies healthy marriages that create healthy families seem to produce better quality of life over the long haul for those in them than those outside of them.”
But does the Bible indeed dignify or teach that? Or are we simply assuming it does?
Certainly, marriage is a wonderful gift and children are a blessing from the Lord. But, lets ask ourselves where Scripture says they bring a “better quality of life” for the Christian person living in the now-but-not-yet? Where does it say that those who don’t have or belong to them have a lower or diminished quality of life in the now-but-not-yet?
Certainly not here:
But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly [literally, “fleshly”] troubles, and I would spare you that.
- 1 Cor 7:28
Or here:
I want you to be free from anxieties… the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided… The married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.
- 1 Cor 7:32-34
Or here:
But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is.
- 1 Cor 7:39-40
Of course marriage and parenting bring unique joys, blessings and delights to life! But that is not the same thing as saying that they offer Christians a “better quality of life”. Indeed, some verses in the New Testament seem to suggest, well, the opposite. 😬
(Sidenote: In the next post, I’ll suggest that, for all of us, the most rich, abundant and beautiful quality of Christian life is to be found in the household of God.)
In summary, the first reason Christians should not look to sociology for “solutions” is because doing so encourages us to cling to our preexisting, often unquestioned and sometimes deeply flawed assumptions. It too easily results in us prescribing ethical action that reflects those pre-existing (and often self-serving) assumptions, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’m going to knock this one over fairly quickly.
Happiness is a blessing from God. It’s a good thing to pray for happiness and embrace happiness when it comes to us.
But happiness is not the goal of a gospel-shaped life. The attainment of happiness does not drive Christian ethical action. Happiness is not the golden rule. Here is what is:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.
- Matt 22:37-38
Making the pursuit of personal happiness the grounds of our ethical framework is the teaching of the individual-obsessed, hedonistic world.
Making love for God and neighbour the grounds of our ethical framework is the responsibility of those who have been justified, sanctified, forgiven, and made free by Jesus Christ.
Sure, marriage can bring very real happiness. (Pssst. So too can singleness). Certainly, glorifying God and loving others sometimes/often results in us experiencing happiness. And of course there is nothing wrong with enjoying the happiness which God chooses to bestow upon us.
But to encourage Christians to choose to marry (or indeed, choose not to marry) foundationally because it might make them feel happier is not a gospel-shaped ethic. Following Jesus means putting ourselves last. It means being willing to “give up” the things we love, long for, and so often seek to find our happiness and security in, all while knowing that, in Jesus, we receive a hundredfold in this age and in the age to come, eternal life (Mk 10:29-31).
I guess this last point is not so much an argument against employing sociology in Christian ethics as it is a demonstration of the double standards which so often result when it is employed for that purpose—specifically in the marriage and singleness discussion.
The contemporary evangelical church has a set narrative about singleness. That narrative is characterised by several distinctive features. I detail these features at length in chapters 3 and 4 of my book. One of them is the portrayal of singleness as a self-serving, self-focused, self-loving, and self-obsessed life situation. Only when the recalcitrant Christian single finally gets married do they realise just how shallow their prior existence was.
One of my “favourite” examples of this comes from Mark Driscoll back in his hey-day:
“When you’re a single guy, you kinda come and go, do as you please. Your schedule’s your own. Your money’s your own. Your place is your own. You do as you please. Married – totally different; you’re asking this question: “Sweetheart, how can I love and serve you?” That’s it. That’s it, and that’s your job, right?
Single Like Jesus
Do you see the narrative? When you are single, it’s all about me, me, me. Once you have a ring on your finger, well, then suddenly, you turn into a different person who is only ever interested in loving and serving your spouse.
Brett McCracken retells the same narrative at the start of his article, though admittedly in a more subtle and palatable way:
“I lived a satisfying life in my 20s as a single guy. I earned two college degrees, did internships in Hollywood and in the U.K., traveled abroad, settled into my first job, published my first book, helped plant a church, and developed deep spiritual friendships with a solid group. I’m grateful for all of it. But my life became so much richer when I became a husband. And it was further enriched when I became a father.”
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
The single Christian is usually characterised as either an immature kidult, or at worst, a self-absorbed and at best, ignorant individual who makes life decisions based on what they want to do and on what they think will make them the happiest. It is bad for the Christian to be this way.
But then along comes the sociological argument for marriage, and what is its ethical basis?
“[…] marriage is positively correlated with happiness, better mental and physical health, and various other measures of flourishing. And so as Keith Simon argued for The Gospel Coalition last year, “If parents wish for their adult children to be happy, the data suggests they should encourage them to prioritize marriage and children…”
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
“Many people who spoke to me for my new book, Get Married, echoed these feelings. Katherine, a 40-year-old woman in Virginia, told me that “being married has given me [financial] stability, a deeper sense of meaning in the world, and confidence.” Even though her life is more “messy,” with two young kids in the mix, than it was when she was single, she said marriage and family life make her “happy in a more profound way.” “
Why You Should Get Married
So, it should surprise no one—least of all Christians—that our nation’s 50–year experiment with alternatives to marriage has left huge numbers of people deeply unhappy. Thanks to social science, we know the solution.
Married People Are Happier
Do you see the double standards at play?
When single Christians unapologetically delight in the genuine happiness that God brings them in and through their situation in life, they are considered selfish or immature or both.
When married Christians unapologetically delight in the genuine happiness that God brings them in and through their situation in life, they are considered wise and mature and godly.
In other words, the sociological “solution” encourages ethical action based on what we think will be in our own best interests and flourishing… so long as that ethical action involves us getting married. It says its ok—even good—to delight in happiness in marriage. Not so much in singleness. Why? Well, to bring us back full circle, it is because we hold tightly to the starting assumption that marriage is ethically prescriptive for Christians (unless you can prove yourself a rare legitimate exception).
And so the means—pursuing personal happiness—is justified by that particular end—becoming a married person.
Now, please take note of what I have not said here.
I have not said that happiness is a bad thing. I have not said that marriage doesn’t bring certain measures of happiness. I have not said that singleness doesn’t ever tempt people towards selfishness. I have not said we should have no concerns about the current rates of marriage and fertility. I have not said that we should be promoting singleness over marriage in our churches. I have not said more and more people should remain single.
What I have said is that Christians ought not to be determining and enacting our ethics based on what (we like to believe) social science says. Rather, our ethics ought to be grounded in and compelled by what God’s word says and how that same word directs us to act out of love for God and each other.
We have our own wonderful, glorious, clearly defined lane. So, let’s stay in it.
My next post will demonstrate just what a wreck we cause when we veer out of it. Subscribe below to receive it in your inbox.
In that post, I argued that our Christian perception of and response to what we see happening around us—whether on singleness, marriage or anything else—should be foundationally refracted through the lens of the gospel (rather than through sociological data, trends and anxiety).
In this second (and an upcoming third) post, I want to take the discussion further. That is, I want to suggest that, not only should sociology not be the foundational lens we peer through, but that when we do peer through it, we ought to exercise great care and caution.
In a nutshell, I want to encourage us Christians to stay in our lane.
Before I say anything further, let me be clear: I recognise that sociology does not form the totality of Brett’s argument. That is, he does offer some biblical and theological reflections, and I plan to interact with these in a later post.
I also appreciate how he provides some contextual qualifications to his sociological argument. At various points, he also seeks to clarify what he is not trying to say (though again, I want to return in a future post to evaluate the success of this).
Finally, I want to reiterate what I said in my previous post—the sociological argument on view in Brett’s article does not originate from him. Nor is it exclusive to him. Not by a long shot. In fact, it’s been doing the general rounds for at least a year or two.
All of which is to say that, just as Brett employed sociology as an entry point into his argument, here I am using his article as an entry point into my argument: namely that sociology is of limited relevance and usefulness for Christian ethical determination and reflection.
In the early part of his article, Brett presents some sociological findings about the decreased sense of urgency towards and interest in marriage in America today.
As marrying young becomes less common and never-married, childless adulthood becomes more normal, fewer singles feel the urgency to seek a spouse and “settle down.” One recent study showed that, among single and never-married American adults, only 29 percent report they feel pressure from society to get married, with even fewer (19 percent) saying they’ve felt pressure from their family to get married.”
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
He contends that increasing rates of delayed marriage and decreasing rates of fertility are directly responsible for:
“…yielding a litany of negative short-term effects and foreshadowing ominous long-term societal consequences.”
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
This is bad news indeed. However, there is good news. In fact, there is a way to turn all of it around.
“But research shows that getting married, far from a hindrance to financial stability, is one of the best things you can do to gain long-term financial health. Further, as Brad Wilcox helpfully summarizes in Get Married, marriage is positively correlated with happiness, better mental and physical health, and various other measures of flourishing. And so as Keith Simon argued for The Gospel Coalition last year, “If parents wish for their adult children to be happy, the data suggests they should encourage them to prioritize marriage and children over financial independence and career advancement, when given the choice.”
As a Single Man, I Felt Little Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Had
Brett argues that sociological research shows marriage is the highway to happiness, financial security, superior mental and physical help, as well as a range of other measurable indications of personal flourishing. And so, Christians—indeed society as a whole—should encourage young adults to not simply prioritise but proactively pursue marriage and procreation. And it would seem, the earlier the better.
In the quote above, Brett mentions Christian sociologist and author Brad Wilcox (author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization). While not alone in prioritising sociological research and analysis for the sake of ethical formation by Christians, Brad Wilcox is certainly at the forefront.
Here are just a few of the (many) comments he has made over the last couple of years about the correlation of happiness, marriage, and children.
Wilcox’s article, Why You Should Get Married, helpfully represents not simply his own research but also the sociologically driven ethical trajectory that is being increasingly adopted by other Christians on singleness, marriage, and family. He writes:
Well, no one calls their lives happier and more meaningful than men and women who are married, according to the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS). Women ages 18–55 who are married are almost twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives (37 percent), compared to their single peers (19 percent).
Married men ages 18–55 are also more likely to be “very happy” (34 percent) than their peers who are not married (13 percent).
Meanwhile, 23 percent of unmarried women ages 18–55 say they are “not too happy” with their lives, compared to 13 percent of married women
[…] In fact, marriage is a better predictor of happiness than education, work, money, frequent sex, or regular religious attendance.
Why You Should Get Married
Yikes. Married women are almost twice as likely to be very happy than their unmarried counterparts. And for married men, that jumps to almost three times as likely! Correspondingly, almost double the number of unmarried women report not being too happy with their lives.
According to Wilcox et al., the sociological data is clear: Getting married is the best way for individuals (including Christians) to secure greater happiness, health, wealth, and security.
And so, more and more Christian pastors, leaders, and commentators are now using sociological data as the basis for their ethical exhortations for Christians to marry. Here’s just one example:
The truth about marriage, however, is that it is, statistically, the single best predictor of long-term happiness. Making this even more important to understand is that for at least the last 20 years now, Americans have been steadily getting less happy.
[…] In other words, the decline of marriage over the last several decades is causing the decline in happiness, or at least most of it. As Peltzman told The Atlantic in statistical hyperbole: “The only happy people for 50 years have been married people.
[…] Marriage is part of God’s plan for humanity and for His creation. No other human institution forges such lasting and consequential bonds. So, it should surprise no one—least of all Christians—that our nation’s 50–year experiment with alternatives to marriage has left huge numbers of people deeply unhappy. Thanks to social science, we know the solution. The question now, for each of us and for all of society, is whether we’re willing to commit.
Married People are Happier
The excerpt above is from an article (Married People Are Happier) published by Breakpoint, a media arm of the Colson Centre. According to their website, the Colson Centre “exists to equip Christians with the clarity, confidence, and courage they need to live like Christians in this cultural moment.” The article was co-authored by John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Centre, and Shane Morris, Breakpoint’s assistant editor.
So, here we have a Christian resourcing ministry that seeks to equip Christian people to live for Christ, and their argument is that there is an easy fix to the “huge numbers of people who are deeply unhappy” because:
Thanks to social science, we know the solution. [i.e., Get married, you’ll be happier]
Thanks to social science, we know the solution.
Folks, let that sink in.
Here is a Christian resourcing centre saying that social science is what gives us the answers on how to best live for Christ.
I’m sure this is not all Breakpoint or the Colson Centre have had to say about the place and purpose of marriage in the Christian life. And yet in this particular article, as they seek to equip their Christian readers to “live like Christians in this cultural moment”, their entire argument is that social science has found the answer. It is what has diagnosed the problem, provided a prognosis and offers an obvious solution.
This is just one specific example of a much broader and progressively insistent trend in which Christians (including Brett in his article) increasingly rely on sociological research and analysis to inform and substantiate Christian ethical thinking and action.
In other words, we Christians are increasingly veering out of our lane (theology and its pastoral application) to find our groove in an adjacent lane (sociology and its cultural application).
Don’t get me wrong. Sociology can be a useful tool. It can provide us with some interesting and important insights into the culture surrounding the Church, and the wider community that we seek to evangelise with the good news of Jesus Christ.
We should take seriously the sociological research that suggests marriage and fertility rates are declining in Western countries. Likewise, we should be concerned that social science reveals loneliness and isolation are now found at epidemic levels in Western communities.
Furthermore, we ought not to be surprised when this discipline reveals that those in our communities suffer and struggle in various ways. Indeed, we should expect there to be alignment between sociological data and what we Christians know is the reality of living as fallen people in a fallen world.
So, sociology is not something Christians should avoid with a ten-foot pole. It can provide us with some helpful diagnostic and analytical insights.
However, when we Christians start turning to sociology to provide us with “solutions”, well, then we have a problem.
After all, we are not people of the data.
We are people of the Word.
In my next post, I plan to outline a number of reasons why I think we ought to be very cautious about using sociology as an instrument to determine how and why Christians ought to live—particularly when it comes to marriage, singleness and community.
To keep updated when Part 2 drops, make sure you subscribe below!
I hope to explore some of those thoughts in a little more detail over the next week or two. But in the meantime, I think it would be fruitful to explore the broader trajectory of evangelical discourse about marriage and singleness today. This trajectory is on view in McCracken’s article, thought it does not originate from it, nor is it exclusive to it.
Here’s the thing, Brett’s article left me—a never-married evangelical Christian woman—with a strange sense of cognitive dissonance. He writes:
…in our cultural moment, and perhaps in certain cultural contexts (like mine in Southern California), arguments for the good of marriage need to be sounded more urgently.
I get why parents, pastors, and church communities are reluctant to say anything about marriage to singles that feels like “pressure.”
Because from my vantage point in a highly secular region (coastal California), as well as from what I see in the broader trends in contemporary Western culture, singleness doesn’t need more defenders. Marriage does.
I was born, bred and live in Sydney, Australia, not coastal Southern California. But I sincerely doubt that the only similarity between SoCal and Sydney is our enviable winter climates, amazing beaches and secularised populations. And so, I was perplexed by Brett’s claim that it is marriage, and not singleness, which needs to be more urgently talked about, argued for, and even defended in our churches today.
I mean, this conclusion seems so opposite to my experience—past and present— within the evangelical church. It seems so not in sync with everything I’ve read and listened to on these twin topics over the last decade or two.
But maybe it is just me? Maybe my experience is an outlier?
It turns out, not so much. Here are just a few social media comments I came across from others who responded to the article:
I find this perspective interesting because it is such a different one than I have witnessed as a 40-something single woman… In my experience marriage and family is put forward with such high esteem that no one would need to be nudged because they would already feel the push.
Your context in California must be very different from my rural church context in the Canadian province of Ontario, because here, marriage definitely doesn’t need, and has never needed, more defenders… Marriage is all too frequently exalted to the point that, as a single guy in my late 20s, I was made to feel somehow incomplete, lacking in some way, before I met and married my wife.
In my early 20s I was a part of a church that ignored singles altogether to serve its large young family ministry. In my late 20s and into my 30s, I was a part of a church that was almost totally devoid of singles…
My response title… would be, “As a Single Woman in her 30s, I Feel Lots of Pressure to Get Married. I Wish I Didn’t.”
It’s almost like Brett and I (and all these other people) inhabit two parallel universes.
In one, Christians have put singleness on some kind of untouchable pedestal, everyone is too nervous to suggest that maybe marriage is a good thing for a single Christian to pursue and, for goodness sake, the last thing anyone in the church needs to do is talk more about singleness.
In the other, single Christians feel isolated, ignored and invisible in their church communities. If they are male, they are regarded with shameful suspicion. If they are female, they are treated with shameful pity. And both are viewed as abnormal, perhaps even aberrant, disciples of Jesus. (I’ve written more about this here).
What exactly is going on?! Who is right? Who is wrong? Which universe are we truly living in?
Well, I think the answers to those questions all come down to what telescopic lens we are looking at that universe through.
Let me explain. Here are some comments from Brett’s article:
Young adults are increasingly delaying marriage and having fewer children, yielding a litany of negative short-term effects and foreshadowing ominous long-term societal consequences.
Another factor in marriage’s decline is a fall in cultural pressure. As marrying young becomes less common and never-married, childless adulthood becomes more normal, fewer singles feel the urgency to seek a spouse and “settle down.”
Here are some comments from two male pastors who I noted discussing Brett’s article online:
The need of the day is not more encouragement toward singleness. It is encouragement toward marriage. This isn't an opinion, so much as statistical fact.
The rate of singleness in modern society is abnormal and unsustainable. Marriage ought to be held in honor by all, including by pursuing it under normal circumstances.
These comments help us identify the telescopic lens through which these men (and so many of their US male colleagues in ministry) are approaching the discussion. It’s a sociological and statistical lens that notes with both alarm and anxiety the declining marriage and fertility rates in US (and broader Western) society.
And so, those looking at the discussion through this lens deduce that the absolute last thing the church needs to be doing right now is defending singleness. After all, there is far, far too much singleness and far, far too little marriage going around these days. And so, the last thing the church should be doing is talking more—and talking more positively—about the societal scourge that is singleness.
But friends, there is nothing new under the sun. Here are a few brief excerpts from my book, The Meaning of Singleness. They come from Chapter One, in which I recount the societal history of singleness in:.
