Celibacy

The number of people who live alone—more than a quarter of all Americans—is on the rise in the US, according to 2020 census data. Single-person households accounted for nearly 28% of all US homes, according to the data. Married couples still accounted for most household types (46%) in America, but that share has steadily declined over the past several decades, the census survey found. In 1990, 55% of all households were made up of married couples.

However, the number of people living alone or with non-related roommates increased at a higher rate than typical family homes—a rise of 12% compared to just 7%. The number of women living in a home with no spouse or partner was significantly greater than the number of men living in a home without a spouse or partner with 35 million to 24 million.

The 2020 census also collected data on the different shares of opposite-sex partners and of same-sex partners for the first time. According to the results, married same-sex couples accounted for 0.5% of all US households and unmarried same-sex couples accounted for nearly 0.4%. The states with higher concentrations of same-sex couples were primarily located along the west coast and in the Northeast. The census doesn’t include information about single queer people or transgender people.

For years Becket Cook had a highly successful career as a production designer in the fashion world. During that time, he lived fully engaged as a gay man in Hollywood. Cook said, “I had many boyfriends over the years, attended Pride Parades, and marched in innumerable rallies for gay-marriage equality. My identity as a gay man was immutable, or so I thought.” In 2009, he experienced something extraordinary: a radical encounter with Jesus Christ while attending an evangelical church in Hollywood for the first time.

Cook explained what happened:

I walked into the church a gay atheist and walked out two hours later a born-again Christian, in love with Jesus. I was stunned by this reversal. Since then, I no longer identify as gay but rather choose to be celibate because I believe God’s plan and purpose—revealed in the Bible—is authoritative, true, and good.

Surrendering my sexuality hasn’t been easy. I still struggle with vestiges of same-sex attraction, but denying myself, taking up my cross, and following Jesus is an honor. Any struggles I experience pale in comparison to the joy of a personal relationship with the one who created me and gives my life meaning. My identity is no longer in my sexuality; it’s in Jesus.

But instead of celebrating Cook for his authenticity, when he came out as a Christian to his friends he was met with skepticism and, in some cases, outright hostility. His closest friends abandoned him. His production-design agency in Hollywood dropped him under the most vague and frivolous of pretexts—even though he was one of their top artists.

Cook went on to say:

I’m not complaining or claiming to be a victim. What I gained in Christ is absolutely priceless. Like the apostle Paul, I’m learning to “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8). Yes, the loss of close friendships and a lucrative career were harsh, but being in the kingdom of God more than compensates!

Recently, Cook exclaimed to a friend,

I’m the most authentic person you know! In fact, because I’m now who God created me to be; I’m finally authentic. Becoming more and more like Jesus—the truest human who ever lived—is a far more authentic transformation than becoming more and more like whatever “self” my fluid feelings suggest on any given day.

Debra Hirsch experienced a dramatic conversion to faith in Jesus after drug abuse and sex with both men and women. She now holds a Traditional view of sexuality, but has invested herself in ministry to people on the margins of the Christian faith, including those who are gay. Hirsch writes:

I am thankful that Jesus was a single man ... because in him we find the redemption of celibacy, and therefore of singleness. And as many of my dear friends (both gay and straight) are walking the celibate path, this gives them a deeper insight and appreciation of what Jesus experienced.

Stephen R. Holmes says, "To prove that sexual activity is not necessary to a well-lived life, we need to say only one word, 'Jesus.'"

In her book The Significance of Singleness, Christina Hitchcock writes:

A journalist named Kate Bolick wrote an article for The Atlantic magazine looking at attitudes towards single women like her. She noted that many single women still long for marriage and have a fear of lifelong singleness. She says that she experienced "panicked exhaustion" around the age of 36. (She was 39 at the time of the article.) She felt an intense need to marry immediately, even if it meant settling for a less than desirable or "qualified" man. She interviewed several single women in their early 20s. When she asked them if they wanted to get married and if so at what age they all answered "yes" and that they wanted to be married by the age of 27 or 28. She reminded them of her own age (39) and suggested that they could still be single at that age. She asked, "Does that freak you out?" She reports "again they nodded." Then one of the young women "with undisguised alarm" whispered, "I don't think I can bear doing this for that long."

