Don’t Fall for This Misconception about Singleness

A Misunderstanding in the Church

There are a lot of ways we get singleness wrong in the church culture today. Probably one of the most prevailing myths or misunderstandings is the belief that singleness must, by definition, mean that you live a life without love or intimacy—that you’ve just got to be alone the whole time.

The Bible shows us that really should not be the case. If it is the case, the church is failing in its responsibility to be a biblical church because the Bible has much broader categories than we do today of what love and intimacy look like. We tend to assume those things only really operate within a romantic or sexual context, whereas the Bible speaks about friendship with very deep and intimate language.

Even if we don’t have biological family, we have spiritual family.

We Are Family

Friendship is with someone who knows your soul, the real you. It’s with someone who knows your secrets. The Hebrew word for friends is closely related to the word for secret because the friend is somebody with whom you share your secrets. So, in the Bible, a friend is someone who knows you very deeply and loves you very deeply.

All of us need that. The Bible demonstrates that. Particularly, Proverbs shows that very clearly. Moreover, the Bible talks about the church being family, not in a very loose kind of way but in a tight, close family kind of way where we’re not distant cousins, but brothers and sisters.

7 Myths about Singleness

Sam Allberry

This book responds to 7 common misconceptions about singleness, helping everyone—married and unmarried alike—value the unique opportunities that singleness affords to contribute to the flourishing of the church as a whole.

Therefore, it should be the case that even if we don’t have biological family, we have spiritual family. Jesus promises in Mark 10 that those who leave home—and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers—will receive a hundredfold in this life. It is the role of the church that all of us are the brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters to those who would otherwise not have them.

Sam Allberry is the associate pastor at Immanuel Nashville. He is the author of various books, including What God Has to Say about Our Bodies and Is God Anti-Gay?; and the cohost of the podcast You’re Not Crazy: Gospel Sanity for Young Pastors. He is a fellow at the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics.