Is singleness a curse?
Is singleness a curse?
Are millions of people unmarried because God holds some hidden grudge against them?
It's very easy to feel that the single life is a punishment forced on us for an confessed sin, or that God has chosen to bless others with marriage but cursed us. If you're a Christian, I would almost bet you've felt that way at times, because I have.
After many years of singleness, I became bitter and frustrated. I thought I had followed all the rules, walked the right path, and deserved better. I confessed every sin I could remember and any I couldn't remember, just to make sure. Sadly, I didn't understand my true relationship with God. I also had a poor understanding of God himself.
Let's look at the three parts to this puzzle:
1. Why God cannot curse you
Let's understand why God is flatly incapable of cursing you: It's against his character. We know from the Bible that God never changes. His character is fixed. Because he is perfect, he never needs to improve. He has been and always will be consistent. He never acts out of character.
What is his character? 1 John 4:16 tells us: "God is love." Not just that God loves or is loving, but that he embodies love. God's essence is love.
Love, God's love, cannot curse the object of his love, namely you. God's love is so massive and forgiving that you cannot do anything that would bring his curse down upon you.
Believing singleness is God's curse on your life is not just unbiblical; it assigns attributes to God he doesn't have, like vindictiveness or cruelty. God can't break his own commandments. He can't possess evil qualities.
To understand God--the Trinity--fully, we look to Jesus Christ. Jesus told us, "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30, NIV) and "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9, NIV)
Do we ever see Jesus cursing anyone? No! Regardless of our mistaken impressions of God the Father from the Old Testament, we can believe Jesus when he said he reveals the Father through his own character and actions.
By his very nature, God cannot curse you. It's as simple as that.
2. How we can curse ourselves
It's often said life can be heaven or hell, that our thinking makes it so. Too many singles are living in hell on earth because their own thoughts have put them there.
As he thinks in his heart, so is he. (Proverbs 23:7)
That's a bitter pill to swallow, but I can tell you from personal experience it's true. I thought I had been cursed by God, and for all intents and purposes, I had been. My attitude toward life was so sour, a trainload of sugar wouldn't have sweetened it up.
Much of our misery in life is self-made. We've all seen people who have every advantage everyone could want and still they're not satisfied. We've also seen people with disabilities or serious problems and they're filled with joy.
I wasted years with bitterness and anger through a wrong assumption. Please, please don't do what I did. And if you're already in that pit, get out of it. More on that in a minute.
Elsewhere on this site I've said "Feelings are not facts. You can't believe them." But it bears repeating. Just because we feel a certain way about a situation, that doesn't mean we've made an accurate analysis of it. Usually it's just the opposite. Feelings often ignore facts--like God's inherent goodness and love toward us--and instead focus on our hurt.
So we turn singleness into a curse because that's how we feel about it. The good thing about feelings, though, is we can change them, That's hard. That's very hard when we've been doing it a long time. Take it from me.
I could do it only with God's help.
3. How to move from curse to blessing
Remember, this is an extremely condensed summary. The process of moving from believing my life was cursed to knowing it is blessed took much struggle and time. It would have gone faster if I had trusted God more.
Success with this depends on changing your outlook. I finally had to give up my stubbornness in believing my singleness was a curse. Only then did I move on.
Every Christian, single or married, should be on a constant quest to know more about God. My search dates back to my high school years. I was raised in a tradition where God was considered demanding, legalistic, and required constant work on my part to stay on his good side.
As I read, read, and read about God, listened to Christian radio and television, prayed, and studied my Bible, I came to know God better. I came to understand his limitless love for his followers. Only in the past several years did I learn how Jesus did everything on the cross needed for my salvation.
When I began to grasp the true nature of Jesus, I gradually realized he could never curse me. He said as much in John 9:1-7. Make sure to read that passage because it applies to your life too.
When we're in a situation we don't like, it's natural to look for someone to blame. Most of us are single through no fault of our own, so we may blame God. Satan (and he is real) likes nothing better than to fan the spark of that idea. Before we know it, we're convinced God has cursed us with singleness for some unknown sin. But it's a lie. Satan always lies.
There's no doubt. It's hard to escape this mindset, but that's all it is. It's a perception of your situation, and it's not true. We interpret everything that happens to us. It's how we make sense of life.
The more accurate and realistic our interpretations, the better we're able to cope with life. Our interpretations are based on a million different influences on us, from our upbringing to our personality. In this case, believing singleness is a curse is based on a faulty interpretation of who God is.
Finally, remember that many things in life are simply a mystery. Why do children die? Why do senseless murders happen? Why doesn't God end all suffering?
We'll never understand these things in this life and will drive ourselves crazy trying. Your singleness is another one of these mysteries. Instead of trying to understand it, learn to trust God.
God has not cursed you. God loves you, so much that he sacrificed his own Son on the cross for you. That's love. And that's the truth.
