Tag Archives: church

The Church’s Family Idol And Singleness

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Here’s the truth about our culture right now. Close to 50% of marriages will end in divorce. Stats show that nearly one third of first marriages will end in divorce within the first 10 years.  When you add in out of wedlock births, close to 60% of kids in high school don’t live in their “nuclear family”.

The Church has seen this and tried to respond. . . mostly by talking about marriage and family.  But as an unintended consequence we have sometimes made family an idol. And for all of this attention to family, we are not winning.

We have this idea that if we do enough teaching on marriage and family that everything will turn around.  We have hundreds of books.  We hold seminars and conferences.  We have Focus on the Family, we have churches named the Family Church.  We have outreach to families.  We say, “We are going to be doing a sermon series on marriage so invite your neighbor.”

We’ve created this idea of the Biblical family.  This is a little crazy when you consider that there probably isn’t one marriage in the Bible that you would want to emulate.

Now to be sure there are great principles in the Bible for marriage.  But really they are mostly the same principles for all of life.  How do you love another person?  If you’re married, that should be the number one example of that. It’s your number one covenant relationship.

But the Bible isn’t about family. It’s about God and us, mainly God actually.  Jesus says unless you hate your wife and children, you can’t follow me.  How do we reconcile that with how we teach all this stuff?  Jesus is obviously not saying to hate anyone.  He is however saying that He comes first – and that is true regardless of marital status.  So the real question is regardless of my context how do I follow Jesus?  Seems to me we ought to talk to the other half of the peoples’ context.

Now before you rip me, let me say that I’m not against any of this.  I think it is vital the Church talk about these things.  I know that I have been impacted, even as a single, by these teachings.  I’m for it and I’ve encouraged us as singles to learn from it for a variety of reasons.  I’ve seen marriages and families be saved by it.  But this focus on the family will not turn the tide because singles aren’t there to listen to it.

Married people already go to church.  Most of the people that don’t go to church are not married.  According to Barna 37% of them have never been married at all.

What used to happen is the Church would lose the young 20 somethings and then when they got married they would come back.  The problem is that now they are not getting married.  Only 20% of those 18-29 have ever been married.  That means that we are losing the late 20 somethings.  It means that the neighbor you are supposed to invite to the marriage sermon series – they are single.

We can’t just say let’s save marriages because if we’re not careful, there won’t be any marriages to save.  We need a theology of singleness to go with our theology of marriage.  We need to offer some practical help for single people.  We can’t just say get married and then we will help you.  We need to help people figure out if they are called to celibacy or marriage and then help them do it.

Let me give you an example from my own church (which I love).  At my church we have what we call position papers.  These are “brief” papers that say where we stand on certain things.  So for example we have papers on baptism, communion, the end times, etc.

So of course we have a paper on marriage.  We also have one on divorce and remarriage. We have one on Christian sexual ethics.  We even have one on “dating” (we’d be better off with a position paper on how to get a date).  But we do not have one on singleness or celibacy.  And our church at one point was 50% single!  If we don’t have it, who does?

I’m not mad, bitter or whining. That’s not my heart at all.  But, we are losing and this is part of the reason why.  We need to deal with it.

Catch this:  Most of the battle for sexual purity, Godly marriage and family, and even the hot button issues like homosexuality and abortion, cannot be won without a right theology of singleness. People are lost and confused.

You CANNOT change this without a right theology of singleness.  And that theology has to go WAY beyond what not to do on a date.  Until it does it’s going to get worse, not better.

What is your church’s theology of singleness?  What is yours?

Marriage Is For Grown Ups

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So as a single guy, I’ve definitely watched too much late night television.  Every now and then after I’ve had enough Sportscenter, I’ll flip through the informercials.  Now I’ve only ordered two or three things ever (NuWave Oven – greatest thing ever –  Ab Roller, not so much). But one of the latest trends is just incredible to me.

This is the anti-aging movement.  We’ve got Cindy Crawford’s Meaningful Beauty (she really does still look the same – weird), Victoria Principal who is now 63 years old and has been doing “anti-aging” for what seems like forever and the latest I saw is “Julie is 53, but looks 35”.  We also have all the men’s versions.  You can get drugs to make your hair grow back, your sex drive go up (watch out for that four hour erection) and apparently get all your old energy back.

Here’s the reality.  We live in a culture that worships youth and it is confusing singles and killing marriage.

Marriage you see, is for grown ups.  Everyone knows this, which is why no one is getting married. . . . because they don’t want to grow up.