17th and 18th Century England:
Colonial and Post-Colonial America
In other words, the contemporary Western anxiety about the decline in marriage, a lowering of fertility rates and a surplus of recalcitrant singles is not new or novel to our time alone. The nationalistic undercurrent at work beneath this anxiety is not new or novel to our time alone. And the caricaturing and even societal punishment of those who aren’t married—especially women—is not new or novel to our time alone..
Old though this anxiety may be, it is fast becoming the dominant lens through which Christian discussions about marriage and singleness are being refracted today. It is what fuels the assertion that marriage needs urgent defence in and by the church, against the pervasive problem that is singleness.
Here is a case in point:
Do you see how the lens we adopt dictates our perspective? The suggestion that the church needs to rehabilitate a more biblically cohesive approach to singleness is automatically interpreted as an active threat to the fostering and future of marriage and family.
Never mind the centuries-old asymmetrical experience of single Christians in the church. Because now there is an asymmetrical balance between singleness and marriage in society. And so, we are told, the very last thing the church should be doing is painting singleness in any kind of genuinely positive or beneficial light.
Yet, think about the logic of that dialogue above for a moment.
I asserted that we Christians need a more faithful theology of singleness and a more life-giving pastoral application of that theology. Surely, it is an utterly unremarkable thing to suggest that Christians should be primarily concerned with making sure our perspective on singleness is consistently and comprehensively aligned with the Bible’s perspective on it? This is Christian life 101.
My interlocutor claimed that to do this—i.e., to focus on retrieving a theology and pastoral practice of singleness that is faithful to God’s word—would be a slippery slope towards legitimating fewer marriages and fostering higher rates of fertility decline.
Say what now?!
Reading and applying the Bible faithfully “easily becomes” a baptism of abnormality as normality, and failure as success?! Making our teaching about and pastoring of unmarried Christians more consistent with Scripture would “easily” allow such people to take that biblical inch and then run a mile… in the complete opposite direction?!
Do you see how the lens through which we engage with this discussion can warp what we see and how we respond?
Here’s the thing: If we Christians are fundamentally concerned with a sense that society is not promoting and participating in marriage and family enough, then of course any suggestion that singleness needs to be theologically and pastorally rehabilitated in the church:
Not only seems absurd, counter-productive and dangerous,
But it also appears to be a sneaky part of the worldly campaign to undermine, even overthrow marriage and family.
However, if we Christians are fundamentally concerned with ensuring the way we think and love, is faithful to Scripture, glorifying to Christ and shaped by the gospel, then:
Not only do we not need to be fearful of retrieving a faithful theology and practice of singleness,
But it will actually assist us in honouring and promoting the good gifts of marriage and family.
Brothers and sisters, our bread and butter as Christians is not in found in reestablishing some perceived societal “status quo”. Rather, it is living out the Bible’s teaching as those transformed by the gospel of Christ. As we do this, we bear fruit, love the society around us and witness to the transformative power of that good news
And so, the best way to “defend” against singleness being misappropriated by a world that sees it as a license for self-indulgence, self-fulfilment and self-focus is not for us Christians to talk about singleness less, or to talk about singleness less positively.
No, our best response to the world’s corruption of the goodness of singleness is found in upholding the dignity, meaning, significance and purpose of that life situation according to God’s word.
If we do that, we’ll not only delight in a more loving, fruitful and hopeful vision of the unmarried life, but we’ll also witness to a far more loving, fruitful and hopeful vision of married life than the world has on offer.
But.. there’s a catch.
You see, this proactive and productive “defence” of marriage, family and singleness will require us to swap out the tired, old, recycled lens of societal anxiety for a confidently biblical lens that refracts singleness, marriage and family through the light of the gospel.
Allowing the lens of the gospel to refract our perspective in this way:
Will not lead to us diminishing the biblical dignity, meaning, significance and purpose of marriage.
Will not lead to us undermining the unique theological and societal significance of having children,
Will not lead to us discouraging people from marrying and having babies.
But allowing the lens of the gospel to refract our perspective in this way:
Will require us to take seriously the biblical passages that speak about the dignity, significance and unique advantages of being unmarried as a Christian in the now-but-not-yet.
Will require us to take seriously the biblical passages that speak about the complexities, challenges and yes, the “fleshly troubles”, of marriage (1 Cor 7:28) for the Christian in the now-but-not-yet.
Will require our engagement with this issue to be foundationally theological and pastoral in compulsion, rather than sociological in flavour (more on that in a later post).
Will require us to stop casting marriage and singleness—and therefore, married and single Christians—as competitors in a zero-sum game of Christian life.
Friends, God’s word will not steer us wrong. We do not need to be fearful of calls to recover a robust, biblically compelling theology of singleness.
Doing so will not diminish marriage and family as the world is hell-bent on doing. No. It will promote and dignify them as Scripture is heaven-bent on doing.
So let’s have confidence in the efficacy of the word of God & the power of the Holy Spirit as we put our biblical lens into the telescope and peer at both singleness and marriage through the gospel.
]]>We had a “biblical theology” unit of study. We were assigned a “biblical theology” set text. Our lecturers would endlessly speak about the importance of “biblical theology”. And the young adult Dani nodded along sagely. Yes, indeed. "Biblical Theology” is just so important, isn’t it?
But here’s a secret for you: In the very early days, young adult Dani didn’t actually have a clue what “biblical theology” actually meant. What was this thing of which everyone spoke? And why was I only just now hearing about it now?
Of course, it didn’t take long for me to realise that even though the term “biblical theology” itself was new to me, the actual concept was something I was already well familiar with. Sydney Anglicanism has a long-standing—some would even say world-leading—tradition of employing biblical theology (in no small part, the legacy of Australian-born theologian, Graeme Goldsworthy). And so, as someone who had grown up attending Sydney Anglican churches, reading Scripture through a biblical theological lens was as natural to me as breathing air. Now, I knew what it was called!
In his classic text. According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible, Graeme Goldsworthy puts it like this:
“Biblical theology is concerned with God’s saving acts and his word as these occur within the history of the people of God. It follows the progress of revelation from the first word of God to man through to the unveiling of the full glory of Christ. It examines the several stages of biblical history and their relationship to one another. It thus provides the basis for understanding how texts in one part of the Bible relate to all other texts. A sound interpretation of the Bible is based upon the findings of biblical theology.”
Graeme Goldsworth, According to Plan, p. 37
(NB. I’m working from an old edition, cause, you know, I’m old. Page numbers may be different!)
In other words, biblical theology seeks to understand the full storyline of Scripture—from beginning to end—through the person and work of Jesus Christ and according to God's plans in him. It helps us understand God's nature, character, and purposes—ultimately fulfilled in Christ—and how, why and where we, as humans, are blessed to fit within those purposes.
Biblical theology doesn't just connect different parts of the Bible. It helps us to read the whole of the Bible as one unfolding revelation, with Jesus at its very centre.
I recently read an article, titled Blueprints in the Beginning, that reminded me how important it is to practice responsible biblical theology.
Before I say anything further, let me state the points on which I agree with its author (Colin Smothers). Because there are plenty of those.
I believe the Bible teaches that God designed marriage to be between one man and one woman only (until the death of one part them)
I believe the Bible teaches that marriage is a very good and very important part of God’s mandate for men and women to fill this earth and subdue it.
I believe the Bible teaches that all sex outside of the marriage relationship (porneia in the language of the New Testament) is sexual immorality and, therefore, sinful.
I believe the Bible teaches that same-sex sexual activity (in any context) is porneia.
I agree with the Smothers on all of these conclusions.
But there is something I don’t agree with him on. And it’s an important something.
Of marriage, Smothers concludes:
That’s the point of our two-ness. That’s the point of our differentiated-yet-complementary sexuality. Why are there two genders? Because of marriage!
Colin Smother - Blueprints in the Beginning
Pay careful attention to what he is saying here. He is not simply saying that creation tells us marriage is (only) meant to be between a man and a woman. He is not simply saying that marriage was part of God’s earthly intention for men and women.
No. He is saying that the reason why God made two different sexes,—“the point” of our male and femaleness—is marriage. Or, to put it in the inverse, he appears to be saying that if there was no marriage, there would be no reason for God to have created a sexually differentiated humanity.
How does he draw this conclusion? From his understanding of Matthew 19 in which he says “Jesus engages in a bit of biblical-theological ju-jitsu”:
4 “Haven’t you read,” [Jesus] replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” - Matt 19:4-6
I’m not quite clear on some aspects of Smother’s exegetical argument about this passage (and particularly how he sees the “Therefore” in v.6 operating). But since I don’t want to take us down that particular rabbit hole, I will leave you to reason that out yourselves.
But the upshot is he sees Jesus to be saying that God designed humanity as dual-sexed for the purpose of marriage. That marriage is the “point of our two-ness”. That the reason God made us male and female was “for lifelong, unitive marriage”.
Now, certainly, I believe part of God’s good creative intention for this earth was that marriage would exist amongst men and women. But that is not the same thing as saying the reason God made us men and women was so that marriage would exist. It’s not the same thing as saying the purpose for humanity’s dual-sexuality is marriage.
I think Colin Smothers is incorrect on this. And I think responsible biblical theology demonstrates why.1
Smothers draws his article to a conclusion with these words:
Do you want to know how things ought to be? Do you want to strive for the way it should be? Do you want a paradigm for ethical living, for human sexuality? In other words, do you want to know what it’s all for? Do you want purpose? Do you want an aim, a goal in life?
Go back to the beginning with Jesus and find out how it was so, which is how it should be. Finally, we have the principle: God created the world with a specific design and purpose, including our maleness and femaleness. Study the form, the design, the origin, and you will find the purpose. And you do that by going back to the beginning with Jesus, to Genesis 1 and 2, because from the beginning it was so…
If you want to know how something works, you read the owner’s manual and study the blueprint. Genesis 1 and 2 is our blueprint.
Colin Smother - Blueprints in the Beginning
Friends, I have no problem with us going back to the beginning. Indeed, as responsible biblical theologians, we ought to do just that.
But as responsible biblical theologians, we should not simply stop at the beginning. We should not decide that the first two chapters of the Bible give us all we need to “know what it’s all for”. We should not think Genesis 1 and 2 alone are the blueprint of our humanity as if the case was closed in and at the beginning.
Biblical theology is a means of looking at one particular event in relation to the total picture.
Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan p. 25. (Emphasis mine)
God begins to reveal his purposes for humanity—for men and women, for marriage, indeed for all of creation—in Genesis. But he does not stop there. No. The beginning is part of a bigger story—a total picture—that we see unfolding in all the (many) pages that come after Genesis 1 and 2. That story retains its consistency and coherency. But it is not static.
Furthermore, when we read the particular and (particularly important) things that happened “in the beginning” within the context of the total picture, we discover that the ultimate goal and purpose the blueprint points towards does not entail a return to the beginning.
To put it another way, the form/design we see in the first two chapters of the Bible has a purpose/goal—a telos—that the rest of Scripture patiently leads us towards. Of course, the design is consistent with the telos. But biblical theology teaches us that the telos is the transcendent fulfilment of that design. It’s the beautiful 3D-rendered promise of the blueprint.
So, when it comes to men, women, and marriage, we need to look not only to the form/design—the genesis—but also to the purpose/goal—the telos. And the good news is that we have someone who models exactly that for us!
In Matthew 19, Jesus takes the Pharisees back to the beginning of God’s purposes for humanity and marriage. Three chapters later, in Matthew 22, he takes the Sadducees to the end of God’s purposes for them.
29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven - Matt 22:29-30
Smothers tells us that Genesis' account of marriage provides the blueprint for being a man and a woman. He asks, “Why are there two genders? Because of marriage!”
But… Jesus says that there will be no marriage in the resurrection age.
This is a little awkward. Because, well, this must have meaning for the purpose, the aim, the goal of God having created us as male and female, right?
If I am to follow Smothers’ thinking (i.e., that my sexuality exists because of marriage), then I guess in the resurrection age, where there is no marriage, my femaleness (and others’ maleness) will be redundant. It will be nothing more than a nostalgic remembrance. Of no more actual significance to me for all eternity than my belly button is now.
Or perhaps my femaleness (and others’ maleness) won’t exist there? Perhaps our differentiated sexuality will be collapsed into formless androgyny? We won’t be men and women. We won’t be brothers and sisters in Christ. We won’t be sons and daughters of God. We’ll just be sexless, genderless, humanoids.
No. I don’t believe any of that. My femaleness is intrinsic to my humanity, not just in this creation (Genesis 1:24) but in the creation to come. Jesus was resurrected as the “man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:48). The resurrected Dani will be a resurrected female.
If this is true (and I am convinced it is), then my sexed humanity has a new creative telos—an end—that transcends my experience and expression of it in this creation. That is, the teleological essence of my femaleness transcends marriage (and motherhood), which belongs to this life only, and not the life to come.
Don’t mishear me. Marriage is a wonderful, good, important, unique expression of what Smothers calls “two-ness” in this creation. Indeed, “two-ness” expressed in marriage is instrumental in giving us a glimpse of the relationship that will exist between Christ and the Church for eternity (Eph 5:31-32).
But, contrary to Smothers, marriage is not “the point of our two-ness”. Our “two-ness” has a far greater, far more expansive and far more enduring “point” in God’s purposes than mere marriage.
While we will only be able to truly appreciate and fully delight in that purposeful point when we enter into the life to come, we must not speak and live as if that point doesn’t have any significance in this life here and now. For, those who have already been raised with Christ are to set their hearts and minds on those transcendent things above (Col 3:1-2)
Contra to Smothers, our blueprint is not Genesis 1 and 2. No, our blueprint is all of Scripture. It is the total picture. It is the beginning, understood in and through Christ. It is the middle, understood in and through Christ. And it is the end, understood in and through Christ. And so…
If you want to know how something works, you read the owner’s manual and study the blueprint.
Genesis 1 and 2All of Scripture is our blueprint.
For the record, I think responsible systematic and exegetical theological exploration of Genesis 1:24—in which God reveals he created a differentiated humanity of male and female so that they would be and bear his image—also proves it. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Here’s the backstory.
Around that time, Twitter suddenly started limiting the exposure of Substack links on its platform. Those of us posting our links there found their views plummeting. Switching your Substack over to a custom domain name seemed to offer a workaround. And so, www.thatgirlbosstheologian.com was born.
I explain the full story behind the name in this post here. But if you are a TL;DR kinda person, the short story is that a doofus dude had called me an “annoying girlboss theologian”. Maggots were also involved in the comment. Instead of getting all offended by it, I—and a number of other women—decided to just embrace it as a satirical badge of honour. We may have had our own merch.
Thus, when I needed to pick a new domain name… well ‘That Girlboss Theologian’ seemed an obvious (and humorous) choice.
Alas, I have since received a growing number of snide doofus-esque comments about my moniker. Apparently, it marks me out as a proud, arrogant, feminist, liberal, man-hater. 🤷🏼♀️ It seems that recognising and appreciating satire is somewhat of a dying art these days.
Part of me—the doofuses would surely say the proud and arrogant parts—didn’t want to pander to those who lack both a sense of humour and a generous spirit. However, in the interest of becoming weak to win over the weak (and giving these guys one less reason to dismiss me out-of-hand), I decided it just wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.
And so it’s time to:
and
In other words, this place has got a new name, a new domain (writing.danielletreweek.com) and a new accent colour. But apart from that, it's pretty much a case of keeping calm and carrying on. (Psst. I’m working on getting thatgirlbosstheologian.com to redirect here)
While you are here, I should apologise for being somewhat AWOL lately. It’s been a busy (and difficult) few months, and I haven’t had much spare time or emotional energy for writing on the side.
On June 2nd, my grandmother, Monica, passed away. My family and I had held 24/7 vigil by her hospital bedside for a week before she took her last breath. My sister and I were at her side as she did. I had spent six nights sitting next to her bed, stroking her hand and listening to her breathing. After she left us, it took me double that amount of time to stop waking up in a panic in the middle of the night because I could no longer hear the sound of her breathing in the room and I couldn’t find her within reach.
Death is just awful. Praise be that Jesus has defeated that last great enemy (1 Cor 15:25-26)
A few weeks later I was thankful to be able to take a solo writing retreat in Tasmania, Australia’s southernmost island state (or, depending on your perspective, Antarctica’s northernmost island territory). There I spent 8 days working on my forthcoming book on singleness (due for publication with The Good Book Company in late 2025). I drank a lot of tea, took long rambling walks to clear my head and realised that tending a fire alone is almost a full-time job.
After that, I headed north to Queensland, where I attended the Gafcon Australia conference before taking a proper ten-day holiday—or vacation, for my American readers. It was my longest uninterrupted holiday in a couple of years. There, I also drank a lot of tea, took long walks along the beach, and worked out the perfect air-conditioning temperature for maximum relaxation.
But now here I am. Back at my desk, busily unearthing my inbox, and actively fostering a state of denial about all the deadlines I have to meet over the next few months.
I’m looking forward to being back in your inbox soon. I can only hope that you’ll be just as interested in the thoughts of boring old Dani(elle) Treweek as you were in That Girlboss Theologian.
PS. In exciting news, The Meaning of Singleness is one of ten shortlisted for the Australian Christian Book of the Year Award!
]]>Instead of doing one talk on marriage, one talk on divorce and one talk on singleness, I’ve written a series on relationships that flows out of, and is framed around, Romans 12:1-2:
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (ESV)
After spending a lot of time in these two jam-packed verses over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself repeating one refrain over and over again in my head.
Oh, certainly, Paul makes it very clear that Christians are not to be conformed to this world—or what the NIV describes as the “patterns of this world”. My first talk is premised on the fact that the world is very good at conforming us to its patterns, and often without us being in the least aware of it. We are each like a bowl full of liquid jelly, being poured into a worldly mould, settling into all its nooks and crannies, solidifying into its shape… coming out looking just like it.
As those whom Christ has chosen out of the world (John 15:19), we are not to be moulded to it. And yet, we could all resolutely determine not to be conformed to this world, but then what? What shape should we take on? What nooks and crannies should we settle into? What should we come out looking like?
Not conforming is not enough.
We also need to be “transformed by the renewal of our minds”.
