[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Culture Matters, a podcast exploring the intersection of faith and culture.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it's me Adam, your host, and I'm co-hosting today with one of my favorite people on the planet.

[SPEAKER_01]: Chelsea, how are you doing?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so, guys, I'm doing good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited for today.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, tell me why you're excited for today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited because I read a book a while ago called The Meaning of Singleness, and then I read the second version of that book, and I'm excited to talk to the author about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Meet two, and we are joined by that author, Dr.

Danny Truek, Danny, thank you for coming and being on the show.

[SPEAKER_02]: My pleasure, thanks for having me, guys.

[SPEAKER_01]: We are excited to talk to you because the topic that we're going to be covering is one that's super important to us and I think all Christians in that's to see our singleness as a gift and you wrote a book about it and it is called single ever after a biblical vision for significance for the significance of singleness.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, Danny, typically, I mean, we could do the book jacket intro, you are an author, you're a doctor, you're a theologian, and we are super grateful to have you on the podcast, but I'd love for you to just tell us a little bit about yourself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I, I, I never had the goal in life to be a doctor or an author or theologian, all right.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think my family would tell you that they're not at all surprised about the author part of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've always loved reading and writing.

[SPEAKER_02]: So perhaps that was the most predictable aspect of all of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as you can tell from my accent, I'm not from the States, I'm from America.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a Sydney girl born and bred and I studied theology over here and went to a Bible College of Seminary called More College, where I did four years of biblical and theological studies and went into women's ministry in a local church over here in Sydney, which I loved.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was there for almost seven years before long story short, I wound up doing a PhD on the topic of singleness in the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was really, I mean, this is, and this is where my book single ever after comes in.

[SPEAKER_02]: The reason I did that PhD was to write this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: A number of people had encouraged me to write on singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought at the time, okay, all right, we're going to write this book.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I thought, what am I going to say?

[SPEAKER_02]: I've got like an inkling of what I want to talk about.

[SPEAKER_02]: But [SPEAKER_02]: I haven't done the hard work, I mean, particularly someone who spent four years doing full time theological study, I was so aware of what I didn't know and so I really wanted to make sure that if I was going to write a book on this topic that it was a book that was not just useful but faithful and [SPEAKER_02]: kind of had something more or different to offer than all the existing books out there on sing on us in the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, yeah, I did a four-year full-time PhD in order to write single-ever after, but between the end of the PhD and this book I published my PhD as the meaning of sing on us, which is more academic for you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, just kind of nerding out.

[SPEAKER_01]: How hard was it to, because I love asking PhDs this, how hard is it to take your dissertation and turn it into a book and then take that book and make it into a resource like single ever after.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did you find that enjoyable?

[SPEAKER_01]: Was it difficult?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think everyone's experience here it could be quite different.

[SPEAKER_02]: My turning the PhD dissertation or thesis into the meaning of singleness was actually fairly straightforward.

[SPEAKER_02]: I sort of, you know, had to drop a chapter insert some new material a little bit, but it was pretty straightforward.

[SPEAKER_02]: what was interesting was I thought single ever after.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the meaning of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the first book.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's someone with 900 footnotes kind of right.

[SPEAKER_02]: I thought single ever after was going to be sort of the read as digest version of the meaning of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it's actually a very different book.

[SPEAKER_02]: The first chapter or two of the of single ever after is kind of covers a lot of the ground of the meaning of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: But really [SPEAKER_02]: is actually all the additional work and thinking that I've been doing over last four or so years, rather than just a kind of summarized version of my PhD thesis.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: One of the two key differences, I think, is that there's a lot more stories in single ever after of single people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the other difference is that I delve into a few of the key biblical passages in more detail in single ever after than I did in the [SPEAKER_00]: The meaning of singleness was like, the history side was so interesting to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I assume you just did so much work and research for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to speak more about that part?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that, I love that in that book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I know you didn't have the time in the singer after our version to get into it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're like, hey, if you want to get more into this, go read my other book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Clip, play the marketing point.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's good.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, the meaning of singleness does have a lot of history and it's got a lot of church history so I really go back and look at the early and then the medieval church and the way they were thinking about singleness and marriage, but it's also got some more recent sort of social logical history as I look at particularly the industrial revolution in Western countries and how that has shaped [SPEAKER_02]: our thinking as a society, but also how it's kind of shaped our thinking as a church on marriage and sing one or two.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was both of those were really quite surprising to me what I discovered as I did that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, you know, someone who's also always loved history.

