Singleness: It’s Not What’s Wrong with You

The truth is that not everybody is called to be married. I know that we think that they are. Especially if they want to be married, we think, well, if God has given you that desire, He will surely fulfill that one day. Tell me where that is, chapter and verse in the Scriptures.

It just doesn't exist. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com or on the Family Life app.

This is Family Life Today. So I just have to say, it's always a good day in the Family Life studio when the voice you hear at the end of the show is actually the person sitting in the studio. Shelby Abbott is in the studio in Orlando from Philly. That's right.

Welcome, Shelby. In the flesh, the chilly, chilly flesh, indoors with the AC pumping. I know.

People don't know what you mean. You're in Florida. It's supposed to be warm, but...

I know. It's 90 degrees outside. It's 30 degrees inside.

It's freezing in here. Yeah, it's great. Exactly. But you're used to it because you're a Philly guy. That's right. I don't even know this. Did you grow up in Philly?

No, actually. I'm a transplant. I was born in California.

Oh, that's right. I knew this. And then my mom remarried my stepdad when I was six and he was in the military. So I grew up all over the world after that.

All right. I ended up settling on the East Coast for school in Virginia, and that's where I became a believer in college at Virginia Tech. And then I came on staff with crew as soon as I graduated. And my first assignment was at James Madison University in Virginia. And that's where I met my wife.

And then we moved up to Philly not long after that. How old are your girls? You have two girls. I have two girls.

Quinn is 12 and Hayden is nine. And I love being the dad of daughters. I like to treat them like they're special. We go out on dates and I try to make them feel like I want to raise the bar for them.

So when they interact with men in the future, they're like, you're not quite as good as my dad. That's a good place to be. I watch you on social media and I'm inspired.

Yeah, thanks. I tried to do my best. Well, you wear several hats here at Family Life. I mean, not that you just wrapped Family Life today, but you are the host of Real Life Loading, a Family Life podcast. So tell the listeners a little bit about that. And today we're going to sort of listen to a conversation you had on your podcast. Yeah, so my main job with Family Life is actually the host of Real Life Loading.

So Real Life Loading is a podcast and it actually airs on the weekends on the radio as well. It's for a younger audience, 18 to 28 year olds approximately. It's one of those new endeavors for Family Life where we're trying to reach a younger audience and help them to see that we can call them up toward gospel living. But at the same time, have some fun in the process. And so it's a little bit more of a silly show sometimes.

It really is me. If anybody knows me well, they know that I'm super serious about my relationship with Jesus and very theologically bent. But at the same time, I'm a super huge goofball and I love humor.

I did stand-up comedy for four years. So I like to blend those two things together and I think that Real Life Loading is a little sliver of that in my life. So I love doing the podcast and it's been one of the greatest delights of my career so far. Yeah, you can tell when you listen. You love what you're doing. And you go deep. I try to. Some of these podcasts are deep, but you're right.

They're fun too. So what are we going to hear today? Or interact with today because we're going to actually interact with it. Not too long ago, I had a conversation with an Australian woman. Her full name is Danielle, but she goes by Dani Trowiek. And she has written a book called The Meaning of Singleness. So if you remember Tim Keller's book about the meaning of marriage, The Meaning of Singleness. And so it's a bit of an academic book, but she helps us to understand that in the West, in many ways, our picture of singleness, and particularly in the church, has gotten our view of what it's supposed to be like incorrect.

We want to view it through a biblical lens. And so she talks about that, unpacks a lot of the norms that we've experienced in the West about singleness, how we kind of look at singles, talk about them, talk to them about their singleness, and helps us to see things from a more biblical lens. And so after we were done with our conversation, I honestly told her, we were off microphone, we were done with the interview, and I said, you know, honestly, Dani, you are kind of like a sage in many ways, trailblazing something for us that we need to pay attention to in ways that we simply have not done before. And so immediately she was embarrassed and was like, don't talk about me like that to her face.

But then later on, she asked me to do an endorsement for her because I did speak so favorably of her. But she's pioneering for us in many ways for our culture who need to return to a biblical way of thinking when it comes to the subject of singleness. So that's really what we're going to talk about today. We're going to unpack a few clips from my time with her and help us to know that in this whole process, not only can we learn from them, they can learn from us who are married, and we can really be a family and look at ourselves as a family of God, unpack the subject of singleness in a healthy way where we can dialogue about it and not step on one another's toes.

