”excuse me while I whip this out.”
last friday morning, around 7:15, i read an article entitled the young and the sexless in rolling stone (props to pastor rick for the recommendation). the article focuses on a group of tragically hip evange-kids in new york city who are smart, sensual and sexless.
after reading the article i flew into an absolute rage that produced a couple of bad haikus and carried me far into the afternoon. i didn't know whether i was angry at the author, who at times seems to eschew any measure of objectivity (i.e., somehow i do not think that this particular group of evange-kids is reading john hagee), or the masturband (the livestrong inspired tool that indicates one's ability to master auto-eroticism) wearing evange-kids, who seemed to be utterly enthralled with the idea of displaying their acts of righteousness before men. although i found a number of things about the article troubling, i'll only clue you into a few.
the evange-kids commitment to virginity was so extreme that their interest in all things sexual seemed to border on obsession. these kids talk sex, blog sex, eschew and scrutinize sex to such a degree that sex seems to overwhelm their horizon. i found it particularly troubling when one of the evange-kids in the article insisted on referring to sex as "communion." while there is a intimate, communal element of sex, his linguistic choice seemed to confound sex with the one of the highest ordinances (in baptist language) or sacraments in the Christian tradition. while i appreciate the reverence with which he treats the act, i fear that he is setting sex on a far too lofty pedestal from which it cannot help but fall. although the Bible has a good deal to say about sex (no unsuspecting calves, brothers!), it does not obsess upon sex to such a degree. in fact, such an obsession seems to have more in common with canaanite and greek mystery religions.
second, if i walked into a church and saw dozens of twenty-somethings giving one another "chaste side hugs," i would hit the exit quicker than you can say hot karl. in my opinion, such practices do not help one properly order sex so much as it enflames our scantly repressed desires. legalistic practices such as these remind me of paul's teaching about the purpose of the law. the law does not restrain sin, paul tells us, but it illustrates the remarkable extent of our brokenness and prepares us to receive God's grace. as horrible as it sounds, i almost found myself wishing that these kids would just do the deed, so that they could come to terms with their brokenness, set aside their virginal pride and allow grace to reshape their developing sexuality.
third, i felt like a couple of the evange-kids who were interviewed were being less than honest with themselves. one of the boys confessed that a year or two before his girlfriend gave him a blow job and he felt absolutely horrible the whole time it was happening. i don't want to judge, but i have an extremely difficult time believing that (in fact, my original response was "liar. liar. liar."). i have little doubt that a shitload of guilt followed the experience, but in the moment i think that he felt a little more ecstatic than he was willing to admit. at some point, evangelicals need to come to terms with the fact that disordered sex and many other forms of sin are quite fun. we may choose to abstain from such practices for very good reasons, but to misrepresent the experience itself seems a bit dishonest.
fourth, the brief discussion about evange-kids infiltrating liberal organizations at u.c. berkley so that they could proselytize more proficiently made me want to puke. maybe its just because i'm a flaming liberal, but i do not think our calling is infiltrate and deconstruct the structures of this world so much as it is to actively incarnate the love and compassion of Christ and call people towards a more beautiful, good and true way of life.
okay, so i've bitched enough. i would love it if you would read the article and then do what i have failed to do here. namely, suggest healthier ways that Christians can maintain the sexual practices that are set out for us in Scripture and affirmed by the overwhelming majority of our traditions, without setting legalistic standards, becoming sexual isolationists and teetering towards damndable self-righteousness. basically, i want to think through this more clearly and eventually espouse a more holistic and healthy response. in order to do so, i could use your help.
i've also been reading a lot of articles on killing the buddha lately. i think this site is absolutely spectacular and would like to contribute something meaningful to them at some point in the future. if you only read one article, read a slut for faith. if i worked in a more traditional church, i would have every unknown couple who asked me to sanctify their secular contract read this article before proceeding. i think you'll love this site.
that's it for now. i need to strap on the masturband and get to work. er, i mean i need to wax my rocket. no, i meant...
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12 comments:
I think these kids are setting themselves up for a big disappointment when it comes to "their first time." They have raised it to such a high pedestal, as you say, that when they finally have sex, they are going to be thinking, "So...that's it, huh? Yeah, it was great, but...well now what? What else can I raise up to that level of expectation again?" If you put an event up to such a high degree of importance, it's bound to disappoint when it doesn't come out exactly as your idealized version of it.
I can't put my thoughts into words at the moment, but Jeff, I am expecting a clip from Britney Spears' Crossroads the next time you teach. Got it?
i would hit the exit quicker than you can say hot karl
LOL!!!!!!!!!
i found it interesting how much of their talk was war-like. war is an important metaphor used throughout the Bible, but i'm starting to wonder if it's the best for our times. by nature, the war metaphor is rigidly legalistic; i.e. US vs. THEM. i believe that continuing to operate under this sort of language usage causes us to discard the observed nuances in life and resort to categorizing everything as black or white. while i can hear our conservative friends crying "but you must call evil by what it is!", i think that this sort of legalistic tendency to boil everything down to a rule book robs us all of an important level of experiencing the intricacies and details of life.
