Driving Directions to Wildhorse Canyon

Catalyst 2007 Schedule

Chastity: Improving the Practice, Part 2

I have been thinking about this great little idea that I read in the book “Real Sex.” Lauren Winner reflects on learning how to play the cello. She says she “understands sin formation by way of the cello.” When she began taking cello lessons she used an improper technique to hold the bow. I guess her pinky finger was holding the bow wrong. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to me, but then again I’m not a cellist. Anyway, she used this improper bow hold for 5 years and when she was finally coached to correct it, the right hold felt wrong. It took 3 years to place that pinky correctly to the bow.

I think this illustration is so profound. If practice makes perfect, improper practice makes us imperfect. What we practice as believers shapes the kind of Christians we become.

Take my prayer life for example. Sometimes I don’t feel much like praying. But I know it is important for my faith. When I don’t feel like praying, sometimes I just go to my room and stubbornly get down on my knees. I let my body start the prayer and stay on my knees until my spirit catches up. I find that if I position my body for prayer I always end up praying. This is an example of spiritual discipline. It is choosing to shape the kind of Christian I am going to be by my stubborn practices.

The reverse is also true. When I was engaged to my wife, I didn’t always feel like practicing chastity. It didn’t seem as big of a deal; now that we were engaged, it had just become a matter of timing. We never had sex, but she was so exciting to me and the idea of being married was so exciting that I often pushed our pre-established limits. My poor practice of chastity shaped our relationship. My sin taught her to be physically resistant and me to be pushy about sex. Like a poor cello hold, it took time to correct.

I guess the point is this. The way you practice chastity in singleness is directly related to the way you will practice fidelity and sexuality in marriage. The wedding is not a finish line for chastity. It is more like the marker in a triathlon, when you switch from running to cycling; the race of life is still on.

Winner’s book includes a few more examples about sin formation: pornography teaches you that real bodies aren’t good enough, masturbation teaches that sex can happen outside of a relationship, and premarital sex teaches you that sex must be thrilling. These lessons sin teaches us are like those 5 years of a misplaced pinky finger on a cello bow. Sin effects our spiritual formation and shapes the kind of Christians we will be.

The goal of Christian practice, then, is to stubbornly place our bodies, like a pinky finger, in the right position. Just like kneeling can lead me to pray, we can position ourselves appropriately for the practice of chastity. I look forward to our dialogue with Lauren Winner at this intriguing catalyst conference. Hope you will not miss the opportunity to participate.

the church and sex

as christians we should care about chastity and purity, ‘cause god does. too often, however, we merely pay it lip service. caring about it means addressing it and dealing with the tough issues, not just giving the all-too-cliché advice of “just say no.”

one of my favorite movies is mean girls. in it, there's a part where the p.e. teacher (coach carr) is addressing a group of teenage girls. he's giving his "sex-ed" talk and he says, "don't have sex because you will get pregnant and die! don't have sex in the missionary position, don't have sex standing up, just don't do it! ok, promise? ok, now everybody take some rubbers." i hate to say it, but i feel like the church does the same thing (except the part about rubbers). we are told about all the bad effects of sex but we miss the part about a god in heaven who loves us no matter what we do. we also fail to remind people of the true purpose of sex, in that it was never intended outside marriage.

we all too often hear that our "true love" is waiting for us somewhere. true love is great and all, but it doesn't always come when you're 22 and just finished with college. young adults (or any christians for that matter) shouldn't learn to hold out for some guy or girl that they haven't met or may never meet. they need to be told to do it for god.

i'm not just suggesting that the church should take a different angle on sex; we need a different mind-set altogether. lauren winner suggests this when she says, "if we fear our bodies because they are undisciplined and contingent, messy and willful, we then get especially freaked out about sex, which is one of the places where our bodies are most willful and messiest. when the body becomes something to escape from, the sexual body becomes something to vilify." sex isn't a bad thing. it's not something we should be ashamed to talk or think about. it's in our human nature to need and want this intimacy. we need to learn to discuss this and care for it in a healthy manner. god gave us sex for a reason; it's our job to learn these reasons and teach them to others, no matter how uncomfortable.

real sex, by lauren winner, addresses sex in an honest, intelligent, sincere manner. i'm very thankful that she wrote this book in such a practical and relevant voice. i would recommend it to anyone who is the least bit interested in learning more about the true purpose of sex.

