As a celibate gay Christian, here’s how I find intimacy

Google the word ‘intimacy’ and nearly all the images displayed will be romantic or sexual. This perfectly reflects where our society thinks intimacy is to be found – on a date or in a bedroom.  

But what if you haven’t been on a date recently and sleep alone? I’m a celibate, gay Christian who, due to my biblical convictions, doesn’t date or sleep with other men. Does that mean that I’ll never experience true intimacy: a deep sense of connection, oneness, with another? That’s what many who love me fear: that my life choices are self-harming, will leave me struggling with a permanent intimacy deficit.  

But I think that real harm comes from our cultural misunderstanding that intimacy is only found in romantic and sexual contexts. The reality is that intimacy can be found in a range of different ways, and we need to help ourselves by exploring the many contexts in which human beings can fully enjoy connection and oneness, feel complete or whole.   

Oneness and wholeness 

I can testify to an intimacy with creation, a sense of oneness with its beauty, that I felt recently as I swam in the sea as the sun rose over the horizon. A good farmer feels a deep sense of connection to the soil; a great artist pours their very selves into their painting; a loving parent feels their child’s injury as if it were their own. Each are experiencing a sense of oneness through their involvement in the creation or preservation of something or someone. These are the sorts of feelings that give us human beings a sense of completion, or oneness, that can be part of meeting our God-given need for intimacy.  

The intimacy we are most designed for is to join with the eternal intimacy that Father, Son and Spirit have been enjoying forever 

Though I sleep alone, I can still enjoy intimacy with others in the range of deep relationships I have with my biological family, church family and friends. True relational intimacy comes through emotional vulnerability and time shared with others. I keep discovering that my singleness has gifted me with a healthy network of intimate relationships when a lot of my married friends have become unhealthily dependent on just one. I do not need completing by finding my ‘other half’ but by enjoying the whole range of other people in my life. The more emotionally connected I feel with them, the less I feel the need for any sexual connection.  

Made for more 

My intimacy needs are also met by a growing sense of connection with the person God has made me to be. He has gifted me with my body, personality, strengths and weaknesses - and although I might like to change them all at times, I am increasingly hearing his call to delight in them and use them as he intended. Too many of us spend too much of our time wishing we were someone else and not enjoying both whose we are (God’s dearly loved children) and who we are (uniquely designed divine masterpieces). God wants us to feel whole, not broken, to delight in being fearfully and wonderfully made by him.  

And that is because he has made us for himself – to enjoy an intimate relationship with him, to be eternally connected to him, become one with him. As Augustine of Hippo famously puts it: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” The intimacy we are most designed for is, incredibly, to join with the eternal intimacy that Father, Son and Spirit have been enjoying forever.  

True relational intimacy comes through emotional vulnerability and time shared with others

The scriptures use each of the most intimate human relationships (parent/child, friendship, husband/wife) to help us grasp the sort of intimacy God offers us all in Jesus, with his Spirit as a divine intimacy coordinator. 

I have a dream of a world when people Google ‘intimacy’ and the images that appear include pictures of couples in love and expressing their love, but also people swimming in the sea, sharing meals with friends, enjoying their unique bodies and gifts, worshipping their triune God, filling their intimacy deficit in all the ways God intended.

Ed’s latest book, The Intimacy Deficit: Fully enjoying God, yourself, others and creation (IVP) is available now.