Ep. 208: Is My Singleness a Punishment?

Speaker 1:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s Word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Daniel Markin:
Hey everyone, it’s Daniel. On today’s episode, we’re going to be revisiting an interview that I had with author and Pastor Jon Tyson. Jon has a great way of speaking on the topic of singleness, and he helps shift the purpose and perspective of what it means to be single. He also helps those who are single to view it in a healthier way. I knew that this was a subject that needed to be discussed on indoubt and that Jon would be a great guest to talk us through it. And honestly, this is a great conversation to tune in to, whether you’re currently single, or in a long-term, committed relationship. Jon offers a healthy biblical perspective on how you can maximize God’s calling on your life during your season of singleness. So, I hope that you enjoy this episode with myself and Jon Tyson, and if you’re struggling with being single, I hope this episode brings you encouragement.

Daniel Markin:
Hey, this is Daniel Markin. I’m with Jon Tyson. How are you doing, Jon?

Jon Tyson:
What’s up, man. How’s it going? Thank you so much for having me on.

Daniel Markin:
You’re very welcome. As you know, we are from Canada here and you are an Australian, correct?

Jon Tyson:
Yes. Originally from Australia. I now live in Manhattan in New York City.

Daniel Markin:
So Jon, for our listeners, tell us who you are and how you came to know Jesus.

Jon Tyson:
Oh yes. So, I am a pastor in New York City. I’ve lived here coming up on 15 years. Originally from Adelaide, South Australia. I became a Christian in my late teenage years in the middle of a little bit of a Pentecostal revival in Australia. It was called the Toronto blessing. I had no real interest in the things of God, no hunger for even for spirituality. I was a little bit… I don’t know… If you’ve seen the movie, Dead Poet’s Society, or perhaps folks are familiar with the Enneagram, but I’m a four on the enneagram. So, I’m a dreamer. I have an artistic heart more than anything. And I said, I was just basically living like a modern day romantic. And then I started going out with a girl who went to this church and then sort of got swept into it all. And yeah, that’s sort of how it all happened. Met Jesus in a big Pentecostal church in Australia.

Daniel Markin:
Sweet. And then now you are obviously in New York city and what was that adjustment like right as you began? Because were you newly married when you moved to the city or?

Jon Tyson:
Oh no. So, I moved to the United States in 1997 to study theology. So, I’ve been in the US 22 years and I’ve been married 21 years. So, I met my American wife in the first 10 days of coming to America. And then we got married about a year later or so and had kids right away. So, I have a son who’s in university and then a daughter who’s about to do her final year of high school. So, I got married young, had kids young and then moved to New York after being a youth pastor.
Then pursuing education. So it was a major shift but it was more so a shift because I had been in the Southern part of the United States. So, I experienced more culture shock, I think, regarding moving from the suburbs to the city rather than from basically a religious framework in the South to the secularism of New York. I came to New York knowing it was a pretty secular place. There was very few cultural shocks or surprises with that. Now lifestyle, that’s a totally different issue. But in terms of evangelism and pastoring and all of that I think had a pretty good idea what I was getting into.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. Well, let me just dive in here cause you talked about the lifestyle of living in the city and one of the things that this episode’s about singleness, but one of the things that often marks the city and is probably, I’ve heard you speak before on your churches, a lot of single people in your church. And so, as we talk about singleness, let’s just begin here. If you do a comparison between how singleness is viewed in secular culture and then how singleness is viewed in Christian culture, what would you say the differences are there as we begin to dive into this?

Jon Tyson:
Yeah, so about approximately 80% of our church plus is single in our last church survey. So very, very young church in the middle of New York. Very single church. Yeah, I would say that it’s viewed very, very differently. Our culture has a very, very split mind on this. I think, due to no fault, divorce and then the failure of many marriages, dating apps that basically make sexual relationships very easy, the rise of hookup culture and all those sorts of things, people are very, very open to basically relational frameworks and ways of navigating life that are very, very different in many ways than their parents. So, I think our culture views marriage in general as completely unnecessary. Probably something from another time in history that is no longer necessary unless you’re gay. And if you’re gay, marriage is a fundamental human right that you have to be granted and must be made immediately, legally accessible.
So, it all depends on the framework through which you’re approaching marriage. If marriage is about the traditional view of a covenantal responsibility and the raising of children and faithfulness, culture doesn’t have much place for it, or it doesn’t place the value it used to on it. But if it’s about self-expression and rights, that sort of lens supersedes and then it becomes important again. Inside the church, I think single people feel in many ways, deeply torn because I think the vast majority of people I meet in the church want to be married and feel frustrated that these larger cultural dynamics seem to impact them. But then they also want to be taken seriously and respected as single people. So, it’s a challenging culture dynamic. I think that many people feel torn, in the middle of and, and sort of struggled to find their place and it’s a tough place.

