I find it one of the great mysteries of the modern church. It does not exist in every context and every congregation, but as I’ve traveled and inquired, I’ve become convinced it exists in a great many of them. Here is the mystery: A lot of churches have many single men and many single women who wish to be married, but are not marrying one another. There are lots of single Christians but not a lot of weddings.
Greg Morse recently wrote an article for Desiring God titled Go Get Her: To Men Delaying Marriage which spurred me to think and write about this subject. Morse’s article is an urgent call to young men to stop delaying and instead begin pursuing a wife. But as much as I generally appreciate what Morse says, there is another side to the issue that I consider equally important: From what I have observed, young women may not be a whole lot more eager to marry than young men—at least, to marry the young men who are available to them. Hence, both young men and young women in our churches apparently want to be married, but in many cases, they don’t seem to want to be married to one another. If you speak to the men they are likely to place responsibility on the women (“They won’t accept our advances”) while the women are likely to place responsibility on the men (“Suitable men won’t ask us out”). So even if the young men do heed Morse’s call, I’m not convinced it will ultimately prove effective.
I have tried to understand this phenomenon, so have spoken to young adults, pastors, and parents about an impasse that, if not universal, does seem to be common. I have learned there are a few possible factors in play. In the first draft of this article, I wrote about each of these at length, but then decided it may better to cover them just briefly.
Before I do so, let me acknowledge that, as has always been the case, there are some people who simply have not been able to find a suitable spouse despite their desires and their efforts—people who have experienced the hard providence that God, in his wisdom, has not provided what they long for. Not all singleness is related to what I am about to list.
With that in mind, here are some potential factors that may make marriage especially challenging today.
- The ubiquity of pornography has made men and women fear one another and fear the possibility of either marrying a porn addict or having to deal with a recovering one.
- Many women, especially in urban settings, have attained greater educational or vocational success than the men around them and it is a general rule (though certainly not a universal one) that when this happens men can consider women above them and women can consider men beneath them.
- Many women are well-established in the workforce and do not need a husband to provide for them in ways that may have been true in years past.
- Christians can fall into the “soulmate myth” that there is just one person out there for them to marry and that a marriage can only be successful when they are certain they have found that one individual.
- Fertility technologies allow women to delay childbearing, and therefore delay marriage, into their thirties or even forties. While Christians may not advocate the use of such technologies, the ethos of delaying marriage and family has seeped deeply into society and from there into the church.
- Christians have heard messages about marriage being difficult and they may not see how the potential benefits and pleasures of marriage outweigh the drawbacks and difficulties.
- Churches can make dating weird by attaching too much weight to the earliest stages of a relationship, thus causing people to shy away from relationships at all instead of risking a breakup that will become a source of gossip.
I’m sure there are many other factors, but these are ones I have both heard and observed.
Teaching
I have kept what I consider the most significant factor for the end because I believe it merits the greatest consideration. And often you find that the simplest explanation is the most likely.
I believe the church has not done a great job of teaching whether marriage is to be desired more than singleness or singleness is to be desired more than marriage. Or to say it another way, the church has not faithfully taught whether men and women generally should marry or whether they should prefer to remain single. Note the word should, which implies some level of moral obligation before the Lord.
In previous generations it may have been taken for granted that men and women would naturally pair up and marry off and, indeed, circumstances made marriage a near-necessity. Churches did not need to teach whether people should marry or should stay single because they generally married out of need. But not so today.
Aside from all that I’ve listed above there is this: As people grow up immersed in modern Western culture—as they learn in its schools, swipe through its socials, and watch its media—they gain cultural assumptions and expectations, many of which counter what Christians have long taken for granted. An older generation considers marriage normal and singleness odd; a new generation considers singleness normal and marriage odd. That may be a slight overstatement of the issue, but probably only slight.
An older generation considers marriage normal and singleness odd; a new generation considers singleness normal and marriage odd.
Thus churches need to teach. They need to teach whether God generally wants his people to get married, if he generally wants his people to remain single, or if he has no opinion on the matter. They need to teach whether it is still generally true that “it is not good for the man to be alone” and that mankind is to “be fruitful and multiply.” They need to teach whether in this New Testament era God now prefers for his people to remain single. They need to teach so people can know!
I am convinced that few young Christians today could confidently answer questions like these:
- Does God still mean for humanity to be fruitful and multiply?
- Is it God’s general will for most people most of the time that they pursue marriage?
- Is singleness superior to marriage? Is marriage superior to singleness?
- Is a life of chosen and deliberate singleness—not the kind that involves being utterly sold out to a life of mission and service, but the kind that involves living a more standard workaday Western life—pleasing to God to the same degree as being married?
- Is marriage a kind of consolation plan for those who are emotionally unable to handle being single or sexually unable to handle being chaste?
- And perhaps even a question as simple as this: What is marriage and why does it matter?
I don’t mean to tip my cards toward the answers I might offer, but simply to state that these are foundational questions for which I think few young believers today could confidently provide compelling, biblical answers.
Conclusion
I believe it would be fitting and helpful for churches to lead the way in teaching and preaching on these matters. This would then help young Christians better understand God’s will regarding marriage and singleness and help them align their expectations with his. It would spur them to confidently pursue marriage or singleness to God’s glory. And maybe in one way or another, it would bring clarity to the mystery that has perplexed both me and others.