In 1970 69% of 25 year old white men were married.  In 2000 33% were.  In 2010 only 20% of all adults aged 18-29 have ever been married.  A huge part of the reason is that we keep moving the bar of what it means to be an adult.  Several studies now say that adolescence goes all the way up to 26 years old. It used to be adolescence ended at 18 and you’d have reached most of your adult milestones by 25.  Forty years ago you would have been done with your education, had a job, been married and probably had a kid. Now it’s a free for all.

Human brain development has not changed, human social development has.  

Humanity has always wanted to live forever and the natural outtake of that is that the younger I can look, feel and act, the better off I’ll be.  As a society, and to some extent as the church, we’ve embraced it all.  “Get your masters,” “Follow your dreams”, “join this short term program right after college – you know before you have to get a real job” “see the world” etc.  We have over nurturing parents that don’t want their kids to grow up. Even churches and ministry organizations have fallen into this trap.  We have youth group, then college group, then young peoples group.  Where’s the grown up group?  But I digress.

The point here is that one of the huge reasons that we have more single people than ever before is that we have more immature people than ever before.  I’m sorry if that hurts.  It’s hurts me.  But if we’re honest it’s just true.  We can get away with it so we do.  This is especially true with guys.

Adolescence and singleness are not the same thing.  But by extending adolescence we are making it harder to distinguish.  Marriage is seen as something I can do later, when I grow up – if I grow up.

This is bad for everybody.  So what do we do?

The Church must go after the unmarried.  If the church isn’t going to do this, then we are in serious, serious trouble.  I mean big time.  Here’s what the church used to do. They’d lose all the early 20 something men, but they’d get them back because when they got married and had kids they remembered that they used to go to church.  But now they aren’t getting married and they aren’t coming back.  We HAVE to address this.  According to Barna 37% of the “unchurched” are single/never married and 55% are men.  Do the math.  If our plan is, “they’ll be back when they are married” we are in serious trouble.

Second, we as singles have got to grow ourselves up.  We have to fight against the temptation to act like an adolescent.  We need to move out of our parents houses, take real jobs (even if it is a starter job), quit playing video games and looking at porn, and figure out what it means to make a vow to another person, be it the vow of marriage or the vow of celibacy.  We need to start facing our sin and woundedness. Community will be required for any of this to happen so we’ll have to actually engage others.

If we don’t it’s not going to matter whether or not you get married because you will either be a completely narcissistic single person or a terrible spouse.  We are not called to be either of those.

The good news is that grown up is good.  Facing our stuff is hard but freeing.  Getting older should mean getting better.  That’s the thing about each step of maturity.  It is harder but better.  That is what growth is.

So are you a grown up?  What areas of your life do you still feel like an adolescent?  What area of your life can you get away with because you are single?

Sexual Immorality Leads Away From Marriage

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C.S Lewis once said, “It would seem Our Lord Finds our desires not to strong but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can not imagine what is meant by a holiday at sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to what we have done with sex and marriage in our culture.  We have created a mess.

The problem is not desire.  The problem is that when we try to fill the desire the wrong way (not just sexual desire), it get’s in the way of the right way of fulfilling it.

Sixty years ago 60% of people aged 18-29 were married.  Today only 20% of that same demographic has ever been married.  That is a dramatic change. We are typically entering puberty earlier (there’s not space here to go into why) and yet waiting longer to get married.  So where as we used to say, “just wait 5 years or so to be married”, now we basically say, “just wait 15 years to have sex”.  Thats crazy!  The problem is cyclical because in one sense it’s harder to wait that long, but in another sense because people are giving up and meeting that desire other ways, it is making people have less desire to get married.

Paul writes in 1st Corinthians that if you want to have sex, get married.  He basically says, “rather than burn with unmet desire, get married and meet it the right way.”  But this is a far cry from where we are at today, even in the Church.

We mess this up a lot of different ways and none of them help us when we are single or even later when we get married.

One plan often offered is to kill the desire.  This is where we just basically tell people sex is bad, don’t have it.  We may not say it but we essentially end up leading people there.  This is a horrible idea because desire for sex isn’t bad  Being controlled by it (or any other desire) is but the desire for sex and intimacy is a huge part of the reason for marriage. Worst of all, if I get married, I won’t be able to just flip a switch that all of a sudden makes sex good.