[SPEAKER_02]: been a reminder to me that we, you know, living here in the 21st century, we're not sort of, we just haven't been dropped into this landscape.

[SPEAKER_02]: We've actually, as people and as Christians helped shaped this world that we're in and we have to understand how that has happened in order to kind of sometimes have a bit of perspective on what we should be thinking or why we think the way we do or how the Bible speaks into where we're at.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I found that really interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I loved that, but I wanted to move, I really did, but I do want to move into what you said, which is that you took certain passages from the Bible and looked at them in detail in single-ever after one question I had or just something that I latched onto very early and was thankful for.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was [SPEAKER_01]: this idea that in the beginning you have Adam and even the garden or you have Adam in the garden and it's not good for him to be alone and then later you have sort of the you know Paul talks about sing on this or you have Jesus.

[SPEAKER_01]: our whole, you know, hope is founded on a single, sell a bit, man, how are those two things not and conflict with each other?

[SPEAKER_01]: Is the aloneness that we see in the garden, the same type of is it, is that really referencing marriage or, and so I just love the way you talked about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd love for a reader, I'm a listeners to hear about that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I've got the way single thereafter structure is there's seven chapters and each chapter has two parts the first part sort of to kind of dives into the thinking side of it mainly sort of looking at the Bible the second part of the chapter is living it out.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, what do we do with this and each chapter just a little bit of fun to each chapter has a song title as a.

[SPEAKER_01]: Super fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: Was it just a fun thing or are these like songs that have meaning to you?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it started because I really wanted to call, and I'll let people look at it rather than tell them what I should have wanted to call chapter three, the title of the news, because the name of that one, and that's chapter three is on the gift of singleness, or the so-called gift of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so the name of that chapter was kind of running through my mind as I was writing it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, how do I weave this in?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it kind of went from there and I thought, why do I just try this and see if I can give every chapter a song title?

[SPEAKER_02]: but it was very funny though, because when I sent the kind of full list to my editor, she very kindly said, I really love this idea, but Danny, all of these songs are of a certain vintage, shall we say?

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I had to kind of expand out a little bit further, my repertoire.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was trying to work out how to get a tailor-swift song in there, and I couldn't make it happen, I'm sorry people.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's how it came about and chapter two, which is the one you've just asked me about the it's not good for men to be alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think we ended up going with all by myself.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yep.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had there was a few different ones there too.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yes, one of the challenges, one of the things I find challenging is a single Christian, and I know lots of other single Christians do is a number of times people just carefully say to them, well it wasn't good for men to be alone, so singleness is bad.

[SPEAKER_02]: and there is just an unwritten equation there going on between being unmarried and being alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah, Adam was in the garden.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think if we go back and we look at actually Genesis 1 and 2 and then of course 3 and onwards.

[SPEAKER_02]: What we discover is that the aloneness Adam had was a very literal aloneness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, he had God.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was in perfect relationship with his creator.

[SPEAKER_02]: But two things, he was alone in the sense there was no one else like him.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the kind of parade of animals, the naming of animals, I think is part of God's way of actually showing Adam.

[SPEAKER_02]: There is no one else like you here.

[SPEAKER_02]: You are alone in that sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: You need something particular and special.

[SPEAKER_02]: But the other thing is, and I think this is really interesting, Adam, we don't get any insight into how Adam thinks or feels about his aloneness.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's God who diagnoses the problem here.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's God who says, it's not good for man to be alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's because it was always God's plan that man not be alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: God created Adam with the intention of creating or making Eve from him.

[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't kind of a God going, oh, all right.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I haven't thought this through well enough.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know I need to do something else.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think what we see there is that yes, Eve is made for Adam.

[SPEAKER_02]: as partly his wife, part of her role, her kind of relationship with him and his with her, was as husband and wife together.

[SPEAKER_02]: But...

[SPEAKER_02]: Eve was also created to be his colleague, his work partner, his helper in a much broader sense.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was created to be the mother of children, her female descendants would go on to be neighbors and brothers and aunts and grandmothers and colleagues of men.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I think we see with God saying it's not good for man to be alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: is that God intends for humanity to live in relationship, to not just be this one creature, but to enjoy the diversity of relationship that comes through community.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so marriage is so important in that, but it's not the end in itself, it's kind of the means to the end of human community in this creation, at least.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think we see that ultimately for filled in Jesus, [SPEAKER_02]: but look at the depth of relationships he has with men and women of all sorts of different relationships.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then through him, the relationship we are called to, you know, in the single ever after I write about his prayer in the later chapters of John, [SPEAKER_02]: think I want to say it's 15 or 17 and I should know of the top of my head where he prays for his disciples and he prays that they that we would be one as he and the Heavenly Father are one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we've moved from this aloneness of Adam to Jesus praying for a kind of oneness amongst us that reflects the oneness between him and the Father.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we see things sort of come full circle at that point and it's a wonderful fulfillment.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's so cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: I love to the way that you, if we stay in the theological lane for a second, so can you kind of give a little run-through of the gift chapter, too?

