article about SEX!!!
So I stumbled across a great article today and thought I'd paste it on here:
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NYTimes
May 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Saving Grace
By LAUREN F. WINNER
Durham, N.C.
THE recent Harvard study that found teenagers' virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people's abstinence pledges.
It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community's sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America — to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how "Grey's Anatomy" portrays sexual behavior that doesn't square with Christianity.
But perhaps it's more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality — just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism — many Christians still "struggle with" (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.
So why is the church's approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular "True Love Waits" virginity pledge: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."
This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there's something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus's only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.
Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.
The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won't do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived."
During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn't something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst.
After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves — I will stop drinking — won't cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation.
Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul's phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.
Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers' chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.
--------------------
Lauren Winner is a great author who's works include Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and most recently, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity.
She came to our church for an open forum and did a really great job, and what she talked about was similar to her above article. She's very insightful and is a smart, funny person.
--------------------
NYTimes
May 19, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Saving Grace
By LAUREN F. WINNER
Durham, N.C.
THE recent Harvard study that found teenagers' virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people's abstinence pledges.
It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community's sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America — to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how "Grey's Anatomy" portrays sexual behavior that doesn't square with Christianity.
But perhaps it's more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality — just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism — many Christians still "struggle with" (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.
So why is the church's approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular "True Love Waits" virginity pledge: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."
This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there's something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus's only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.
Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it.
The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won't do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived."
During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn't something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst.
After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves — I will stop drinking — won't cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation.
Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul's phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.
Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers' chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.
--------------------
Lauren Winner is a great author who's works include Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and most recently, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity.
She came to our church for an open forum and did a really great job, and what she talked about was similar to her above article. She's very insightful and is a smart, funny person.
posted by John Mark at 7:24 AM
2 Comments:
And then there are those like me who have abstinance thrusted upon him; no pledge needed here folks! Just straight up being unattractive to girls. Works wonders. I never have to worry about even being in a situation where I would have to worry about if I'm going to lose my purity or not.
I understand and agree with her completely. As much as I would love to get married and have a family, I would also be happy with lifelong abstinence. What's hard for us (me) to comprehend is the fact that if this is what God wants for me, it is what's best for me. Our culture makes singles out to be losers. God uses singles (and "losers") to accomplish his work in the world. I hope that if I am such a loser, I am a winner in Christ! Notwithstanding, I'd still like to get married some day, but that will not be my goal in life. My goal will be to follow God, and my hope is that I will get married in the process.
I think Christians are too wrapped up in modern culture as a whole (myself included). I think a Christians' pledge should not be to chastity, or abstinance, or whatever else one calls it. Instead, our pledge should be to follow Christ and be obedient to His Word. Such a pledge reaches much farther and wider than sexual purity, but has much greater implications.
But I agree with the end of Lauren Winner's statement, "Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community." The Bible tells us to bear one anothers' burdence. I think we have fallen short in that regard as the Church.
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