Chastity: Improving the Practice

The one thing I most like about Lauren Winner’s book is the realization that we are fallen creatures. Often we, church types, assume purity is something we begin with and need to protect--something we can loose or we can save. Isn’t that the presupposition of those purity rings single Christians wear? (I’m not knocking the rings; I support my three single siblings who wear them. Like my wedding ring, it is a sign and reminder to be godly with our sexuality.) Winner, however, starts with our imperfectness. Chastity is something Christians learn. It is a spiritual disciple, “something you practice.” It is a spiritual action.

Let me use my life as an example. I am a 31 year old college minister. I married 9 years ago. So, I’ve practiced the disciple of sexual purity both as a single guy in abstinence and as a married guy in fidelity. I’ve done well, but I wouldn’t call my journey with chastity blemish free. I didn’t have sex before I married, but I don’t think I was a very good virgin. In my mind, being a virgin was drawing the “No Sex!!!” line in the sand. But I didn’t really get that it was a spiritual discipline. I wasn’t doing chastity as a spiritual practice. I simply viewed premarital sex as an avoidable evil.

I started college with the heartbreaking end to what had been a meaningful high school relationship. I choose to date casually my freshman year, you know with no real commitment. So, I dated several different girls. Many weekend relationships were physical in nature. I probably kissed twenty girls that year, but I kept the “no sex” rule.

My shallow relationships that year taught me to be physically free with my body, as long as I wasn’t having sex. Winner says the opposite, what you do does matter. We are trained by our actions. Casual making out instead of casual sex wasn’t real purity. It wasn’t intercourse, but it wasn’t well practiced chastity in a Christian sense. Chastity values intimacy, honors relationships, and practices appropriateness. Chastity teaches us how to behave appropriately in relationship. It’s about being rightly related to others more than drawing the individualistic “No Sex” line in the sand.

I think that chastity is really more a practice than a state of being. None of us simply start pure. Even virgins are fallen creatures and sinners. Some have fantasized, used dating for selfish reasons, or masturbated. Others have corrupted their own understanding of sex as something evil, like theft or murder. Non-virgins are maybe more aware of their failings. But we’re not all hopeless. It’s like rock climbing. No one knows how to make a climbing knot or use a wedge the first time out, but these are thing we can learn. In the same way we need to learn to pray, fast, study our bible, or rock climb, we should learn purity. The Spirit can teach us appropriateness in our relationships and how to be rightly related to our dating partners and spouses, and rightly related to those who aren’t.

communal sex

the book real sex addresses a great deal of the practical and theological rational behind chastisty. even so, i have to admit it is a book i had a hard time reading outside the privacy of my room. despite all of my mom’s openness and the wonderful group of friends i have who are willing to talk about sex, it was not a book title that i wanted to explain at a coffee shop. lauren addresses the things that other authors have not even acknowledged. she talks about topics like casual sex, lies the media and our culture have told us about sex, and even lies that the church has told us about sex.

the thing i found most intriguing, however, was lauren’s discussion on “communal sex.” she suggests that sex is something we have to address as a community. to some (especially those that say what happens behind closed doors should remain private) this may sound like crazy talk. but, when you actually take some time to think about it, it makes a lot of sense. with all the hype and focus that we’ve had about the importance of community, shouldn’t this include being able to talk about sex?