I find it so interesting that in Romans 12:2, Paul calls for his readers to undergo a transformation that comes through the renewal, not of their hearts (as we might expect), but of their minds. This transformative mind renewal will allow them to “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect”.
Paul’s focus on the mind in Romans 12:2 echoes back to the previous verse, and specifically his use of the adjective modifying worship (“spiritual” in the ESV and “true and proper” in the NIV). The original Greek word is logikēn and it means logical, rational, or reasonable. At first glance, this seems a rather unusual word for Paul to have used in the context of Romans 12:1
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your rational/logical/reasonable worship.”
But I love how Christopher Ash draws the connection in his short commentary on Romans:
“Offered bodies come from changed minds, for the mind is the parliament of the body, where feelings are felt and assessed, options are considered, decisions are made, and affections are determined.”
- Christopher Ash
The transformation that comes through the (gospel-shaped and gospel-powered) renewal of our minds is a transformation that sees us become those conformed not to the will of the world, but to the will of its creator. Such transformative conformity shapes us into the logical, rational, reasonable people we were created to be—those who discern and practice what is good and perfect in God’s sight. It allows us to offer our bodies—our whole selves—to him as living sacrifices. It marks us out as those who are holy and acceptable to him, who worship him truly, properly, spiritually logikēn-ly.
It is not enough to not be conformed to the patterns of this world. We must also be transformed by the gospel-shaped, gospel-powered renewal of our minds.
As I was writing the third talk in my series, on the other side of the world a man was giving a different talk. On Saturday May 11th, Kansas City football player Harrison Butker gave a commencement speech to the Catholic Benedictine College’s Class of 2024. And, well, social media exploded. Let’s just say that he copped a lot of backlash for veering off the world’s script. (You can read the full text of the speech here or watch the video itself here).
To be honest, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to all the palaver. (American football players are not of much interest to this Rugby Union watching Aussie). But one thing did catch my attention—the number of evangelical Christian leaders who posted supportive, complimentary, “heck yeah, preach it brother!” type comments, especially in response to what Butker said about the vocations of men and women.
Experienced evangelical leaders were calling this young(ish) Catholic layperson “courageous” for saying what he did. They said that even though they disagreed with his Catholic doctrine, he spoke “perceptively about the goodness of God-made manhood and womanhood”. They celebrated his “manly courage” and (metaphorically) rolled their eyes at the outrage he was enduring for just “saying what Christians have believed for two thousand years”.
In other words, they loved his non-conformity to the patterns of this world.
They loved comments like this:
“I want to speak directly to you [women] briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you”
And this:
“…this class, this generation, and this time in our society must stop pretending that the things we see around us are normal.”
And this:
“Part of what plagues our society is this lie that has been told to you that men are not necessary in the home or in our communities.”
And this:
“Be unapologetic in your masculinity, fighting against the cultural emasculation of men.”
They LOVED his non-conformity.
But they loved Butker’s non-conformity so much that they were largely willing to overlook his non-transformity. (And yes, I did just make that word up).
They so loved the parts where Butker stuck it to the world, that they were willing to just quickly by-pass, even ignore altogether, those comments which did not reflect gospel-renewed transformation of his mind.
Comments, for example, like this one:
“[My wife] is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation.”
Did you catch that? Lord willing, it will be through marriage that he and his wife will attain salvation. Harrison Butker is a Catholic. Catholics believe that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacraments are efficacious expressions of the saving power of God—that is, they are an actual means of grace. Meanwhile, evangelicals do not believe marriage is a sacrament, and we do not believe sacraments are efficacious for salvation.
But let’s not allow a little thing like a fundamental difference in our understanding of God’s grace distract us from a mutual commitment to non-conformity. Preach it brother!
The same goes for a comment like this:
“The road ahead is bright. Things are changing. Society is shifting. And people, young and old, are embracing tradition. Not only has it been my vocation that has helped me and those closest to me, but not surprising to many of you, should be my outspoken embrace of the traditional Latin Mass. I've been very vocal in my love and devotion to the TLM and its necessity for our lives… The TLM is so essential that I would challenge each of you to pick a place to move where it is readily available.”
Again, did you catch it? Society is shifting, people young and old are embracing God’s Word. Ahem. Sorry, I mean “tradition”. They are embracing tradition.
Now remember, Butker is a Catholic, and Catholics hold to the authority of Big-T Tradition. He thinks there is a particular sort of T/tradition which is such a “necessity for our lives… so essential” that he advises his young listeners to move somewhere it is available—the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).
What is the TLM? Well, it is a very old form of the Catholic Mass offered almost entirely in Latin (i.e., the majority of it is incomprehensible to 99.99% of people). There is some other unique stuff about it (such as the fact that the priest offers the Mass with his back to the people). But most significantly, like any Catholic Mass, in the TLM the priest offers the Sacrifice of Christ to the Father, in atonement for sin. As Butker explains:
“I still go to the TLM because I believe the holy sacrifice of the Mass is more important than anything else.”
In other words, Butker holds to the t/Traditional Roman Catholic view that Jesus Christ is necessarily re-sacrificed at every Mass celebration, and that this is absolutely vital. Yet this is something Protestants fundamentally reject and vigorously deny, holding as we do to the fact that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God,” (1 Peter 3:18).
But hey, let’s not allow a little thing like a fundamental difference in our understanding of the efficacy of Christ’s death distract us from a mutual commitment to non-conformity. Preach it, brother!
Along a similar line:
“Never be afraid to profess the one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church, for this is the Church that Jesus Christ established, through which we receive sanctifying grace.”
Protestants don’t believe that sanctifying grace comes through the Church. But again, what’s a little heresy about the grace of Christ and work of the Spirit in light of a mutual non-conformity? Preach it, brother!
Changing focus a little, let’s look at something he said amid his comments directed to the young women in the Class of 2024. After telling them that they “should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives”, he went on to “venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world”. Butker continued:
“I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”
Her life truly started when she began living into her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m sorry, but what a ridiculous statement. And what a particularly ridiculous statement to say to a bunch of young adult women who have just spent the last 3-4 years applying themselves to meaningful study, outputs, relationships and social development.
Of course, the vocations of wife and mother bring unique, wonderful, extraordinary (and often also very challenging and difficult) changes to a woman’s life. Of course, her life dramatically shifts as a result. But no woman’s life “truly starts” only once she has a ring on her finger and a baby at her breast.
Our lives begin at conception because we are made in God's image. We begin living life to the full when we trust in Jesus as the one who gives abundant life. None of us will be wives or mothers in eternity, yet that is where we will truly, perfectly, fully live. Forever. As I said, what a ridiculous statement.
But not only is Butker’s comment theologically erroneous, it is pastorally destructive. How do you think never-married Christian women, infertile Christian women, divorced or widowed Christian women feel upon hearing that? How do you think all of those women (most of whom would dearly love to be married to a godly Christian man) feel when they hear a man essentially say that women live in suspended animation until such a time that they become a wife and a mother?
But hey, why let a little thing like theological error and the pastoral devastation of countless sisters in Christ distract us from our mutual commitment to non-conformity? Preach it, brother!
Just one more, OK?
“Everything I am saying to you is not from a place of wisdom, but rather a place of experience”
This one is a little different because this remark is actually straight out of the ‘conformity-to-the-world playbook’. After all, the authority in our world is what? Lived experience.
We’ve got a 28 year old football player here advising young men and women about how they should live, and what is the basis for his advice? Not wisdom (however that is defined) but his experience.
In every other arena—especially in the LGBTQ/same-sex attraction arena—evangelicals are enthusiastic in their pushback against the authority of lived experience. And this is usually for good reason (even as it is also usually not done as lovingly as it should be). Sin has corrupted our minds and hearts, and we’ve been given over to our futile thinking (Romans 1). Our experience is far from trustworthy, let alone authoritative.
But when we have a young Catholic guy speaking from his lived experience (rather than from wisdom or God’s Word) to recruit others into his non-conformity, well then, that’s A-OK! Nothing to see here. Preach it, brother!
It is not enough for us to throw our arm around his (broad footballer) shoulders in mutual commitment to non-conformity, all while we know he doesn’t share a mutual commitment to the transformation of authentic gospel-shaped renewal of his mind.
Is it wrong for evangelicals to publicly acknowledge that they agree with aspects of his talk? Not at all. But when evangelicals enthusiastically offer public support for his “manly courage” and his wise perception on matters of non-conformity to the big, bad world, all while remaining largely silent about or casually cavalier of his false teaching about the gospel itself… then something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Here is what we got:
“So-I-don’t-agree-with-all-the-Catholic-stuff-and-whatever. But wow, guys!!!! Did you see all the stuff he said about women and wives and mothers?! And men and husbands and fathers?! Oh and also work and vocation and how women’s greatest calling is marriage and motherhood!? Seriously, this guy is awesome! And brave. And courageous. And perceptive. I stand with him in refusing to conform to the ways of this world. You should too. Preach it, brother!”
Here is what I wish we got:
“Yeah, so I think he’s got some good insight to offer about God’s created distinctions between men and women, the significance of marriage and parenthood, the way we can be sucked into the world’s way of thinking and so on. There is some decent stuff in there. But, wow. He’s got the gospel wrong. He’s got salvation wrong. He’s got sanctification wrong. He’s got authority wrong. He’s got the church wrong. He’s got marriage wrong. He’s got Jesus wrong. Sure, he’s rocking it on the whole non-conformity thing. But what is he urging people to conform to instead? It’s not what I think the Bible teaches.”
Friends, not conforming to the world is not enough.
We need transformation to a new, better, far more wonderful kind of conformity—conformity that comes through the renewing of our minds according to God’s word, conformity to what is good, acceptable, and perfect in God’s sight, conformity that leads us to offer our whole selves as living sacrifices to God as our logical, rational, reasonable, spiritual, true, proper, logikēn act of worship.
As Jesus’ disciples we are called to something far grander than mere non-conformity to the world. We are called to the dramatic transformation of the gospel in our lives.
]]>Back in 2018, I formed a small, ad hoc committee to run (what we thought would be!) a one-off conference on singleness in Sydney. Sam Allberry was our keynote speaker and we decided to call it Single Minded.
After our conference tickets sold out in the early-bird period, it began to dawn on us that we might have more than a one-off conference on our hands. And so, Single Minded Ministry was born!
Last night I did some calculations. Over the last seven years, Single Minded has:
Run 29 events
With over 41 different speakers
Been watched by people in 22 different countries
Sold 5149 tickets (probably more by the time you are reading this!)
Released its own podcast, Single Minded Stories
We’ve covered topics such as:
Singleness in the Storyline of Scripture
Loneliness
Friendship
Singleness & Sanctification
Purity Culture
Hospitality as a Single Christian
Singleness & Sex
… and so many more.
Single Minded’s vision is:
To see God’s purposes for singleness so wonderfully expressed in the body of Christ, that married and single Christians glorify Jesus with one voice.
Flowing out of that vision, our mission is:
To develop biblical, theological and pastoral resources exploring God’s purposes for singleness that equip Christians, encourage Christian communities, and shape Christian culture.
Not in Sydney? No problem!
We’re livestreaming the entire conference and you can watch it from the comfort of your own home.
Not able to watch the conference live?
No problem! Livestream tickets include unlimited catch-up access to the conference.
(Plus, there’s an additional perk for many of our international friends! Ticket prices are in $AUD, which means it will likely be a really inexpensive conference for you!)
(And no, I can’t remember what it was I said—captured in that video preview below—which had all of us laughing like that 🤷🏼♀️)
]]>Alas, Twitter had other plans.
In the following 36 hours, two different Twitter commentators posted two different tweets, the combined force of which had me pulling my pen and paper back out of the drawer (or, in reality, logging back into my Substack dashboard).
So here we are, ready for round two of talking about how babies are made, and not made, and who amongst men and women is apparently more naturally oriented towards or tethered to the babies that are made or not made and why exactly that is and is not.
Put more simply, we are going to consider the importance of why it is never a good idea to confuse God’s natural order with humanity’s fallen reality, particularly when it comes to sex, babies and being the one who made a baby because you had sex.
(Just in case you were wondering, the image below is the closest I could get to some sort of abstract representation of confusion—or, alternatively, the aftermath of a visit to a very confused hairstylist. May you enjoy it either way.)
So, about those tweets…
(A note for newish readers: it is my normal practice to redact names/handles/photos of those whose social media comments I engage with in my Substack articles. This enables the focus to remain on the content rather than the person. However, since both of these tweets are from evangelical leaders who make significant contributions in the area of theological anthropology, I think it is appropriate, even important, for me to leave them unredacted on this occasion.)
Here is a series of tweets from a Twitter thread Michael Clary recently posted about the vocations of women (a thread that, for the record, I have not engaged in at all). Michael is a current nominee for SBC first vice president and author of God's Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality and
Did you get that?
A woman’s body is obviously far more oriented toward potential motherhood than a man’s body is towards potential fatherhood. It is absurd to think that a man’s body is biologically designed for fatherhood to the same degree a woman’s body is biologically designed for motherhood.
My first thought was that perhaps someone could tell the (on average) 180 million sperm that is contained in every single male ejaculation and who are all competing to fertilise that one solitary egg that their originating male body is not biologically designed for fatherhood to the same degree or extent that a women is biologically oriented towards motherhood?
Ok. Yes, that is somewhat facetious. But, really?!
While I didn’t engage on that thread, I did reshare Michael’s first tweet, asking if this passes for commonplace evangelical teaching about men, women and procreation. It garnered quite a few “Ummmm. No. No it is not” responses. Michael then replied:
Note what Michael does in his response. He takes his initial statement made about what is natural, biologically designed and divinely ordered and, when pushed back on it, turns that into a statement about the consequences that are brought about because of sinfully distorted behaviour. Hold that thought, OK?
The second of the two tweets that captured my attention was made by Colin Smothers, (executive director of CBMW). It was posted as part of the Twitter discussion between Peter and I about his article. The last tweet (marked with a red *) is the one I want to draw your particular attention. The rest are provided for context:
So, to recap:
Colin said Peter’s article is great, which presumably meant that he agreed with Peter’s key premise laid out in the article’s title: namely that the Pill is the main contraceptive technology that has obscured God’s truth (i.e., that which we would say is natural) about the sexual differentiation between men and women.
He said the article pushes back on the worldly (“spirit of the age” i.e., unnatural) idea of interchangeability between men and women in the arena of sex and procreation.
I said I was unsure how the Pill has singularly fostered this (worldly) interchangeability and so singularly thwarted God’s distinct design for men and women.
Colin replied: “Men are naturally “untethered” from the possible outcome of their own sexuality (children) in a way women are obviously not. The Pill, more than any other technology, radically altered that picture, with abortion as its backstop — thus accelerating interchangeability.”
Now, just take a moment to appreciate what he is saying here.
Men are naturally untethered from the possible outcome of their sexual actions (i.e. becoming a father through the conception of a child). This untethering is part of their natural (ie. divinely ordained and intended) design. The problem with the Pill is it allowed women to emulate men by untethering themselves from the consequences of their sexual actions. This is bad because it is part of the androgynous agenda of the spirit of this age, which stands opposed to God’s created purpose. To put it another way:
Men being untethered from the consequences of their sexual actions = being men = natural = good.
Women trying to do the same = trying to be men = worldly = bad.
Now, to be fair to Colin, he has said that he “didn’t know how you got that out of what I wrote. It seems willfully obtuse”. He said all he meant was that:
“But because of the unique role differentiation in the process — women gestate the baby for nine months while men do not — sin has distorted that reality to subsidize men a level of promiscuity not possible for women, apart from the Pill, abortion, etc.”
But no, that is not what he originally said. He agreed with Peter’s claim that women’s use of the Pill to untether sex from conception has obscured God’s truth about sexual differentiation because it makes her more like a man who has the ability “to engage in sex without necessarily considering procreation” (a quote from Peter’s article).
Colin’s initial comment was about the natural tethering/untethering about what is true (or ought to be true) within the created order, not what is the result of sin’s distortion. He’s made the same move that Michael Clary did: Make a statement about what is part of the “natural” order, and when critiqued, double down that all you meant is that we live in a sinful world.
For the record, I don’t believe Colin Smothers or Michael Clary intentionally set out to confuse or conflate natural order with fallen reality. Unfortunately, neither of them have acknowledged that this is precisely what they have done.
They essentially say the same thing, albeit with a slightly different focus. Because women are the ones who fall pregnant, their bodies have a more natural (i.e., divinely ordered) orientation towards reproductive realities than men’s bodies do. Because women are the ones who fall pregnant, they were designed with a more natural link or tether between their sexual actions and its procreative consequences.
Let me be clear. Nurturing a child in your womb and then birthing that child in the world is an enormous, distinctive, wonderful privilege that only women experience. It is a fundamental part of God’s good design for women, and women only, in this creation. I expect I will grieve for the rest of my life that I was not blessed with experiencing it myself. I fully endorse that it brings into focus the magnificently unique relationship between mother and child and the magnificently unique beauty of motherhood.
But…
Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean that God designed a woman’s sexual actions to be more “naturally tethered” to the possible consequences of those actions than a man’s.
Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean that a woman’s biology is more naturally oriented towards conception than a man’s.
Being the one who falls pregnant does not mean a woman is more naturally designed for parenthood than a man.
In God’s good, pre-Fall, “natural” design, he created both men and women (and, indeed. child!) to be equally bound and blessed by the link between sex and procreation. That men and women experience that link differently does not mean they are more or less tethered by the link, or more or less oriented towards its potential outcome.
Yes, the reality of carrying (or potentially carrying) a child in your body is a wonderfully distinctive experience of that binding and blessing link. Women are not only reminded of that when they are actually pregnant but, indeed, every time they menstruate.
But so, too, is the experience of a man who looks at that positive pregnancy test that confirms he and she have together conceived a child, who marvels at the growth of her belly as it nurtures and protects their child, who waits in sheer anticipation for that moment when he finally gets to meet and hold and welcome and know their child. The reality that he is and always will be the one who fathered this child.
That is God’s “natural” design for women, men and children. That is how he has naturally tethered them to one another and how he has naturally designed their biology to orient towards parenthood.