But when we do step on one another's toes, we're gracious, we learn, we grow, we don't make the same mistakes in the future. I'm excited for our listeners to hear this because a lot of our listeners are married. We have singles that listen, but most are married, and we don't even understand how to think about how our kids are single.

A lot of us, we're in churches around people, just like you said, that we don't speak or understand singleness in a way that they feel honored. So I think this is going to be great stuff to hear. I think we're going to learn a lot.

Yeah. So this first clip, Danni's going to talk to us this time about how our language about single people can make them feel deficient. In one sense, this is just the way the English language currently works. It hasn't always been this way.

It may not in the future. But in our time, in our place, to be single is synonymous with being unmarried or not married. So people might be introducing me or pointing me out to someone, and they might say to you, Shelby, that's Danni. She's single. She's not married.

But they would never say to me, oh, this is Shelby. He's married. He's un-single.

You know, our language doesn't work that way, does it? And so we define the single person by who they're not. They're not a husband. They're not a wife. We don't do that for the married person. We don't say they're not single. And so just in the way that our language works, there's a sense in which singleness is deficient. You're not something else.

You're not married. I mean, what a great point. Yeah, something we just don't think about very much, but it's so profound. And it starts to, just like, you know, if you have a wound on your shoulder and someone pokes at it little by little by little by little, but eventually you go, can you stop poking at that same wound? And a lot of times singles feel like the way we use our language keeps poking at that wound. I'm thinking of us as parents, how we trigger our own kids, because we'll do that and introduce our own kids by saying they're single, not married. And it could be, and our kids are thinking, oh mom, are you trying to set me up again? But you're saying it's like poking them in the wound that hurts.

So don't do it. And again, it's not one of those things that I think they would think that we're trying to be intentionally mean-spirited or we're using that language on purpose. Well, surely there are people that use that language on purpose for manipulation purposes. Like parents, sometimes they do do that. Or they get asked in church all the time, like, well, she's single in a way of being like, hey, why don't you check out the options that exist here in that church? Or they try to sit them next to someone who they quote unquote think they would like. Or even asking the question, are you dating anyone?

Yeah, exactly. Or why not? Why hasn't it worked out for you in a certain way yet? And it can begin to help them to feel like they're missing something in a way that something is wrong with them. But the truth is that not everybody is called to be married. I know that we think that they are, especially if they want to be married. We think, well, if God has given you that desire, He will surely fulfill that one day. Tell me where that is, chapter and verse in the Scriptures.

It just doesn't exist. And so we want to be careful about how we use, our words matter. They really do. And so it's not like we want to walk on eggshells around singles. And we can certainly mess up and make mistakes around them. But the point is to grow and to learn and to get better at these things so that we can care for the single brothers and sisters that are in our churches and in our families in ways that we've not been intentional about caring about them before. As I'm listening to this, I'm thinking, when I'm around a different ethnicity or diverse than me, I'm cognizant of my language because I don't want to offend. I want to honor. I never think that way around singles. Just that simple thought is like, I should be just as careful. I want them to feel loved and honored, and my language matters.

So that's a great tip. Got to be more, right? So this next clip that I want to play with Dani is talking about, a little bit on the language thing, but about why, in some ways, marriage, even though we think getting married can be this way sometimes, but why it isn't the best way to quote-unquote level up in your Christian faith. So we want to use that word intentionally here because a lot of times we can think that singleness is junior varsity and marriage is varsity in a number of different ways.

So let's listen to this first. I think it's important to recognize that for those who are married and who get married, God willing, it is a kind of, well, I won't use the language of leveling up, but it's a way in which God is going to grow you to become more like Jesus. That's the hope. That's the intention. But where I think it can become difficult is that we can tend to think of marriage as the place in which God is going to do that, and singleness is just this perpetual state of Christian adolescence.

And it's just not true. God challenges me in my sanctification as a single woman in all sorts of ways that my married friends are not challenged, and that's okay because that's what God is doing in our individual context. He's making us more like Jesus, where we are, who we are in the relationships we're in. It's in Jesus that we level up, not through marriage or singleness. I think that's so true in our culture. We don't even know we're doing it, but we are making this assumption that, oh, you are on the junior varsity if you haven't gotten married. I wish I was wrong, but I think we do it in the church maybe even more than the community. And I've done it as a pastor. I know I've made singles feel like you're less than. And it's just wrong.

