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.