Introduction: Cultural Changes
The major reason you are single is because you are living at about the year 2000 AD (or CE). If you had lived 4000 years ago in Old Testament times when Abraham was born, you would probably be married. If you had lived 2000 years ago in New Testament times when Jesus was born, you would probably be married. If you had lived 200 years ago in the USA or Europe, you would probably be married.
Marriages took place at a different time in individuals’ lives, and spouses were chosen very differently more than 200 years ago. Trying to translate what happened into contemporary English may lead to confusion, and the meanings of words continue to change. For example, in Matthew 1:18 the King James Version (KJV) says that Mary was “espoused” to Joseph; the New King James Version says that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph; and the New International Version (NIV) says that Mary was “pledged to be married” to Joseph. Looking up these words in the 1975 Webster’s New 20th Century Dictionary Unabridged resulted in these definitions.
· Espouse: to betroth; as, the king espoused his daughter to a foreign prince.
· Betroth: to pledge in marriage; as, the father betroths his daughter.
· Pledge: to promise. The NIV does not tell who made the agreement, but it probably was between Joseph’s and Mary’s parents.
On-line definitions of espouse and betroth today do not give examples of parents being involved. This aspect, so common previously, is ignored today.
Today’s readers are often further confused when in the next verse (Matthew 1:19) Joseph is called “her husband” in all three translations. The Greek word “aner” is the word translated “husband” as it is in 49 other places in the New Testament, but “aner” is also translated “man” in another156 places in the New Testament! Joseph was “her man.” The Message says that Mary was “engaged to be married” and does not give any label (husband or man) to Joseph. To understand better, we need to consider changes in our own culture.
Cross-cultural workers are keenly aware of how one culture varies from another because they have to learn the differences between their passport cultures and their host cultures to serve effectively. Those same workers may not be aware of how their own cultures have changed over the years so that concepts, such as “singleness,” may mean something quite different today from what they meant many years ago.
Most Cultures until the 19th Century
In Bible times, like today, singleness meant that the person was unmarried; however, who was single and why they were single were quite different from today. To understand who was single and why they were single, we must look at marriage customs and laws of the day.
Marriage at Puberty
In most cultures, including that of the Hebrews in the Old Testament, people expected to marry at about the age of sexual maturity, the age of puberty. Many passages in the Talmud contain comments about the expected age of marriage, and those comments indicate that the ideal age of marriage was the age of puberty. In fact, not marrying daughters at puberty was viewed by some rabbis in the Talmud as making her a prostitute (Leviticus 19:29). The minimum legal age of marriage was 12 for women and 13 for men. This became more formalized with the advent of the Bat Mitzvah for women and the Bar Mitzvah for men.
In New Testament times the Roman law allowed women to marry at 12 and men at 14. English law from a thousand years ago also allowed women to marry at 12 and men at 14. USA laws 200 years ago allowed women to marry at 12 and men at 14. Of course, most people did not marry at those ages because they did not go through puberty until later. However, most of them apparently married at about the age of puberty. Therefore, at that time most singles were children because many people married as soon as they became adults (i.e. sexually mature).
Marriage Arranged by the Parents
In most cultures, including the Hebrews of the Old Testament, marriages were arranged by the parents. Abraham asked a trusted servant to go find a wife for Isaac, giving explicit instructions for what she was to be like and how to go about doing it (Genesis 24). Isaac gave Jacob explicit instructions about whose daughter to marry (Laban’s), and Jacob obeyed (Genesis 28). After Jacob picked out Rachel and agreed with Laban, he found that Laban had tricked him into marrying Leah, Rachel’s older sister (Genesis 29). When Jacob confronted him about switching daughters, Laban explained that it “is not our custom here” to give a younger daughter in marriage before the older one was married.
As with marriage at puberty, the Roman, English, and colonial American cultures followed the same pattern of arranged marriages. Early Puritans in the USA did not “ensnare” their children in vows of virginity but married them as soon as possible. In these cultures, if a person was single beyond puberty, it was because of the parents. Isaac was 40 before he married, but that was because Abraham had not found him a wife. Apparently Leah had some problem with her eyes that made finding a husband more difficult, so she had not yet married, but Laban insisted on carrying out his duty to find her a husband, even if he had to be deceitful (Genesis 29:25-26).
For thousands of years single people were those younger than puberty and those whose parents had not found them a mate. Note that these are arranged marriages, not forced marriages. If either the prospective bride or the prospective groom did not want that marriage, it did not occur. The prospective bride or groom (or the parents) could choose not to go through with the marriage. Then the “search” began again.
(For more information see Appendix D)
Mostly Single Missionaries
From the time of Christ until the 19th century the Good News was spread to different cultures primarily by singles, and most of those were men. The apostle Paul was not married, and he advised against it in 1 Corinthians 7. He said that it was not wrong to marry if people needed to, but people could be more effective in serving God if they were not concerned with pleasing their spouses.
After New Testament times unmarried Roman Catholic priests and nuns spread Christianity around the world. They literally “renounced marriage for the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:12). The majority of these Catholic missionaries traveling all over the world were men, and they had chosen to remain single so that they could better please God.
