As our society has made it possible for a human life to begin without sex, it has felt increasingly impossible to enjoy a human life without sex.
The basic premise of Hollywood comedies: like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and 40
Days and Nights demonstrates this—the first chronicles a man’s increasingly
desperate attempts to have sex for the first time; in the second another man
struggles to last just 40 days and nights without it. So for many in our world
today, to call people to more than 40 days and nights without sex, or to more
than 40 years—potentially, in fact, to a whole lifetime without it—sounds
totally implausible, even comical.
And yet that’s God’s clear call to every Christian who remains unmarried.
The pity one receives (and can feel) as a result of living without sex until……
is often overwhelming. At times the implication seems to be that that person is
not quite human simply because he/her has yet to experience such a basic human
right as sexual intercourse.
But as Thomas Schmidt observes, “It is only an aberration of our own sorry
generation to equate the absence of sexual gratification with the absence of
full personhood, the denial of being or the deprivation of joy.”
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| How Can You Live Without Sex? (Part 1) With Bishop Nelson Nzvimbo |
Previous generations had different attitudes toward celibacy. The single-minded bachelors who used to prop up most
British institutions, and the devoted spinsters who spent their lives caring
for elderly relatives, used to be admired, not pitied. Yet such lives are now
mocked and avoided, and talk of celibacy or chastity produces the giggles that
talk of sex used to. As Christopher Ash asks, “When did we last see a
successful movie which portrayed a contented bachelor or spinster?” I never
have.
And tragically, the church can become just as sex-obsessed as society around it.
As the world has idolized sex in almost any context, the church has often
idolized it within marriage. Some believers rush into marriage in their early
20s so that they can have sex. The danger, of course, is discovering that desire
is almost all they have in common with the person they’ve now committed to for
life. Early marriage has become the panacea for Christians struggling with
sexual temptation, leaving far too many shocked to discover that temptation
still remains when they return from their honeymoon.
Course Correction
The church needs to ignore the
giggles and start rehabilitating the concepts of celibacy (or singleness) and
chastity (or sexual self-control). We need to articulate the benefits of a
celibate life for some, and to encourage chastity for all.
Or, to put it another way, we need to start reading our Bibles again.
It’s hard to see how Scripture could be any more positive about the
celibate life. Its central character, Jesus Christ, was single and yet is held
up as history’s only perfect human. In Jesus you see life to the full—and his
was a human life without sex.
And then, of course, there is the example and teaching of the apostle Paul.
Would he have been able to make his missionary journeys if he had a wife to
care for? Would he have been such an effective pastor and mentor to young
church leaders if he had his own young family? He clearly expresses in 1
Corinthians 7 the unique gospel benefits of his celibate life, and it’s time we
start promoting similar thinking in our churches today.
We need to listen to both Jesus and Paul when it comes to the subject of
chastity. Jesus’ high standard for sexual self-control could not be clearer in
Matthew 5, and Paul encourages it again and again to churches in cities where
chastity was as little valued as it is in many cities today. All Christians are
required to be sexually self-controlled. The importance of this—both outside
and inside marriage—must be stressed in a world in which we’re typically encouraged
just to follow our feelings.
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