Sex and the Single Christian: Total Avoidance?

A reader commented on an earlier post that total avoidance seems like the safest strategy for the single person where sex is concerned, and I agree; I also agree with him that a modus operandi that takes anything we're uncertain of and treats it like a sin can quickly lead to an unhealthy Christianity.

However, depending on what you count as "sexual" and how you understand "total avoidance," I'm not sure total avoidance of the sexual is even possible unless a person chooses to join a monastic community.  I think the  thought-word-deed breakdown helps here: how far does one have to go to avoid what's sexual in thought, word, and deed?

Consider sexual activity. It's not clear how much of our interaction with individuals of the opposite sex is guided by our sexuality. There's certainly plenty of confusion

Latest Reads: Singled Out

The Book:
In Singled Out: Why Celibacy Must Be Reinvented in Today's Church, Christine Colon and Bonnie Field canvass an impressive range of views on singleness and celibacy, from the early church fathers to contemporary Catholic thinkers to Joshua Harris to Henri Nouwen to Sex in the City.  In fact, a great deal of the book reads like an academic literature review, and the reader might just want to skip the first four chapters (spelling out positive and negative views of celibacy in secular and Christian culture).

Why I liked it:
The authors' aim seems to be to find a healthy, middle-of-the-road view of celibacy that doesn't portray it as either an ultra-holy state of marriage to God, or a pitiable state of unfulfillment, and they're interested in particular in an understanding of singleness that is relevant to the 30-and-beyond crowd, in contrast with abstinence literature that typically addresses teens and college students.  They do a great job identifying "dangerous messages" in Christianity, such as

Thoughts on Singles' Welcome in the Church

I'm working my way through Singled Out, by Christine Colon and Bonnie Field, and although I don't have a review of the book ready yet, I do have a few thoughts on how singles are received by the church.  I should perhaps preface them by noting that I myself have been happily married for five years, and have spent very little time in the singles scene, so I'm not speaking as any kind of expert.

One of the points made by Colon and Field is that the evangelical church's emphasis on family can make it surprisingly hard for single adults to be made welcome and integrated into the church body.  I personally have felt convicted for a while about what I've come to think of as Cookie-cutter Christianity: Christian environments where when you walk in the door you're surrounded by all of these lovely people with their smiles and warm greetings and lovely children in adorable outfits, who look like they could be straight out of a catalog.  But I've mostly thought about this as it relates to questions of age, ethnicity, and disability- not family.

For a single person visiting a church...