I've come across several pieces of writing lately about how the church treats single people:
I will admit I don't directly have a dog in that fight; I've been married nearly 14 years. But I have a lot of dear friends who are not married, who encounter this every single day. (pun sort-of intended) But I don't look upon them as "my unmarried friends"... I see them simply as "friends".
A quick look around, and you'll see this attitude toward singlehood is hardly limited to the church. I think that the issue cuts all the way to the core of human nature: how swift we are to apply labels, and the nature of those labels (e.g. unmarried friends, childless couple). Nobody wants to be defined by what they don't have.
Of course, America's fix-it culture probably plays a significant role in this. What if we treated singleness less as a problem that demands a solution? Or childlessness, for that matter. Or lack of anything. No station in life is an automatic prescription for happiness.
What if the church focused more on cultivating authentic joy and contentment in ALL circumstances - not just teaching people how to accept their circumstances now until they get married, have kids, graduate, get a different job, or buy a house. Come on, Church, we should be showing the rest of the culture how that looks.
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