Dear Friends in Christ,

Hmm… I hadn’t planned on writing about chastity on Valentine’s Day… I’ll have to factor that in next time… But what better day to consider chastity? Chastity celebrates the fullness of the love between husband and wife, and chastity celebrates the love among family and friends and with strangers that loves as God loves, and loves well and loves generously and loves rightly.

I wrote in my message last week that chastity (and even celibacy) is not merely the absence of sex, nor merely restraint. Chastity in its fullness is about how we love in ways appropriate to our relationships, and how we love well, in ways that build up the other and all our relationships. When our relationships thrive, the whole community thrives. Chastity points toward something beautiful, rather than toward the challenges we have with chastity.

Of course, we need to take stock of those challenges. I wrote about the mindset of our culture about sex, and also about the drives within us. Even when we don’t fan the flames of those desires, they still press upon us. Our desires do have a healthy origin, connected to our need for personal connection and physical touch. God designed us to be in relationship with each other, and we are not disembodied ghosts; we are physical people as well as spiritual people.

It’s safe to say, however, that our drive for sexual intimacy is generally out of proportion. C.S. Lewis once observed that we would think it strange if we gathered in a theater to watch the slow unveiling of a plate of food. There are no “food strip clubs” in our culture. Furthermore, some of us will be single all of our lives, and for all of us, large portions of our lives will be spent single and celibate. Even in marriage, spouses are not always available to each other. Conflict, travel, illness and injury can make marriage feel a lot like celibacy. How can we live with our desires unmet? How can we find peace (spiritually and physically) without the intimacy we crave?

In this context, the peace that our guts imagine is probably not attainable. We will always encounter that restlessness and desire; it is a normal part of the human condition, young or old, single or married. The peace that we can find, by God’s grace and mercy, is, in fact, making peace with that restlessness and desire rather than always trying to fill it with sex.

Theologian Victor Lee Austin writes that while marriage focuses and concentrates our commitments and our relationships to a spouse, friendship points our loves to a much wider scope of relationships. And we are all called to friendship at all times in our lives (whereas marriage is a calling not for all of us, and even then, only for part of our lives).

What if we looked beyond that restlessness and desire that we carry, and looked toward the good things sought by the source of that desire? God made us for relationships—not only the happy ones, but the messy relationships inherent to humanity. We need each other. We need partnerships and commitment. We need generosity and hospitality to others. We need camaraderie and connection, common purpose and connection to heritage before us and beyond us.

Christian Community

What if Christian community could cultivate those kinds of relationships? The healthy living out of those generous and vulnerable and dedicated relationships that fit our calling in life is in fact what chastity is, and how chastity is lived out.

Monks and nuns live in community so that their singleness is not solitude nor isolation. In community with common purpose, they can encourage and support each other and find creative and life-giving ways to respond to that restlessness and desire, channeling it toward joy in giving for others. How might we, outside of the monastery, support each other with such life-giving relationships? Since we all carry some of that restlessness, how can we support each other? Married or widowed or single—the answer is not merely “find a partner,” but rather how can we build relationships of depth and meaning and purpose? Instead of trying to satiate the endless cycle of sexual desire, how can we find wholeness in more holistic relationship across the range of our personal commitments?

If our community could love this way, all of us would flourish. We would especially provide support for those who are single and who seek to cultivate chastity. This raises various disagreements in the church these days about the historic understanding of chastity, and the legitimate parts of the yearning that we carry when our desires are unmet. The boundaries involved in chastity are challenging for all of us, for married and single people and especially challenging for gay men and lesbian women who seek to follow that historic teaching (yes, this raises a lot to unpack—for another email). The church—the Christian community—should lead with compassion and lead with embrace. Even as we stay humble before God and seek to follow his ways, we can also embrace each other and feed each other with relationships of depth and vulnerability and commitment that help us flourish toward chastity’s goal. We all need each other, and by God’s grace, God gives us to each other, to bless us.

This Valentine’s Day, as some celebrate the fun of romance, remember to celebrate also the generous love that knows no bounds, that seeks good and blessing for others widely—for family and friends, for brothers and sisters in Christ, and even for strangers. The goal of chastity is blessing for all of us, drawing us closer to God’s dream for each of us, and for all of us together.

More anon…

Yours in Christ,

-Tom