Paul said that "everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial." maybe it's time we started to look at our lives this way. in my life, I've found ways to justify nearly everything...with SCRIPTURE! (after all, isn't that just what the different denominations are for?) i think one of the steps we could all take towards a healthier "world view" (haha- Jeff!) would be to understand that, while we are free to act as we want, the way of Christ is to act in a way that is beneficial towards others.
and i guess that brings me to a new (and my last) point. it seems that this article and the subject matter is, at its core, completely self-centered. it's all about thier own virginity and holiness. this focus on your own self only leads to a more naricissistic desire for one's own holiness. this is also known as an idol. if we really want to live after Jesus, we should start not looking at what makes our own selves holy, but rather what is most beneficial for others around us. of course, i imagine that abstinence would still hold its place, but the focus, and thus the intention, would just be different.
prescient as always, dr. lewiston.
a couple of quick responses.
first, i completely agree with you in regards to the war metaphor. it seems to me that the polarities of "us" versus "them" were demolished by the incarnation of Christ. by becoming a man God demolished are ontological distinctions between humanity and divinity. this fact compels us to deconstruct our ethnic, social and economic distinctions as well. in Christ there is no male, nor female, no slave nor free, no cracker nor collard people!
second, as per your last paragraph, i think that we need to reconsider the aim of our morality. it makes much more sense for me to eschew my disordered sexual tendencies if i consider them in light of the community of which i am a part. the community does not merely serve as a means of accountability for individual morality, but a healthy community serves as the proper end of a well ordered and God-glorifying individual life. it seems to me that we should be constantly reminding ourselves that the community does not exist to serve us, but we exist to serve the community.
third, i should have made clear in the original post that i find the evange-teens intentions to remain sexually chaste until marriage totally laudable. however, i think that they should also recognize that the manner in which fulfill or incarnate our intentions (i realize that this language is inadequate and unclear) can nullify the value of our stated intentions.
fourth, i also meant to critique the practice of the "silver ring thing" in the article. if this abstinence practice proceeds as the author says it does - virgin woman gives ring to dad who transfers it to husband on wedding day - then i find that practice wholly patriarchal and despicable. if the man also had a ring and there was an exchange i could tolerate it. but the way it is described makes it sound like a symbolic transfer of property. of course, i realize that this practice could have been misrepresented by the author, but still...
The article had plenty problems, for sure. Not the least of it (as one of my readers noted very articulately) was the idea of obedience based on a dream of better sex. Clearly that’s not at all what the Bible promises. As to the Berkeley “infiltration” ... well, let’s just say there’s far more to that story than would have ever fit into a story on Christian virgins. ;) Some attempts to explain it can be found here.
I agree that warfare language can be abrasive. I guess I mean it more in the sense of a great Oakland band, Tremolo, who launched a benevolent fund with half the profits from their new record Love is the Greatest Revenge. But sacrifical-love-as-warfare aside, what are we to make of Paul’s language in Ephesians 6? Or the Genesis 3 prophecy that enmity would be between the serpent (Satan) and the seed of Eve (humankind)? “Enmity” sounds pretty warlike to me. As I tried to explain to Jeff, the difference is between whether you regard those outside the church as enemies (which, admittedly, some Christians tend to do), or fellow pawn-combatants in a spiritual war in the midst of which you’ve switched to serving the winning side. Gee, maybe that language doesn’t sound very different ... Well, since I’m floundering here, Dan Allender’s decade-old book Bold Love is a great approach to the topic.
anna,
thanks for stopping by. i hope that you caught the confession about my tendency towards judgment in my most recent post. although i was enraged by the article for a number of reasons i was really encouraged by your post on the 26th. your elevation of relationship above experience was insightful and right on.
as for the war metaphors, i am not about to deny their significance within the biblical narrative, but still have serious questions about the whether these metaphors provide us with a helpful frame for our current experience. i have more to say about this issue, but the imperial stouts i consumed this evening are having a negative effect on my synapses. so, more to follow.
all quibbles aside, i hope that you keep writing miss broadway. the world needs more of what you have to give.
peace.
Okay, now that i've had a couple hours of sleep and 20 ounces of coffee, let me explain my hesitancy to use war metaphors in regards to sexuality.
first, i am hesitant to use this metaphor in regards to sexuality because the scriptures do not seem to frame sexuality in this way. if memory serves, usually the authors of scripture talk about "fleeing sexual immorality" (I Cor. 7:1), "avoiding sexual immorality (I Thess. 4:3), avoiding the adulterous woman (Prov. 5), etc. thus, it seems to me that it makes more sense to talk about abstinence as a discipline than as a war. the monks of old often talked about being "athletes for God." perhaps we should talk about our pursuit of sexual morality in similar ways.