But more often what we do is go out and meet our desire for sex in some other way. Sometimes this means having sex outside of marriage. This does not lead down a path to marriage.  That’s not to say that people who do this don’t get married but it doesn’t increase the chances.  This is why so many people who live together end up not getting married.  Playing house and being married are not the same thing.  Sex before covenant is never beneficial.

But the biggest problem in the church right now is what I call Lazy Sexual Immorality. This is where I don’t meet my sexual need with another person at all.  Instead I just watch, read or think about someone else doing it and “meet” my need that way.  Tony Campolo once said, “If you are going to sin, at least do it boldly.”  These are the opposite of bold. They are gutless.

If you are under 30 you have seen internet porn.  It’s just the truth.  You have.  The average age a person first sees it right now is 11.  Read that again.  Now this screws us up in all sorts of ways.  But fantasy and habitual masturbation are right behind it.  They are all ways that we can meet our needs without having to “involve” someone else.  And they are killing us.  I have a friend who says that every guy thinks marriage is going to be a porn movie and every girl thinks it’s going to be a romance novel.  It’s not either.  It should be better.  But that is what we are expecting, and when it doesn’t happen we bail.

When we meet our sexual desire outside of marriage it leads us away from marriage.  Either we get our desire met, and therefore don’t want to make the sacrifices to meet them in the right way, or we get wrapped up in our shame and guilt and therefore either can’t engage the real thing or feel like we don’t now “deserve” it.  Usually some sick twisted combination of all of the above.

It’s a nasty cycle and a lot of people are in it.  I’ve been in it many times in one form or another.  Fortunately, you don’t have to stay in it.  I’m going to write more on that soon.  But for today the question really is this: What are you doing with your sexual desire?  How are you meeting it?  Do you see how that affects you from engaging the real thing?

 

Would Jesus Snuggle?

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The other day one of my friends posted a link on facebook that just stopped me.  I wasn’t even sure exactly what to do with it – it’s just dumbfounding.  And yet . . . it’s not.  Which is why she posted it.

There is a new place called The Snuggery.  Basically the idea is that we all need physical touch and intimacy.  It brings healing and comfort.  But sense most people don’t have it, this lady has started a business.  I’m not making this up.  For $50 you can have a 45 minute snuggling session.  There are two professional snugglers.  You can snuggle with both for $100.  Again, I’m not kidding.

It’s not to be sexual and it must be fully clothed (pajamas are ok though).  Just wear what you are comfortable in.  You can talk or not talk.  Whatever you want.  You just snuggle. You get to be touched.

I’m literally not sure whether to laugh or cry.  Seriously.  In a way it breaks my heart.  This is where we are at as a society.  We are this alone.

Now I guarantee there are some married people who haven’t snuggled at home in a while, which is tragic.  But as a single person this is a huge issue.

I mentioned this in one of my first blogs.  One of the absolutely hardest things as a single is the lack of touch.  And the older you get, the more this is true. What these ladies have right is that touch matters.  Under the heading of WHY SNUGGLE they list out the benefits of intimate, nonsexual touch.  They aren’t wrong about any of it.  And as their lead sentence says, “Why Snuggle? Quite simply because it makes us feel good.”

But if you are single what do you do with this?  If it is true that we need touch, what do we do?

The problem is exasperated by several things.  First off we have had a lot of bad physical touch in our culture.  Over the course of their lifetime 28% of kids age 14-17 have been sexually violated in some way.  This doesn’t even begin to include physical abuse or physical neglect.  That is the world we are growing up in.

Secondly, we have a much more isolated world.  We are way more likely to work alone, and 28% of us live alone. (Now if half of us are married that means that 50% of single people live by themselves.)  That does not lead to good touch.  It leads to isolation.

Finally, partly in response to all of the above and the sexually immoral culture that we live in, the Church has told us not to touch anyone.  Kiss dating goodbye.  Don’t touch or it could lead to sex.  I get it, I really do, but man, if we don’t touch at all, that can’t be good.  We can’t live in fear and call it religion.

I can speak from personal experience here.  I went 10 years without kissing anyone (age 25-35).  Most of that was spent with very little touch.  There were lots of reasons.  But to be honest as I turned the corner of 30 I was messed up, and I’d say lack of touch contributed to that.  I remember feeling awkward even hugging sometimes.

I’ll be honest and say I’m not sure how to fix all this.  I’m not suggesting the Church start establishing Christian Snuggeries.  But I know that we need an answer.  We need something different than “don’t have sex” and “don’t go to far”.  Why should two women be addressing this while we stand on the sidelines?

