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A few Chimes back, I
wrote an article titled: “Caution: Seniors Scrambling,” in an attempt to
comically highlight the pressure we West-Michiganders face in regards to
getting married. As a single woman about to leave behind the world of
formal education and start life in the “real world” (which may or may
not include getting a job, as I’m graduating with an English major),
this is a highly personal domain for me, and I felt like I needed to
voice my concern (though I know a small school newspaper is not exactly
a great platform for any revolution). Surprisingly enough, a lot of
people read the article (many, after my mother thrust it in their hands
with the excitement and pride a normal mother might have if her child,
say, found the cure for cancer). In conversation with those who did read
it, I found myself defending and explicating my views, which I thought
I’d take another stab at here.
Chris, a family friend
occasionally bemoaned his own family’s prejudice toward his singleness.
All throughout college, Chris’ younger brother had been seriously dating
someone while Chris remained single.
Every year at the
Thanksgiving celebration with extended family, his brother and
girlfriend were given seats at the adult’s table, while Chris was left,
knees protruding awkwardly over the plane of his chair, to entertain his
younger cousins.
We have separate
tables in our church as well. Single people are rarely asked to hold
leadership positions. Sermons are geared toward and have themes around
marriage. Ceremonies like baptisms and marriages are the bedrock of our
churches celebrations: neither events that celebrate the single life.
Single people are
marginalized even in attempts at inclusion: the minute they walk through
the door, we feel the need to usher them into a singles’ ministry where
they can mingle with others with the same affliction. Personally
speaking, none of my problems have anything to do with being single, and
I’d rather be a part of the “big people’s table” when it comes to
matters of the church.
Christian literature
carries some blame in regards to the church’s treatment of single
people. In a book entitled Dating: Guidelines from the Bible, the author
Scott Kirby sets up the premise of the book on the basis that human
beings are incomplete without a marriage partner. He states, “Back in
the Garden of Eden, God made man with a woman-sized void in his life.
And God created woman with a man-sized void in her life.” He goes on to
state, “Only man and woman together make a whole. Separated, there is a
sense of incompleteness.” This is just not true! To treat people inside
the church as incomplete not only disrespects them but also limits our
view of the power single people hold.
What if this had been
said in the community Mother Theresa grew up in: “That Theresa is a
great woman, but man, if she could just find someone, I’m sure she would
make something of herself.” When we act as though single people are
incomplete, there is the risk of their internalizing that and wallowing
in their singleness instead of listening to God’s call for them.
The fact that people
buy into this notion could be the reason why many marriages fail and why
many singles are unhappy and unproductive in their state of singleness.
Peter Weaver, a United Methodist bishop, expressed his concern for our
culture’s attitude toward singles in a convention addressing ministries
for single adults.
He states, “The church
often co-opts society’s biases and begins to think there is something
wrong with being single. Those in the church who live alone amid these
biases sometimes internalize the belief that something is wrong with
them.”
If people in the
church are not being affirmed in their singleness and are not given
responsibilities and respect, they will most likely not take a seat at
the children’s table, they will leave. Or, equally tragic, they might be
forced into a call of marriage not from God, but from the intense
pressure around them.
Strong single people
with an intense desire for ministry are all around. Paul and Jesus are
some of the model examples we have from the Bible. Though there is
controversy about whether these two had wives, doesn’t it say something
that these possible marriages were never explicitly mentioned in the
Bible? Even if they did exist, they simply were not the focal point of
Jesus’ and Paul’s ministry. This can be a lesson to both single and
married people: our single or married state is not the point of our
lives, and should be treated as a means to an end of serving God.
There is a potential
for squandering God’s gifts in marriage when our focus lies in the
relationship with that one other person to the neglect of furthering
God’s kingdom outside of ourselves. This same potential is prevalent in
singles’ lives when those people feel inadequate alone and waste talent
and time looking for someone to complete them.
If we are trained to
view ourselves as half-people, walking around trying to find another
half to complete us, we fool ourselves and discredit God. God has
created us with a God-shaped void in each of us, and to insinuate that
another person could come close to fulfilling these needs is unfair to
our potential mates and creates an untrue illusion of marriage for
single people.
Our culture’s
obsession with marriage and romantic love plays itself out in almost
every movie and TV show. Those few that center around singles usually
include characters who are power-crazed and sexually promiscuous, i.e.
Sex and the City.
Last weekend, I
watched The Notebook with a guy who was told “you won’t know how to love
until you see this movie.” Call me cynical (or man-hater, crazy
feminist, take your pick) but I couldn’t help poking fun of the
plotline, or lack of, in this movie. Ally and Noah meet, fall in love,
consecrate love. Ally leaves. Noah is sad. Ally comes back. Noah is
happy. The entire movie is about these two people’s intense desire for
one another. But I couldn’t help wondering what else they had a desire
for. What did they do with their lives? And what were they planning to
do now that they were reunited, besides swoon over each other? Life, in
most cinematic depictions, is about the rising action of searching for
someone and the climax of finding him or her. Why, with the wide variety
of what God has planned for us, is romantic love the only thing we seem
to latch on to? Why do we want to mimic these trivial screenplays in our
own lives?
Evidence of failed
attempts at love comprise the growing number of divorces in our society,
with the church not far behind in its contribution to this epidemic.
What if we, as a community, stopped validating trivial and tainted
depictions of love (The O.C., Desperate Housewives, etc.,) and instead,
focused our eyes on things of importance in the world like fighting
injustice?
What if we were so
focused on this that matters of personal satisfaction brought about by
romantic love took a backseat to our drive to be a beacon of light to a
dark world?
Marriage, one of the
many gifts from God, could be put into perspective and used as a tool,
not venerated for its own sake as the ultimate goal, as the cheesy music
fades and the credits start to roll. |