second, i think that the war metaphor tends to polarize our thought. this produces the unhelpful us/them bifurcation that you already mentioned and encourages us to think about our pursuit of sexual morality as a contest in which we will either win or lose. the latter conceptualization is particularly troubling since, from all appearances, all of us are losers in the contest to keep ourselves sexually pure. at least i am. in my experience, abstinence before marriage was a very difficult struggle in which i "won" some battles and "lost" several others. if i framed my experience as a war, i think i would have been incredibly discouraged, since my record didn't quite measure up to alexander's or general patton's. however, if i view my experience through the lens of discipline, i can see how over the years i eventually learned how to abstain from my impulses and, by God's grace and through the mysterious work of His Spirit, my sexuality evolved into something that was more ordered than it was disordered. thus, my experience increases my hesitancy to use the war metaphor.
i realize that other people might find the war metaphor helpful and i do not want to condemn them for that. however, from my limited, lightly studied and quickly transcribed perspective, i would prefer not to talk about sexual morality in that way.
i hope that you find this response helpful. there is more i would like to say, but i need to sell some Bibles.
peace.
concerning the war metaphor usage, i think one of the biggest dangers currently facing christianity is our incessant transliteration of scripture over the thousands of years separating us from the time when it was written. no matter how you go about it, scripture was written by men, and those men, although they could have been writing from a place of divine revelation from God, were still filtering their revelation through the language skills stored in their brains. therefore, Paul would never have been able to talk of sin as subsets of neural circuits consisting of chemical synapses that are physically strengthened everytime that circuit is activated (thus making the circuit, or "habit", harder to break), because Paul didn't have that knowledge. instead, paul used metaphors that he and his audience could best understand, much like Jesus using the idea of a new "kingdom" to describe a new way of life for the Jews living under Roman rule.
i'll concede that the war metaphor works for some people, for a lot of people really. however, i question how helpful the war metaphor is in modern times. war is inherently decisive: it's always US vs. THEM. war is also inherently human, because all the wars we know about were/are between humans. therefore, it seems to me that one of the easiest things to do when describing life in war-like terms, even though we don't mean to, is that we label (or think of) other people as the enemy. now this might work for nation states, but i have a sense the it is diametrically opposed to the cause of spreading and increasing the loving community of people who follow Jesus. even though we don't mean to, could it be that our employment of the war metaphor causes us to subconsciously withhold kindness from someone who has been grouped with "THEM?" while Paul's usage of the war metaphor worked 2000 years ago, i think we have to start asking ourselves whether or not this is the most beneficial way to look at life. it could very well be that our continual usage of the war metaphor has lasting effects into other areas of our lives, and that this effect is ultimately more detrimental than the short-term benefit we gain from using the war metaphor to battle lust.
at the same time, i understand the lingering desire to use the war metaphor. it helps us set a stage in our minds of what is good and what is bad. but the question i have here is: are we correctly setting the stage? i grew up in a church where people signed that shitty abstinence pledge thing, but still all the girls in youth group went around in the most scantily-clad fashions their daddy's money could buy. sure we might have abstained from sex and blow jobs, but what did that matter when every guy in youth group could go home and get off that night because the girls had been pretty talented at crafting their own renditions of a Cosmopolitan magazine cover? what the hell does sexual purity and abstinence matter if we continue to support the same standards of beauty put forth by a sexually-overcharged culture? how are young girls ever to understand their own beauty when the models they have to guide them are the characters on the O.C.?
it seems to me that if you really want to start taking a stand against the unhealthy standards of sexuality and beauty, then the best thing to do is to encourage the promotion of healthier images in our society. this is done in many ways, but the most effective is through film, TV, music and literature. if Christians are supposed to be the "salt and light" of the earth, then it seems it'd be much better for us to be injecting this "salt and light" into our culture, instead of continuing to separate the salt and light from the rest of the world. if we really want to draw others in to living a "better" life, then we should present our way, our standards, of living as a better option to other human beings, instead of offering it as the "right way" to people who are living the "wrong way". in my experience, i've found that people are much more receptive when you offer them a suggestion for a better way to live, rather than telling them that you know you're on the winning side of a war.
craig,
i had similar thoughts. in fact, i was going to include them in my last comment, but was sidetracked by the need to upsell corduroy brown TNIVs.
i am beginning to think that biblical metaphors are cultural containers for revelation. we should always be aware of the meaning of these metaphors and their rhetorical function. however, we should think long and hard about what they communicate to our current culture, so that we can decide whether to use them or find another container.
thanks for your input. peace.
"biblical metaphors are cultural containers for revelation"
i couldn't have said it better...
i - myself, personally (i.e., "for me") favor the "holy" side-hug - but, again, that's just me - and we all know i'm wierd (i've always had a soft-spot in my heart for the "weaker brother" - referenced in the eating of ceremonially unclean foods... -think he too often gets a bad rap). maybe that explains that when i've given sisters in different x-ian circles side-hugs they look at me as if i have two heads (i think i notice that look before they say, "hot karl..." and "i hate that shit..." ;-)
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