The Puzzle Of Singleness Series

Where have all the married couples gone? At least on television. Have you noticed that there are very few married folks on television anymore?

These days you would be hard pressed to find a couple in a traditional marriage on prime time these days. In Big Bang the only marriage couple you see are Raj’s mom and dad when he is skyping with them. In “Last Man Standing” Mike and Vanessa are married, In “Raising Hope” Burt and Virginia are married and of course Marge and Homer are married, but for the most part folks are single, divorced or living together.

Which may be reflective of society, Statistic Canada tells us that for the first time since it started keeping track single adults outnumber those of us who are married. In the last census we discovered that there are over 8 million people over eighteen in Canada who are not in a committed relationship, neither married or living common law, and that represents 25% of the population.

Interesting. And some of those folks are committed to their singleness but many of them talk about how someday they are going to get married and have kids. And part of it is that society has changed, I attended a session a couple of years ago and the topic was “Emerging Adults” and the premise was that 30 is the new 19 and that where we were in our early twenties, as far as career and marriage goes, that for the most part, today’s generation will be about 10 years behind us. And that isn’t a criticism it is a reality, and part of that lies with how we brought our children up, which is very different than how we were brought up, which was very different from how our parents were brought up, which was probably very different from how their parents were brought up. One of the consequences of that is that people are remaining single longer than they ever have in history.

This is week five in our Family finding your place in the puzzle series and we’ve kind of hit on marriage and parenting and last week we looked at how we are to honour our parents at various stages in our lives so this week we are looking at “The Puzzle of Singleness”. And we will be looking at some of the challenges that go along with being single. Especially some of the challenges that specifically go along with being single and being a Christ Follower. Let’s start with the proverbial elephant in the room.

1) What About Sex Often God is portrayed as “anti sex” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It all began in the beginning, which when you think about it is a really good place for it to begin. Now I know that some people teach and have been taught that original sin was sex and that was why the first couple was expelled from the Garden of Eden. The theological term for that teaching is “A crock.” Here is the account of creation Genesis 1:27 So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. So to start God made boys boys, and he made girls girls. And the parts were all in place and they all worked. This is before original sin and before the fall, Adam and Eve were fully functioning models. And then God gives them directions as to what to do with all the fiddly bits. We read in Genesis 1:28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it.” Now listen to what it says at the end of Genesis 1:30 . . . And that is what happened. And the very next verse says Genesis 1:31 Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!

And time and time again throughout the scriptures we are reminded that sex is God’s gift to us. And sometimes that’s a shock because most of us are convinced that our generation created sex or at least discovered sex, especially if you are child of the sixties or seventies. Got news for you, there was only one virgin birth and you weren’t it.

And if we don’t think that our generation created sex then we think we are the first generation to enjoy it. Wrong again. It has been the way it is since creation, sex didn’t evolve it hasn’t gotten better. If anything as we have moved away from creation and that initial intimacy we have moved away the fullest enjoyment of sexual intimacy as well.

But this comes with a caveat and that is that God created sex as part of the marriage relationship and the word of God warns us both in the old Testament and the New Testament against sex outside of marriage. Is it because God is an old Fuddy Duddy and he doesn’t want his children to have fun? No, it’s because he is our loving father and he cares about us.