Appropriate touch is vital.  I can’t remember where I saw it but there is a video of nuns in a poor country taking in dying children.  You know the first thing they did?  They hugged them and held them for extended periods.

In Mark 2 a leper approaches Jesus.  Back then, lepers were separated out and seen as unclean.  They were to avoid contact with the “clean” people at all costs.  In fact there was a six foot rule that said no one was supposed to be within six feet of them.

But as this guy approaches Jesus, he doesn’t move out of the way.  Now Jesus could have said the word and this man would have been healed of leprosy.  But he still would have been untouched, and maybe people would have wondered, “is he really well?”

In one of the most simple, powerful moments in Jesus’ ministry, he reached out and touched the man.  He knew he needed more than a physical healing – he needed to know he was touchable.

Somehow we have to rescue this.  We have to know that not only are we “Christian” or “Saved” but that we are touchable.  Whatever message we send the single person, that has to be part of it.

Have you ever suffered from lack of touch? Where do you go for appropriate touch?

Sexual Immorality Is Not Just About You

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About two weeks ago I was relaxing at a hotel bar where I often go to chat with friends or write this blog.  I was just about to shut it down when a gentleman showed up who was from out of town.  He sat down and started to share about why he was in town etc. Anyway after a while he asked if I had a family and I said no, but I was about to get married.  He of course congratulated me and shared he had been married for 20 years. Then he said this, “Of course you know, that once you get married, you’ll have less sex.”  I laughed.  I sure as heck hope not, because we are not having sex now.

It was the same when I was in college.  I was literally the only person in my suite of 9, that didn’t have sex my freshmen year.  They used to joke about it.  I was also the person they came to when stuff in their life was hard.  They knew I was different.

You see we don’t just flee from sexual immorality for ourselves.  It’s one of God’s ways of separating us out – as a witness.  It’s not just about you and me and our little moral battle.

One of the big misconceptions that people have is that sexual immorality is worse today than at other points in history.  There is the idea that all of a sudden it’s “crazy” out there and that marriage is being devalued etc.

This leads to a couple of problems.  First, there a lot of people who think what the Bible says about sex is “old school” and not relevant for today.  On the other hand the Church ends up running around shouting that the world is ending, making an idol out of the family and longing for the past (which I think is the 1950’s America).

Now it is true that American culture is changing.  But none of this is new.  Neither is our call to live differently than the culture.

When you look at the sexual practices that God lays out in the old testament it needs to be understood that God was giving them these specifics for a reason.  That reason is that all the other societies in the Near East were not practicing them.  When God says, don’t sleep with an animal, He says it because others were.  He’s not making up random stuff.  The Near Eastern cultures were crazy, even by our standards.  People were having sex in every way, with everybody and everything.  They even worshiped to it.

God was saying to the Israelites, “You will not be like them.  You are my people and this will distinguish you.”

The same is true in Paul’s letter to Corinth.  They had written Paul and they asked him what they should do.  How should they practice sexuality and marriage now that they had Jesus?  Paul starts that whole message by saying, “Now for the questions you asked about – here’s how to apply God’s teaching and live the way He would want in your context.”  Which was a completely pagan and dualistic context.  Sound familiar?

If we are going to flee from sexual immorality we have to define what that is. The good news is that currently most folks are not sleeping with animals or temple prostitutes (at least I’ve never been tempted by either).  So in our day, we can’t just take one liners from the Bible and try to make them mean what we want them to.  Instead, we need to take the overall meaning of sex, marriage, and celibacy in the scriptures (which is pretty dang clear) and apply that to our current context.  In legal terms it’s like law and case law.  How does the law apply to our case today?

But beyond that we need to realize that our call to flee from immorality is not just as a set of rules to keep us out of trouble.  God called Israel out.  He made them His people and commanded them to live in a way that demonstrated Him to the world.  One of the ways they were to do this was by how they behaved sexually.  Paul tells the early church the same thing.  You are set apart.  You were bought at a price.  You are NEW and different.  Live like it – in the light!

One of the reasons we fail is that even in our morality or lack there of, it’s all about us.  That wasn’t really the point.  God has bigger plans.  When we are set apart, people are drawn to us.  Want to be counter cultural?  Want to make a difference?  Want to point towards God.  Live this area of your life differently than the world.  It was true 4000 years ago and it’s true now.