It is. And I told Dani before we even started the interview that I was doing some research on her and listening to a few of her talks online before I wrote down my questions to talk to her in our interview. And I said, just in the research alone, you have challenged me and encouraged me to rethink many of the ways that I think about singleness. I have not thought this way before, and you have challenged me in a loving and gentle, kind way to make me look at it, think about it, process it, talk to my other friends about it in ways that I simply have not done before. And I kind of almost wanted to apologize before we even started the interview, because I said, you have already, quote-unquote, discipled me into a new way of thinking. Not that that new way of thinking wasn't there in Scripture before, because we definitely want to check those things when they make sure they line up with Scripture.

But everything that she was saying totally lined up with what the Bible teaches, and it's just one of those things that culture, and in particular, like you were saying, Dave, Christian culture has embedded some sort of narrative in all of our brains that does not line up with the truth of what Scripture communicates. We level up in Jesus. We do not level up in marriage. I'm thinking about us as parents, having adult kids. I know that when my kids got married, I had this sense of, ah, there is almost this security, now they have someone that will love them, see them, walk with them, and it gave me this security and contentment for my kids. I'm thinking, as parents, I think that we can generally make them feel less than by hoping that they will get married because it will make them happier and more secure, which isn't always true, for sure. There's a lot of, like you were saying, even from the pulpit sometimes, that they say pastors are encouraging, and I've seen it tons on even social media, saying if you want singles in your church to be more godly, you need to push them toward marriage.

And that has a complete lack of understanding of suffering. So I'm not necessarily saying that singleness is always suffering and marriage is always sanctification, but for singles who want to be married and aren't, there is a certain element of suffering in there that is unique to their situation. So one of those things, and this is what I told Danny, too, is that there are things that she, as a single woman, can teach me as a married man that I will never be able to know because she's suffering in a way that I have not been able to suffer. She is suffering in ways that help her to understand what it means to be a true follower of Jesus in ways that I am not learning, and she has a wisdom that can be imparted to me that I would not ever be able to gain on my own without listening to her and learning from her.

Well, let's listen some more. Yeah, so Danny's going to talk about this. In the book of Matthew, Jesus says that we won't be married in heaven.

She's going to talk about why is this significant for how we view singleness in the here and now. And I'd encourage people, if you're not familiar with this passage, to go back and have a look. It's in Matthew 22, and it's Jesus replying to some Sadducees about the nature of the resurrection life. Those are the guys who didn't believe in the resurrection in life after death. And so they're trying to trick Jesus into admitting, oh yeah, the resurrection, it doesn't really exist. And they use it through an example of marriage.

And Jesus responds by saying, well, you don't know the power of God. In heaven, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. And I want to be careful about applying the language of single there because Jesus doesn't say we'll all be single in heaven. I mean, the word single is just not in Scripture anywhere.

It wasn't invented until, like, you know, the 1500s. But Jesus does say we won't be married in heaven. There won't be husbands and wives in eternity. There will be one husband and one wife, you know, the groom, Jesus and His church. Together, as the collective bride of Christ, we will be married to Him. But individually to each other, we won't be married to each other. You won't be a husband. I won't be a wife. Instead, we will be brother and sister to each other for eternity. And so if we think, hang on, this is actually going to be our relationships with each other forever. And it's going to be perfect.

We're not going to be lacking anything in that. Then I think that actually confronts us to rethink how we think about singleness now, about not being a husband or a wife now, about only being brother and sister to other Christians now. It gives it a certain dignity and value and purpose in actually pointing us towards that future. It actually shows us that our lives are just as important in pointing towards the eternal hope that we have in the resurrection in just as important but a different way to married Christian lives are. You know, Shelby, it's one of those passages I never liked. You know, Jesus says we're not going to be married in heaven. I'm like, I want to be married in heaven.

I love her. I can't imagine. But I didn't have the perspective. Danny just brought a whole new perspective, saying you won't want to be. You don't need to be.

Yeah, you don't need to be. There it is. There's this less than perspective in my mind as if I'm single and less than. I'm not going to be as happy.

