This is not to say that it is easy to be a Christian single: It is not.
Evangelicals are currently being compelled to take a fresh look at homosexuality as it relates to the Christian church—and it’s long overdue. We have neglected to search the Scriptures to ascertain their real teaching on this subject, allowing vague half-truths and uncertain knowledge to shape our attitudes instead. We have tended to blanch at the mention of the word homosexuality, cry “Shame! Shame!,” draw our righteous robes about us, and turn away from any serious contemplation of our responsibility towards those in our midst who may have a homosexual orientation.
Recent events in the gay world are forcing us to face the matter. No longer can we withdraw into our evangelical ghettos and pretend that homosexuality does not exist for us. It does exist, not only in the outside world, but among ourselves. A small percentage of men and women in every Christian congregation is likely to have homosexual tendencies. We can no longer ignore the matter or escape our obligation towards these members of the Body of Christ.
Perhaps the best thing to date that has come out of our newly awakened concern is a growing awareness of the distinction between homosexual orientation and homosexual practice. Only a few years ago the two were thought to be the same thing, and the very mention of the word homosexual brought wholesale condemnation. Thoughtful Christians are now beginning to see that we may not always be responsible for our sexual orientation, although we are accountable for our response to it. With this realization has come another—that there are homosexually oriented persons in our midst who are nonpracticing because of deep Christian commitment, and that they need our love and care. Attention is beginning to turn in their direction.
The Scriptures are strangely silent about the homosexual condition, as they are about many other things we should like to know. But nowhere do they condemn it, although they strongly condemn homosexual practice—as, indeed, they condemn heterosexual practice outside of marriage. Only homosexual behavior is sin; the condition is a distortion of man’s true nature, one of the many results of the Fall, and it is not always a matter of choice. Christians who suffer from this sad anomaly need the care and support of the Christian community, not its condemnation.
In recent months, a strange new phenomenon seems to have arisen in Christian circles. Sympathy with and compassion for Christians with homosexual orientation is sweeping some evangelicals away from their biblical moorings. There are those who teach that people whose homosexual orientation is not a matter of personal choice and cannot be changed should be able to form permanent homosexual relationships with the blessing of the church and the evangelical community. It is not in keeping with the gospel of love, we are told, that such persons should be denied sexual outlet because of an orientation for which they are not to blame.
I do not purpose to go into the many aspects of this matter here, although I have biblical reasons for believing such a view to be wrong. Others more capable of Scriptural exegesis than I are speaking admirably to the question. Rather let me speak from a point of view on which I am well qualified to speak, that of a Christian single. Before our much-needed compassion for Christians suffering from homosexual orientation leads us to conclude that their human predicament justifies our parting company with the Word of God, let us consider the nonpracticing Christian heterosexual.
Through no fault or choice of my own, I am unable to express my sexuality in the beauty and intimacy of Christian marriage, as God intended when he created me a sexual being in his own image. To seek to do this outside of marriage is, by the clear teaching of Scripture, to sin against God and against my own nature. As a committed Christian, then, I have no alternative but to live a life of voluntary celibacy. I must be chaste not only in body, but in mind and spirit as well. Since I am now in my 60s, I think that my experience of what this means is valid. I want to go on record as having proved that for those who are committed to do God’s will, his commands are his enablings.
Like my homosexual neighbor, my whole being cries out continually for something I may not have. My whole life must be lived in the context of this never-ceasing tension. My professional life, my social life, my personal life, my Christian life—all are subject to its constant and powerful pull. As a Christian I have no choice but to obey God, cost what it may. I must trust him to make it possible for me to honor him in my singleness.
That this is possible, a mighty cloud of witnesses will join me to attest. Multitudes of single Christians in every age and circumstance have proved God’s sufficiency in this matter. He has promised to meet our needs and he honors his word. If we seek fulfillment in him, we shall find it. It may not be easy, but whoever said the Christian life was easy? The badge of Christ’s discipleship is a cross.
Why must I live my life alone? I do not know. But Jesus Christ is Lord of my life. I believe in the sovereignty of God, and I accept my singleness from his hand. He could have ordered my life otherwise, but he has not chosen to do so. As his child, I must trust his love and wisdom.
I may not blame my singleness on God. Singleness, like homosexuality, suffering, death, and all else that is less than perfect in this world, was not in God’s original plan for his creation. It is one of the many results of man’s fall. All of us, Christian and non-Christian alike, must partake of the evils attendant upon man’s sin. It is not ours to choose our portion. Singleness is a part of my share.
But ours is a redemptive God. Where we will allow him, God moves into all our human sorrows with healing and sustaining grace. He gives himself to us intimately and personally, meeting us with sufficiency for all our needs, enabling us to live richly, creatively, and joyfully. This he has done for me through all my life. This he is doing for countless others the world over. And this he will do for his homosexually oriented children as well. God does not ask of them or of any of us what we are unable to do; rather he gives himself to us in such measure that we are able to do what he asks.
These things are true not only in the realm of the mind and spirit, but in the realm of the practical and physical as well. In his recent book Eros Defiled, missionary-pastor-psychiatrist John White writes about what he calls “sexual fasting.” He explains psychologically how our attitudes can so influence our bodily appetites that a man fasting voluntarily will suffer no hunger pangs while the same man, deprived of food by force, will suffer intolerably. Applying the same principle to sex, he continues:
Just as the fasting person finds he no longer wishes for food while the starving person is tortured by mental visions of it, so some are able to experience the peace of sexual abstinence when they need to. Others are tormented. Everything depends upon their mindset or attitude. The slightest degree of ambivalence or double-mindedness spells ruin.
“I cannot stress this principle enough. Neither hunger for food nor hunger for sex increases automatically until we explode into uncontrollable behavior. Rather, it is as though a spring is wound up, locked in place, ready to be released when the occasion arises. And should that occasion not arise (and here I refer especially to sex), I need experience no discomfort” (InterVarsity, 1977, p. 22).
Multitudes of God’s singles have proved this true in practical experience. There is no need to rewrite the Bible out of sympathy for homosexually oriented Christians. God has written his laws of relinquishment deep within our psychological natures. If we want to keep them, we can. Thousands of us are doing it every day.
This is not to say that it is easy to be a Christian single: It is not. Singles have many griefs and problems neither recognized nor understood by the rest of the world. Many of us feel very much alone and overlooked in our churches, our needs for love and fellowship largely ignored.
Perhaps it is time for Christian singles to speak out. The church as a whole should take a long, compassionate look not only at the needs of its homosexuals, but of all its singles. Most churches (and mission boards) would fall apart without the constant, quiet ministry of its singles, particularly its single women. Yet there is no other group in the Christian family for whom so little ministry is provided. Most married Christians don’t really know singles exist; neither do many of our church boards. Yet we are fellow members of Christ’s body, human beings with human needs like everyone else. It is time the Church of Christ awoke to its responsibility and began to show some concern not just for some of its singles, but all of them.
G. Douglas Young is founder and president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies in Jerusalem. He has lived there since 1963.
