Does loving marriage mean hating singleness?

Today I listened to a podcast by Ben Woodring [BW] and Jeff Wright [JW], entitled "The Virtue of Hate". It was the December 4, 2023 episode of Backwoods Belief. In the segment below, they argue that sometimes in order to show love to one thing, you have to hate the thing that threatens it. They then apply this to Christian teachings on marriage and singleness. Take a look:

[46:08]

BW: Um, so I guess as we're sort of turning towards the- the more, how- how do we apply what we're talking about, that would be the encourage- one of the encouragements I would have is to- and this is something A. D. [Robles] said on the- the video that I was watching. You gotta learn to hate. And that doesn't mean to hate indiscriminately. You gotta learn to hate what is evil, and in order to do that, you gotta know what is good, you gotta fear the Lord, you gotta know your Bible, um, and in so far as you are cultivating those good positive affections towards what is good, if you're not also seeing negative affections, and I don't mean negative as in bad, but- uh, a- a- a proper disgust for what is evil, you may not be cultivating those positive affections in the way you think you are.

JW: Yeah. Yeah. And I do think that's a- you know, if you're like, man, maybe, maybe I've been negligent on this front, probably the best way to- to, uh, to start self-examining is like, what do I truly love, what do I love because I'm self-conscious it's a gift of Christ, to me, what do I experientially love, that's a gift of Christ to me, and then the next- yeah, once you've identified those things, is to kind of follow up by going, okay, what things would destroy this? What forces out there would, um, corrupt this, remove this- 

BW: What- what opposes it?

JW: Oppose it, uh, label it this thing that is a gift of Christ, evil, right? Call- calling evil good and good evil? Um, and that- that's where you should start being like, okay, when I run into that stuff, it's getting- it's getting every bullet I have, fired at it.

BW: Yeah. Yeah. S- so, a great example of this is, I absolutely despise when I see people out there who are selling singleness as a positive good for society- 

JW: Sure.

BW: or for Christians. 

JW: Yeah. 

BW: I- It- it makes me angry, like, and it's righteous anger. Uh, it makes me mad when I see that stuff and I- it- I just despise it, because it's such a lie, and it is- it is telling people that their good, godly desire for a spouse, or a husband or a wife, is wrong, and not to be desired, and I love marriage, and I love my wife so much that I hate the people who tell me that I ought not- 

JW: Hear, hear. Hear, hear. 

BW: To me- this is the most visceral example that I can think of personally for myself. It just drives me crazy when I see people talk about that kind of thing. It, it- it's such a lie, um, and I- I hate it. And that's right, like, it's good to hate that.

JW: That is Matthew Lee Anderson.

BW: Uh-huh. Yeah.

JW: It- it is The Gospel Coalition. It- it is a hatred of the human race.

BW: Yeah.

JW: In Out of the Silent Planet, Weston, I think, is rebuked for loving the human race only in idea, that some descendant of ours might crawl across some foreign planet someday. We're more debased than that. We hate the thought of offspring.

BW: Yep. Yeah. Its, it's vile. And it- the- the appropriate- not just, like, mindset toward it, but the appropriate emotion toward it is disgust, and hatred, because, God hates it too. And, you know, we're to- to think in Van Til's terms, you know, we're supposed to think God's thoughts after Him. Well, if the Psalmist writes that, you know, "I consider them my enemies and I hate them with a complete hatred," I ought to do that too, about the things which God hates. 

JW: Mmhmm. Yeah, if I can reference earlier, you- you have to be aware, be wary of, being nicer than Jesus.

BW: Yeah.

JW: Um, you- you've made no gains, if you're nicer than Christ.

BW: Yeah. Because it isn't a true kindness. 

JW: Yep.

BW: It is, it is an actual cruelty, no matter how nicely it's dressed up. 

JW: Yep, that's right.

[50:21]

I admire this kind of strong reaction because it shows how much Ben and Jeff value marriage. At the same time, I think they are using a mental model that imagines marriage to be a gift, and singleness to be a curse, rather than, as Paul viewed it, both the status of marriage and the status of singleness are equally gifts.

"I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." (1 Corinthians 7:7)

I remember C. S. Lewis, in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (p.190) wrote the following about William Tyndale's writings against the Catholic Church:

In all this we may be very sure that what Tyndale is attacking is a mere travesty of what his best opponents held; as what they attack is also a travesty of his own view. In these controversies each party writes best when he is defending what (well considered and in a cool hour) the other did not really deny. But it is important for us as historians to see how the Roman system appeared to Tyndale and to numbers of Englishmen in that century. It seemed to them the religion of gloom and anxiety, the service of a hard taskmaster... But, equally, it seemed to them the religion of self-righteousness.

This shows why it's important to step into someone else's context and see how an idea feels to them emotionally, given their background and circumstances and the conversation in their circles of society. 

For me, as a single, I've been greatly encouraged and felt "seen" by recent writings by Dani Treweek, Matthew Lee Anderson, Barry Danylak, Ed Shaw, and others praising godly singleness and encouraging more community in church. 

But for Ben and Jeff, it seems that these kinds of writings sound too much like secular anti-family rhetoric, which may be discouraging to them as they want to see more Christians starting families and having kids amid an aging population. Pro-single theology might even make them feel marginalized for their choice to be married and have kids.

I get it -- my parents changed churches when I was young because people expected them to put me in children's church rather than have me in the main service. They felt out of place. Later, when our family had eight kids, we joined a church with mostly homeschoolers like us, and it felt great -- there were kids our own ages, and we made lots of friends. Then later, a lot of Bible college students (both single and newlywed) started attending the church, and this changed the dynamic again, as there were two different kinds of population awkwardly coexisting. 

Now that church has planted, disbanded, and planted again, and many of those Bible college students are now elders with large families of their own.

In conversations with others -- and the internet isn't the best place for this -- it's best to listen for people's emotional reactions to ideas, because that's where you really connect or disconnect with their values. 

I do think it's possible to value marriage and kids, and also value singles in a church. But it will be easiest to feel it in person-to-person relationships and gatherings. For me recently, this has looked like living in a house with Christian roommates, attending a young-adults group comprised of both singles and married couples, buying gifts for the children of prisoners as part of the Angel Tree project, and participating in a men's group where both married and single men encourage each other in their spiritual disciplines and relationships.

We still have a long way to go.