I'm not going to be as fulfilled. And she just brought some real clarity to that. That's what Jesus was trying to tell us. Yeah, and I think one of the things that singles can teach us. Well, first of all, I love the word dignity that she used there.

I love that word. I can learn from that. And they possess a dignity that I simply don't as a married person. But one of the things that I think singles know and understand in Mays that perhaps married people do not is that our best days as Christians, as followers of Jesus, our best days are ahead of us. Now, that's difficult for me to believe as a 46-year-old man today who has chronic back pain and nerve pain issues where I'm thinking, man, if I could just go back to my 20-year-old self with all my—my best days are behind me.

But no, no, no, no. Scripture actually says that my best days are ahead of me, that we're not going to be in heaven in some cloud, ethereal environment, playing a harp, wearing a robe. It's not going to be like that.

Heaven and earth are going to meet, and God is going to reshape, reform, restore this earth, and it's going to be a real place where we are united with Christ in ways that we've never experienced before. Singles have a taste of that in ways that I do not as a married person because I struggle with the various things that you just said. How can I live for eternity without being married to my wife, Rachel? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But to a degree, my vision is a bit clouded because I'm married. That's not to say I'm less than at all. And Dani was very clear to say, I'm not saying that singles are better than married.

She made that very clear multiple times. It's just that so many times we have a tendency to look down on singleness, but perhaps they understand things about the future in ways that we don't right now. It's almost as if, as a single person, they have really come to be the bride of Christ, and He is enough, where I'm like, oh, if you're not there, will it be as good? And singles already know, like, yes, it will be.

It will be. Yeah, and your next question, I'm really interested to hear what she had to say, because there is this longing that you sense that all singles have that's a lie. But as a married person, you often think that's where they live, in this constant state of longing. So I knew I was getting ready to talk to Dani, and I have a friend in our church who, a single woman, 35 years old, she came to me and my wife Rachel and said, would you guys be willing to mentor me? And we were kind of like, we don't know what that looks like, but sure, okay. Her name is Laura. She's been delightful. We love having her in our lives. So I asked Laura, and I said, I'm going to be talking to Dani, and she knew who she was. And I said, if you could ask her one question, what would it be? And so Laura basically said, how do I deal with what she called chronic singleness and the grief that comes from the unfulfilled longing to be married?

And this is how Dani answered. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that there is a rightness to any grief that particular singles may feel about not being married. Marriage is a good gift from God. And so there is an appropriate grief and sadness about not having received that good gift. And I think I'm wanting to be careful in my work and my ministry to not be seen to be talking up the significance of singleness so much that I allow no space for actually that grief, because it's a grief that I know well also.

You know, that sense of potential. Having that door always open to the possibility of change, to the possibility of marriage, can make it even harder, because you're always living in expectation and anticipation of something that you know may not come about. And that can be incredibly difficult. And I think it's important for our churches to recognize that that is what a lot of single Christians are grappling with. I think I want to encourage married Christians to have real conversations with their single friends, to ask them how they're doing, but in order to do that well, build trust with them by actually letting them know how you're doing. Be real about your marriages with them. Help them to know that they're kind of not missing out on this fairytale existence, but that marriage itself has its own griefs and challenges.

I think that's where the answer really is. It's in actually being vulnerable with each other so that we can understand what we're each grappling with and to be praying for each other and helping each other fix our eyes on Jesus. I think we also need to encourage each other in the church, whether we're single or married, to try and be aligning our perspective with God's perspective on our singleness. And God doesn't see my singleness as a chronic condition. It might feel that way to me at times, perhaps most of the time, but from God's perspective, I'm not chronically ill with my singleness. He actually sees it as a good thing He's given me for His glory and for the love of others. And so I'm not single because I've somehow thwarted God's plans for me. I've made a wrong decision, which has meant that I've kind of ended up with the second best.

I am where I am in life because this is where God has actually determined in His good sovereignty for me to be. And He works for the good of those who love Him, which means I, even in the midst of my grief, and I think there is genuine and right grief that we feel as singles, I have to keep trusting God. I have to keep trusting that He is all-powerful and that He is always good. Wow, that's so good. Powerful, isn't it?

It's so powerful. I had a conversation with a woman that was in her early 40s, and she was lamenting because she's still single. And a guy had just broken up with her, and she thought, this is finally the time.