Daniel Markin:
Totally. So, in my other ministry where I work with, I help with the young adult ministry and if you were to ask almost every young adult in that room, the majority of them want to be married someday. And I think that’s definitely a desire and I think that’s part of our creative design and that’s the desire that many, many people have. But you’re right, the frustration can kick in when it doesn’t seem to be happening, I guess, right away.

Jon Tyson:
Yeah. I think you mentioned something very interesting there and I think this is where people feel confused inside the church because you mentioned the idea of creational design, God, Adam and Eve and then Jesus references marriage and Ephesians five talks about Christ and the church. There’s an assumption that marriage is a part of the created order, natural and desirable. And then you get people like Jesus and Paul who, when talking about the Kingdom of God, in essence, say you’re better off being single and if you can, you should. And I wish everybody could be single. And so, I think that adds to part of the confusion.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. Can we jump into that then? So how do you balance those two things? Because that’s a real, live question right there. We were created for relationship. It’s not good for man to be alone. Does that just change all of a sudden when we get to the New Testament?

Jon Tyson:
Jesus says something that I honestly find absolutely extraordinary. Jesus basically says that, and He mentions this actually in Matthew chapter 19. The context of the passage is the disciples coming to Jesus and asking Him about a divorce case and Jesus gives a hard answer and the disciples say, “If this is the situation, then it’s better not to marry.” And instead of Jesus softening that, it’s actually, “Not everyone can accept this, but if you can accept this, you should accept this.” And He basically says there’s three kinds of eunuch. There’s people who have been made eunuch, there’s people who were born eunuch. And then there’s people who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of heaven. And this was such a radical theological shift for the Jewish community in the first century.

Jon Tyson:
And then Jesus says it seems that there’s people who are born eunuchs, which means Jesus seems to, there seems to have been some ancient awareness. I think Augusta mentions this in passing too, of basically people who seem to have some sort of, what we would probably in modern day life, call intersex traits or be born intersex.
And then He said there’s other people who choose voluntarily to live like this and the emphasis on that is about focus and service. Now the reason it’s such an extraordinary thing because the Jewish community believed that the way that you showed that you were a full participating member under the blessing of God in the covenant community was that you were married, you had a large family, predominantly male heirs, that you owned a piece of the land, that you literally have geography in Israel, that your tribe was a lot of just a part of their inheritance. And the blessing of God was you’re on your land, you’re married, you’re having sons, and this prosperity around your life. And Jesus comes along and does make a shift in the New Testament where He says, “It’s not about land, it’s about kingdom. It’s not about natural family, it’s about spiritual family.”
And He comes along and says, “It’s about spiritual children, not necessarily biological children.” And so, Jesus introduces a paradigm of the Kingdom of God that rocks people. And He says, “If you can accept this, you should accept this.” So, in some sense, does the New Testament change everything? The answer is yes and no. Yes, Jesus offers a paradigm and that’s basically what I think Paul is picking up on. This idea of people who voluntarily choose to live like they have no interest outside of serving in a Royal court. And they give themselves fully and devotedly to the master and the mission. And because Paul was living in that state himself, even though he certainly had the right to marry, it seems the other apostles had married, he basically says, “I wish you could experience this joy of serving Christ wholeheartedly.” And Jesus says, “If you can make space for this teaching, you should.”
So, the assumption is there’s an invitation in the New Testament to singleness, either as a lifestyle choice or certainly for a period of time where we devote ourselves exclusively to the service of God. And if we can accept that, we should accept that. Now, how do you contrast that? I think there’s sort of a challenge between a natural creational view of life and, these special revelation – these interjections by Jesus, Paul, and in many ways, monastic communities through history, who in some ways act like prophetic reminders that our lives are not just to be about our own lives and our own kids and there’s a greater cause. So, there’s no solution, man. There’s just attention. Paul mentions there’s some sort of gift and Jesus says, “This is not given to everybody, but whoever can accept it should.” My point is this, we should wrestle deeply with it. We shouldn’t throw away.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah, I mean there is a lot of practical opportunity that comes with being single and I think that’s what Paul gets at, right, in first Corinthians seven, he’s saying one has this gift, another has that gift.