[SPEAKER_00]: The way that people's interpretation of what a gift means, how they can feel about it, can write in their meaning into the text, instead of going the other way around.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, I think you open that chapter really well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was the chapter that I really wanted to write and I didn't, I might even be in the chapter I wrote first.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not quite sure, but I didn't really go into this in the meaning of singleness, but I do think it is a really important pastoral topic for single Christians, but also church pastors and married Christians to get their heads around because [SPEAKER_02]: I do think we use this language of the gift of singleness really casually, as if we all know what we're talking about and be what we're talking about is what the Bible's talking about and I'm not sure that that is the case.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the gift of singleness is something we really need to tackle as a church instead of just throwing this language out here out there.

[SPEAKER_02]: What is, well, first of all, there is no the gift of singleness in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can't go and find that phrase.

[SPEAKER_02]: What it's referring to is at the Apostle Paul in one Corinthians chapter seven, verses seven to eight, says, you know, I wish all were as I am.

[SPEAKER_02]: That is unmarried.

[SPEAKER_02]: But each has his own gift from God.

[SPEAKER_02]: One has one kind, one has another.

[SPEAKER_02]: And from that, we've kind of created this whole theology of God gives this special spiritual empowerment of singleness and contentment and singleness and joy and singleness and energy and singleness to a very small number of people just like Paul.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't haven't been given that special gift, [SPEAKER_02]: and someone like Martin Luther would say it's not more than one in a thousand people who have.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if you haven't been given this special gift then you're not really meant to be single.

[SPEAKER_02]: You need to get married.

[SPEAKER_02]: For all sorts of reasons, for your contentment, for your sexual purity, for your service of God and his people, marriage is where you're meant to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: And [SPEAKER_02]: It's an enormous amount to hang off.

[SPEAKER_02]: This one kind of somewhat oblique verse in scripture.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I do in chapter 3 is unpack.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why have we turned that one verse to talk about a gift of one kind or another?

[SPEAKER_02]: into this special, I kind of call it a bit cheekily, the boost to shot of the Holy Spirit that's given to a very rare number of special people.

[SPEAKER_02]: Why is that happened?

[SPEAKER_02]: So going to quite a lot of detail, but sort of a bit of a spoiler is, I think one of the challenges is that we import Paul's discussions about gifts in chapters 12 and 14 of First Corinthians, or one Corinthians as we call it, back into chapter 7.

[SPEAKER_02]: There he's talking about gifts to build the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: gifts of speaking in tongues and administration and healing and miracles and all sorts of things that are designed to build the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we kind of go, all right, well he must be talking about that back in chapter seven, too.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's no reason for us to think that the word for gift is just the word for grace.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the same word.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's a case of us actually just needing to really grapple with how do we not sort of import something that's later in scripture back earlier.

[SPEAKER_01]: That super helpful for me, that chapter, I think I'm guilty of that same kind of, you know, you're trying to communicate something to people who are struggling or who are asking this question about their singleness.

[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.

[SPEAKER_01]: And...

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize until I read this chapter that in some ways I think I was one offering something that wasn't necessarily biblical, but two maybe trying to like get out of the uncomfortableness myself rather than lean into something with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so honestly what that chapter did was help me also see, how do I lean in with people a little bit better around this?

[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you for that gift, honestly.

[SPEAKER_01]: One thing and I did not [SPEAKER_01]: Here we are.

[SPEAKER_01]: Here we are.

[SPEAKER_01]: I also was so helped in the next chapter by this idea of chosen singleness versus, you know, on chosen singleness and how it was helpful.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'd never, I just never thought of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I found it so helpful.

[SPEAKER_01]: Could you talk just a little bit about that category as well?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so chapter four is about choice and circumstance in sickness and how we think about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think both chapter three, the gift of synonymous and chapter four, choice and circumstance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one is that I'm glad to hear that you thought sort of impacted by those because I do think that both of them are kind of at the leading edge of our discussions about synonymous in the church and particularly the pastoral edge of how single Christians, [SPEAKER_02]: Think about their sing-woners.