Unmet Desire Is Good

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When I was a kid, I really, really loved basketball.  I wanted to be good.  I would pretend to be the Missouri Tigers in the driveway.  You know the drill – down two with time running out, you shoot, and. . . if you missed – well you were fouled.  Haha.

In high school I wanted to win, and I wanted to be the star.  Now the truth is I was good but not a star, but that didn’t keep me from working at it.  I would practice a lot.  I bought the “strength shoes” to improve my vertical. I did endless drills.

I had a good not great career.  But I loved the whole thing.  But what drove me was the chance to win.  I had a desire to win.  It wasn’t always met – but it drove me to be better.

We have a huge problem in our culture and it has a crazy impact on us as singles.  We think that unmet desire is always bad.  If I have a desire, then it should be met – right now!  This is America damn it!  Meet My Desire!

Desire is good.  In fact in Psalm 37:4 God promises to give us desires (not give us what we want, but give us what to want).  Desire drives us to do incredible things.  Desire makes us want to grow, to change, to become better.  Without desire we would be dead.

Desire drives us to act.  Always. The question becomes where do we let us drive us.

We all have a desire for love. Now obviously we need to take our desire for love to Jesus first.  This is critical for everything else in life.  The best part is that God will meet us and He does love us.  In fact he is the only person who can meet that desire.

But what about other desires.  Can God meet our desire for sex?  Can God be our spouse? Can God physically hold our hand or give us physical intimacy?  No.  And yet God created sex.  He created us with the desire for physical and emotional intimacy and partnership with another person.  That’s awesome . . . and frustrating!

So what do we do with unmet sexual/intimacy desire?

We can go out and meet that base desire by having sex with someone.  I mean we have needs and they need to be met.  A lot of us don’t want the work involved with that sin though so we settle for what I call “Lazy Immorality”.  By this I mean, porn, masturbation, romance novels, whatever.  (I’ll define this more soon).

We can also just try to kill the desire so we don’t have to feel it.  Just focus on work, or school, or a hobby.  The more extreme the better.  Whatever works.  Ministry works well here.  Just focus on other stuff.  Shove that desire down deep.

We can get religious.  Just be content where you are.  We can drop in some misused Pauline quotes.  The favorite is in Philippians 4 where Paul says, “I have learned the secret to being content in any and every situation.”  So just don’t want.  “Just Be” is how we take that.  But that isn’t really what Paul is getting at.  The “secret” isn’t to kill desire.  It’s not to be ok with whatever.  Paul gives us the secret in the next verse – through Jesus “who gives me strength”.

Paul had learned that regardless of what he felt, Jesus would meet him and sustain it.  His identity, joy, or overall life was not wrapped up in unmet desire or circumstance. That is the contentment Paul was talking about.  He wasn’t saying, “Don’t feel.  Don’t try to make things different. Stay as you are it’s fine.”  No Paul was saying Jesus was bigger than all of that.  He is saying let whatever your situation is let it drive you to Jesus.  I don’t need to kill my desire or have it met the wrong way.  I need to walk straight into unmet desire – with Jesus.

We can’t just tell people to not worry about it.  We don’t do this in other areas.  The church doesn’t say to the poor – just stay poor and be content.  It doesn’t say to the sick, just stay sick and be content.  No, we step up and step in.  We act.  (Or at least we are supposed to).  All the while pointing out that no matter what the circumstances Jesus has to be desired first.

The truth is that these desires we have are natural and good, and from God.  We need to engage Him and we need to move forward.  It’s hard.  Unmet desire is a part of life to the full.  We need to feel the tension.  It drives us to the things that God has for us – if we let it.

What do you do with your unmet desire?

Singleness Is Not A Spiritual Gift

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Many different times I’ve been asked if I had the “gift” of singleness.  It’s always bothered me.  I think it’s because there is basically only one scripture that uses anything close to that term, and even then it isn’t singled out (ha – how about that pun).

The scripture of course is in 1 Corinthians 7.  I’ve talked about this section of scripture more in depth but basically Paul is talking about marriage, singleness, divorce etc. In the very first paragraph, Paul says that he wishes all were like him (single) but that each person has their own gift from God.

That’s it.  That is the only place in the entire Bible where you could make the case for the “gift” of singleness.

Notice that we don’t go around asking people if they have the gift of marriage.  I guess if you are married you’ve got it and if not it could go either way?

I think either marriage or singleness could be a gift in a sense.  But it’s not a spiritual gift.  It’s not tongues, prophesy, teaching, mercy, healing, exhortation, singleness. . .