Jon Tyson:
Yeah, I mean I think there’s probably some theological conjecture as to what that gift is. Yes. So, some people would see this as like a special anointing or ability from God or a sense of call and other people would say, maybe not. Because part of the challenge that we have to acknowledge as well, is the world of modern app-based dating. I mean, the first century Christians would not have even had a grid for this. So, basically choosing relationships based on romantic love. I’m not thinking primarily about family dynamics in marriage. The ease through which sexuality exists outside of marriage without shame in modern society, it’s very, very… You’ve got to do a lot of real work to make the gap and provide the theological foundation from a first century world into modern society. And so, it can’t simply dismiss someone who serves well. I don’t have the gift of singleness; therefore, I want to get married. Because basically singleness was almost not a category like it exists in the modern world. So, my whole point is we do have to sit, we have to wrestle deeply, and we have to acknowledge that in our society, whether you are single by gift or single by circumstances, we should still leverage the season however long it lasts for radical service unto God.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah. And I think you are completely right about that because it’s a time of undistracted devotion.

Jon Tyson:
Yes. That’s Paul’s vision, undistracted devotion as we stand before God so that we can just have our heart fully focused on Him. Part of the thing we have to do is re-evaluate the purpose for marriage in the New Testament.
And my basic take is the purpose of marriage in the New Testament should fundamentally be about leveraging your opportunities to seek first and extend the mission and Kingdom of God. So, what I don’t think the New Testament lays out is a modern vision of romantic attraction. Some version of the American dream where your life is taken over by erotic and the nostalgic romantic feelings that results in your getting married. And then your whole life is about this vision of just basically, sexual, romantic, friendly, whole life union in a bliss for its own sake. And the reason we see so many divorces is because people just crush each other with their expectations. You get married when you meet someone and you basically think, yes, I am attracted to you. Yes, I love you. And agape love should probably be the huge factor because that’s what the Bible tells us to do with our spouses. Agape love them. And then the goal is to figure out how do we serve God better together. So, if you meet someone that you love, that you like, that you’re attracted to, that you can commit to, but you think I can serve God better with her, you should get married then. The primary lens shouldn’t be, do I like this person? Is this fun? Could we have a lot of great adventures together? Could we build a great family? The vision should be, are we going to help accelerate the kingdom of God through our relationship or not? And that to me is the missing lens around Christian marriage. So, I don’t believe in a purely sort of natural law vision of marriage that is driven purely by creation or Genesis. I believe that it’s got to be driven by this vision to extend the kingdom of God.
And that to me, I guess, is how I would interpret Paul and Jesus’ exhortations into a traditional framework of marriage. Very few people ever even asked that question. I always feel like a hypocrite talking about singleness, while I am married. One of the reasons I decided to marry my wife and – Bible college when you’re a young pastor is what probably you would call a target-rich environment. Meaning everybody’s young, everybody’s there because they want to serve.

Daniel Markin:
Bridal college.

