One By One: A 7-Day Devotional By Gina Dalfonzoናሙና

Getting Past the Stereotypes

How often have you heard single women described as “too strong” to get married, or heard Christians deride single men as the sort of guys who live in their mother’s basement and play video games all day, or heard people in the church speculating on the sexuality of those who have remained single? Much of the time, those descriptions have nothing to do with the actual people we’re talking about and everything to do with stereotypes based on faulty thinking. We’ve got some pervasive mental images of single people that have made their way through the church like a virus, the sort of thing that’s very easy to catch before you even knew it was in the air. 

When it loads us down with unbiblical and unrealistic ideas, the church gives to single people of both sexes burdens too heavy to bear. And for those who do eventually achieve marriage, it gives them a shaky foundation to build on. 

We single Christians don’t need fairytales, and we don’t need hoops to jump through or obstacle courses to conquer. We need to hear truly godly, practical wisdom on how to trust, how to respect, how to forgive, how to be patient and kind—all the things that go into creating and sustaining strong relationships with the opposite sex. We need to be reminded that Christ calls us, with His help, to approach each other with love and understanding, not to barricade ourselves behind walls formed by pain and pride. We need to be taught how to really listen to people and appreciate who they are, not just make assumptions about them and then blame them for those assumptions. 

In short, we single Christians need the church to stop teaching us to play games and start teaching us to live in the real world. In order to do that, the church as a whole needs to start rethinking quite a few concepts and traditions.

Single people in church too often have been relegated to the role of “the least of these.” You can start to change that. In doing so, you can paint a truer picture of Christ, not just for single people but for the church and the world. 

What stereotypes does our Christian culture have about single men and women? How might your church be inadvertently promoting those stereotypes?