I'm going to get married, and I could have a baby. And she said, that dream has died. And she said, my life, I don't even see the point of going on because I don't know if I want to go on if I'm not married.

And so it was such a good opportunity to say some of these same things. I wish I could have said it as eloquently as Danny did, but just to say, oh, marriage in itself is not the end-all. It's not our hope.

It's not what brings us total fulfillment. It's Jesus. And I said, keep looking around like He's with you. He loves you. He's not surprised.

He's like, why isn't Danny married yet? So how do we convey this? How do we help do this? Yeah, it's good. And I think that probably you did a pretty good job. Knowing what I know about you when you talk to her, you're good.

And maybe I would just say to the listener right now is that if someone comes to you with this kind of thing, you don't want to meet emotion with facts and analytical stuff. You want to meet emotion with emotion in those times, and mourn with those who mourn, weep with those who weep. And I did that first. Yeah, and I'm sure you did. I've learned. I did it back in the day.

I cried with her. Yeah, and I'm sure that's probably what she needed at the time. But I think one of the ways that Danny put it was so eloquent, a way that I've kind of synthesized it is that for the Christian, there is no such thing as Plan B.

Everything is Plan A. Now, that doesn't mean that sin is a good thing. God never calls a wrong thing right.

He never calls a bad thing good. So we will sin, and we will be sinned against. But at the same time, knowing as we walk with Jesus, He could still make good things out of bad things. We have those stories of things that have been horrible that have happened to us, but we have seen now God shape them and mold them into good things, and know that where you're at in your life is God's Plan A for you, and try to make the most of that Plan A, rejoicing in the fact that He's always with you in that process, that the finish line is not putting on a ring. The finish line is Jesus. Yeah, I thought, as I listened to Danny, I thought, we're all the same.

Yes. Single people think, I want to be married, then I'll be happy. Married people, and we're all married here, and we've got to be honest. There have been times where we're like, I'd like to be single.

It'd be easier. Because marriage is hard, and you see single people like, they don't have any struggles I have, and they're thinking the other thing, I want to be, and it just points us all back. We all have a longing. We think the answer is being single or being married, and both are wrong.

The answer is Jesus. We all have a PhD in comparing the worst parts of our lives with the best parts of other people's lives, and vice versa. Everybody just does that, and that's a mistake from the beginning.

We shouldn't be doing that anyway. So whether you're single or married, that longing that's unfulfilled is not going to be fulfilled in an institution called marriage or singleness. I'm going to tell you what you already know. It's Jesus.

That's why you have the longing, and marriage only points to that, and singleness does too, so see Kim. Thanks, Shelby. This has been really insightful. Yeah, great to be with you guys again.

Thanks. Man, that was fun being with Dave and Anne. If you want to hear my full interview with Danny Trowick on Family Life's Real Life Loading podcast, you can check out the episode titled, Singleness, Are We Getting It Wrong?

Just look for Real Life Loading, or you can get the link in our show notes. Now, Danny has written a book called, The Meaning of Singleness, retrieving an eschatological vision for the contemporary church. That's a big mouthful, but this book basically offers biblical, historical, cultural, and theological reflections to retrieve a theology of singleness for the church today. It's an important book, and you can pick up a copy at familylifetoday.com, or you can give us a call at 800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word today. Now, I want to share a fact with you.

The U.S. Surgeon General has declared an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Isn't that sad? Maybe you're not surprised, but could you be the person, you right there, that God has put in your community to pull people closer to each other and to God himself? Well, maybe a small group is just what your community needs to connect with God and with each other while you press into your faith at the same time. Well, we're offering an unmissable 25% off for a limited time on all small group materials, and some of those materials are just perfect for those who haven't yet met God. They include materials from David Ann Wilson, and they have studies tailored to your group's needs, like the Smart Step Family from Ron Deal. Our studies are low-prep for leaders, which that sounds appealing to everyone, so you can focus on connecting with people and listening rather than scrambling at the end to prepare stuff.

Again, you could get 25% off. Just check out our link in the show notes, or go online to familylifetoday.com to find more information. Now, coming up tomorrow, David Ann Wilson are going to be joined by Elisha and Katie Vogtberg. They're going to be talking about what life is like after the baby, the pain points of postpartum. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.