Singleness & Sexuality

We live in a sexualized culture. There's no way of completely escaping it. The unfortunate thing is that some of this thinking has infiltrated the church. We've bought into our culture's thinking.

The truth is much of our struggle with conversations around singleness is that we believe in the lie of our culture. We don't talk about it. We've never admit that we have.

The lie we've bought? It's about about the importance of sex and experiencing it.

Christina S. Hitchcock puts it this way in her book, "The Significance of Singleness":

"At the heart of America's [and Canada's] fear of celibacy, a fear that American [and Canadian] evangelicals share with their secular counterparts, is the belief that if we do not engage in sexual activity, we're not really grown-ups; we may not even be fully human." (pg. 16)

When I first read that, my instinct was to disagree - as yours may be. But, I stopped to think about it for a bit and realized I ultimately couldn't disagree when I looked at the big picture of Western Christianity. Whether we're aware of it or not, we say things that point to how we think this way.

The truth is that, if we're going to live according to God's standards for sexuality, we have to be unafraid to stand apart from our culture. And that means we have to go beyond just talking about "saving" sex for marriage.

When we make comments about how getting married means someone has grown up or about sex being an adult activity we reveal how we've bought into our culture's beliefs. Even if we still believe sex should be only within marriage, we don't even realize that we equate it with being an adult.

The problem for single people is that, regardless of whether we get married one day or not, God made us sexual beings. That doesn't change just because someone is single past college-age. This doesn't mean we have to be controlled by it, but it does mean we still have to acknowledge and live with that part of us.

So, we have to learn to address it better. This is about holding the message of God's plan for sex and sexuality high.

As we create space for people who are single into their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond in our discussions about this, we have to learn to change our responses to their expressions of struggle in this area. Being told once again that God calls it sin outside of marriage so we just have to not sin doesn't help. Neither does quoting 1 Corinthians 7:9 at us, which says that it's better to marry than to burn with passion. These responses minimize the struggle that is being expressed.

Rather than offer platitudes in response, we need to be okay with acknowledging the struggle. We cannot try to find the easy way out with this one.

What it looks like to live God's way doesn't change just because of your age or marital status. It is still God's plan for sex to be only in marriage. We are still called to sexual purity in all areas of our lives.

But, what also doesn't change is that singles still have the same sexual desires as those who are married. This means single people live ever day with no way to satisfy these desires from a human perspective and stay in God's design for sex. Some days this isn't even something that crosses our minds. And other days it's a much bigger struggle.

The hope to hold onto in this struggle is that others have lived this way. We're not the first people who have lived with this struggle and we won't be the last.

Sam Allberry reminds us of this:

"Jesus was not calling others to a standard he was not willing to embrace himself. He wasn't calling singles to sexual abstinence while knowing nothing of it himself. He lived this very teaching.
But there's even more that even that. Jesus is not just an example of a nonhypocritcal teacher. He is the example of the perfect man. He is the humanity all of us are called to be but which none of us are. He is the most complete and fully human person who ever lived. So his not being married is not incidental. It shows us that none of these things - marriage, romantic fulfillment, sexual experience - is intrinsic to being a full human being. The moment we say otherwise, the moment we claim a life of celibacy to be dehumanizing, we are implying that Jesus himself is only subhuman." ("7 Myths about Singleness", pg. 25)

Even in the struggles we have hope because we know it's possible. That doesn't mean it's easy. Just that it's possible.