Whenever men recklessly exploit their sexuality to untether, sever or disorient themselves away from their procreative potential and purpose it is a result of their self-serving fallen flesh, not how they were “naturally” created. That they were made with the capacity to father countless babies to countless women does not make the sinful exercise of such a capacity “natural” (any more than the person born with strong biceps “naturally” exercises that capacity by sinfully knocking people out according to their whim).
That the Pill allows women to engage in sex without necessarily considering the consequences of their sexual action is not primarily problematic because it artificially makes them more like men. No, it’s (potentially) problematic because it is (potential) evidence of their own self-serving sinful nature. It (potentially) demonstrates the woman’s intent to sever the natural link between sex and conception, just as men have merrily been doing for millennia. (I use the word “potentially” because not all women take the Pill for contraceptive purposes alone.)
Sin is what singularly severs the link between sex and procreation. Sin is what singularly obscures the truth of God’s created differentiation of the sexes. And tragically, sin is what makes men and women into equally self-serving opportunists.
How wonderful that the gospel brings redemption, forgiveness and hope to all sinners alike!
I don’t know how prevalent this particular confusion and conflating of natural order and fallen reality is. I don’t think I have ever seen it vocalised before—at least not so directly or specifically. So perhaps these two comments reflect nothing other than these two men’s isolated opinions (though I have privately communicated to Peter that I believe the premise of his article lies downstream from it. He rejects this). But I also recognise that these two men occupy positions of prominence and influence (especially when it comes to the areas of men, women and sexuality in the church) and that their separate comments bubbled to the surface in entirely unrelated discussions. Both of these factors make me slightly nervous that this particular conflation and confusion may be more widespread than I had ever thought it could be.
Ultimately, what matters is that we eradicate any such conflation and confusion quick-smart. If there was ever a good time to “naturally” exercise some strong theological biceps for a knock-out punch, then, for the sake of men, women and (so, so, importantly) children, this here is it.
]]>These days, I’m finding that position increasingly untenable.
Maybe it’s age? Maybe it’s maturity? Maybe it’s changing contextual circumstances? Maybe it’s disillusionment? Maybe it’s all these things combined? Whatever it is, I now find myself less and less willing to let moments of Christian misogyny pass without identifying it for what it is. And this, not despite my complementarian convictions but precisely because of them.
I write all of this by way of introduction to some reflections I want to offer on this recent article, How the Pill Obscures God’s Truth in Creation.
But first, I need to make an apology to Peter, the author of that article. When I read the article a few days ago, I made this off-the-cuff comment:
The reality is this hasty post was neither thoughtful nor helpful. I’m sorry for that and am humbled by Peter’s generous reply in which he asked me to “Say more.” As you’ll see, I remain unpersuaded by some aspects of his article and some of his comments about or implications for women in particular. However, I really don’t like the fact that I’m now “primed” to spot what I think are instances of misogyny and then automatically interpret them as unapologetically or intentionally so. Peter, I’m sorry for doing that here. I need to do better at discerning between a piece like yours and a piece like this (whose anonymous misogyny makes it next to impossible to appreciate any points of theological substance buried underneath the casual chauvinism).
I also think it is important for me to restate something I said in that (somewhat ill-advised) tweet. I firmly believe that we evangelicals are way overdue for a reckoning when it comes to contraception, IVF and even adoption. I think our general approach and attitude to these matters display significant inconsistent (sometimes even contradictory) theological reasoning and grossly inadequate pastoral application. (I’ve found Matthew Lee Anderson’s contributions—e.g., here, here and here—well worth considering). All of which is to say, I suspect Peter and I share broadly overlapping concerns on the topic of contraception as a whole (more on that below).
Having said all of that, I still have some thoughts…
I recognise that not every article can say everything about anything related to its premise statement. In other words, Peter’s argument doesn’t need to incorporate a discussion about all forms of contraception to evidence his premise about why one particular form of contraception is uniquely problematic. But here’s the thing…
Peter argues that the Pill is the form of contraception primarily responsible for the obscuring of divinely designed sexual differences. For example:
“The main technology that obscures God’s truth in our sexual differences is oral contraception, approved by the FDA in 1960”
“But it [i.e., the Pill] also severed the link between sex and procreation in the minds of entire generations. In doing so, it paved the way for no-fault divorce, same-sex marriage, and today’s transgender movement with its neologisms like “pregnant person,” “chestfeeding,” and “people who menstruate.”
These are significant claims to make about this one particular contraceptive technology in particular. And yet, immediately after laying all of these evils at the feet of the Pill, the rest of the article consistently conflates the broader category of contraception (and its effects) with the Pill specifically. For instance:
The terms “the Pill” and “contraception” are regularly used interchangeably, as if they were absolutely synonymous with each other or the sum is represented by the part.
The article offers two quotes (one from Harrington and another from Akerlof and Yellen) to substantiate the detrimental consequences it ascribes to the Pill. However, in context, both sources are actually talking about the development and availability of contraception technology broadly.
The article links the uptake in contraception with the uptake of abortion (FYI: I think it is a fair link to explore). But it then continues, “Because Christians oppose abortion, we tend to think we’re immune to the Pill’s other effects”, as if abortion is a direct effect of the Pill.
But does this casual conflation of contraceptive technology with the Pill matter? Am I being unnecessarily pedantic?
Well, yes, I think it does matter. The article titles and frames its argument around the Pill itself rather than contraception more broadly. Peter is seeking to say something specific about this particular form of contraception. And that’s fine. There is room, even good reason, to focus specifically on the impact of the Pill on society and the Church.
But to conflate the broader impacts of contraception with the Pill and then lay all (or almost all) of these terrible consequences at its feet is problematic for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is that doing so lays all (or almost all) of those terrible consequences at the feet of those who swallow the Pill—women.
Oh, certainly, men come into play. They are assigned some responsibility. But only as a secondary result of the reproductive agency the Pill offers to women.
“Whereas in the past, a young man felt social pressure to marry a girl he got pregnant, that sense of obligation diminished with the Pill. If a woman can control her “reproductive life” as the Pill promised, then how can a man be held accountable for her pregnancy? Men began to feel less responsibility for their sexual actions…”
Sure. Ok. I can absolutely see how ready access to the Pill exacerbated the issue of men’s sexual irresponsibility. But the key word there is exacerbated. That problem didn’t spring into being with the Pill. It was a rampant problem before the Pill. Furthermore, it was a rampant MALE problem before the Pill, that WOMEN inevitably bore the brunt of.
This is where the red flags of subtle (unintended) prejudice against women first started waving gently in the breeze for me. As far as I can see, the article places the bulk of the responsibility for men’s (worsening) irresponsibility on women and their newfound reproductive agency, rather than where it actually belongs and has always belonged. Soley and squarely on men. I don’t think it was intentional in the argument as framed. But I do think it is the inevitable read of the argument as framed..
As I read, I couldn’t help but wonder why there is no mention of a certain other form of contraceptive technology whose ready availability predated the Pill by centuries (millennia, even)—the condom. Here are some stats that reveal just how pervasive that form of contraception was in the decades immediately prior to the Pill:
“By the mid-1930s, the fifteen major condom manufacturers [in the US] were producing one and a half million a day at an average price of a dollar per dozen,” Gamson writes. During World War II, condom production ramped up to 3 million a day, because condoms were given to American troops.1
For all the article’s talk about the detrimental personal and societal consequences of contraception, why doesn’t that technology get a mention?
Well, I think the answer to that question lies in the fact that the article does not actually want to focus on the broader problematic effects of contraception generally—although, I do think there are numerous points where it does seem to dive into this, thereby confusing or even veiling its main goal and focus. What is its main goal or focus? It wants to identify one specific problem that it contends is the direct responsibility of the Pill in particular— the flattening of sexual differentiation between men and women.
Now, at this point, I must make a confession. Even as I understood the article's premise, I was confused about aspects of its argumentation. Numerous reads later, and I still remain somewhat confused. I think (hope!) I now get it—read on. But it took me some time to parse its particular claims about how and why the Pill has obscured sexual differentiation between men and women and what that obscured differentiation actually is. I’d encourage you to read it for yourself and make up your own mind as to whether you think I’ve understood it correctly or not.
Let me start with what I don’t think the argument is saying.
“the Pill has reshaped our understanding of women’s fertility, making it more conceptually aligned with the way we think about men’s ability to engage in sex without necessarily considering procreation”
In other words, the Pill has allowed women to treat sex and its consequences as cavalierly as men do. This means the two sexes are now much more like each other in terms of their ability to engage in sex without proper consideration of the consequences. Now, as much as that seems to me a natural reading of that particular quote in the broader premise of the article, I cannot and do not believe that Peter actually thinks that this is the “splendour of our sexual differences” that have been lost by the Pill. That is, I cannot and do not think that he is lamenting the fact that men have lost the capacity to be uniquely cavalier in making unwise or sinful sexual choices.
So if not that, then what?
Well, I think we see a glimpse of the answer in the quote offered from Mary Harrington:
[The Pill] “promised to flatten the most irreducible difference of all between the sexes: pregnancy.”
I think the sexual differentiation that the article laments has been flattened is pregnancy (namely, that pregnancy is something women used not to be able to avoid. But now they can). Peter seems to confirm this when later he writes (emphasis added):
“… so contraception [Note: In a previous sentence it was the Pill that was specifically on view] clouds our Christian ability (and sometimes our desire) to see the splendor of our sexual differences. It’s easier than ever before to think of men and women as mostly interchangeable. Many of us do. We unwittingly make men the measure of women, whether in work or life or the church”.
I fell prey to this way of thinking when my daughters were little. I’d sometimes ask them what they wanted to be when they grew up and then suggest all sorts of wonderful things like a teacher or writer or doctor. I came to realize I was suggesting everything except the one thing only a woman can be: a mom.”
I think Peter is saying that the sexual differentiation that the Pill has compromised is this: Because women are now able to avoid the reality of pregnancy, and so freely pursue (and be distracted) by other aspirations without regard for that, this makes them more like men.
I think the key phrase here is that the Pill has led us to “unwittingly make men the measure of women”. Peter illustrates this by speaking of how he encouraged his young daughters to dream big about everything they might grow up to be until he realised that he was himself flattening their unique sexual differentiation. How? By not ever suggesting the one thing that is the unique measure of a woman— being a mother. (Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it in just a moment)
So, in summary, this is what I have come to understand the article’s overall argument about the flattening effect of the Pill to be:
1. Because women are the ones who get pregnant, the unique measure of what it is to a woman is—or at least must necessarily include reference to—being a mother.
2. Men can be fathers (and that’s great!). However, because they don’t get pregnant, the unique measure of what it is to be a man does not necessarily include reference to being a father.
3. By providing them with agency over whether or not they get pregnant, the Pill has enabled women to measure what it is to be a woman without necessary reference to falling pregnant and being a mother.
4. In other words, they are now like men in that respect.
5. And so, the Pill has uniquely obscured the sexual differentiation of men and women.
Sorry friends, but I sense a double standard lurking here.
Why is the measure of a woman found uniquely in what only she can do—being a mother—while the measure of a man is not found uniquely in what only he can do—being a father?
Why is the male measure consistent with “all sorts of wonderful things like a teacher or writer or doctor” without reference to fatherhood, while a female’s measure may possibly allow for some of those wonderful things, but only so long as it includes reference or allowance to motherhood?
(Note: I’m not saying I think motherhood should be incidental to womanhood. Rather, I’m questioning why fatherhood is considered incidental to manhood.)
Is this really what we think lies at the heart of sexual differentiation between men and women? Women get pregnant and so their measure is rightly made in relation to that. Men don’t get pregnant and so their measure is not necessarily related to their capacity to impregnate women?
From what I can see, that seems to be the conclusion of this article. From what I have been able to understand, that is the sexual differentiation it claims has been tragically flattened by the Pill, and the Pill in particular (and therefore by women, and women in particular).
Unfortunately, I think this results in the diminishment of the privilege and responsibility of both men and women in this creation. What is more, this diminishment is characterised by unintentional and subtle, but nonetheless inevitable, misogynistic undertones.
If we are going to measure what it means to be a woman by her capacity to bear children (and become a mother), then we also need to measure what it means to be a man by his capacity to impregnate women with children (and become a father). If we are going to exhort women to form their expectations of how they go about fulfilling the creation mandate to work in this world in necessary conjunction with their privilege of conceiving children, then we need to exhort men to form their expectations of how they go about fulfilling the creation mandate to work in this world in necessary conjunction with their role in the conception of that child.
To put it simply, I don’t think the argument or conclusions of this article truly honour the equality that is implicit within sexual differentiation. And I don’t think this is healthy or honourable for women or men alike.
Postscript: I feel I need to clarify that while I believe God’s design for conception and procreation is absolutely intrinsic to sexual differentiation in this creation, I am resistant to the idea that it represents the ontological definition of sexual differentiation (i.e. that it is the absolute, fundamental, eternal thing that differentiates men from women). We will all still be men and women in the resurrection age. But there and then, none of us will be having sex, being impregnated, impregnating others or becoming parents. This suggests to me that procreation is essential to understanding God’s design and intent for manhood and womanhood in this age. But that it is not the basis for our telic understanding of differentiated manhood and womanhood as an eternal ontological reality that will be perfected in the new creation. As Christians, we straddle both of those ages and so should resist defining what it is to be a man or a woman now solely on the basis of this creation alone. But that’s a discussion for another day. My point in this piece has been to critique this article on its own terms and according to its own argument.
https://daily.jstor.org/short-history-of-the-condom/. Interestingly, this source notes that condom sales decreased once the Pill (and IUDs) entered the marketplace. This would seem to only confirm the reality that men saw women’s contraceptive decisions as an occasion for them to take on less contraceptive responsibility.
This was the excerpt he posted:
… when there is an overabundance of Christian singles who want to be married, this is a problem. And it’s a problem I put squarely at the feet of young men whose immaturity, passivity, and indecision are pushing their hormones to the limits of self-control, delaying the growing-up process, and forcing countless numbers of young women to spend lots of time and money pursuing a career (which is not necessarily wrong) when they would rather be getting married and having children. Men, if you want to be married, find a godly gal, treat her right, talk to her parents, pop the question, tie the knot, and start making babies.
Kevin DeYoung, Just Do Something, p.108.
Before I go any further, let me offer some initial comments.
I have not read the whole book. I do not believe that this excerpt represents the entirety of DeYoung’s thinking on singleness, let alone marriage. Some of what I have to say below may be mitigated by things he says elsewhere in either that particular book or his broader body of work. I’m simply here responding to the content of this particular quote as something a Christian leader publicly promoted as being “spot on!”
I take it that DeYoung’s comments were motivated by a genuine concern and love for the many single Christian women in today’s church who desire to be married. I don’t read any ill intent whatsoever in their content or in his probable motivation. I don’t think he is setting out to objectify, diminish or harm women
And finally, I am very well aware that DeYoung is most definitely not sitting alone on a limb here. Much of what he says in the excerpt above finds confirmation in the thoughts of others. Indeed, what he says is a well-established part of the contemporary Christian discourse on marriage and singleness. I explore this at more length in my book.1
With all that being said, not only do I consider this excerpt from DeYoung to be theologically troubling, but also deeply pastorally problematic for the very single Christian women whom DeYoung expresses concern for.
Let me explain why I say that.
Look at the first sentence of the quote:
… when there is an overabundance of Christian singles who want to be married, this is a problem.
Now, to be fair to DeYoung, he introduces this sentence with some other words that were not included in the original quote I saw posted:
There is nothing wrong with being single. It can be a gift from the Lord and a gift to the church. But when there is an overabundance of Christian singles who want to be married, this is a problem.
DeYoung is keen to make sure people know he doesn’t think singleness itself is a problem. It can (potentially) be a gift from the Lord and may (potentially) be a gift to the church. But he thinks an “overabundance” of Christian singles who would prefer to be married is a “problem”.
I'm not exactly sure when an abundance becomes an overabundance. Who can tell when many single Christians become too many single Christians?! But, note that DeYoung’s concern requires us to focus our attention on the issue of singles who want/desire/long for marriage. We’ll come back to that in a moment.
As we read on, we discover that for DeYoung, this is essentially an issue of supply and demand. When demand (single Christian women who want to marry) outstrips supply (single Christian men who are ready and willing to marry them), simple capitalist economics tells us that supply must increase to meet demand. DeYoung’s solution is simple—more young Christian men must be ready to marry all the young Christian women and to do so more quickly.
The problem is that this framing of the issue is not a biblical or theological approach to singleness itself, NOR to the matter of how we faithfully respond to unmet wants, longings and desires. For instance:
Why is an “overabundance” of Christian singles in the church a “problem”? The apostle Paul didn’t seem to be overly concerned about there being too many singles in the church, right? (Check out 1 Cor 7:7, 17-24). Could it not be that having many single Christian women in our spiritual family might, in fact, be a blessing to the church? Could not their (and their male counterparts) presence amongst us be a vital eschatological reminder that a too often worldly church needs? Might not they be witnesses who testify to God’s grace and the Spirit’s sufficiency in, for and through them, despite how they feel about their singleness? What DeYoung identifies as a problem is only a problem if you start with that working assumption that it is indeed a problem.
Since when is our desire for something a surefire indication that it is something we ought to set our hearts and minds on? Perhaps something we are obliged to be provided with or even owed? Why is this “problem” rightly framed through a capitalist “me get what me want” approach to our desires? Why do we not respond to the unmet desire for marriage in the same way we do other unmet desires in the Christian life—by first interrogating our desires and discerning what they reveal about the state of our hearts?2 Why do we not consider that some, even many, of these young women’s desire for marriage may not be as biblically informed as it could or should be? Why do we not primarily focus our efforts on exhorting her always to cast her anxieties on God? Why is our priority on something other than encouraging her to pray he might answer her prayers for a spouse while exhorting her to seek contentment in Christ regardless? As a friend of mine has succinctly put it, “imagined ‘preference’ [is not] a stable ground for moral exhortation”.
DeYoung’s (and many others) capitalist supply/demand formulation does not reflect genuine theological or biblical thinking about singleness (or marriage). Nor does it provide single Christians (especially women) with the careful pastoral care, comfort and challenge they need from us as they seek to faithfully and maturely navigate unfulfilled longings and desires in this life.