Jon Tyson:
Yes, bridal college, all of that stuff is real. But I met my wife and yes, I was tremendously attracted to her. She’s obviously a very, very beautiful woman, but basically just… We talked about a life vision, and she was in school to basically, missionary school to go to Africa and just throw her life away for unreached people groups.
And I was like about revival and awakening in Western culture. We just basically said, I said to her, “Are you just willing to go anywhere and do anything to serve God?” And her answer was like, “Yes, I would go anywhere and do everything and do anything.” And I was like, “Well, we should team up, we can do more together.”
So even though there was probably, other technically compatible women in Bible college, I thought, I’ve got this woman with just this rare vision for the Kingdom and a rare, sacrificial heart. I think we can do more together. And to her full credit, she has been willing to go anywhere, live a staggeringly sacrificial life compared to Western standards and has just been an amazing life partner. So, that should be a big factor.
Another thing that often is not addressed when we’re talking about singleness, or even if we are going to get married later on, making sure that we’ve possessed within ourselves is our own sense of self-discovery and deepening of our relationship with God.
So many people enter into marriage and they don’t know who they are and they don’t have a deep base of relationship with God. So, therefore, they expect the relationship to deliver this sense of completeness or self-awareness or -fulfillment that basically it’s a place they haven’t developed their own preferences, their own depth, their own character, and they’re hoping another person would come along and short circuit or accelerate the fulfillment of that. And marriage would definitely be better and we would definitely be way freer and more effective in our service of God if we take our single time and figure out who we are.
Use the available margin to deepen our theological understanding, to answer the deep questions of doubt that all of us carry in regards to our faith, exploring the gospel and culture and the challenges of our moment. And a lot of people, I think, live with levels of under-development or perhaps dysfunction or think, when I meet someone, we’ll work through it together rather than focusing on becoming, whole and healthy in the gospel and then bringing this strength to the other person to serve them, rather than getting the other person to fix them.

Jon Tyson:
When Paul says make the most of every opportunity because, or make the most of the time, because the days are evil. It’s always interested me. I don’t think he’s talking about chronological time. I think he’s talking about Kairos time, which is sort of like what season am I in? And when I’m out of this season and I reflect back on it, what am I going to wish I got right. And it’s more about seasonal regret than it is categorizing things as good or bad or whatever. It’s about how do I leverage the season I’m in for the kingdom of God and realizing the advantages. There’s also a lot of challenges that have to be addressed, but leveraging, you can’t let those step out. The advantages of singleness and seizing that opportunity.

Daniel Markin:
Totally. Okay, so let me ask you this question then. Some people getting married so early, is that a danger? Or how would you counsel someone in that who are looking at… They want to get married right away?

Jon Tyson:
It’s so subjective. It’s so subjective. So, you’ve got general biblical principles and then you have the application of those principles that determines whether you’re wise or a fool. The right principle in the wrong place, wrong time is often very unhelpful. So, I think it just depends so much.
Look, if you’re coming from a purely naturalistic perspective and probably what would be called a traditional biblical worldview, God created marriage. It’s a part of the creation of framework. If that’s the case, I think there can be wisdom in getting married young for a lot of reasons. From a Kingdom perspective, I don’t think it’s that simple. Part of the problem is because the time that God has designed for formation in a single person’s life is often squandered by the cultural constructs and reality that we live in. So, if it’s like, look, I’m a Christian, I think I should probably get married, but I don’t want to get married because I don’t know, man, I don’t know what I want to do with my life.
And then you get to go on in a wasted decade. Basically, our frivolous self pursuits and that feels like squandering some of the most important years of your life. Your 20s and 30s are such vital years in your walk with God, your human experience. I want people to live those well. And so, as someone who got married super young, and by the way, I had never heard a talk because I’ve been married 22 years, I certainly grew up in a time I’d never heard a talk on singleness. This wasn’t even a theological option for me. So, part of the choice architecture of the Christian tradition back then didn’t include this at all. But I can tell you I am very, very grateful for the formational discipleship work that’s happening to me by being married and getting married young. My life capacity, my level of responsibility, covenantal responsibility in my confrontation with selfishness, sinful patterns, and all of that was revealed by the mirror of marriage. And I’m very grateful for that.
So, my concern is if you say, I’m not going to get married young and I think I want to get married because I basically want to explore myself from a cultural standpoint, I think that can be unwise. But if you have a process of singleness where you’re delaying marriage because you are consciously seeking to understand who God’s made you, see what God’s doing in the world, I think there can be wisdom in that.
So again, there’s no simple answer here. It depends on the person. It depends on the community that they’re a part of, the resources that are around them and all the rest of it. There’s a lot of unhappy people who got married too young out of cultural pressure and they didn’t do it for biblical reasons. They were basically… Their bodies were filled with sort of like sex chemicals driving them towards each other and we said it’s better to marry than burn. And I think that that passage is probably been overused and under nuanced and done a lot of damage.

