celibacy - a necessary gift?

A couple of folk have directed me to Ian Paul’s blog over the past few days, where he’s posted something of a response to Jayne Ozanne’s new Foundation. 

One of the responses comes from David Bennett, a gay celibate Christian, who questions the Ozanne Foundation because he fears it will “resist, persecute and reject celibate (or “Side B”) gay Christians”. 

If you’ve not come across the Side A/Side B language before, I first came across it through reading Justin Lee’s material - his website has generous and interesting material on this, as a debate between evangelical and gay Christians who think celibacy is not a necessary response and those who do talk together. 

The first thing I’d like to say to David is - Jayne is a good friend of mine; we had lunch the day after the Foundation was launched. And I am a gay celibate Christian. She isn’t for a moment out to resist, persecute or reject me, and I wouldn’t have thought you either. 

She has far bigger matters on her mind...

But secondly, I really do want to gently push some of the ideas in David’s post. You know - I love reading Ian Paul’s blog. He writes in a punchy style and (a bit like John Lewis) never knowingly undersells anything. David, I hope, is joining in the hyperbole. But I want to try to work a bit deeper than that.

Let me say that I have every respect for those who choose the path of singleness and celibacy because (apart from anything else) whatever my theology is, that’s my life too. 

When I was 21 I was offered a post working at St Aldate’s Oxford; I was David MacInnes’ first lay assistant (intern). The moment he asked me to take a year out and do that work, I knew I was likely putting myself on the road to ordination. I knew that as I struggled with my sexuality (very, very secretly) celibacy was what was expected of me, and I accepted it. The only alternative was if - by some great miracle - life changed totally. I was still praying it might back then. In the late 1980s, it was common teaching from evangelical pulpits that your orientation could change. 

I caught a lifestyle when I was very young because I was taught it was necessary. I no longer believe that’s what the Bible teaches. I believe that same-sex marriage can find a Biblical validity. But without going anywhere near there, today I’d like to celebrate the very Biblical lifestyle option that traditionalists insist upon. With a tweak or two...

Celebrating Celibacy 

Let me be as clear as I can be: celibacy is not a bad option. It can be a terrific option. My only difference with those who propound it as the only option is that they see it as the necessary lifestyle for Christians who are gay, and I do not, because try as I might, I can’t see that in the Scriptures. I will always commend celibacy as good - always, that is, as long as we are staying firmly on Biblical territory. 

Good - yes. Difficult - often. Glorious - sometimes! And by no means the exclusive preserve of gays. But if you are single and celibate and whether you are straight or gay, I feel like I can’t go any further without apologising. So on behalf of the whole Church of God, here we go - I apologise. 

I understand what you must go through.

You arrive at a new place. A new church. A new social setting. You’re on holiday and meet a group of people. And within minutes you are asked -  

“So, do you have a family?” 

Of course, if you are young and it’s one of those Christian holidays where you’re hoping to meet someone, your answer may be very different. But if you have passed the first moments of youth and you are fed up of the way the Church (especially, perhaps, Evangelicalism) revolves around couples and families, it can be a most dispiriting moment.

My usual answer is to smile and say, “No, just me & a Springer Spaniel.”

Now, I know that as I stand there, glass of wine in hand, or cup of coffee, or whatever, the person I’m talking to is looking at me and thinking, “But you look quite normal” or (more bluntly) “But you don’t look gay”. A couple of weeks ago someone actually said that second statement to me out loud. Seriously.

Of course, I don’t really mind. I’m old enough & ugly enough to laugh and enjoy such moments. But then - I’ve been through enough awkward social moments to find them funny. For those of you who still struggle, may I apologise on behalf of every thoughtless soul out there. 

I’m afraid it’s just how people think these days. If you are over a certain age and single - there must be a reason. That’s what goes through people’s minds. I’m a pastor; I’ve had it explained to me, with people not realising they were saying it about me. Glorious. Of course, a lot of the time in the church (as in the wider world) being single comes with complications and all sorts of stories - life comes with complications and stories. And so we all get the same response. So I’m sorry.

Why?

Am I apologising that straight single people are (for a moment) being presumed gay? No. Not at all. You should be so lucky. I’m apologising because culturally (once we’re past student years) the presence of a single person often seems to bring a certain discomfort into a gathering. People just panic. A single person! Help! I apologise because we are treated as if there’s something wrong with us.

Newsflash: Single people are normal.

A Normal Gift

Normal. Not better. Not worse. John Stott is careful to help us hold a Scriptural balance. In an interview about singleness, given to Christianity Today in 2011, he drew on the experience of his own life but was quick to ensure that those who have suffered from thoughtlessness on either side of the married/single divide don’t claim a moral superiority. He said: “We must never exalt singleness (as some early church fathers did, notably Tertullian) as if it were a higher and holier vocation than marriage. We must reject the ascetic tradition which disparages sex as legalised lust, and marriage as legalised fornication. No, no. Sex is the good gift of a good Creator, and marriage is his own institution. If marriage is good, singleness is also good.”