hear me out. i’m not saying that a husband should go golfing with his buddies and give them a detailed rendition of the previous night’s activities. nor should a wife reveal way too intimate details about her marriage bed. nobody wants that (i hope). but in an appropriate and supportive environment, a community should be able to talk about sex. whether one is married, dating, single, a widower, and even a teenager, we should all be able (and willing) to appropriately talk about it on some level. we should also be able to talk about our struggles in that department. think about it, if we felt freer to talk about sex and sexual sin, it could radically change our communities and the failings of our communities.

i used to have a boyfriend who was constantly down on himself about his sexual sin (it didn’t include me, but i’ll leave room for the imagination). i told him that all of our sin was the same, and we all struggle with different sins. granted, it was a little awkward for me, but at least i knew exactly how to pray for him, and understood what he struggled with. i feel like we should all be honest with our failings (there are of course appropriate environment s for such) so i just don’t understand why this all has to be so taboo.

in his album, the house show, derek webb talks about sin and how we’ve turned it into a “cultural hiding game” instead of what it really is. sin. he says ,”take joy in the fact that your sin is real and so is your savior”. he also said that “the best thing that could ever happen to you is if your sin was broadcasted on the 5 o’clock news”. webb says a lot of great things, and i apologize for butchering it, but he’s right. until we stop pretending, stop “hiding” from what we really are, we will never be able to conquer these issues as a community. so, when lauren talks about “communal sex”, she’s saying that sex should dealt with as a community. whether it be failings, anxieties, or perhaps a PG response, it shouldn’t be ignored.

confessions from a reader

i am a mid-twenties, single woman who recently graduated from college. before i write about my thoughts on lauren winner’s real sex, i thought i should tell you a little bit about my own history. we all know the word “sex” has had christians running for years. when i mentioned to my two friends in seattle that the catalyst 2007 topic would be about sex, my two friends groaned. they placed their hands over their faces, and said “no more talk about relationships. we’re sick of it”. i, of course, was tickled by their response. there isn’t a better word to utter than “sex” if you’d like to get a good reaction.

growing up the word “sex” was a word that you dare not utter, especially in church. you would even get stared at if you were having a full-on conversation about it in a public place. the funny thing is that we all know people have sex…obviously, or none of us exist. but most people don’t talk about this topic very often, unless, that is, you grew-up in my household.

when i was about 8, my mom rented a movie called “where did i come from”, which was a cartoon that not only explained the body parts of both men and women, but also had an addition…a not-so-entertaining graphic of a sperm race to the egg. this was an eye-opening pool of knowledge for me. up to this point i thought that sex was just when people took their clothes off and kissed (due to the movies i’d watched). i had no clue of the mechanics involved.

i was always a curious contender and spoke freely due to my mom’s openness of the subject, but then i became a christian i learned that talk about sex was not kosher around my peers. i was 17 after all, and supposedly chaste (this, however, wasn’t the case). i knew what christians thought about sex, but we all know that thinking and knowing are two different things. even knowing doesn’t ensure that we know how to practice chastity.

so, what kind of things did i learn about sex and being a christian? well, one of my big introductions was an event called “true-love waits.” this event was ok, but the problem for me was that i had already not waited. i shrugged thinking, “man, i can’t wait for my ‘true-love’.” my next introduction to the christian version of sex was at a camp where the speaker and a panel of people answered questions on the topic. this helped for a while, but it didn’t change my mind-set about sex. finally, i went to a camp as a leader, and visited a small group session in which a speaker talked about losing our purity. i kept thinking that these girls are older and may have already made mistakes and participated in actions that make you “un-pure.” how are they supposed to feel?

we all know what we're supposed to do, but i think what's missing is practical and theological reasons of why we're supposed to do it. it seems that we focus a lot on keeping your virginity (which is a good thing), but some people are past that (and possibly at an early age). as a church, we can't ignore that because that's what we want to believe. times are changing and so are our youth, young adults, and not so young adults. the church needs to be willing to change its methods without changing its message.