The big problem I have with the gift idea is what is often implied.  It’s the idea that if you have this gift then you will know it and you will be able to handle singleness no problem. Flip this around – if you have the gift of marriage then you will not have any problems in marriage, because you will desire all the right things etc.  Um yeah, not so much.

A president of a seminary has said that to determine if I have the gift of singleness I should ask myself, “Can I go the rest of my life without sex, without the companionship of marriage, without having children and without being bitter about it?”  He says if I answer yes, then I probably have the gift of singleness.

Maybe, but the problem is that I could probably answer that yes at this point in my life.  But I’m engaged and I’m pretty sure God is in that.  My point is that I could go without sex (I’ve done it for 40 years) and I’m not bitter.

This whole area is a complete mess in our culture because we have so many people not married.  There are A LOT of reasons for this, some good, most bad.  But we have the chance here as the Church to begin to help people figure this out.  It starts with recognizing what marriage really is and what celibacy for life really is, and then helping people walk in both.  We need some different questions.

Jesus doesn’t talk about it being a gift.  In one of the most misused “singleness” scriptures of all time Jesus actually says something way more interesting.  In Matthew 19 Jesus is asked about divorce.  He says it’s not good and goes beyond what they were expecting to say that anyone who divorces his wife for any reason other than sexual immorality and marries another, commits adultery.

The disciples are shocked.  They say, “If this is the situation between man and wife, it’s better not to marry.”  Then Jesus says this not every one can accept this word (what he just shared about marriage), but only those to whom it is given.

But then Jesus goes on to say that some are eunuchs at birth, some are made that way by others and, “there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”  Big word there.  Do you see it.  CHOOSE.  Look Out!

Is Jesus saying we have a choice?

This is so critical.  We have over spiritualized/romanticized the whole dang thing.  No where in the Bible does it say that there is THE ONE.  No where does it talk about a soul mate.  No where does it say that married or single that I won’t struggle with sexual sin or have no unmet desires.  We’ve made up this perfect scenario and it messes up the whole thing – singleness and marriage.

Marriage is a choice.  So is celibacy.  I can choose to make a vow with God to another person in holy matrimony.  I can also make a vow with God, to celibate ministry.  Both are good.  Neither has anything to do with being single as we know it today.  It’s not about whether one is easier or harder for me.

We all make choices.  We pass on dating/marrying certain people and we make choices to date/marry certain people.  Other people make choices about us.  We make vocational choices, geographical choices.  We have more choices than any culture at any point in history.

This is why it is so critical that we walk with God and others – so that we can make more good choices.  God may well call you toward one or the other.  We choose whether or not to listen and obey – just like every other aspect of life.

If I Get Married, Can We Still Be Friends?

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Let’s say after a few visits to a church you decide to join a small group. You go to sign up and after taking down your general information the person running the sign up asks you, “How much money do you make?”  After you recover from shock, you say, “Excuse me? Why does that matter?”  The person warmly smiles (because that is what we do at church) and says, “Oh, this year we are going to be doing a couple of lessons on money, so we are setting up our small groups by income level – you know so that people are kind of in the same boat so to speak, and can identify with each other better.”

What would your reaction be to that?  Or how about if you go to a church with Sunday School classes.  What if there was a people with a lot of money class and a people with no money class.  You know because people with different income have different needs, experience different struggles and of course like to hang out with people just like them.

Here’s the best part about this – if you get a big promotion – you get to move to a new group.  Of course if you get demoted – well . . . .

In my opinion, one of the great problems in our Christian communities is that we have become all about affinity.  We hang out with people like us.  The problem is the kingdom doesn’t look like this.  

Just look at Jesus’s disciples.  I mean it was not very often in those days that you would have a fisherman, a zealot and a tax collector hanging out together. . . every day. . . for three years. Actually it doesn’t happen today either.

But they did.  Why?  Because they came together around Jesus.  And a funny thing, it worked.  In fact we are having this conversation because it worked.  But this is not how we like it.  We like comfort.  We like the people who look, act, and think like us.  There’s a lot wrong with this but for me the main problem is we are ripping each other off.

I bring all this up because there is often this weird divide between singles and marrieds in the church.  In fact I would say that the divide is more apparent in Christians than non-Christians.  There are a lot of reasons for it.  We can make idols out of family, marriage, or even singleness.  The Church in our current culture is pretty marriage centered and often treat marrieds and singles differently.