Being single in the Scriptures is always a normal option - but more than that, it is always a gift, and therefore always a blessing for the wider community.

St Paul, in wishing that everyone followed his way of life - his unmarried way of life -  in 1 Corinthians 7, is clear that such a personal wish is slightly beside the point because: “Each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that”. Being married is a gift from God, and being single is a gift from God. Fulfilling either life should mean leading a fulfilling life, as God’s gift blesses a person and through that person, a community. 

We get an insight into St Paul’s understanding of his own gift a little later in the same chapter: “An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs - how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world - how he can please his wife - and his interests are divided”. For St Paul, the gift of singleness allows him to be single-minded in his ministry and in serving God’s people. The level of that gift to the small churches of his day all around the Roman Empire, and to the global Church of God as it has grown ever since is simply extraordinary.

However when turned into a general rule, this is at best incomplete and may become problematic. As William Loader writes in his book on New Testament Sexuality, “Paul gives no indication of seeing marriage as an advantage in times of hardship or stress or of marrying primarily for love”. Indeed, St Paul sees marriage as the bringer of hardship: "Those who marry will face many hardships in this life, and I want to spare you this”.  

No doubt marriage can bring hardships; no doubt marriage can relieve hardships. A gift has all sorts of seasons. 

So too celibacy. 

I have many single friends in ministry. Like many of my married friends, they work ridiculously long hours and give themselves beyond all reasonable expectations. One of the differences for the singles and the marrieds is that St Paul doesn’t seem to recognise the hardships that come from imposed and unending professional loneliness. Where there is companionship, there is support along the way. Where there is none, that support is sometimes less easily accessed.

The gift has a cost. And I guess that's normal too. But still, it's a gift, and it shouldn't be presumed upon - by anyone.

And I'm not just talking of ordained people.

Celibacy, the single life, requires an ability to live alone that some people have and some do not. It’s a gift - a divine charism - given to some and not to others. That’s St Paul’s understanding. 

A Gift That Costs

I read well-meaning calls for the church to be better at developing ‘friendships’ for all so that those who ‘have to’ live this life find a better community in which to do so. But I’ve been reading these calls for thirty years and have only occasionally found anything of the reality that might lie behind such ideals. 

Community and friendships and understanding are vital for those called to singleness; but even these concepts cannot support those not called to celibacy yet expected to live it. Just as counselling and support and even prayer cannot prop up those not called to marriage. Ed Shaw’s chapter on intimacy in his ‘Plausibility Problem’ book misses the point for me because good friendships (which he labels “intimate friendships”, wanting to re-claim the word ‘intimacy’ from an exclusively sexual connotation) are not just for single people, and too many single folk simply don’t find their normality gives them the kind of church family that can sustain the sorts of groups of friends Ed describes. Large university churches can sometimes do this, but then as life progresses, even large family churches often struggle. 

And lots of us find normal life comes in small churches…

Gifts are gifts. Impositions are impositions. For singleness/celibacy to be a normal gift, it must be treasured both as normal - and as gift. 

St Paul gets this. He knows it. 

“To the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”

“Better to marry than to burn” isn’t usually how we begin a wedding service; I’m not sure I’ve ever heard this used as a text for a wedding sermon, either… Please, context is all -  St Paul sees both marriage and singleness as divine gift. The point is, if you don’t have the gift of singleness, don’t fake it. You will end up pointlessly crucifying yourself, and no good can come of that. 

Those who pretend to be morally ‘better’ than they actually are (however ‘better’ is defined, for whatever reason people decide to make that choice) live a lie. How much of a lie depends on how big the pretence is. Pretending I can be single when I cannot is a pretty big lie. And that’s often where promiscuity and secret sex and a whole slippery slope of sin sets in. St Paul will have nothing to do with it.

Nothing.To.Do.With.It.

So why do we seem to make such a pretence the only option for a whole category of people in the church today?

This is why I don’t go with those traditionalists who insist - if you are gay, you must be single. It ignores St Paul. It ignores the biblical concept of gift. It presumes. It enforces. It de-humanises. It takes away any sense of normality. And it reverses the idea I looked at in my last post - Jesus’ principle about man not being made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man. This principle, a radical re-understanding of one of the Ten Commandments, was explained by Jesus as being given to raise people up not grind us into the dust. 

It revealed Scripture as revealing who God is and how he loves people. All people. 

How much more then should this gift of celibacy (gift, not law) lift people up and not bind, reduce, make us feel like sinful failures who are unworthy of God and unequal to our fellow Christians? Yet this is (sadly) too often the result of traditionalist teaching when singleness is made law, not gift, and imposed on all gay people.

For those who have the gift of celibacy - we should rejoice! Celebrate. Support. Far more than we do. Far more. And we shouldn’t for a moment think it’s just about gay people. 

And for those who have different gifts - we should also rejoice! Celebrate. Support. Far more than we do. And we shouldn’t for a moment think these gifts are just about straight people.