[SPEAKER_02]: How do they live it out?

[SPEAKER_02]: How do they think about God who has, you know, not given them a spouse, but has, withheld this, you know, special gift or how are they not thinking about themselves as just victims of circumstance?

[SPEAKER_02]: this is the sort of leading edge of the discussion that it's important for us to get right a so we're being faithful to scripture but be so we're loving single Christians well and so yeah one of the things I talk about in the choice and circumstance chapter is and I think there's indicated by even just the language in that we're now using to talk about singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've spent 10 years sort of immersed in this this topic.

[SPEAKER_02]: and over course of 10 years I have seen the language really shift.

[SPEAKER_02]: I came in just at the point that people started talking about celibacy a little bit more often.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, the word celibacy is almost being used instead of the word single.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a few things going on there that I sort of address in the book, one of which is I think it really does kind of focus on the sexual aspect of singleness more than scripture would actually tend us towards.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it also introduces these ideas of choice for circumstance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of self-sense is posed as something you step into, something you choose, something that you exercise your agency over.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so [SPEAKER_02]: And that ends up again leaving women and men, like myself, who are unmarried, not necessarily because we've set out to remain unmarried.

[SPEAKER_02]: Sort of sitting there thinking, well, how do I think about my singleness?

[SPEAKER_02]: And how do I think about God?

[SPEAKER_02]: How do I think about him as the good father who likes and giving his children good gifts?

[SPEAKER_02]: when I've been praying for this good gift for so long and he's withheld it from me.

[SPEAKER_02]: What do I think about him and my relationship with him?

[SPEAKER_02]: Is he ignoring me?

[SPEAKER_02]: Has he abandoned me?

[SPEAKER_02]: Am I doomed to be ineffective in serving him?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I think that's if we continue sort of just [SPEAKER_02]: On this trajectory about chosen intentional singleness being the real deal, we are really in danger of leaving lots of real deal single Christians behind, which I think is really troubling.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that chapter I do go into thinking through what is the role of [SPEAKER_02]: choice, which as 21st century Westerners, we just idolize agency and control and choice.

[SPEAKER_02]: Versus understanding God's sovereignty and goodness to us in Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we think about these things and, you know, to use upon marry them together in our thinking about singleness as well.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's such a the right question to ask to and I think like you said like Western Christians have a hard time of of getting very critical about where they're at like they they haven't even really separated the ways that Western ideology romanticism things like that have like infiltrated their theology and then and then for your book like this it's like hey if you look at it this way and get back to the text and get back [SPEAKER_00]: of the text, there's just a better way to think it through and do that in community and do that in prayer, but like, just think more critically.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I loved about your book is that I don't know, like, as I've read in, like we were saying, maybe the time for him to last 10 years, there can be this sense in which you're pitting like married and single people again, [SPEAKER_01]: on purpose, but it's just talked about like they're on opposite sides.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there was such an importance in this book placed on married and unmarried people needing to be friends and that, you know, we're each bringing some a different get to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it doesn't diminish the value of the other and so like both things can be good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the tension, the tension of two things being good or two things being true is so frequent in Christianity and we're just not used to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: We want it to be black and white, you know, and it's not.

[SPEAKER_01]: So Danny, maybe you could talk about that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like how did you [SPEAKER_01]: How did you avoid that mistake?

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I feel like it's probably easy to slip into.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is easy.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think for me, it was a lesson I learned doing my PhD in writing the meaning of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, right at the end, I think it's a last chapter of the meaning of singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: I talk about, if we look at church history, how I'll make marriage and singleness have been understood.

[SPEAKER_02]: If we look at scripture and, you know, we don't scripture never presents marriage and singleness as competitors to each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: in one sense opposite stages of life or states of life because marriage, what about marriage and unmarriage?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they are the reverse sides of the same coin, but they're not, they're not in competition with each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I talk about it in the meaning of singleness and I found this very helpful for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: So hopefully it's helpful for other people.

[SPEAKER_02]: I talk about them as kind of almost like two portraits that [SPEAKER_02]: You know, a artist has painted as a series that a design to hang on the wall next to each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the way that you can see the detail and the beauty and the texture and the colors of one is because the other one is next to it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's highlighting it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, complimenting it if you take one off the wall or if you put a shroud over it or you turn the spotlight off one.

