30 Sep Just Because You’re Celibate Doesn’t Make You Single
I'm digging a little deeper into the discussion of celibacy here, focusing on the question of love and intimacy in a celibate person's life. I've found that intimacy is one of the biggest impasses that many people have when it comes to being celibate, but it doesn't need to be. Hopefully this post begins to address that concern. Please comment or send me a private e-mail through the contact page — I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! And as always, please subscribe to follow future posts!
When you’re a single, Christian woman committed to a traditional sexual ethic, sooner or later you reach an impasse: either get hitched to a guy or be single and lonely for the rest of your life. The predicament is hard enough when you’re straight. But as a lesbian, I found my situation to be far worse. I saw myself stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I couldn’t see any way out.
I couldn’t imagine marrying a guy. Just thinking about it made me sick to my stomach. But neither could I imagine being single. I couldn’t imagine lacking the relational intimacy that comes from sharing a life with somebody else. And while I'd read plenty of Christian articles on the blessings and benefits of singleness, I saw them as little more than lackluster appeasement. A half-hearted attempt to make single people satisfied with a way of life that isn’t satisfying at all.
I had bought into the modern hierarchy of relationships, with marriage sitting at the top. Unless I got married, I could never experience the greatest expression of love between people. I could be miserably married or miserably alone. A catch-22. And there was nothing I could do about it. Or so I thought.
Fortunately, God’s vision for human flourishing looks very different.