Possible Preaching Angles: This illustration captures the pain and honesty around singleness—for both men and women. But it also highlights the need for a better way to think about singleness, the high view of singleness found in the Bible.

In an interview popular blogger Jen Hatmaker was asked, "Do you think an LGBT relationship can be holy?" Hatmaker replied:

I do. And my views here are tender. This is a very nuanced conversation, and it's hard to nail down in one sitting. I've seen too much pain and rejection at the intersection of the gay community and the church. Every believer that witnesses that much overwhelming sorrow should be tender enough to do some hard work here.

But former lesbian Rosaria Butterfield reproved Hatmaker for this "tenderness" that leaves people in sin. Butterfield wrote:

If this were 1999—the year that I was converted and walked away from the woman and lesbian community I loved—instead of 2016, Jen Hatmaker's words about the holiness of LGBT relationships would have flooded into my world like a balm of Gilead … [I would have thought], Yes, I can have Jesus and my girlfriend. Yes, I can flourish both in my tenured academic discipline (queer theory and English literature and culture) and in my church …

Maybe I wouldn't need to lose everything to have Jesus. Maybe the gospel wouldn't ruin me while I waited, waited, waited for the Lord to build me back up after he convicted me of my sin, and I suffered the consequences … Today, I hear Jen's words … and a thin trickle of sweat creeps down my back. If I were still in the thick of the battle over the indwelling sin of lesbian desire, Jen's words would have put a millstone around my neck.

To be clear, I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. I didn't swap out a lifestyle. I died to a life I loved. Conversion to Christ made me face the question squarely: did my lesbianism reflect who I am (which is what I believed in 1999), or did my lesbianism distort who I am through the fall of Adam? I learned through conversion that when something feels right and good and real and necessary—but stands against God's Word—this reveals the particular way Adam's sin marks my life. Our sin natures deceive us. Sin's deception isn't just "out there"; it's also deep in the caverns of our hearts.

Christopher Yuan, a transformed believer whose past includes gay prostitution, says that celibacy is a choice, but singleness is each person's origin and destiny. "[Some] people are called to celibacy but everyone was single (at birth), is single (through their childhood and young adult years), and in the end will be single (in heaven) … . Celibacy is a commitment; singleness is a state of being." Some Christ-followers are called to celibacy as a vocation, but all single believers are called to chastity.

This vision for sexuality applies to every person, desire, and category. Gay, bisexual, straight, married, single, or other—everyone bears the same burden. For some, this may seem a heavier weight to carry, but, nonetheless, God's design for sexuality applies equally to each person.

An article in Vanity Fair contains some shocking quotes and vignettes about a website that connects people for the sole purpose of having sex. Marty, an investment banker from Manhattan, claims that he's been "racking up girls." He says he's slept with 30 to 40 women in the last year: "I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy," in order to win them over, "but then they start wanting me to care more … and I just don't."

"It's like ordering Seamless," says Dan, another investment banker, referring to the online food-delivery service. "But you're ordering a person."

"There is no dating. There's no relationships," says Amanda, a senior at Boston College. "They're rare. You can have a fling that could last like seven, eight months and you could never actually call someone your 'boyfriend.' [Hooking up] is a lot easier. No one gets hurt—well, not on the surface."… It's a contest to see who cares less, and guys win a lot at caring less."

One of Amanda's friends chimes in, "Sex should stem from emotional intimacy, and it's the opposite with us right now, and I think it really is kind of destroying females' self-images."