Let me reiterate something, I know DeYoung’s comments were made with the interests of unmarried Christian women in mind. But here’s the thing: Those same comments render those women little more than passive characters in their own stories.
DeYoung tells us that “Countless numbers of young women” are in the situation they are in because they have been “forced” into it by men. This, of course, means it is up to the men to resolve her situation. In fact, if young men just got their act together, then they could come up with a double whammy! They could solve “the gal’s” “problem” while simultaneously also solving the “problem” that “the gal” is in and for the church. Voila!
But where is the single Christian woman herself in all of this? Where is her personal responsibility and agency (whether exercised wisely or poorly)? Why is her situation simply depicted as the “square” result of male ineptitude? Why have her own decisions not been seen to play any role in our her situation (again, whether those decisions were wise or poor)? Why is a potential lack of spiritual maturity on her part not on view in this narrative?
How is it that DeYoung (and all these young men) know what she’d “rather” be doing than putting her experience, education and expertise into action as a worker? Come to that, why is she not rightly permitted to yearn to serve in more than one good way, at the same time? To desire to be a wife and mother and a woman who works in some active capacity?
And why is she “the gal” a guy needs to “find” rather than a woman called to take responsibility and seek out good for herself and those around her? Why is she simply the victim of the (male) other?
Where is she in her own narrative? She’s nowhere. She’s a ghost.
Let me speak frankly, earnestly and urgently.
Christians (and especially pastors), PLEASE stop telling young, immature men with a lack of self-control just to go out there, “find a godly gal” (anyone will do), and get married.
Wives are not the ready-made solution to those men’s immaturity. They are not an off-the-shelf remedy for those men’s lust.
It seems that everywhere I look right now, Christian leaders are espousing sociological data that (apparently) proves that marriage = happiness. So, since we’re apparently all sold on the authority of sociology for determining Christian moral action, here’s a sociological observation for you. Like it or not, the material conditions of the 21st-century West mean that, in a range of very important respects, today’s young people are significantly less mature than their 15th, 9th, and 1st-century counterparts.
Pastors encouraging, nay, commanding young Christian men who exhibit significant social and spiritual immaturity to just find someone, “pop the question, tie the knot and start making babies” is… well, it’s just 🤯. It puts the bulk of the burden of that guy’s selfishness, unreliability, fear of commitment, and lack of maturity on their young wife. She’s meant to be the solution, the thing that will set him on the right path.
Such a woman finds herself in a very tenuous position. The young “gal” who has been found, married & impregnated before she has had the chance to grow up herself, form and build robust non-marital relationships, and even develop incoming-earning potential in our capitalist market finds herself in a very vulnerable position today. You don’t have to like it to recognise the truth of it.
A guy doesn’t need to be an abuser out to exploit that vulnerability intentionally. He just needs to be someone who has been consistently told that marrying and having babies with her is what will set him on the right path. When that doesn’t magically happen, who do you think bears the brunt? Who do you think is left isolated, confused, alone and perhaps even scared in that situation?
We keep hearing (and rightly so) that marriage is hard. It is difficult. It takes sacrifice and effort. It involves a persistent commitment to being other-person-centered for so long as you both shall live. And then, in the next breath, we read exhortations that urge young, immature, selfish, commitment-phobic, uncontrolled, unreliable, anxious young men to just “find a godly gal, treat her right, talk to her parents, pop the question, tie the knot, and start making babies.”
I am not saying that getting married young is always (or even often) inadvisable. But, in light of the realities of our day and age, I am saying it is incredibly shortsighted and can be pastorally disastrous—especially for women—to just keep on blithely insisting that getting married young is ‘the Christian way’.3
Finally, DeYoung’s words don’t account for the fact that there are significantly more unmarried women in our churches than unmarried men. Even if 99% of unmarried Christian men followed his exhortation to the letter, there would still be loads of unmarried Christian women who long to be wives but who still aren’t.
What is his (and our) word to those sisters in Christ?
After all, they’ve just been told they are a “problem” of “overabundance” in and for the church. They’ve just been told that their situation is one they have been “forced” into “squarely at the feet of young men”. They have just been told that their situation needs to be solved by the actions of these young men.
So when all the Christian men step up to the plate and decide to marry someone else… tell me, what then?
I beg you to consider how this leaves the still unmarried Christian women thinking about themselves, their value, their worth, and their dignity in the eyes of others.
I beg you to consider how this might play upon all their insecurities (because trust me, it will) and how it may even give Satan a foothold that he’s eagerly ready to exploit.
I beg you to realise how poorly this approach equips them to deal with unresolved longings, unanswered prayers and unprocessed grief in a Christian community that sees their ongoing situation as, if not a problem, then certainly a pity.
I beg you to consider how this very logically may lead them to decide that, since a man who knows and loves Jesus hasn’t solved their “problem” (and the “problem” they are), then it's up to them to solve it themselves by marrying a man who does not know and love Jesus.
I don’t believe that DeYoung’s comments here offer nothing of any value. I do consider it very important that older, wiser, faithful Christian men (and indeed, women!) encourage, equip, and exhort young Christian men to grow to maturity in Christ and their love of others. To borrow DeYoung’s book title, we must Just Do Something about that.
However, the ‘Just Do It’ approach to marriage is not that something. Our love for God and our love for others demands much more of us than that approach allows.
Scripture’s actual teaching about singleness, marriage, and the church provides us with a far more robust, compelling, and faithful way to love and encourage our single sisters and brothers, and indeed our married brothers and sisters, as we all await the return of our Lord and Christ together.
For those interested in reading more on what I call the “Sanctification Narrative” of Christian marriage, including how others have contributed to the construction of that narrative, you might like to read pp. 46-49 of my book The Meaning of Singleness.
To be fair to DeYoung, he does offer a few brief comments about the importance of praying that we might have the right motives for marriage (see p. 106). However, these seem to be more about having the right motivations about whether to marry a specific person, rather than about the desires of our hearts when it comes to marriage more broadly.
Furthermore, just because it was ‘the Christian way’ in the highly idiosyncratic decade of the 1950s, does not mean it was ‘the Christian way’ in the decades and centuries before that. Historical data testifies to significant fluctuations in men's and women’s age of first marriage.
But then, on that particular day, on that particular podcast I added something more. I said that it was something I had personally struggled with and that it is something I feel like I’m struggling with more and more, rather than less and less.
I didn’t know those words were going to come out of my mouth, but they did. And as soon as I said them, I realised that they were indeed true. I find the experience of walking into church alone every Sunday and looking around to see where I might sit increasingly difficult and sometimes even painful. I am becoming more nervous about it rather than less.
The podcast interviewer gently asked me, “Why? Why do you think that is the case?”. Their question was not intended to be a challenge but rather an attempt to understand my experience better and I was thankful they asked it. I can’t remember the exact answer I gave at that moment. But I’ve since found myself returning to their question over and over again.
As I grow in both age and spiritual maturity, why am I finding something as seemingly simple as where I sit in church on a Sunday to be increasingly profound, complex and even anxiety-producing?
In one sense, there is a straightforward answer to that question. You see, I’ve recently changed churches. This was occasioned by a house move I made to another part of Sydney about two years ago. At that time, I didn’t want to say goodbye to my church family, so I stayed. However, the distance was making it difficult for me to be involved and invested, not just in the structural ministries of my church but in the lives of my family there. And so, after much prayer, I made the difficult decision to change to a church that was not only closer to my home but many of whose members live in my immediate area. I’ve been warmly welcomed at my new church and am very much enjoying getting to know people there. But I’m a newcomer. Walking solo into a place where you know very few people can heighten the whole “Where should I sit? Who should I sit with?” question.
But even as that is an undoubted factor in why I’m currently finding the experience more rather than less difficult, I knew it wasn’t the whole answer. You see, I had been feeling the same sense of anxiety at my old church. I knew and loved so many people in that church community. And yet, there was still an underlying sense of disquiet on most Sunday mornings. Each week, I’d walk in and think, “Ok. Should I sit in a pew by myself and hope that someone comes to join me?” all while knowing that if they didn’t (as was often the case), I’d be sitting alone for the next hour, feeling simultaneously conspicuous and invisible. Or I’d think, “Ok. Should I approach some people already sitting down and ask if I can join them?” all while bearing the weight of almost always feeling like the ‘needy one’ in this equation.
So, I knew what was going on for me was pretty deep-seated. But I couldn’t put my finger on why it was becoming more, rather than less so. And I was puzzled about where this consistent disquiet had come from. It hadn’t characterised my experience of church for earlier portions of my adult life. So why now? When had it started, and why was it becoming a bigger and bigger thing for me?
That podcast interviewer’s gentle probing question wouldn’t leave my mind. I kept turning it over and over.
And then, it hit me.
I suddenly found my mind transported back to a Sunday morning at church a few years ago. I could see myself sitting in a pew, alone, with nobody next to me, nobody behind me, and nobody in front of me.
And I was weeping.
It was mid-2020. The first of the “Covid Years”.
In Sydney, we had an initial lockdown in early 2020, but then sometime around the middle of the year (maybe a bit earlier—it’s a blur!), that lockdown was lifted, and churches were able to meet again on Sundays. But there were still restrictions in place.
One of those restrictions was that the number of people that could meet in a room was dependent on the size of that room. The smaller the room, the fewer number of people could gather in it. This meant that my church congregation could no longer meet all together because we had been meeting in what was a pretty small space, and we wouldn’t have all been allowed to attend under the restrictions. To cut a long story short, logistics required my congregation to divide up and attend one of two different church gatherings with others from a different congregation who met at a different (and larger) church building within our parish. Seemingly overnight, I lost the church family I had been a part of for years. It was nobody’s fault. It simply was what it was. But gee, it was hard.
But there was another restriction in place. Not only could only a certain number of people gather together at one time, but we needed to keep at least 1.5m between us and anybody else who wasn’t in our household. So, I was now attending a newly integrated congregation that was a mix of some people I knew and loved from my old church family, as well as some people I didn’t know. But I wasn’t able to sit with any of these people.
During those months, I would walk into church and sit in a pew by myself. The pew in front of me was roped off. The pew behind me was roped off. In theory, if I sat at one end of the pew, then another lone person could come and sit right down at the other end of the pew. But in reality, almost nobody did that. For months, I sat alone in a pew, totally isolated, with nobody being allowed anywhere near me, watching family households walk into church and sit together week after week.
I spent most of those Sunday mornings either fighting back the tears or weeping silently. I have never felt as wretchedly alone as I did in church during those months.
I’m generally fine with being in my own company. I live alone. I’m comfortable being alone. I’m very happy to go to movies or cafes or even restaurants alone. And so it wasn’t sitting alone, being alone, feeling alone itself, which was so difficult for me on those Sunday mornings. Rather, it was sitting alone, being alone, feeling alone in my church family.
It felt so wrong. And that’s because it was wrong.
Not wrong in a “it was wrong to obey government restrictions” sense. Not wrong in a “nobody should have asked that of you sense”. We were in the middle of a pandemic. People’s lives were at stake. Frankly, none of us really knew what we were doing or what we should be doing. The whole thing felt wrong!
No, I mean it was wrong in the sense that “if there is any place where a Christian should never feel so wretchedly alone, then surely that place is the gathering of the family of God. It was wrong in the sense of “this feels so awful because it is not what is meant to be”.
As I turned that podcaster’s question over and over in my mind, I realised that my increasing struggle with sitting alone at church all comes back to that experience of feeling—indeed, of being—so wretchedly alone in my church family for all those months. And the terrible reality of that aloneness was tangibly expressed in the reality of my sitting alone.
This is why the question of where to sit weighs so heavily on me now. This is why the prospect of sitting by myself, with nobody on either side of me in church, causes me anxiety, even in a time and place where (thank God) none of those restrictions still apply.
I have intimate experience with the wrongness of sitting alone, of feeling physically isolated, within the household of God.
I hated it then. And so I hate it now.
I grieved it then. And so I grieve it now.
It caused me distress then. And so it causes me distress now.
I’m not suggesting that my experience is descriptive of any other single Christian’s experience. I’m not saying others feel the way I do or ought to feel the way I do for the same reason I do. I’m not saying that every person should undergo a deep existential crisis at the thought of sitting alone at church (though, keep reading for more thoughts on that).
I’m just saying that no member of God’s family (single or otherwise) should feel that the place where they most belong is also the place where, sometimes, they feel most alone. None of us should be OK with that.
The ultimate issue is not where singles (or indeed married Christians) sit in church but whether their experience of relational belonging within that church congregation reflects the truth that this place, these people, are truly their family.
So, what do we do all this?
Well, first, I want to say a word to my fellow singles. And also to those married Christians who attend church without their spouse.
If you time your weekly arrival at church perfectly so as to make it easier to walk into the building alone, if you go through the whole rigmarole of where to sit each week, if you dread the moment right at the end of the service when suddenly the pressure is on to find someone to talk to (made harder in a context where all the parents immediately rush out the door to pick their kids up from their program), then I get it. I truly do.
I am intimately familiar with feeling both incredibly conspicuous and absolutely invisible all at the same time. Brothers and sisters, if it feels wrong (and it should feel wrong) that is because it is wrong.
And so, the challenge for us is to allow that truth to embolden us.
We need to pray for the spiritual courage needed to put ourselves out there relationally, to not simply sit—or hide—in our (metaphorical and literal) corner.
We need to ask the Spirit for bravery in initiating “the ask” and for boldness in letting our church family members know how they can love us.
We need to ask God to grow in us a nagging sense of discontent and dissatisfaction with feeling alone while we sit in the midst of family.
And we certainly need to ask him to rebuke any sense in which we might clutch onto those feelings of aloneness in order to harbour or legitimate feelings of resentment and bitterness towards those who have left us alone.
We need to ask, “Hey, can I sit here with you?”.
We need to ask, “Hey, why don’t you sit here with me?”.
I’m going to be praying God gives me the courage to do both of these things more and more in the weeks and months to come.
For my married readers, can I invite you to look around and see those sitting alone in your church gathering? Can I invite you to notice those who arrive at church alone each Sunday? Can I invite you to observe those who, immediately following church, look anxious, lost, or ready to rush straight out the door?
And then, can I invite you to think about what small things you could do to help those brothers and sisters feel like they belong to your church and, indeed, to you?
Perhaps it might mean asking a single friend if you can pick them up on your way to church some Sundays.
Perhaps it might mean making a real effort to get to church ten minutes early so that you are in a position to invite someone arriving alone to come and sit with you and your family.
Perhaps it might mean approaching someone sitting alone to say that you and your family would love to worship next to them.
Perhaps it might mean not always sitting together in a family unit at church, in order to demonstrate the truth that in that place, amongst those people, you all equally belong to one new household… together.
Perhaps it might mean making a bee-line to the person who is sitting by themselves right after church so they don’t feel the immediate need to run for the door.
Perhaps it might mean inviting that person to walk and talk with you as you go to rescue the long-suffering kids’ program leaders from your little ones.
Perhaps it might mean alternating weeks with your spouse regarding who is on “kid duty” after church so that one of you is always free to seek out conversations with people who seem a little lonely or lost.
Perhaps it might mean all of these things or other things entirely.
At a family gathering, no family member should even be left alone. At a family gathering, no family member should ever seek to be left alone.
Those of us who belong to Christ belong to each other. We are his family. How might we express that wonderful, confronting, glorious truth, even through something as simple as where we choose to place our butts on a Sunday?
]]>My natural verbosity is one of the reasons I actually like Twitter. Some of the time. A tweet’s character limits force me to keep it brief. Even a multiple-tweet thread requires me to think carefully about how to construct and communicate my argument in line with the number of characters I can use for each individual comment. Writing a tweet forces me to think carefully about what point I’m trying to make and how to make that point clearly, articulately and succinctly.
But with brevity comes risk. Risk of being unable to get your point across as clearly as you would like. Risk of being misunderstood. Risk of not providing enough context. Risk of taking things out of context. The Twitterer has to live with this kind of risk. They have to live with the knowledge that what they have said is almost never everything they could say.
Yesterday, I tweeted about the ‘Billy Graham Rule’.
The tweet was so brief that I didn’t even hit the yellow “you’ve only got 20 characters left so you better make it good” warning, and that almost never happens for me!
I stand by both that tweet and its brevity (hold your horses, I’ll share it with you in a moment). But there are times when the point of a brief tweet can be strengthened by a not-so-brief follow-up discussion. So here we are on my Substack… and sorry guys but it has no character limits.
Before we get to my tweet about the Billy Graham Rule (henceforth, BGR —because we Christians love our acronyms), let’s consider what the BGR actually is. The following is sourced from the Billy Graham Evangelical Association’s website:
Recently, “the Billy Graham rule” has been in the news—a reference to the second of four rules Mr. Graham and his team created decades ago to maintain ministry integrity. This particular rule deals with upholding sexual morality. Read below for background on these four rules, known as “the Modesto Manifesto”:
The website goes on to explain more about the particular rule that has colloquially come to be known as the BGR. In the words of Graham himself:
The second item on the list was the danger of sexual immorality. We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel. We pledged among ourselves to avoid any situation that would have even the appearance of compromise or suspicion. From that day on, I did not travel, meet or eat alone with a woman other than my wife. We determined that the Apostle Paul’s mandate to the young pastor Timothy would be ours as well: “Flee … youthful lusts” (2 Timothy 1:22, KJV).
Now, I already have questions.
Is it OK to assume that daughters and mothers are exempt from the rule? But perhaps more importantly, what constitutes “alone”? Is it being behind closed doors? Is it being in private, but not behind closed doors? Is it being one-on-one with a woman in a public space such as a cafe or a building lobby? Does going for a stroll with a woman along a highly-travelled path count as being alone? Do phone calls between a man and a woman count as “meeting?” Does the age or situation of the woman matter? For example, would a housebound elderly woman also be exempt?
None of these questions are facetiously put. They are all genuine questions that arise from Graham’s own description of his eponymous rule. What are the boundaries of the rule? What is included and excluded? Should we err on being more or less conservative in our interpretation and application? The answer to all those questions is “🤷♂️ It’s up to you”.
