August 16, 2021
I wrote in my book and have mentioned in other articles that there’s often a stigma placed on older, unmarried men in the Church.
When I was in sixth grade and in youth group, there was a youth leader who was in his forties and unmarried. My friends and I used to earnestly ask him why he wasn’t married and whether or not he planned to ever get married.
Looking back now, I realize how asking him these things could’ve annoyed him. I knew for a fact that other youth group kids and youth leaders regularly asked him the same thing. He was also likely asked about it by his family and friends outside of the church. Still, he was a good sport and never acted annoyed. He would just shrug and mumble something about waiting to meet the right girl (in God’s timing, of course).
Later on, in my early twenties, I was friends with another “older” unmarried church man who was in his mid-thirties. These days I don’t consider that old at all, but when you’re neck-deep in Church culture that prefers men to get married in their twenties, an unmarried man in his thirties will start to raise some eyebrows from other people in the congregation.
But where does this social stigma come from?
According to numerous sermons I’ve heard over the years, the Church supposedly loves single people because according to Paul (who was also single, as the pastor always reminded us) they have more time to dedicate to furthering God’s kingdom. They don’t have to spend a bunch of time hanging out with their wives and raising kids.
I suppose on paper that make sense. But if the Church was actually serious about furthering God’s kingdom in the fastest and most efficient way possible, you’d think they’d tell people to forego marriage altogether. Instead they do the exact opposite and push couples down the aisle way before either of them are ready for such a commitment, whether they’re aware of that fact or not.
I think this stigma of being an older, unmarried man in the Church came about because if Church teachings are actually followed, they lead to a lifestyle that would be unsustainable for most unmarried Christian men.
Here’s an example: in Church culture, sex outside of marriage is prohibited. Therefore, an unmarried man should never be having sex and, technically speaking, he shouldn’t be masturbating either, since that would cause him to lust after a woman in his mind. Despite all the talk about being sexually pure, even Christians will reluctantly admit that never having sex and never masturbating is not sustainable. Therefore, the unmarried man essentially walks around with a billboard announcing his sexual sin. So a social stigma crops up, even if it only happens in the subconscious mind.
On the flip side, very few Christians ever just assume that a married Christian man is committing sexual sin. Even if a married Christian man is having an affair or masturbates to porn behind his wife’s back, he still enjoys and benefits from the congregation’s assumption that his sexuality is within God’s acceptable standards.
Here’s another example: some Christians might conclude that an older, single man in their church has remained unmarried because he’s “struggling with homosexuality.” Since being gay is a sin in fundamentalist circles, he’s “not allowed” to date men and, technically, every single second of his existence is lived in sin on account of his being gay.
Even in more “progressive” churches that spout off Christianese nonsense about “hating the sin, not the sinner” and think they’re being inclusive by saying things like, “it’s not a sin to be gay; it’s a sin to act on those feelings” still don’t allow for an unmarried man to have a sustainable and enjoyable lifestyle. They expect him to just repress all those “sinful desires” forever.
So basically people in the Church view an unmarried man as likely engaging in all kinds of sexual sin or is “struggling with homosexuality.” Either way, they regard him with some skepticism.
It’s interesting. This’ll be the case but at no point do any of these Christians pause and contemplate about how this reaction toward older, unmarried men illustrates how impossible the standards of behavior are in Church culture.