[SPEAKER_02]: you might be thinking, I'm really kind of now highlighting this other one.

[SPEAKER_02]: But what you're doing is you're actually diminishing that that second one because you're not allowing it to be understood in the context in which it's meant to be understood properly by the one who designed it, who made it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's how I've come to think about marriage and singles, it's not, they're not competitors, they're designed to compliment and highlight and show the beauty of each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we need each of them in the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is particularly what I talk about in chapter one of single-ever after.

[SPEAKER_02]: Both of them point us to different aspects of the new creation reality.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's awaiting us as [SPEAKER_02]: the church together men and women as the church who are going to be married to Christ the bridegroom.

[SPEAKER_02]: but who has individuals in that church has individual men and women are not going to be married to each other.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, marriages for this creation only, it's a wonderful and important and beautiful but it's for this creation only because marriage in eternity belongs to Christ and the church.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so we need married people in the church now to help us fix our eyes on this marriage that's coming and how amazing it's going to be.

[SPEAKER_02]: But we need single Christians in the church now to help us see what it's going to be like to live as individual resurrected Christians for all eternity in relationship with each other, not as husbands and wives, but as brothers and sisters in Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if we get out kind of [SPEAKER_02]: Theology on, in that sense, it allows us to see those two portraits on the wall as compliments rather than competitors, and it allows us to honour both without diminishing, or feeling we need to bring the other one down if we really want to see the beauty of the one that we're after, so yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: just beautiful, beautiful, and brilliant.

[SPEAKER_01]: And Chels, like, you know, where friends, you're single, I'm married.

[SPEAKER_01]: One thing that can happen is not on purpose, but as you get married, maybe you start having kids or whatever, it's not that you don't want single friends.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's that you live very different, you can live very different kind of lives.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just maybe you could just talk for one second about like, what's it look like for you as a single to be a friend to married people, et cetera, and how can married people be a friend to single people?

[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about this a lot in previous episodes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's a way that people on both sides can get really lost.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think the single side, you can start to get so sort of self absorbed.

[SPEAKER_00]: I say that gently, I'm single, that you forget that like your married friends do have responsibilities and there's ways that you can meet them in that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the same is true vice versa, so the perfect example is like, I want to have dinner, you know, and Heather, Heather's Adam's wife, Heather's like, hey, come over for dinner, I'm going to join you in your family and you're going to eat dinner at 530 because you have kids.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm probably going to eat a late breakfast or skip lunch because I eat dinner at like eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's silly.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a silly example.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a sacrifice there that I'm making in order to enter in with you or another example is like, I'm going to say, hey, Heather, send me the soccer schedule.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to try and come to a game.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's an opportunity for me to to be another adult in your child's life that shows up for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then also show it for my friends in a way that's like, [SPEAKER_00]: You know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's really beautiful and you do a really good job of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe putting the question to you in a different way, Danny, how has singleness allowed you to participate in the in Kingdom work?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, I start single ever after by saying if you told me 20 years ago that I'd be doing this, you know, have a PhD in single as two books on a thinking on podcasts, running a ministry, I would have run screaming from the room, you know, but that is not, no, that's not my future, but I'm so think I didn't imagine any of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't set out to do any of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was really at the encouragement of people around me who could see that [SPEAKER_02]: I was I think trying to work it through myself as a never married woman who was in women's ministry and so speaking to lots of never married but also divorced and we don't women and men as well that [SPEAKER_02]: This is where I am, and I'm so thankful to God that he's given me the opportunity to be involved in this work.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's up to him, whatever fruit he wants to be from it, but there's no way that I would have have been doing probably this topic, but even just, you know, a PhD directing a ministry, spending my life sort of reading, writing, re-sourcing, doing podcast.

[SPEAKER_02]: If I was married because [SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying none of it would happen, but it wouldn't be happening in the way that it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm so thankful I get emails from people all around the world who have come across my work.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is all glory to God and none to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: God is being pleased through my kind of trying to grapple with this myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: to actually build the church or build other members of the body in other parts of the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: In ways that I've got no idea about, but his work is happening there, and I'm just so thankful that I get to be just a small part of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But you know, I think one of the things that I challenge in Singapore after a CSID, that [SPEAKER_02]: if it allows you to do more stuff.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I go into that, you know, I sort of say actually there's that intrinsic goodness, which is what we just talked about, pointing towards a new creation to come.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that doesn't mean that the instrumental, the doing stuff goodness is not good.