And that’s the first thing we need to know about the BGR in ministry contexts today. Because it is all in the individual's interpretation and application, we’re not all necessarily on the same page when we talk about the rule and putting it into practice. Some who affirm the BGR will happily meet with a woman one-on-one in a public setting. Some will never meet with a woman one-on-one in any setting. Some will happily have regular phone calls with a woman. Some will never speak to a woman on the phone. Some will happily have a coffee with a woman in the local cafe. Some will never suggest or agree to such a thing.
The first thing to note about the BGR is that it’s not always clear what we actually mean by it.
But the second thing to note about the BGR is that it was a “rule” developed by a particular group of men who were in a particular context. As Graham says:
We all knew of evangelists who had fallen into immorality while separated from their families by travel.
The men who created and committed to this rule were itinerant preachers and travelling evangelists whose ministry was (usually) undertaken in isolation from their wives, their families and their lives back home. The women they were (not) meeting with were often strangers with whom they had no relational, pastoral, or ongoing connection. Their wives usually had no clue who these women were, nor that their husbands were in the potential position to be meeting with these particular women one-on-one.
But the overwhelming majority of adherents to that rule today are not in that same context. Instead, they are typically male church pastors whose ministry is undertaken in the vicinity of (sometimes even inside) their home. The women they are (not) meeting with are usually members of their congregations or perhaps members of their church’s ministry team. Not only are these women most often known to the pastor’s wife, but very often, the pastor’s wife knows the day-to-day meeting schedule of her husband.
The contexts are not at all the same.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the BGR has no legitimate application outside its original context. However, it is incumbent upon us to recognise that Graham et al. developed and practiced this rule in an entirely different relational context, with an entirely different set of pastoral expectations and implications.
In one sense, we might argue that a church pastor’s context makes the application of this rule only more important and urgent. For example, the fact that there is an existing and ongoing connection between a pastor and a female congregant means there may be more opportunity or temptation towards impropriety were they to meet one-on-one. That may indeed be the case.
But a church pastor’s context also means there is more at stake in the application of the BGR, and especially for the women at the other end of that rule. These are not strangers. They are sheep within the flock. These are not women who the pastor will never see again. They are sisters in Christ that they are called to disciple. The man is not an itinerant traveller leaving town tomorrow. He is the pastor of her church, the appointed overseer of the household of God of which she is a valued member. Yes, there is much at stake for him and his ministry. But there is also so very much at stake for her.
Today a male friend of mine shared with me the practice of the senior pastor of a church he had attended many years ago and for whom he had much respect. This pastor had decided to apply the BGR to his ministry and, in fact, to go beyond it. He made it clear that. in order to honour his wife, he would not develop any sort of meaningful friendship or relationship with a woman other than her. My friend mused that, for many years, this pastor faithfully executed his ministry and maintained a strong marriage. But there were consequences. Women in his congregation told my friend they did not feel their pastor loved or knew them.
Which brings me back to my tweet.
My tweet was a response to another tweet—actually, a duo of tweets, both written by male Christian leaders. It is my usual practice to redact the names of people whose tweets I interact with here, and this time won’t be any different. I’m not trying to hide my sources (a quick search on Twitter will bring those up for you). But in these posts, I want to engage with the substance of what a person says rather than be seen to launch an offensive against the person themselves.
With that said, here are the two original tweets (from two different men):
And here is my response:
I wanted to take (or rather create) the opportunity to speak a little bit more about why I responded to those tweets in the way I did. To share with you what was going on in my head and heart when I read those first two tweets.
Here is the thing: when it comes to the BGR, we’re used to hearing how much is at stake for the man and why this necessitates the rule being put firmly into place. But what about the women on the other end of the rule?
We hear that the pastor occupies a position of public ministry, and so it is vital that he not just be above reproach in his own behaviour but also never be anything other than this in the eyes of another. He needs to disallow any opportunity for temptation and any possibility for misperception. The best way to do that is to keep out the women.
We hear that the pastor occupies a position of public ministry, and so he is vulnerable to being falsely accused of sexual harassment, impropriety or abuse. He must never allow himself to be in any situation where a false charge could be levelled at him. The best way to do that is to keep out the women.
We hear that the rule exists for the sake of the man. The only woman who ever comes into active consideration in the application of the rule is their wife.
But when do we hear about the women left on the other side of that yellow “keep out” tape?
Here’s the irony. The man puts the rule in place in order to keep his reputation free from stain. But doing so requires him to first of all conceive of that woman as a threat to his godliness. The rule puts him above reproach, while it simultaneously casts her into a default position of stained reproach.
The man puts the rule into place because he is concerned about protecting himself from the possibility of being falsely accused. But doing so requires him to first of all conceive of that woman as someone who might falsely accuse him. The rule puts him beyond the reach of being falsely charged, while it simultaneously perceives her as someone who might charge falsely.
For the rule to protect the honourable man, it must first of all assume the worst of the nameless woman. She is no longer that unique sister in Christ. Rather she becomes a potential threat. She is no longer that unique disciple in need of encouragement and exhortation. Rather she becomes a potential accuser.
She loses her individuality and instead becomes a category.
She stops being one of the sheep and instead becomes a risk to the shepherd.
Does this mean I think the BGR rule has absolutely no place in church (or wider) ministry?
No. It doesn’t. Far from it.
Boundaries, discernment and wisdom, are vital in the area of male/female relationships in the church, especially between a male church leader and female members of his congregation or ministry team.
It is not the “rule” itself that is the problem, but our attitude behind and to the rule.
If we see any particular iteration of the BGR as necessary to protect men from women, we are missing the point that boundaries exist in order to serve others well.
If we see any particular iteration of the BGR as necessary to prioritise the interests of men because of the threat of women, then we are missing the point that wisdom is oriented towards love of the other.
Wise, careful, faithful boundaries between men and women in the church ought to prioritise the fact that people are not categories but individual disciples. They are not caricatures but spiritual siblings.
“Rules” exist to invite people into appropriate, loving, kind relationships with us. Not to keep people out.
Furthermore, thoughtful and informed implementation of Billy Graham-type rules can be of great service to women themselves! On one of my first days serving full-time on a church ministry team here in Sydney (as a women’s discipleship trainer and coordinator), the senior pastor/minister of our church had someone cut a sizeable hole in his office door and insert into it a glass window. He did that so he and I could meet in his office without qualms, concern or suspicion.
I was so incredibly thankful for that kindness. Yes, it demonstrated to me that he took his own godliness seriously. But just as importantly, it demonstrated to me that he took my godliness seriously. It also showed that he wanted me to feel comfortable and safe meeting one-on-one with him. And perhaps most meaningfully to me at the time, it meant that he was committed to meeting with me one-to-one as he did with my male ministry colleagues. The window in that door was a constant reminder that he valued my role and my contribution to our team. It was an ever-present affirmation that he saw me as an individual, not a category.
So by all means, let the rule rule. But let it rule in wisdom, in kindness and in love. Let us speak about it in ways that demonstrate that we respect the women in our churches as the unique, important, individual sisters in Christ that they are. Let us apply it in ways that show them (and remind us) that they are a necessary part of the body and, as such, rightly deserve our honour rather than our suspicion.
]]>… Let me be very clear. Marriage is a wonderful gift from God. It has enormous significance, enormous meaning, and enormous importance. Marriage is very, very good, and it is able to bear very, very good fruit. Most wonderfully, our marriages are meant to point us towards the eternal marriage between Christ and the Church. Marriage is so important.
But marriage is not how we belong to the church. Marriage is not how we feel connected to others in the church. Marriage is not the way we enter into relationships in the church.
The Bible honours marriage, and it calls us to honour marriage. But when it comes to life in the family of God, do you know what male/female relationship it talks about over and over again? Do you know what male/female relationship Scripture puts at the very heart of life in the family of God?
It isn’t husband and wife.
It is brother and sister in Christ.
The Bible reveals that our life together in the family of God is fundamentally the life of sons and daughters of God and, therefore, brothers and sisters in Christ.
Even just something as simple as a search on the word “brother” in the New Testament brings that truth rushing home to us. Here’s a list of all the New Testament books with the number of times the word “brother” is used in each. For the sake of the exercise, I’ve left the gospels out of this list because they quite often use the word brother to speak about actual biological brotherhood rather than spiritual brotherhood.
Acts (31)
Romans (17)
1 Corinthians (32)
2 Corinthians (12)
Galatians (11)
Ephesians (2)
Philippians (9)
Colossians (5)
1 Thessalonians (17)
2 Thessalonians (7)
1 Timothy (2)
2 Timothy (1)
Philemon (4)
Hebrews (8)
James (15)
1 Peter (1)
2 Peter (2)
1 John (12)
3 John (1)
Jude (1)
Revelation (4)
In those books, the word “brother” is used 194 times.
The overwhelming majority of the instances refer to spiritual, rather than biological, brotherhood. In each of those references, the word “sister” is either used alongside “brother”, or it is theologically implied as part of the spiritual sibling relationship on view.
194 times.
But to get a greater sense of what the New Testament actually means when it speaks about brothers and sisters in the family of the Church, let’s zoom in on just one of those books in the Bible—the book of Acts. In this book, we get a remarkable insight into the life of the early church in their baby years, right as they were getting started. As the family of God was being formed, how were they speaking about their relationships with each other within that family?
Well, let’s look at the very first time the Apostle Peter addressed the church after Jesus had ascended. In fact, let’s look at the very first words he used as he did that.
In those days, Peter stood up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred and twenty) and said, “Brothers and sisters…”. (Acts 1:15-16)
Right there, in the very first chapter of Acts, when the total number of Christians in the world was a small portion of the number of people reading this particular post, Peter was already addressing them as his and each other’s brothers and sisters.
Or consider what happened when the apostles gathered all the Christians in Jerusalem together so that the church might appoint a number of its members to oversee the practical needs of the church. We are told the apostles said:
Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom... (Acts 6:3)
Right from the very start, the gathered church, the family of God, the men and women who made up his household were each other’s brothers and sisters.
And so it is no surprise that as we trace through Paul’s missionary journeys in later chapters of Acts, over and over again, we read about how he visited with “brothers and sisters” all over the place. Most of these men and women were people he had never met before. And yet he speaks about meeting, being welcomed by, staying with the “brothers and sisters” in Judea (Acts 11:29), in Phillipi (Acts 16:40), in Corinth (Acts 18:18), in Ptolemais [Phoenica] (Acts 21:7), in Jerusalem (Acts 21:17), in Puteoli [Naples] (Acts 28:13), in Rome (Acts 28:15) and elsewhere.
Right from the very beginning, life between members of this new, burgeoning, forming family of God was the life of brothers and sisters.
Now, that is not exactly news to us, is it? We’re used to the New Testament authors using the language of siblings and, in fact, using it frequently. But I fear that the language of “brother and sisters” is so familiar to us that it has become overly familiar to us. To put it another way, I fear we are so used to seeing that phrase in Scripture that we almost don’t see it anymore.
We’ve domesticated being brothers and sisters in Christ into a nice, warm-fuzzy sentiment and little more than that. And perhaps that’s not particularly surprising given the place siblings occupy in our context today. Siblings are often nice to have. By and large, we appreciate having brothers or sisters. Most of us love them most of the time (even if that may be harder for some than others!).
Brothers and sisters are not unimportant to us today. But they are not the essential relationship within the modern family. They are not the glue that holds the household together. They are not the male/female relationship at the centre of the family. For us, that honour belongs to marriage.
But that wasn’t the case at the time of Jesus, at the time of the early church, at the time the New Testament was being written. At that time, in that place, the relationship between husband and wife was important, sure. But it was the relationship between brothers and sisters that was the fundamental, the foundational, the formative relationship that lay at the heart of the family.
Here is how Joseph Hellerman puts it in his book When the Church Was a Family:
Among those who belong to the same generation in the world of Mediterranean antiquity, the closest family tie was not the contractual relationship between husband and wife. It was the blood relationship between siblings. As is now generally recognised by students of ancient family systems, the strongest ties of loyalty and affection in the New Testament world were ideally those shared among a group of brothers and sisters. The emotional bonding modern Westerners expect as a mark of a healthy husband-wife relationship was normally characteristic of sibling relationships. (p. 37-38)
Can you think of a passage in the gospels that gives us a glimpse into the deep 1st Century intimacy between siblings? Well, there are a bunch of them, but let me pick just one. For me, its perhaps the most moving of them all. Here is a short excerpt from it:
Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”
…
On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. (John 11:1-3, 17-19)
We know there is a good news story here. Jesus brings Lazarus back from the dead! But have you ever stopped to wonder about the emphasis on siblinghood in this passage?
When Lazarus is sick, it is not a wife, children or parents who send word to Jesus. It is his sisters.
When Lazarus dies, it is not a wife, children, or parents who many Jews travel from Jerusalem to comfort. It is his sisters.
When Jesus arrives, it is not a wife, children or parents who rush out to meet him and fall at his feet. It is a sister.
When Jesus is moved to tears over Lazarus’ death, it is not the grief of a wife or children or parents that prompts that. It is the grief of his sister.
For 1st Century readers, it would have made complete sense why this story was about a man and his two sisters. For Mary, Martha and Lazarus, their most intimate family relationships were with each other as brothers and sisters.
For us 21st Century western readers, the whole idea grates. Yet our role is not to judge what people in the 1st Century thought about the family. Instead, it is to understand what they thought about the family. Because if we do that, we can better understand why the New Testament speaks about family in the way it does, and what implications that has for our life together in the family of God today…
]]>But I’m also never quite sure what to expect from a TGC (US) article on singleness. I’ve found some of their publications on this topic to be compelling, faithful, encouraging and challenging. And I’ve found others… less so. But I expect that to be the case for any article on any topic from any publishing house. After all, I just linked to what I and many others thought was a truly hideous article on singleness (*ahem*) published by Christianity Today. And yet, I myself write the occasional article on singleness (and other things) for Christianity Today.
I’d be doomed for perpetual disappointment and frustration if I expected a Christian publisher to only ever publish stuff I agreed with. Indeed, they’d be doing me a disservice if they did! I need to engage with the views, perceptions and Scriptural interpretations of others. I need my own views, perceptions and Scriptural interpretations to be quizzed and challenged. I’ve matured enormously—in my theological thinking, my pastoral care and my personal godliness—by interacting with faithful Christians who think differently from me on a whole range of matters.
And so, as I clicked on the link to read ‘Promote Marriage and Dignify Singleness by Prioritizing God’s Mission’ by Jared Kennedy, I wasn’t sure what to think. And by the time I got to the end of the article I still wasn’t sure what I thought. I felt a bit disoriented, unsure quite what to make of it. And so, I decided to ask some others what they thought of it and then ruminated on it for a few days.
This morning, I clicked on the link again in order to carefully reread it and process my thoughts. And since I am long overdue for a new Substack post, well, here those thoughts are. Hey, don’t blame me! You’re the ones who have subscribed! And if you haven’t, well you know what to do👇
The first thing to say is that there were aspects of this article which I deeply appreciated. Most predictably, I was delighted by Kennedy’s reflections on the eschatological significance of the single Christian life:
“Jesus lived out God’s disciple-making mission while single. So did Paul. The arc of redemptive history bends toward this trajectory. Consider that in the new heavens and earth, we will not marry (Matt. 22:30). Corporately, the church will be Christ’s Bride. Individually, we’ll be like the angels in a “single” eternity. We live in a liminal time—the new covenant era of biblical history when the creation mandate for this earth and the new-earth-oriented Great Commission overlap.”
AMEN. The arc of redemptive history does indeed bend towards an eternity in which we will all live and relate as unmarried brothers and sisters, rather than as husbands and wives. Since I’ve already written a 90,000-word book about just that, I won’t bore you more about it here. Suffice it to say, “Preach, brother!”
Alongside my predictable appreciation for Kennedy’s eschatological lens, was my deep thankfulness for the loving intention and faithful motives behind his article. It seemed clear to me that this article truly seeks to honour single Christians and encourage them to live wholeheartedly for Christ. More than that, its author clearly wants to challenge married Christians, church leaders and entire Christian communities to honour singles, too. He wants to equip those readers to also encourage their single brothers and sisters to live wholeheartedly for Jesus. I have absolutely no doubt that the article was very well intended and motivated (and I mean that in the least patronising and most genuine way possible!).
For a reader to be able to perceive the genuine and loving motivation that lies at the heart of an article like this—especially on this topic—is no small thing. Singles are used to reading articles written about them by married people (usually married pastors) which frequently chastise them for being single, pity them for being single, rebuke them for being single, or shame them for being single. That Kennedy does not set out to do any of these things means a lot.
But, (you knew it was coming, didn’t you?), even as he didn’t set out to do those things, unfortunately, I feel he didn’t altogether manage to avoid them. That is, I still finished the article with a slight taste of chastisement and shame in my mouth. I couldn’t entirely ignore the light aroma of pity and rebuke that wafted through the air. I don’t for a moment think Kennedy set out to make me (or other single readers) feel that way. In fact, I suspect he (and many married readers) may think I’m overreacting, perhaps looking for things in the article to be offended by.
But the truth is that the undercurrents of entrenched evangelical thought about singleness are just so strong, so pervasive, so deeply embedded in our minds, our practices and our communal consciousness that it is almost impossible not to get swept up in them. What is more, we are so used to their gravitational pull on us that we don’t even recognise when, in fact, we are being pulled by them.
Every unmarried Christian who shared with me their thoughts about this article spotted the undercurrents that ran beneath it. And I did, too. Even as we felt genuinely encouraged by Kennedy’s desire to bring singleness into shore, to give it a welcoming landing on the beach of contemporary evangelicalism, when we lifted our eyes at the end of the article we realised that we had still been carried a long way out by those almost invisible undercurrents.
The first of these undercurrents is the subtle but pervasive messaging in the article that singleness doesn’t measure up to marriage.
This is evident in something as fundamental as the article’s title and accompanying image. As someone who regularly writes for online platforms like TGC, I’m aware that authors almost never select the image attached to their article, and sometimes not even the title given to it. That may very well be the case here. But regardless of who chose either or both of these things, consider their messaging.