But a lot of it is that we are just so self focussed that we rule out anyone in a different context.

I see this all the time.  Sometimes it’s the married peoples fault.  They get married and just kind of abandon their single friends because somehow magically they now identify more with them than those they were friends with before.  But then there are single people who give their newly married friends almost no choice because they start treating them as if now they have some sort of weird disease – “they’re married now so you know. . . ”  To top it off, many churches (and ministries) are set up in such a way that when you get married you have to switch groups/classes/etc.

And of course no one who is in a different place could possibly be helpful.  The married person doesn’t think the single person could possibly understand and speak into their married life, and the single person knows that married person just doesn’t get their plight.

Here’s what’s funny about this for me.  I’m 40 years old.  I’ve never been married – I’m about as single as you can get.  And in six months I’ll be married.  So can we still be friends?

All of my mentors are married.  A whole lot of things on this blog come from conversations with them. At the same time a whole lot of people I mentor are married – will I now suddenly be a better mentor to them?  Once I’m married do I still have stuff to say about being single or am I now clueless?  Will more married people now trust me because I’m married?  Really, if you want to be un-single should you listen to the person who is always single (I once told someone I could teach them how to not get married. Ha!) or the person who figured out how to get married?  We could play this game all day.

The truth is we need each other.  We singles need to learn how to love our married friends and vice versa.  It can be complicated.  It takes being intentional. It takes having a right theology of singleness and of marriage.  It means not lifting one up over the other but lifting Jesus up over both.  It probably means being uncomfortable.

Is your community divided?  Whether you are single or married, are you willing to be intentional with those who aren’t?

Why Do We Date The Wrong People?

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Recently in a sermon a pastor was sharing about how singles can become bitter while waiting on God to bring them a spouse. This can be true, especially if you wait without really walking with God.  But then he went on to say that bitterness could lead us to dating the wrong people – in other words we give up and kind of say screw God, he’s not bringing me someone, so I’ll go date people I shouldn’t. (By the way, the pastor deserves for credit for actually addressing singles).

But, while I don’t doubt that people sometimes do date the “wrong” people because they get tired of “waiting” on God, I don’t think it works quite that way very often.  Most of the people I know that are bitter at God for not having a spouse are not dating anyone – right or wrong.

Many people who would say they got tired of waiting on God, and therefore dated someone they knew they shouldn’t, are kind of full of it in at least one of two ways.  First they usually didn’t really wait that long, and they never really have (again I’m talking generally here).  Waiting six months is not a long time.  Heck a year is not really a long time. Secondly, usually they were attracted to someone and they went for it regardless of what God wanted, and then they rationalized it backwards.  That’s not being bitter about waiting for God, that’s being disobedient to God and then trying to rationalize it.  Those are two different things.

Being mad at God is not typically the reason that we date the wrong person. Usually there are other reasons – and it’s habitual.  In other words we have a pattern of dating people that we later would say we shouldn’t have.

How does this happen?  I’ve had several different people tell me that it seems like their “picker” is messed up.  In other words, somehow they keep picking the wrong people to date.  I think there are several ways this happens.

Here’s a great quote, “It just seems like all the people I’m attracted to (or who are attracted to me) aren’t Jesus people.”  Really?!  Have you ever thought about why that is?  I mean are non believers etc, really “hotter” than believers?  I’m gonna go with no.  So what gives?

Here’s some ways we get into these traps.

Sometimes we are afraid of the real thing.  In other words if you constantly date people you know you can’t marry, guess what – you don’t have to get married.  You will always have a way out.  It’s a control thing.  I know it seems weird, but I promise you there are some of us that are sabotaging the whole deal from the get go.  We are scared of marriage for whatever reason, but we want companionship so we date people we know deep down we wouldn’t marry.  This always turns out one of two ways, you have to break up (some do this super quick each time, others do it long and drawn out each time) or you end up so tied to the person that you go ahead and marry them – you’ve come this far.

Some of us think we are disqualified from dating and marrying the good person.  In other words, I’ve done bad stuff, so the person who has it together with Jesus won’t want me.  The truth of course is that we have all done bad stuff in one way or another and none of us is disqualified from marriage.  If God is not going to withhold salvation, is He going to withhold a spouse?

Another version of this is the “I don’t want to face my hard stuff, so I’ll date only people that won’t make me face it.”  This is one of the exact reasons God created marriage to begin with – to make us face stuff and grow.  Running from the people that make you grow is bad in every way, including but not limited to who you date.