The reporter says that none of the guys she spoke to want to be in a relationship. "I don't want one," says Nick. "I don't want to have to deal with all that—stuff." "You can't be selfish in a relationship," Brian says. "It feels good just to do what I want."

She asks them if it ever feels like they lack a deeper connection with someone. There's a small silence. After a moment, John says, "I think at some points it does." "But that's assuming that that's something that I want, which I don't," Nick says, a trifle annoyed. "Does that mean that my life is lacking something? I'm perfectly happy. I have a good time. I go to work—I'm busy. And when I'm not, I go out with my friends."

Covenant Eyes, a Christian company that sells internet accountability software, receives thousands of emails from people struggling with viewing online pornography. Here are some examples of heartfelt cries for deliverance and help:

A teenager wrote: "I really need help breaking my porn addiction and I don't want to waste my teen years and the rest of my life with the gigantic secret. Please keep me in your prayers."

"Eddy88" wrote: "Please pray for me … My porn addiction is killing me. I just can't give up. I try to stop but then I keep failing all the time. I wish I would just die because I hate myself so much. Only Jesus can save me but I feel so alone and depressed."

Phillip wrote: "Please pray for me. I've been struggling for too long with this addiction to porn. I want it out of my life for good!"

Aaron wrote: "I have been battling with porn addiction for years now … I feel so incredibly distant from God. Often I sit and I try to focus on him when I'm tempted but it's almost like I can actually hear my inner heart saying reject him. I hate this; it's the most horrible feeling ever and it's effecting my whole life with God. I lead an evangelism ministry at university and I fear it's affecting that, too."

Sean says, "I don't want to live with this dirty secret anymore. It is ruining my relationships with people and life. I just want to break free."

Editor's Note: The Pixar movie Inside Out includes a short film called Lava, a quick story about two volcanoes who fall in love. In the following illustration, Eve Tushnet summarizes Lava and observes how our culture assumes that romantic love, in particular marriage, has become the only place to meet the deepest needs of our heart.

In the short film Lava, a volcano lives all alone in the middle of the ocean. He's surrounded by pairs of animals: two leaping dolphins, two flying seabirds, etc. Every day he sings about how much he longs for "someone to lava." The years pass, he's still alone, and he becomes grayer and colder, eventually sinking into the sea. But lo! a lady volcano has heard his song. Love gives her the strength to explode up above the water. Volcanette and Volcano are united, in a cataclysm of underwater lava, and snuggle together as one island, forever and ever.

In some ways, this cute, short film reflects the fears, longings, blind spots, and expectations of the culture we already have. The villain of Lava is loneliness. This is the terrible fate that our hero must escape. We feel the shakiness of our communal bonds, and worry that we won't find anyone willing to hold onto us: As parents divorce, friends move across the country, extended family members drift into mere Facebook-friend status, we fear that all people are islands.

The only way to vanquish loneliness, in Lava and in the culture that created it, is through romantic love. Love between a lady volcano and a man volcano exists to rescue us from loneliness. There are no other forms of love depicted in the short: no families, for example. The dolphins and the seabirds have no calves or chicks. Romantic love not only exists to free us from the terror of loneliness; it also stops there, and has no obvious fruit beyond the happiness of the lovers. Huge swathes of our culture, from our health-insurance policies to our church ministries, are set up as if the one [and only] way that adults give and receive love, care, and kinship is through romantic love, and marriage is the institution which ratifies and fulfills that love.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Singleness; Celibacy—God has good and rich plans for people who are not married. (2) Body of Christ; Community—the church is the place where our deepest needs for friendship and community are met in Christ and his people.