Promote marriage. That is, prioritise it, encourage it, advocate for it, advance it, boost it up. Dignify singleness. That is, make it OK, make it legitimate, give it a reason to be, sanction it.
One has the sense of moving forward proactively. The other has the sense of passive justification.
Perhaps I’m overreacting? Well, look at the image selected to illustrate an article on marriage and singleness and, indeed, whose word count is primarily about singleness. It’s a stock image of a young, attractive couple on their wedding day, silhouetted against a setting sun, staring lovingly at each other, and whose posed bodies evoke the image of a heart.
Or consider the way the article is bookended with the single person whose diligence God rewards with marriage. Certainly, the article doesn’t go so far as to say those exact words—”God will reward the truly faithful single person with a spouse”—but the implication is there, both in the opening story of Isabella and the closing sentence that suggests other single Christians can become their own Isabella. After all, a story like Isabella’s:
“… may feel like a meet-cute from an evangelical rom-com, but it’s true (though I’ve changed the names and minor details). It also illustrates an important truth. When single Christians experience anxiety over finding a spouse, church leaders shouldn’t pressure them to pursue marriage at all costs. Instead, we must remind singles that God’s path to blessing is found by putting Christ and his mission first.”
What is the important truth that Isabella’s story illustrates? You don’t solve the single Christian's unmarriage problem by pushing them to get married. Isabella’s story illustrates that if you encourage them to put Jesus (rather than their own desires) first then God will solve their unmarriage problem in the end anyway. They’ll get the blessing after all. It’s the illustrative story of the rare exception— the unmarried Christian woman committed to costly vocational ministry who, in her mid-late 20s, finds herself the perfect spouse, conveniently right there at her own church’s singles Bible Study and who miraculously shares her exact passions and is able to make all her dreams come true within a year.
The story that is omitted is the story that is the usual reality—the unmarried Christian woman trying to trust Jesus in her singleness even as she longs for marriage, and who, regardless of what church, bible study group, mission trip or ministry she gets involved with, spends her 20s and 30s and 40s essentially never meeting any mature unmarried Christian men who are interested in a relationship with her and so gets on with seeking to live faithfully for God despite the fact that he does not answer one of her most consistent and heartfelt prayers.
The article tells us that singles should resist “wasting their time on self-centred scrolling, entertainment and gossip” (more on that later) and instead, focus on devoting themselves to kingdom work. This is the godly thing to do, but also:
“As an added benefit, serving others can help a young person build the kind of character and charisma that godly members of the opposite sex find attractive.”
In other words, if you get focused on Jesus, you might find yourself becoming the kind of person someone wants to marry after all.
We are explicitly warned against:
“…viewing marriage as morally superior to singleness in every situation.”
Because marriage isn’t morally superior to marriage in every situation.
Just most of them. After all:
“In Genesis 2:18, God states, “It is not good that the man should be alone.””
(Sidebar here, guys: I’m getting close to the point where I can’t predict what I’ll do when the next person tells me that Gen 2:18 says marriage was the solution to Adam’s aloneness. Please read this article. It’s one of those ones whose title and image I had no control over.)
Do I think Jared Kennedy sets out to intentionally propose a prosperity (in-marriage) gospel in this article? No, I don’t. But that is the subtle end result nonetheless. Why? Because one of the fast-flowing, seemingly irresistible undercurrents that pulses beneath evangelical thinking about marriage and singleness is that singleness is something you escape from into marriage, because we all know marriage is obviously better. Even an article like this one—an article that genuinely seeks to dignify single Christians—can’t resist getting caught in this undercurrent.
The same article gets caught up in the second key undercurrent that exerts its unilateral gravitational pull over our evangelical thinking about singleness-namely, its instrumentality.
In The Meaning of Singleness, I describe the instrumental view of singleness in this way:
“Any instance of Christian singleness is typically only conceived to be legitimate when it is determined to have genuine value, and that value is typically only conceived to be genuine when it fulfils a certain function. To put it another way, it is the instrumentality of singleness which determines its value and therefore its legitimacy within the eyes of the believing community…
… the unmarried life is evaluated as legitimate and valuable only because of its particular utility. Where that utility is not directed towards its proper instrumental ends, that individual’s expression of singleness becomes illegitimate, perhaps even sinful, and emptied of its theological import…
…perhaps the most problematic outcome of this myopically instrumental focus on singleness has been the diminishment of any innate dignity within the single Christian life. Contemporary Christian literature, digital media, and sermons consistently teach unmarried Christians that their unique situation has no intrinsic meaning or purpose outside of what they do with it”
(The Meaning of Singleness, p.79-82)
The problem with the instrumental view is not that it celebrates the usefulness of singleness. The problem is that is all it celebrates about singleness. And that is what we see in this article.
Consider the way that single Christians are subtly depicted at points in the article.
They are chronically anxious about their marital destiny
They are sucked into the worldly patterns of self-centred individualism, loneliness and cynicism of the opposite sex
They waste their time on self-centred scrolling, entertainment, gossip and video games
They are inherently in danger of being like the socially and spiritually destructive widows of 1 Timothy.
(Sidebar again: Notice how rarely anyone talks about the obsessive anxiety about their situation that many married Christians wrestle with? Notice how rarely anyone talks about how married Christians are able to get sucked into self-centered individualism? Notice how nobody seems overly concerned with how much time married people spend on social media or enjoying time with their friends or chilling out doing something that relaxes them? Oh sure, perhaps some married people might need some gentle reminders about these things. But singles, well they are inherently prone towards all of them).
Now consider the proposed solution to this inherently problematic situation which we call singleness:
“…God’s good work through unmarried believers in history and today will help the singles among us to see their dignity and usefulness in God’s kingdom.”
“But if we keep the mission first, we’ll see mature, Jesus-loving believers who learn to live out their Christian callings. This will give dignity to those who remain single”
The dignity in singleness comes in its usefulness. The legitimation of singleness is evidenced in its utility. The meaning of singleness is demonstrated by its instrumentality.
Yes, there is one or two head nods in the article to marriage also being a place for mission, and a spouse being someone you need to get along with well enough to be effective partners in mission. But nobody is getting to the end of this article (or indeed any evangelical article on marriage) thinking that the only good thing about marriage is whether the people in it are really proving themselves to be useful or not.
But that is all we see singleness as being good for.
And even then, not every single person’s usefulness is legitimate. Like nearly every other contemporary resource on this topic, this article drops in passing comments which clarify that only certain types of singleness are the usefully dignified kind.
It’s singleness which is a “lifelong call” (with the usual reference to 1 Cor 7:7-8 as if that verse is obviously only referencing lifelong singleness).
It’s the singleness that is intentionally chosen “for the sake of Christian ministry” (with the usual reference to the self-made eunuch of Mt 19:12, but no mention whatsoever of the two other eunuchs Jesus mentions who didn’t choose their kingdom-serving job, but get on with the task nonetheless).
Not all Christian singleness is legitimate. Only the really kingdom-focused kinds. And by that, he (and others) mean only singleness which is entirely devoted to (so-called) undistracted ministry. And if you haven’t chosen it, then you can’t be undistracted by it.
(Another sidebar: Notice once again that nobody is saying that only marriage, which is devoted to undistracted ministry, is the legitimate type of marriage. Married people are allowed to enjoy their situation for the other blessings and benefits it brings alongside its instrumental usefulness. Not so single Christians. Get off those video games guys!).
Kennedy turns to 1 Corinthians 7 to argue his point about the dignity of singleness being exclusively found in the fact that it allows for “undistracted ministry”. He views 1 Cor 7 through a missional lens, writing about the “good of a mission-oriented gift of singleness” and that this passage “frames human relationships in light of the bigger story of God’s mission”.
The problem is that 1 Corinthians 7 is not primarily about mission in the now-but-not-yet. It’s about holiness in the now-but-not-yet.
Sure, mission is a natural follow on effect from holy living. But the key focus of that whole chapter is about how married and unmarried Christians in Corinth might live rightly before the holy God who had “bought them with a price” (1 Cor 6:20).
This is why he exhorts married Christians not to abstain from sex with each other—because their holiness is at stake (vv. 1-6).
It is why he exhorts those singles who were not exercising self-control to marry (v.9)—because their holiness is at stake.
It is why he exhorts the married Christian not to divorce their non-Christian spouse—because their own, their spouse’s and even their children’s holiness is at stake (vv.12-16).
It is why he exhorts the Christian who has a wife to live as if he has none (v.29) by emulating the example of the unmarried Christian who is not divided but devoted to God—because their holiness is at stake (vv.32-35).
1 Corinthians 7 is not a chapter about the usefulness of single Christians. It’s a chapter about the holiness of single Christians. And married Christians. And betrothed Christians. And widowed Christians. It’s about all of us living in “a right way in undivided devotion to God” (v.35).
Just as marriage’s meaning is more than mission, so too is singleness’ meaning more than mission. Just as marriage is dignified by more than its usefulness, so too is singleness dignified by more than its usefulness. Both of them are situations that God gives us for a small or a long number of years. Both of them are situations he may choose to give us again. And both of them are situations in which we are called to holistically honour him, love others and glorify Christ—regardless of how we feel about it, whether we have chosen it or how long we live in it.
Do I think Jared Kennedy sets out to intentionally restrict singleness’ dignity purely to how useful the single person is evaluated to be? No, I don’t. But that is the subtle end result nonetheless. Why? Because one of the fast-flowing, seemingly irresistible undercurrents that pulses beneath evangelical thinking about marriage and singleness is that its usefulness is the only thing that can sanction (certain kinds of) singleness as OK. Its instrumentality is the only thing which gives (certain kinds of) single people a hall-pass on the great goal, ideal and duty of marriage. Even an article like this one—an article that genuinely seeks to dignify single Christians—can’t resist getting caught in this undercurrent.
So as I said guys, I had a mixed reaction. Though, I must admit that the time I have spent writing this analysis of the article has shifted the marker more towards the “disappointing” end of the scale for me.
This article is genuinely one of the better ones I’ve read (and trust me, I’ve read a lot) with respect to its good-faith intention to provide single Christians with visibility, honour and dignity in the church. And yet, the undercurrent it is swimming in is just so strong. The gravitational pull is just so potent. The inherently problematic view of singleness is just so deeply embedded in the evangelical consciousness that even a good article easily gets swept away from the shore.
This is one of those times when we have to forget everything we ever learnt on “Bondi Rescue” (excuse the Aussie in-joke). We need to start fighting the undercurrent by swimming against it. The more of us doing it together, the easier it will become.
]]>On Boxing Day, I’m too distracted by recovering from all the good food, presents and cheer to think about it.
But then comes December 27th and I notice a sense of sinking dread quietly nestling itself in the pit of my stomach. I halt what I’m doing, tilt my head and wonder “Wait. What is that? Where has this slightly sick feeling come from? What accounts for this creeping realisation of foreboding? For these pangs of disquiet”.
And then I realise.
Ah. New Year’s Eve.
The loneliest day (and night) of my year.
Last year, I spilled my guts about why a night of fireworks and frivolity fills me with such angst and anxiety.
As a never-married Christian woman who lives alone, NYE is typically the one night of the year that I fear being alone. It’s the one night of the year when sitting by myself on my couch becomes unbearably loaded with the emotional weight of what was, what could have been, what is and what isn’t.
I don’t want to have to sit with that emotional weight all alone. I want to share it a little with others. I want them to share theirs a little with me. And then I want us to distract each other so that we don’t just keep sitting with that emotional weight. So that we can, indeed, welcome in the new year.
But today, on this December 27th, I suddenly realised that for the first time in many years, I feel no sense of sinking dread at NYE’s approach.
Huh. That’s new.
Just as I normally need to pause in order to identify the source of the disheartening disquiet, this year I needed to pause in order to appreciate its completed absence.
Wow. This year I am not dreading NYE.
Why? Because back in November a friend called me to say that he, his wife and his family wanted to spend some time with me. There and then we decided that I’d come down to spend NYE with them, stay the night, and low-key hang out with them the next day. Apparently I’m to be inducted into their long-standing New Year’s Day tradition of watching hours of dash-cam videos and yelling at the TV. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but… COUNT. ME. IN.
It’s not simply that I have NYE plans. It’s that I have NYE plans with people who I know want to spend time with me (and I with them. Very much so). And it’s that I have NYE plans which were locked in two months ago.
I haven’t had to endure the sudden realisation that NYE is only days away and that I have no-one to spend it with. I haven’t had to convince myself that I’m totally absolutely 100% fine with spending it alone on my couch watching reruns of Taskmaster… or that I need to tentatively put my hand up to ask if anyone is willing to be my friend for the night, all while bracing myself to receive no response because it’s just not on most of my friend’s radar.
The dawning realisation of the complete lack of stress, anxiety, foreboding and dread I feel this NYE has been a revelation. Wow.
So, to repeat what I wrote in that spilling of my guts article this time last year, as this NYE approaches…
For those of us who are single and sad about NYE, can I encourage us to be proactive? Be vulnerable and help trusted loved ones to understand why it is a hard night for us, why we don’t want to be alone for it, why we love to spend it with them instead of by ourselves…
For those of you who are married, please be aware of how much emotional energy it can take for us singles to initiate the ‘Hey. So. I’m just wondering… what are you doing for NYE?’ conversation. The question might seem completely mundane to you. For us it can take a lot of courage to ask to be seen, to ask to be invited, to ask not to be left alone….
And for those for whom NYE brings home the passing of the years, the inexorable temporality of time, the fragility of our bodies, the sadness of suffering, let’s remember that we do, in fact, have confident reason to hope for new beginnings. In fact, in Christ, our new beginning has already begun! We are even now his new creations, destined together for eternal life with him in the incredible age to come. Let’s remind each other that in that place, at that time, we won’t lament the passing of the years. Rather we will rejoice together in their endless accumulation.
Amongst the endless spam (seriously, does ‘unsubscribe’ mean nothing these days?) there was an email from a friend. Attached to that email was a quote from CS Lewis.
My friend wrote that an acquaintance of his had recently posted this quote on Facebook. It had been posted with the following comment:
“Lewis on the difficulties of singleness and marriage”.
In my (single) friend’s email, he expressed his disappointment and bewilderment about his (married) friend’s decision to post this quote:
“I really wonder what they're thinking when they post stuff like this - whether for even an instant they consider how it might be received by a single person.”
I knew the feeling. I’ve often wondered the same thing.
But my friend also expressed his confusion about Lewis’ quote:
“Lewis's apparent equating of singleness with miserable solitude seems off the mark (though I haven't read the source for context).”
I agreed with my friend. This didn’t sound like Lewis. At least, it didn’t sound like something Lewis would say about marriage and singleness in particular. My interest was piqued. And so, I did what any good researcher would do. I went back to the sources.
Here’s what I discovered.
Lewis did write these words. He wrote them in a letter to Mary Willis Shelburne, an American woman with whom he exchanged letters for over a decade, right up until his death. Several contemporary books include records of Lewis’ correspondence with Mary Willis. The description of one, Letters to an American Lady, reads:
On October 26, 1950, C. S. Lewis wrote the first of more than a hundred letters he would send to a woman he had never met, but with whom he was to maintain a correspondence for the rest of his life. Ranging broadly in subject matter, the letters discuss topics as profound as the love of God and as frivolous as preferences in cats. Lewis himself clearly had no idea that these letters would ever see publication, but they reveal facets of his character little known even to devoted readers of his fantasy and scholarly writings -- a man patiently offering encouragement and guidance to another Christian through the day-to-day joys and sorrows of ordinary life.
The words in the quote posted on Facebook were extracted from a letter Lewis wrote to Mary Willis, dated 8 November 1962. You’ll find the full text of the letter in question below.1 However, before you read it, let me remind you of the excerpted text in the posted image which was described as being Lewis’ words “on the difficulties of singleness and marriage”.
8 November 1962
Dear Mary Willis,
Yes, I can well understand how you long for ‘a place of your own’. I norminally have one and am nominally master of the house, but things seldom go as I would have chosen. The truth is that the only alternatives are either solitude (with all its miseries and dangers, both moral and physical) or else all the rubs and frustrations of a joint life. The second, even at its worst seems to me far better.
I hope one is rewarded for all the stunning replies one thinks of and does not utter! But alas, even when we don’t say them, more than we suspect comes out in our look, our manner, and our voice. An elaborately patient silence can be very provoking! We are all fallen creatures and all v. hard to live with. It is not only Episcopalians who behave as if they had never read St James.
I hope the operation will turn out to be unnecessary.
Yours,
Jack
Perhaps you’ve already worked it out.
Lewis’ letter had nothing to do with his views on marriage and singleness. But if you aren’t quite convinced yet, well, let me give you some more context to his correspondence with Mary Willis Shelburne.
From his other letters to her, we can tell that Mary Willis seems to have been quite a troubled and, at times, rather unhappy woman. She had a very difficult relationship with her daughter and son-in-law. She was in poor physical health. Sometime around 1960 her doctors and family had deemed her unfit to continue living independently in her own home. At the time of this Nov 8 1962 letter, she was either (reluctantly) living with her daughter and son-in-law, or she had been moved into an aged-care ‘Home’. (Both were true at different points during their correspondence. I couldn’t quite tell which was the case at the time of this particular letter.) She also seems to have been quite financially impoverished, and heavily reliant upon the support of her family and friends (including Lewis).
On Nov 8th, Lewis replied to a letter Mary Willis Shelburne had just sent him in which she had expressed her longing for ‘a place of her own’. It seems she missed her independence and resented that (in her view) it had been stripped away from her, never to be attained again.
And here’s one final piece of important information you need to know. At the time this letter was written and sent both CS Lewis and Mary Willis Shelburne had been widowed. They were both single again.
What does all this mean? It means that Lewis’ words were not an exhortation about singleness and marriage. Rather than were an exhortation (and a gentle rebuke) to his pen pal, that she might remember that none of us was created for the kind of enduring solitude and independence that she was craving. Lewis was reminding her that we all need others, even as all of us are fallen people who are hard to live with.