[SPEAKER_02]: It is good.

[SPEAKER_02]: There, it's really important for single Christians.

[SPEAKER_02]: even the ones who are really struggling in their singleness and so wish they were married.

[SPEAKER_02]: And to think how do I serve Christ where he has put me, for so long as he's put me here.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that doesn't necessarily mean doing the same things as people expect you to do, you know, filling up the church rosters, doing the children's ministry church, whatever it is, might be.

[SPEAKER_02]: but there's lots of other opportunities too for us just to get on with serving Jesus in our singleness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Often, not even, you know, I don't want to say just despite our singleness in because of our singleness, you know, I think there is a real testimony from single Christians who can be struggling in their singleness to demonstrate [SPEAKER_02]: to the rest of the church, what faithfulness can look like, even in the midst of sadness.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, concern.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I'm getting older as I've been reminded this year, very, my body is playing up in ways that it wasn't before.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm now being reminded of if God gives me many more years on this earth, it will be as at least as a, [SPEAKER_02]: What does it look like for me to grow older and demonstrate what it is to trust God in kind of a body that's going to be breaking down from getting older and it's hard to for me to manage life.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's a look like for me as a single woman to demonstrate trusting God.

[SPEAKER_02]: reliance upon the family he's given me in Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much for single people to testify to, not just through what they do, but how they live in their singleness as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: It brings a dignity to, I think your book does such a good job.

[SPEAKER_00]: It brings a dignity to both Mary's and Unmarried's.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then it, it especially highlights how much I think the church needs to notice, especially the older singles in their family, and they need to take care of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's beautiful, and I think your life is a testament to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like you said, it testifies to the goodness of God and the faithfulness.

[SPEAKER_00]: How faithfulness never returns void, you know, that it's always being returned through God's grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I just, yeah, I love the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think everyone should read it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just long for to what you guys just, this picture you painted of what the church could be.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, not only, I don't know of true relationship and friendship that represents the heart of God and where we're all headed together.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just think that vision is so beautiful.

[SPEAKER_01]: So.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Danny.

[SPEAKER_02]: Can I can I throw in a challenge for us?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think, yeah, please love a challenge.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because I was listening to you, then, and I'm captivated by that vision as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think we're going to have some challenge.

[SPEAKER_02]: In one sense, I'm really excited, because I feel like we're talking about these sorts of things more than we were ten years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, for sure.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just one small voice in that bigger discussion.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we're at a time where I'm like, I'm energized because we are actually having these conversations that we weren't having a decade ago.

[SPEAKER_02]: But he's, I think, you know, take this as a word of prophecy that needs to be weighed to see if it is actually authentic or not.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to struggle in in the years to come because the conversations in the church as a turning to kind of what's going on in the world, marriage and fertility rates are decreasing.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's kind of now a sense of anxiety where Christians need to get married, Christians need to have babies, Christians need to do this young because, you know, we can't think like the world is.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now clearly we shouldn't be like the world is, but I'm a little bit nervous that if you look at the history of this discussion, the pendulum just keeps swinging wildly one direction to the other.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm a little nervous that the pendulum is kind of going to get pushed straight back up to the the way to be a Christian in 21st century Western cultures is to get married and have babies, which isn't I'm not saying that's not a way to be a Christian, totally.

[SPEAKER_02]: If we're going to [SPEAKER_02]: get there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get there because the Bible takes us there and we aren't down the importance and the beauty of marriage and family, rather than because we've got this kind of cultural anxiety that we need to just do everything opposite to what the world tells us to do.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that is going to probably in the years to come make us talking about singleness in the way we are today, increasingly difficult or being seen as [SPEAKER_02]: to kind of value singleness because questions need to be getting married because they're not like the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's just something I think we need to be on guard about and proactive and addressing now.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think I mean, it's a good warning saying.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great warning and maybe even something to dig into deeper because I actually think the conversation's already heading there.

[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: To I think we're on the edge of it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I totally [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that I don't know if it's already being said explicitly, but the hand-ringing about population and all those kind of things and how this is an opportunity because nobody else is having baby, you know, like, I think to your point, Danny, I think it's less about the Bible and more about fear and some of these things and yeah, I just, I think there's something there.

[SPEAKER_01]: You're putting your finger on something, so yeah, good morning.

[SPEAKER_01]: This episode is produced by Chelsea Conway with Editing and Support from the Good Podcast Company.

[SPEAKER_01]: As always, check the show notes for resources and ways to connect with us.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.