It's better to be single than ...?

There’s a phrase that has been circulating in the Christian circles that I move in over the last few years, and is still being said, regarding singleness, which I believe is ultimately not particularly helpful, so I have decided to blog my thoughts on it. The phrase is:

“It’s better to be single than to wish you were.”

or the long version:

“It’s better to be single and wish you were married, than to be married and to wish you were single.”

I can understand the rationale behind the phrase – it’s the “things could be worse” argument. It’s the “if you don’t like your vegetables think about the children starving in Sudan” argument. But there are a number of reasons why I think that is fostering an unhelpful way to view singleness. The first is simply that it is encouraging a comparison of circumstances. Doing so is never the very best way to deal with your own situation. There are always going to be situations worse and better than your own, and comparing either way isn’t really dealing with the crux of the matter, and is ultimately not the best thing to do for your own growth. And it is not a biblical rationale. You won’t find it in 1 Corinthians 7. The things that are better than something else in that passage (in the ESV) are “it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (and perhaps, in dealing with some single people, the best thing you could do to serve their holiness is to actually to help them get married) and that “he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better” but those just don’t equate to the argument above. (Infact, the "could be worse" argument generally presupposes that what is is bad, which is definitely not Paul's argument.)

That leads to the second point, that the nature of the comparison it is making is not a good one. It’s comparing singleness with a bad marriage. As Candice Watters writes in her book Get Married: What women can do to help it happen (I mentioned that I might read this book here and will have more to say on what I think about this book in entirety later, but she is definitely right on this point): “that’s not a fair comparison – it equates married people on bad days with singles on their best. People who marry well and are committed to their marriages don’t wish they were single again, and singles who are honest about their desires don’t find consolation in married people having bad days”. The saying is true in so far as it is better to be single than to wish you could escape your marriage, because there is no way out of a marriage that you don’t want except through sin, whereas single people can potentially change their situation without sin. But why are we even giving voice to the notion of being married and wishing that you weren’t? How is that helpful? It just shouldn’t be a category. And it won’t take too long before single people will just stop and think, ‘but the vast majority of married people I know don't wish they were single’. Further, in my experience, people I know who have actually gotten out of bad marriages, even very bad marriages involving serious hurt, often remain hopeful of a good relationship. Even an experience of a bad marriage doesn’t prevent people subsequently seeking a good one. So too the idea that you could end up in a bad marriage does nothing to deter people from desiring a good one. There is just no real substance to the argument. There’s nothing in it that’s truly satisfying or genuinely helpful. After my father died people would occasionally try and be helpful and say things to my Mum like “well, you’re better off being single than being married to an alcoholic” (or something similar) and my Mum would just scratch her head and think ‘well maybe so but I wasn’t married to an alcoholic’. How would we then rate singleness against being married and being very glad that you are married?

Far better would it be to encourage single people with the something to the effect that it is good for them to be single, for now if not forever, because that is what their loving Heavenly Father has given them for now – and they can trust to His goodness and use it for his glory. No sideways comparison.

(P.S. I’ve culled a lot out of this post, so if you have a comment, please let me hear it!)