The same sentiments are echoed in a letter he sent her just a month later. In a December 10th 1962 letter, Lewis insisted that:
One must get over any false shame about accepting necessary help. One never has been ‘independent’. Always, in some mode or other, one has lived on others, economically, intellectually, spiritually… We are members of one another whether we choose to recognise the fact or not.2
As Lewis wrote to this elderly, troubled, unhealthy, unhappy, poor, perhaps even somewhat embittered widowed Christian woman—a woman who longed not only for enduring solitude but independence from others— he was seeking to remind her that our creator has made humans for “joint life” with others humans. This kind of “joint life”, he writes, is better by far than isolation.
Lewis’ words to Mary Willis had nothing to do with marriage and singleness, per se. They were about the necessity of our being human beings in reliant relationship with others, rather than longing for relational solitude and independence apart from others.
To live in reliant relationship is to live the “joint life”.
Am I surprised that Lewis’ words have now been removed from their context, excerpted and abbreviated in self-selective ways and reframed to bolster the contemporary evangelical obsession (yes, obsession) with idealising and idolising marriage as the ‘joint life’, and so depicting singleness as the miserable and dangerous life of solitude?
Not in the least.
I do not doubt that my friend’s friend who posted the meme thought that Lewis’ words were about marriage and singleness. I mean, why wouldn’t they? Those kinds of sentiments are precisely what evangelicals have been saying about singleness for decades and decades. Why wouldn’t this person assume that Lewis was saying the same thing? Why wouldn’t they assume that he was warning against the miserable dangers and tragic solitude of singleness? Why wouldn’t they assume that Lewis was affirming that “joint life” (i.e., relational life) belongs to those who are either a husband or wife?
But friends, that wasn’t at all what Lewis was saying. And given his rich, abundant and varied relational life — as a bachelor, then as a married man and then as a widower—I suspect he would be bitterly disappointed that anyone thought it was. I mean, this is the same man who reportedly wrote:
It's all love or sex these days. Friendship is almost as quaint and outdated a notion as chastity. Soon friends will be like the elves and the pixies - fabulous mythical creatures from a distant past.3
Guys, this evangelical obsession with making marriage the sum-total, the golden-goal, the ultimate form of the human relational life—the very definition of the “joint life”—is just so exhausting and demoralising and frustrating.
But more than that, it contradicts the teaching of Scripture.
The Bible celebrates, honours, encourages, commands and delights in all manner of relationships between human beings—in all the ways we are called to “joint life” with, amongst and to one another. It most importantly venerates the “joint life” of the household of God. The “joint life” of being disciples of Jesus. The “joint life” of being brothers and sisters in Christ. The “joint life” of being sons and daughters of God. The “joint life” that will be the eternal life of God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule.
Yes! The Bible honours marriage. It speaks so highly, so wonderfully, of the one-flesh relationship between a husband and wife. But it never—NEVER—makes that relationship the relationship. It never depicts it as the way to live the “joint life”. It never caricatures the unmarried life as a life of miserable, dangerous, isolated solitude. I mean, goodness gracious, the apostle Paul says that he wishes everyone was unmarried!!! (Even as he recognises that it is not “best” for every Christian person to be so).
Why then do we evangelicals—the ones who claim to really take Scripture seriously—persist in our obsessive idealisation and idolisation of marriage as the “joint life”? Why do we take words that speak about the richness and abundance and necessity of human relationship in all their forms and varieties, and self-selectively interpret them so they become about just one relationship? Not only that, but why are we so fixated on the one human relationship that ends with death? On the one (wonderful) expression of “joint life” that will not carry over into eternity?
Why, oh why, do we do this?
Well, I’ve written many a post, indeed multiple book chapters, seeking to understand and explain the answer to that question. And so, I won’t rehearse all that again here.
But friends, I do want to ask you if you’ll be part of the unwinding of this. I do want to ask you if you’ll be part of the changing of the script. I do want to ask if you’ll commit to understanding and applying the full and wonderful counsel of God on marriage, singleness, relationship and community more fully and faithfully, I do want to ask you if you’ll allow the gospel—and all its wonderful earthly and eternal blessings— to shape your thinking about what it means for those of us who delight in the fullness of “joint life” with our Lord and Saviour to so also delight in the fullness of “joint life” with one another.
For here too Professor Lewis has a lesson for us:
“But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends "You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.4
Location 30441 of the Kindle version of C.S. Lewis’ Collected Letters Volume Three.
Location 30609, ibid.
I’m having trouble tracking down the exact citation for this quote. Let me know if you know where it is from!
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, p.89
This post comes to you from San Antonio, Texas where the weather has been warm(ish), the Mexican food has been abundant and the ETS annual meeting (the what now? see below!) has been a whole lot! I’ll explain more about that in a bit. But for the moment…
The fact that an academic book (based on my PhD dissertation) is a reader’s choice finalist in the category of ‘cultural engagement’ is both unexpected and wonderful! I take it to be more evidence of the fact that the evangelical church is beginning to embrace fresh and faithful discussions about singleness in the Christian life and community!
If you’ve read, enjoyed or in some other way benefitted from The Meaning of Singleness would you consider voting for it at the link below?
A win would be a significant boost in keeping the conversation about singleness front and centre in the evangelical discourse.
Voting closes at midnight (I guess CST?) on Friday, November 17th. Yes, that’s tomorrow!
Everyone who votes goes into the draw to win a collection of each of the winning books from all categories. Plus, all finalist titles can be purchased direct from IVP for a 25% discount using the code above.
As I said above, this week I’ve been attending the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio. It’s a yearly conference where hundreds of theological and biblical scholars get together to present, listen to and engage with a lot of papers on a whole lotta different topics. I haven’t done an actual count of the total number of papers given across the three days but I’m guessing it would be somewhere in the range of 400+.
On Tuesday morning there was a three-hour session focused on my work in The Meaning of Singleness. This was one of perhaps only six sessions across the whole conference specifically and entirely focused on a recently published book. It was an incredibly humbling privilege to have my work taken so seriously by those who gave papers (see below), the organisers of ETS who approved the proposal and all those who attended our session.
Rachel Gilson & Matthew Lee Anderson each presented thought-provoking papers building off and taking further some of the work I had done in the book. We did have another speaker slotted in to give a paper but unfortunately, he was unable to attend for (very good) personal reasons. So I stepped into the breach and presented a paper based on content from my dissertation that hadn’t made it into the book.
As much as that session was a total (surreal) highlight for me, the thing I love most about ETS are the people I get to meet and spend time with. When I wasn’t sitting in a session listening to a paper, I was speaking with theologians in the lobby, bumping into biblical scholars in the (giant) bookstore, sharing meals with friends I only see once a year when I travel to the other side of the world, or having coffee with publishers and other very interesting individuals.
All of ETS was great, but the thing I was most incredibly surprised by, thankful for and excited about is the number of people who wanted me to know that God is graciously allowing my work and writing on singleness to bear fruit in their lives and within their church communities. I was genuinely surprised but so deeply encouraged by the number of people who approached me across the course of the conference to share how my work has been significant for them personally and was even inspiring their own work in this field.
I often joke about how I did a PhD in order to write a book. But in all honesty, it’s true. I undertook doctoral research in order to produce both a careful and faithful book on the topic of singleness… for the sake of the church. I wanted to write something that, in God’s goodness and kindness, might be an edifying resource for single Christians themselves but also for the body of Christ as a whole. My part in helping shape this broader conversation is just one small part. But I’m so, so thankful to God for allowing me to play that small part in helping his people see the gospel meaning, dignity and significance of the unmarried Christian life.
]]>I suspect very few of us can help but know who Taylor Swift is. I hear she’s now playing for the NFL. Geesh, is there anything that woman can’t do?
However, Andy Stanley may be a little more of an unknown quantity, especially to some of my fellow non-US readers. But don't tune out if you don’t know who Andy Stanley is! As the title suggests, this piece is far more about us than it is him. However, in order to bring the focus rightly onto us, I first need to draw your attention to something Stanley recently said.
To cut a long story short, Stanley gave a talk at his church, explaining his (and so also his church’s) approach to Christian sexual ethics and especially same-sex marriage. This sermon came on the heels of some concern about a conference Stanley had been involved in that seemed to promote—at least passively so—an ‘affirming’ position on human sexuality (i.e., accepting same-sex relationships/marriages as morally permissible for Christians).
Much has been said about Stanley’s talk and the conference that motivated him to give it. However, I want to zoom in on just one part of it. At 41:40 in his talk Stanley said:
“Many [same-sex attracted Christians] are convinced that traditonal marriage [i.e., marriage between one man and one woman] is not an option for them. So they commit to living a chaste life […] and for many men and women who put their faith in Christ they just decide ‘Ok, I’m just going to buckle down, I’m just going to bear down, I’m just going to be by myself, I’m not going to have family, I’m going to be sexually pure.’ And many, many, many, many do that for long seasons of time. And for some it’s their whole life
But for many that is not sustainable. [NB. bolded emphasis original].
And so they choose same-sex marriage—not because they’re convinced it’s biblical. They read the same Bible we do. They chose to marry for the same reason many of us do: love, companionship, and family.”
Now, there is a lot that we could delve into in those comments. And by the end of this article, we’ll come full circle back to some of them. But for now, I want to draw your attention to Stanley’s comment that living a life of chaste singleness is not sustainable for many same-sex attracted Christians. It’s not doable. It’s not workable. It’s not realistic. It’s not possible. It’s not something they can keep “buckling and bearing down on”.
The single, celibate, same-sex attracted, and all-around awesome Sam Allberry has responded to Stanley in this Christianity Today article. While I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, one particular comment in it really grabbed my attention. Sam writes:
…when any leader suggests to me that chaste obedience to Christ in singleness is not sustainable, he is saying the very same thing to me that the Devil says.
Those familiar with my work will not be surprised to hear that I greeted this with a hearty “Amen!”. I was so thankful for Sam’s unapologetic testimony that chaste obedience in singleness is sustainable. After all, that’s not something you often hear in contemporary evangelicalism, is it?
Which is why I was surprised to see numerous other commentators highlighting, reposting and applauding that exact same quote from Sam’s article. I counted nearly 20 posts featuring that one comment alone in my Twitter (I mean, “X” 🙄) newsfeed. Those 20 posts were then retweeted or quote-tweeted well over 200 times. That quote was the quote commentators were sharing from Sam’s excellent article.
When I realised that, I started hearing Taylor Swift warming up in the background.
Let me be clear. I absolutely, fundamentally, and foundationally disagree with Andy Stanley’s comment that faithful, chaste singleness is not sustainable for many Christians. On the supremely remote chance that he ever stumbles across this article, I’d encourage him to consider the countless opposite-sex attracted single and single-again Christians who have always existed in our midst as living, breathing, walking, talking, sustainable examples of faithful, chaste, long-term singleness. Most (not all) are women, and they’ve been there all along.
So, yes, I disagree with Stanley. But, gee whiz it was something to see a rash of evangelical commentators act as if any conjecture about singleness’ sustainability for the contemporary Christian was an obvious lie of Satan.
It was something to see them behave as if all of us were (or should be) totally on board with the idea that Christian singleness is absolutely doable.
It was something to see them comment as if singleness and chaste obedience to Christ naturally go hand in hand in today’s evangelical church.
Spoiler alert: They don’t. And I can prove it.
At the very same time my newsfeed boasted some big-name commentators celebrating that exact excerpt from Sam’s article, my newsfeed was also home to some other big-name commentators posting other stuff. Stuff like this.
And this.
And that’s just a couple of tweets from this week alone. Those two examples don’t even begin to blow a gently rippling breeze across the surface of decades upon decades upon centuries of evangelical teaching about the deficient, deviant, destructive, tragic, meaningless, spiritually ill-formed, relationally unfulfilled, sexually oppressed, value-compromised and belonging-impaired situation that (supposedly) is Christian singleness. Those two examples don’t begin to touch on all the ways we evangelicals have made singleness into something we very clearly do not consider sustainable, liveable or doable.
They don’t touch on the way we define singleness not primarily as something with its own dignity and meaning, but as the lack of something else—as being Not-Yet-Married. The way we so frequently but incorrectly take God’s pronouncement that it was not good for Adam to be alone (Gen 2:18) and use it to justify our assertion that being single is ‘fundamentally tragic’.
The way we typically portray single Christians as deviants set on attacking marriage. The way we are told, and tell ourselves, that ‘Satan dishonours marriage by fooling us into believing that singleness is okay’ (p. 43). The way our prominent preachers insist that ‘Scripture is clear that God will sanctify us largely through our marriages’ . The way our prominent authors write that ‘marriage is the preferred route to becoming more like Jesus’ (p. 17).
The way single Christians are characterised as obsessed with ‘escalating self-preoccupation, personal ambition, personal development, personal promotion’. The way we believe that singleness ‘by nature caters to and cultivates [selfishness]’. The way we depict single Christians as only ever being concerned about themselves, as opposed to married people for whom it is ‘totally different; you’re asking this question: ‘Sweetheart, how can I love and serve you?’.
The way some of the biggest names in contemporary evangelicalism insist that the primary marks of becoming an adult have to do with getting married and having kids. The way our articles claim that while ‘Scripture at no point condemns singleness, it does pity singleness, particularly for women.’
The way key Christian leaders endorse and recommend books that talk about God having made each of us with a “spouse-shaped hole” and that ‘this is why spinsters often come in pairs. They are clogging up each other’s spouse-shaped hole’ (p.36). The way we run conferences where speakers teach that singles are walking lust bombs, captive ‘to sexual sin, at a rampant level [. . . because] you’ve got all these people with these pent-up desires that can’t be normally met and they are about to explode’. The way authors insist that marriage ‘is such an important part of honoring God as sexual beings [. . .] I don’t know how people can make it morally without getting married’ (p.32).
The way we’ve subsumed the ideal of friendship into marriage, such that now ‘the most vital of human friendship of all [is] with our very best friend, our spouse’. The way that women who are friends with men they aren’t married to are consistently depicted as seductresses out to lure married men into emotional affairs. The way we so easily pronounce that ‘emotional adultery is having as your close friend someone of the opposite sex who is not your spouse’.
Oh, and the way that in recent months it has become de rigueur to post tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet, after tweet about how unmarried and childless individuals are doomed to a far more miserable, unhappy and more suicide-prone existence than their married and procreatively fruitful counterparts… all without any recognition of what a self-fulfilling kind of prophecy such a move actually is. Nor that correlation does not imply causation.
Can you hear Taylor’s vocals getting louder?
Look, don’t get me wrong. I was glad that all of these individuals were retweeting Sam’s brilliant comment. But I was also stupefied at what seemed to me to be the rather large dose of self-delusion involved in the process.
I could imagine single Christian after single Christian, reading those retweets with a raised eyebrow and thinking to themselves, “Oh, so now you tell us? Now, this is the story you’re running with? Now the single Christian life is totally doable, totally sustainable? Huh. I guess you learn something new every day.”
Come on guys. Is it any wonder that someone like Andy Stanley, and plenty of others, have come to the conclusion that a chaste, unmarried life requires the single person to ‘buckle down’, ‘bear down’, ‘be by myself’ and ‘not have any family’?
Is it any wonder that he, and plenty of others, have come to the conclusion that this kind of miserable, lonely, isolated, grinding existence is ‘not sustainable’ for many?
Is it any wonder that he, and plenty of others, have come to the conclusion that it is understandable why many will choose to forgo their biblical convictions in order to chase the thing they’ve been told over and over again is the only real way they will ever be able to experience ‘love, companionship, and family’?
No. No, it is not any wonder.
And the reason it is not any wonder is that singleness as a life of isolated buckling down and bearing up under; singleness as a life lacking in genuine intimacy, companionship and family; singleness as a life of existential unfulfillment and loveless loneliness is precisely what we have taught, insisted upon and promoted in our evangelical churches for decades upon decades.
And with that, Taylor Swift bursts onto the stage in full musical flight. To unapologetically appropriate the lyrics of her hit, Anti-Hero:
It’s us. Hi. We’re the problem. It’s us.
Yes, I have significant disagreements with Stanley’s argument (again, read Sam’s article for more on this). And yes, I deeply lament that he seems to endorse same-sex attracted Christians turning their back on biblical conviction to chase the world’s version of personal fulfilment and existential realisation.
But before we point our fingers at the problem over there, we first need to own up to the fact that, actually, the real problem lies much closer to home.
It’s us. Hi. We’re the problem. It’s us.
We need to own up to the fact that we have constructed a narrative that prizes (idolises) one thing above all other things. We have written a story that idealises (idolises) that one thing as necessary for true human flourishing. We have crafted a context that necessitates (idolises) that thing as the way to truly become a spiritually mature Christian who is genuinely committed to the kingdom of Jesus and living their best life at the same time.
We need to own up to the fact that, just like Taylor’s Anti-Hero, we evangelicals are really good at staring ‘directly at the sun, but never in the mirror’, even as ‘all of the people [we've] ghosted stand there in the room’.
Because, yes, we have indeed ghosted innumerable single Christians.
We have made it seem unsustainable for someone to “buckle and bear down” on living the tragically-pitiable, second-rate, sin-prone, spiritually-stifled, intimacy-starved, love-less, family-absent, unmarried Christian life.
We have turned unmarried Christians into invisible spectres in our churches, such that the very possibility of long-term faithful singleness has become nothing more than a fable.
We have been holding the exit doors open for them, all while subtly curling our lips up at them for not having the staying power to refrain from walking out across the threshold.
It’s us. Hi. We’re the problem, it’s us.
Friends, it is time for us to stop staring into the sun and start staring into the mirror.
It is time for us to stand up and take responsibility for idealising and idolising marriage in ways incompatible with Scripture.
It is time for us to acknowledge our culpability in turning singleness into a life situation consistently depicted as cruel, oppressive and unsustainable.
It is time for us to recognise our own liability in urging single people to buy into the lies that Satan wants them to believe.
It is time for us to take God at his Word when he says that we have life, and have it to the full, not in marriage or sex or romance… but in Jesus Christ the good shepherd (John 10:10).
It’s us. Hi, we’re the problem. It’s us.
And so, what an amazing, wonderful, awesome thing it is for us to know that Jesus Christ is always and ever the solution we all so desperately need.
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