I accepted an assignment to write an article for a church magazine. The topic is singleness. I don't even know if that's a real word, but it's a topic with which I am intimately familiar.
I played bass at a "Christian singles conference" awhile back. I attended the sessions but kinda skipped out at the end, because I felt like I was being told that the solution to the problems associated with being single is...to not be single! That's kinda like saying the solution to poverty is to not be poor.
Anyway, as a single person, I've heard a lot of different stuff. Here are my two pet peeves that I hear from people who probably mean well but should maybe know better:
1) "I just KNOW that God has the perfect person for you, and he's just preparing you for her."
How can anybody know that? It just feels patronizing.
2) "Don't pray for God to help you find 'the one'. Pray that God will make you into 'the one'."
The sinister implication here seems that I'm not praying for the right thing. And that all the non-single people are different because they prayed correctly. Screw that. This is similar to the advice to keep working on myself. I've worked with messed up families long enough to know that lots of non-singles haven't worked on themselves at all. So it's like a false dichotomy.
So...my advice is to stop giving advice to single people!
I think one of the significant challenges to being single is feeling unwanted, which kinda hurts. Loneliness isn't fun. I'll write more about it later, or in the article that I'm now responsible for submitting next month.
Well, it's the weekend now. Weather should be nice, dim sum is always nice. Gonna just enjoy it as much as I can.
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What I don't like about the advice a lot of Christians give (including the examples you cite above) is that they encourage passivity. It's like.. just keep praying and keep becoming a better person, and magically things are going to work out for you in the end (because that is God's will). The advice I give to single friends? Don't just sit around and wait for Mr. Right (usually I'm advising females) to appear. Do something! Go out and meet people, do fun things -- not only is it enjoyable, but you will be much more appealing if you've got stuff going on. Oh, anad sign up for one of those Internet dating sites, eHarmony or not.
ReplyDeleteI think prayer and trust in God is good when it empowers, bad if it paralyzes you. [insert that joke pastors like to use about the guy who drowns in the flood after he neglects to take the rescue boat, helicopter, etc. that God has sent]