Daniel Markin:
Right. No, I totally agree. Okay. So, I appreciate that. Let me, can I ask you like another side of this then? Because people might find themselves in a frustration of being single and finally saying, well, you know what, I’m just going to be as useful as I can to the Kingdom and then they fill up their schedule with so much stuff to the point where you’re prideful in the sense that I don’t need anyone else. I’m so much more valuable right now and I don’t think that’s a healthy place there because people can get frustrated and fill the disdain but then, I mean they’re being useful to the Kingdom, but that doesn’t sound like a healthy place to be either. How would you counsel someone who might be finding them self in more of a prideful place?

Jon Tyson:
Well, I would just say you need to repent because God’s not interested in service for Him for selfish motives or out of prideful motives. I mean the default posture of the human heart is religion, not rebellion or it’s rebellion expressed through religion. It’s self-justification, self-righteousness, and it’s part of the challenge of maturity and development. I just turned 43 so now I’m heading into my middle years and I was certainly, I had elements of self-righteousness and a sort of zeal and Pharisaical tendencies when I was a new believer. Being a part of that is, so you should always repent of pride, but you have to acknowledge that you can’t fast forward sanctification or spiritual growth. It’s just going to happen. And a lot of people go through seasons of self-righteousness. This just comes with the territory man.
And so, I just, I honestly, I know that nagging people doesn’t change them. I know that telling people they’re prideful rarely produces repentance or just makes the ego more rigid. So, I just try and be gracious and love people. So, if someone, I just try to invite him into my life and love them. I see someone who’s like all single in their self-righteousness. I try and love them. Lectures rarely work. We’ve got to find another way to do it. I often learned in my parenting, when my kids were little, I’d try to make them love vegetables. So, I’m like, eat your Brussels Sprouts. And your kids are like, they’re disgusting. Now, and I hated Brussels Sprouts as a kid. Now, I love them. Why? Because you can cook them in bacon fat and put a red wine vinaigrette. I love them as an adult because I’ve discovered other ways to access them.
And I think we have to be patient in our processes. People move through that. We can be prideful in every situation. We should hate pride. We should hate pride, and we should avoid. The good thing about pride too is that eventually God will discipline you in your pride. So, I spend a lot of time in prayer and just ask God, please humble them. And if God doesn’t humble them, life will humble them. Pride doesn’t work well, and you’ve got to remember the enemy’s strategy is basically a keto. It’s using whatever momentum you have against yourself. So, if it’s humility, he’s going to make you prideful in your humility. If you’re prideful, he’s going to – he’s going to try and bring despair around your pride. Whatever you’re doing, he’s going to push it too far and use it against you. So, you always just have to be careful of that.

Daniel Markin:
Yeah, absolutely. You kind of mentioned ways that you can get around your single friends and celebrate them. And what are some other ways that you have found helpful in mentoring and celebrating your single friends, so it doesn’t make them feel ostracized for being single, but actually affirming them in the season that they’re in right now. What are some ways that we can encourage our brothers and sisters?

Jon Tyson:
I think it’s a number one that’s just including them in your lives, not making dumb comments. Not making marital assumptions, not making dumb condescending comments about singleness. I think another one is knowing a person’s whole life story, what are their goals, what do they love? And then appreciating that, being thoughtful in that, celebrating that. Most of our big celebrations are, I’m getting married, I’m having kids. Those are the big ones we celebrate. And I think it’s important to know people and say, what are your vocational goals? What are your personal goals? And just basically seeing their whole humanity, recognizing the journey they’re on, championing the parts that are very, very meaningful to them. And then remembering those moments that can sometimes be culturally exclusive.
And so Thanksgiving, Christmas, other celebrations, inviting those people to do life with you if they feel like they don’t have families of their own. Jesus says, if the church has done right in this life, you will not fail to have a hundred-fold the family you long for around you. And if the church is living in the way of Jesus and consciously seeking to pattern our lives after him, they’re going to make sure that, that promise comes true with the single people.

Daniel Markin:
Amen. Well, Jon, I appreciate all of that and thank you for joining us. That was awesome.

Jon Tyson:
Oh, no worries mate. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1:
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