Missionary Single Issues: Is Singleness OK?
- Approximate Time Commitment: 20 minutes
These booklets cover those issues which are unique to or heightened by those individuals who live in a culture other than their passport culture. The author wrote it, not as one who lived as a single missionary, but as someone who has talked about singles issues with single missionaries.
Modern Western Culture presents serious challenges related to maturity, marriage, and family. Changes in the culture during the last couple of centuries have produced disturbing trends which relate to the singles (unmarried individuals) growing up in it.
Resource Description
Article
In By Ones & by Twos Jeannie Lockerbie Stephenson reveals how she was once told that she had “done more in this area than any other single person.” She thought that meant that no other one person had accomplished as much as she had. Later she found out that the speaker meant that no other unmarried person had done as much—implying that married people do more than unmarried ones!
Here are some questions that unmarried missionaries have been asked either by other missionaries or by nationals in cultures where marriage is expected.
- Are you gay? (implying homosexuality)
- Why aren’t you married? (implying that people of that age would be married unless something was wrong)
- Are you dating? (implying that if two unmarried people are doing something together, it must be more than just friendship)
- When do you plan to marry? (implying that everyone should marry)
Is there something wrong with unmarried missionaries? Are they immoral or inferior in some way? Here are some thoughts to consider.
Jesus
Although Jesus was not a missionary in the usual sense of taking the Good News from one culture to another here on earth, he certainly crossed cultures to create that Good News which missionaries proclaim today. Philippians 2 notes that Christ Jesus left his heavenly home and came to live here as a man in an earthly culture among human beings.
Having never married, Jesus was a single, and he did nothing immoral or inferior. If our Lord lived all his life as a single, there is certainly nothing wrong with that…
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