Nuns may be considered “brides of Christ” because of this ceremony referred to in the Catholic Catechism: “923. Virgins who, committed to the holy plan of following Christ more closely, are consecrated to God by the diocesan bishop according to the approved liturgical rite, are betrothed mystically to Christ, the Son of God, and are dedicated to the service of the Church.” Some nuns consider this a marriage ceremony and wear wedding rings.
Western Culture since the 19th Century
During the 19th century changes in the minimum legal age of marriage and the age of puberty began to take place in Europe and North America. At the same time the prevalence of arranged marriages declined.
Marriage Illegal at Puberty
Between the middle of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century the age of puberty in both men and women decreased by three or four years in Western countries. The ages of puberty in women dropped from about 16 to about 12, and in men dropped from about 17 to about 14. Although no one is sure why it happened, the decrease is well documented by hundreds of studies over a couple centuries.
During the same time period countries increased the minimum legal ages of marriages by about six years. By the middle of the twentieth century the most common minimum legal ages for marriage were 18 for women and 21 for men. This difference in age for women and men, like that of earlier laws, showed an awareness that women matured earlier than men. However, in the 1960s in nearly every state the ages were changed to eighteen for both men and women.
Figure 1 shows visually how these factors changed singleness. For thousands of years people were able to marry when they reached puberty. Now it is illegal for them to marry until several years later. This is forced singleness, a new kind of singleness. By law everyone is required to live at least five or six years as a single. This “forced” singleness is difficult for individuals who would like to marry.
Figure 1. Major changes in average age of puberty and minimum legal age for marriage for women during the last 3000 years. The ages for men would be about two years later (except in the case of marriage since the 1960s).
Marriage Arranged by the Couple
During the same time period, the last couple of centuries, parental arranged marriages also declined. At first the young couples began making their own arrangements and then getting the blessing of their parents. However, today many couples do not even consult their parents and marry even if their parents disapprove.
Before the 19th century people could “blame” their parents if their spouses were not to their liking (if married) or if they were still single (if unmarried) because their parents had not found them a spouse. Of course, as God did for thousands of years, he still calls some individuals to lives of singleness, and others make that choice on their own. However, if other people today are single beyond the minimum legal age of marriage, they do not have their parents to hold responsible for their spouse or for their singleness.
Most individuals in the 21st century still find a spouse among people they know well or at least have met personally at some time. However, an increasing number are using the help of matchmakers online to recommend possible spouses. Just as Abraham asked his trusted servant to recommend a spouse for Isaac, today more and more people who have not found a suitable spouse among their acquaintances ask on-line dating services to recommend possible spouses. If one recommendation is not satisfactory, the person asks the service for another.
Single Again
In the 19th and much of the 20th centuries once people married they could never become single again. Although they had no spouse, they were classified as divorced or widowed. However as divorcees rapidly increased and widows or widowers were looking for spouses, such people began to be classified as singles. With this change in terminology, “singles” (any currently unmarried person) are a rapidly increasing segment of Western society. In fact, in 2007 in England and Wales for the first time there were more single adults than there were married adults. Although this is not yet the case in the USA, the trends show that it will soon be. An interesting note is that the US Census Bureau now seldom uses the term “single.” It classifies people as married and unmarried. Then it divides the unmarried ones into three categories: never married, divorced, and widowed.
Mostly Married Missionaries
Since the beginning of the 19th century, when Protestant William Carey became the “father of modern missions,” the majority of long-term missionaries have been married. Leadership among these Protestant missionaries was primarily married men, most of whom took their wives and children with them as they took the Good News about Jesus Christ first along the coasts of the continents and then inland to places that had little access to the outside world.
Today only about a quarter of these Protestant evangelical missionaries are single, and the majority of these single missionaries are women. Some of these single women have been passed over for positions of leadership because agencies did not approve of women in leadership over men. However, some of them still have emerged as leaders in service and have been so outstanding that books and movies have featured their lives.
Conclusion
During the last two centuries singleness has changed as Western culture forced everyone to go through several years of singleness after puberty. In addition, the choice of marriage partner is no longer the responsibility of parents but of the young adults themselves, so they remain unmarried until they find a spouse. This is not a call to return to arranged marriages of teenagers as was common until two centuries ago. It would be nice if that were possible, but few children reared in Western culture today are ready to play adult roles at the age of puberty. They have not been prepared for adult roles in life, are required to attend school, and are forbidden to work. They are often not responsible, and virtually no one expects them to act responsibly.
Single people have always been vital to the missionary enterprise. If there had been no single missionaries, Christianity would be much less a world-wide religion than it is today. Imagine the world without the apostle Paul, without any Roman Catholic priests or nuns in other cultures, and without a quarter of the missionary force today.
If you would like to know more about the changes in Western culture during the last couple of centuries please read Appendix A: “The New Singleness,” Appendix B: “Is Singleness OK?” Appendix C: Single Again, and Appendix D: “Arranged Marriage” at the end of this book. For further information about the forced singleness of adolescence, please see Understanding Adolescence at http://www.missionarycare.com/ebook.htm#adolescence.