Rich Mullins, a Christian musician and songwriter who died in 1997 at the age of 41, once confessed in a concert that he struggled with watching pornography while traveling alone. One of his spiritual mentors told him, "It's not that you're so bad, it's just that you're not supposed to go out by yourself." So Mullins took a friend along with him on a trip to Amsterdam near its famous red-light district. Mullins said he was hoping his friend would fall fast asleep and start snoring so, as Mullins put it, "I thought, 'Maybe it would be fun to just take a walk and be tempted.'" He waited until 5:00 in the morning for his friend to start snoring, but he never did. Meanwhile, in the midst of his temptation, Mullins picked up a notebook and wrote the words to one of his more popular songs, 'Hold Me, Jesus'":

And I wake up in the night and feel the dark
It's so hot inside my soul
I swear there must be blisters on my heart
So hold me Jesus, 'cause I'm shaking like a leaf
You have been King of my glory
Won't You be my Prince of Peace"

With this back story, some people call this Mullins' "Prayer for Porn Addicts" song, but it could also be a called a "Prayer for Anyone Who Is Tempted" Song.

In the interview with Jonathan Merritt, N.T. Wright said:

We need to remind ourselves that the entire biblical sexual ethic is deeply counter-intuitive. All human beings some of the time, and some human beings most of the time, have deep heartfelt longings for kinds of sexual intimacy or gratification (multiple partners, pornography, whatever) which do not reflect the creator's best intentions for his human creatures, intentions through which new wisdom and flourishing will come to birth. Sexual restraint is mandatory for all, difficult for most, extremely challenging for some. God is gracious and merciful but this never means that his creational standards don't really matter after all.

Pastor Andy Stanley gathered with about 250 singles to answer questions on the topic of love, sex, and dating Attendees were asked to write their questions on cards and turn them into the moderator ahead of time. The most pointed question of the night came from a middle-aged gentleman. His card read, "I'm divorced. Why save sex for marriage?" Here's Stanley's reply:

Good question. Your direct question deserves a direct answer. If all there is to life is this life, if you are merely a predator and women are prey, if sex is just physical and disconnected from the concept of permanency, exclusivity, and relationship, then I can't think of a reason not to have sex with as many women as you can convince to hop into bed with you."

Stanley commented: "That's not exactly the answer they were expecting from their pastor. My answer was particularly disturbing to women in the audience. Heck, it was particularly disturbing to me." Stanley continued:

But if there's more to this life than what meets the eye … if there is a God in whose image you've been made and in whose image every woman you've met has been made, if sex is a creation that was created with a purpose and if part of that purpose is to enhance the expression of intimacy between two people … and if that fragile, wonderful, delicate experience we term intimacy can be damaged or broken through abuse, then your sexual conduct matters a great deal. So you have to decide what you believe. Not just about sex. About everything. Once you decide, the answer to your important question will be clear. Perhaps uncomfortably clear.

After almost ten years and six children together, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt decided to tie the knot and get married. This isn't just a Hollywood love story. It represents broader cultural trends. More and more, the major milestones of a relationship are occurring prior to marriage rather than after.

But does this trend even matter? Does it matter if people have sex before marriage? A recent study (2014) at the University of Virginia rejects what they call "The Vegas Fallacy"—the idea that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, or that what happens before marriage doesn't effect our marriage today. The study reports:

Actually, what people do before marriage appears to matter. Specifically, how they conduct their romantic lives before they tie the knot is linked to their odds of having happy marriages. Consider sex. The vast majority of Americans—about 90 percent—have sex before marriage (Finer, 2007). Many of them have sex with multiple partners before finding the person they will eventually marry …

The ghosts of the prior romances can haunt new ones. Those who had more romantic experiences … are more likely to have lower-quality marriages than those with a less complicated romantic history … This doesn't mean that sex before marriage will doom a marriage, but sex with many different partners may be risky if you're looking for a high-quality marriage.

Sam Allberry, an Anglican minister from Great Britain, recently shared about his struggle with same-sex attraction. Allberry wrote:

Homosexuality is an issue I have grappled with my entire Christian life …. There have been all sorts of ups and downs. But this battle is not devoid of blessings, as Paul discovered with his own unyielding thorn in the flesh. Struggling with sexuality has been an opportunity to experience more of God's grace, rather than less.