Finally, there are a lot of Christian people who say they want to follow Jesus and date a Jesus follower who quite frankly aren’t actually walking with God.  In other words they would give all the right answers but their lives and hearts don’t actually reflect it.  They are actually doing exactly what they want to do, they just don’t want to admit it because it sounds bad.

Here’s the reality.  We date based on how we see ourselves.  This is always true regardless of high or low we view ourselves.  It’s true of not just of who we date, but how we date, how we approach the opposite sex and how we act.  This is why having our identity in Christ is so key.

Is your picker broken?  How do you see yourself?  Is your identity in Christ?  If not, what is it in – really?

The Church Doesn’t Get Singleness

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Here’s a fun experiment.  Go to amazon and search for Christian marriage books and then search Christian Single books.  It’s not pretty.  (Then for real fun go through the Christian single list and try to find books written by a guy.)

Here’s the point.  The Church loves to talk about marriage.  They are like the marriage experts.  As I’ve said no matter what your theological beliefs, you can find a marriage book for you.  I mean you name it – you like Keller? Eldredge? Piper? Jakes? Bell?  You can find their take on marriage. Books about how to navigate singleness – not as much, (apparently ladies you are supposed to do a lot of waiting and being satisfied, and us guys are supposed to figure it out without any help whatsoever).

But it’s not just books.  Marriage retreats, forums, conferences, sermon series.  Its even part of churches’ missional approach, “we are going to be doing a series on marriage – invite all your friends.”

Sure somewhere in there they like to throw in the obligatory thought on singleness, which is usually short sided, un-researched, full of platitudes and impractical.  And then the best part is we kind of get a pat on the head as if to say, someday you too can be a grown up married person.

Now someone will say that I’m bitter or just seeing the grass as greener on the other side.  I’m not mad – I’m just right.  In 20 years of walking with Jesus and going to church (including the last eight at a church that has 50% single people) I’ve never had a married friend say, “The church just doesn’t get marriage.”  Single people feel it all the time.  It’s a no brainer and it’s real.

Have you ever thought about why it’s this way?  One main reason that I’ve talked about before if that most pastors don’t get it.  But there are other basic reasons.

First it’s just flat easier to talk about.  There’s more clear scriptures on marriage.  There’s not much on singleness and exactly zero on dating.  Also, it’s more obvious if a marriage is in trouble than if a single is.  So the fact is it’s just easier.

Second, married people fit the church structure better.  They are more comfortable showing up to church to begin with. Much easier to go with someone than alone.  The church knows that if you love kids then you will get parents.  A lot of Christian parents are married – (side note – we are not very good with single parents either.  Holy smokes.  Let’s hold another moms group during the day – that helps – yikes).

The truth is almost everything we do is set up for the family – training the family, protecting the family, growing the family. In fact I would submit that family is an idol in our church today, but that is another post.  Now it is helpful as a single person, especially if we didn’t grow up with it, to see and be engaged with solid families and I’m all about that.  But where does the non married person fit into all of that.  What real practical help are we giving to them for where they are right now?

Third, the church assumes that you should get married.  We talk about being called to singleness but we do absolutely nothing to help anyone determine that.  Our theology of singleness is messed up at best and completely lacking at worst.  

Finally, because they don’t know what to do and what to say, they offer up spiritual platitudes about waiting on God, not settling, perfect definitions of who we should marry, and how to not have sex – which is their biggest concern.

Now some of this is our fault as singles.  Here’s what I mean.  We are way more likely to church hop (in fairness some of that is due to the stuff above).  We can leave any time – we don’t have to convince a spouse or pull kids away from their youth group.  Secondly, married people typically give more money and assume more Sunday leadership roles.  I can’t back that up with statistics but I’d stake any amount you want on that being true. We often have less invested.

But here’s the thing, and you, me, married people, the church and everyone else might want to grab a hold of this.  The day of reckoning is here.  50% of America is unmarried and the trend is upwards.  80% of people age 18-29 have never been married and that trend is upwards.  So unless the church wants to get smaller it might want to think about how to help, reach out to, walk with, encourage, engage, and challenge singles.  They might want to figure out how to empower them in leadership.  Perhaps they could help them figure out and pursue their calling to marriage or to celibate ministry.

The church could be a place where singles are welcome, treated equally and held accountable through real relationships.  Or it can keep ignoring reality and miss out on the opportunity.