But over the last couple of years I have felt increasingly concerned that, when it comes to our gay friends and family members, many of us Bible-believing Christians are losing confidence in the gospel. We are not always convinced it really is good news for gay people. We are not always sure we can really expect them to live by what the Bible says. It is simply not possible to argue for gay relationships from the Bible …. God's Word is, in fact, clear. The Bible consistently prohibits any sexual activity outside of marriage.

As someone who experiences homosexual feelings this is not always an easy word to hear …. There have been times of acute temptation and longing—times when I have been "in love" …. [But I have learned that] what we give up for Jesus does not compare to what he gives back …. For me these include a wonderful depth of friendship God has given me with many brothers and sisters; the opportunities of singleness; the privilege of a wide-ranging ministry; and the community of a wonderful church family. But greater than any of these things is the opportunity … to learn the all-sufficiency of Christ.

My main point is this: the moment you think following Jesus will be a poor deal for someone, you call Jesus a liar. Discipleship is not always easy. Leaving anything cherished behind is profoundly hard. But Jesus is always worth it.

Possible Preaching Ideas: Obviously, this quote applies to those who struggle with same-sex attraction, but it also illustrates the need for everyone Christian to exalt Christ as the One who is worth more than every human possession and relationship.

Tim Keller was once asked to identify a few obstacles to revival in the contemporary church. Drawing on his experience in Manhattan, Keller started with one issue—the fact that almost all singles outside the Church and a majority inside the Church are sleeping with each other.

Keller illustrated the point by talking about a tactic, one that he admitted was almost too unkind to use, that an old college pastor associate of his used when catching up with college students who were home from school. He'd ask them to grab coffee with him to catch up on life. When he'd ask about their spiritual lives, they'd often hem and haw, talking about the difficulties and doubts now that they'd taken a little philosophy, or maybe a science class or two, and how it all started to shake the foundations. At that point, he'd look at them and ask one question, "So who have you been sleeping with?" Shocked, their faces would inevitably fall and say something like "How did you know?" Keller pointed out that it's a pretty easy bet that when you have a kid coming home with questions about evolution or philosophy, or some such issue, the prior issue is a troubled conscience.

Keller concludes that if the Church is going to see serious spiritual renewal, especially among the younger generations, we need to present an alternative view of sex that is beautiful, but different than the one offered in the dominant cultural narratives; a view of sexuality that affirms its goodness while placing it within God's intended framework.

Wesley Hill writes movingly about growing up in a Christian home and being taught biblical views on sexuality. And yet, Hill writes, "Confusingly, I found myself, just when all my friends were beginning to notice girls and become interested in dating, having longings to be in that kind of relationship with a member of my own sex." After receiving wise and loving guidance from Christian mentors, Hill writes:

As I discovered more about Christianity's historic teaching, I found myself convinced of the position which the church has held with almost total unanimity throughout the ages—that although many people find themselves, through no fault of their own, to have sexual desires for members of their own sex, this is not something to be affirmed and celebrated but is, rather, a sign that we are broken, in need of redemption and re-creation. Gay people are not uniquely broken—that's a position we share with every other human who has ever lived, or will live—but we are, nonetheless, broken. And following Jesus means turning our backs on a life of sexual sin, just as it does for every other Christian.

He offers this advice to others who struggle with same-sex attraction:

If you're someone living with homosexual feelings, Jesus' message to you … is not primarily a no to your deepest hunger. I do believe that discipleship to him entails giving up gay sex and gay relationships. And that may be more painful than you can imagine right now …. But, ultimately, Jesus is offering you the kingdom. He is offering you eternal life. He is offering you himself in the gospel. Sacrificing your sexual freedom … may seem like a high price to pay—and it is a high price to pay!—but he promises you a joy so stunningly great that if you felt the full weight of it now, you would literally come undone.