Tag: Sex

Guest Post: Sex and the Act of Worship by Nicole Cottrell

I met the Nicole, also known as the Modern Reject at Catalyst a couple of years ago, just as she was launching. I’ve been amazed at how quickly MR has become a community of people who love to ask tough questions. Nicole is provocative, thoughtful and sharp. Join the conversation at ModernReject.com and follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

I didn’t come to Jesus a virgin. Instead, I came to Jesus with far more sexual experience a girl of 16 should have. I also came to Jesus, however, somehow knowing that He didn’t care about any of that. He saw me as a virgin. It was a new day.

So, I suppose on some level, I expected the church to talk about this fact, too. I expected to hear rousing sermons on the gift of sex, ordained by God, pleasing to Him when experienced between man and wife. I expected to hear exactly what it was I was now waiting for, having once had sex, only to give it up in pursuit of Christ.

But, those messages from the church never came. Different ones did, however.

I think a youth pastor once talked about what not to do–how to not let things go too far with your boyfriend–so as to remain a virgin. You know, since virginity was the prize and all.

Virginity, it seemed, was what all young Christian people were to aspire to.

It wasn’t the powerful, supernatural, superglue-like bond that formed between two people who had only had intercouse with one another. It wasn’t the protection from emotional damage and even physical ramifications that comes from waiting. It wasn’t the lifelong guarantee of a healthier and more satisfying sex life with your spouse, if both were each other’s only sexual partner. It wasn’t the holiness and clarity that comes from a life surrendered to purity–purity of mind, spirit, and body.

No, those were not the messages I heard. Those rewards and blessings from the Lord were not discussed. It was simply stated within the church that sex was not good. Virginity was good. Sex could wait…you just never knew exactly why.

**The world sells the lie that sex is love. Yet, on the flip side, the church sells the lie that sex isn’t love**.

Young Christians swallow this up believing that marriage and sex are somehow not related, somehow not wholly and spiritually intertwined.

Sex, it seems, is simply a byproduct of marriage instead of an integral and intimate part. So, it becomes easy for us to dabble in sex outside of marriage. It becomes easy for us to view sex as just an action or an activity, and not the spiritual, emotional, and physical oneness described in Genesis.

And the two shall become one flesh, is quite literal. Sex is two becoming one and is nothing short of glorifying God.

Of course, when I finally got married at the tender age of 25, I had to unlearn all that I had been taught…and subsequently hadn’t been taught about sex between a husband and wife. No longer was I able to compartmentalize sex or view it as separate from love.

You see, both the world and the church have it wrong. Sex is love but…in marriage.

In the context of a marriage covenant between a man and a woman, sex and love are forever and inextricably linked. You cannot love your spouse without enjoying the gift of sex God has given you both to enjoy. Nor can you love sex, apart from your spouse, whom God gave you to enjoy it with.

God receives glory when we enjoy the gifts He has given us, whether it be good food, a child, a home, a loving spouse, or…sex. To put it plainly, when we enjoy sex within marriage we are worshipping the Lord. Strange to think, perhaps. It was for me, until the Spirit revealed this truth. Now, on Sundays, my husband and I sometimes skip church and choose instead to stay in bed and “worship the Lord.”

YOUR TURN: What were you falsely taught…or not taught about sex? What is the one thing you know now, that you wish you had known then? What would you tell young people today about sex and marriage?

Nicole Cottrell is…a hopeful romantic, baby wrangler, blogger on a mission, wife to her hero. Most importantly, follower of the One. She’s the Modern Reject. Stalk her on Twitter @modernreject or on Facebook at Modern Reject. She’ll be your BFF.

Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll

Though it’s certainly not all bad, the helpful and the harmful in Real Marriage are too thoroughly intertwined to be helpful.

Complementarian Egalitarian Gender Roles Mark Driscoll Marriage Real Marriage Sex Sexuality

Book Review: PUSH (Precious)

PUSH is a punishing, brutal picture of a person who is a victim of the American Dream. That person is Precious, a sixteen-year-old girl who at the book’s opening is pregnant with her father’s child. For the second time. Rather inexplicably because of this, Precious is expelled from her school (during which we discover that she is also illiterate) and sent to an alternative school. Here she meets Blue Rain, a teacher who sees past Precious’ rough demeanor and begins to mentor her.

The result is a journey out of the night that has been Precious’ life towards a day of possibilities for her. She begins to read and to evaluate herself and her life. She learns to see that she is damaged, that the life she is living is not normal or acceptable. She learns to protect herself from her parents.

And she learns to remember her past truthfully, to see her Self as fully human.

Precious sweeps us along on her journey, touching on the disembodiment our culture creates. Some of the most painful moments occur when Precious envisions her ideal Self – skinny, pretty and white, and when she escapes her body as her father rapes her, imaging herself far off and away, detached from the prison of her body.

The miracle of the book is the path we discover along with Precious, a path that surprisingly leads towards hope. She seems like such a lost cause, a victim of a broken, irredeemable system that destroys innocence, that crushes both the victim and the victimizer without respect for any persons. But through Blue Rain and the community of girls at the alternative school, the system is overcome and Precious steps onto the path toward redemption and healing.

PUCH is cruel and unrelenting; for ever two steps Precious takes forward she is shoved back. And the end is no fairy tale (:: ahem :: Blindside). But for those of us who live in a real broken world, hers is the story we need.

Bottom Line: PUSH asks you to consider what hope and healing look like in the real world. Do you have the courage to introduce yourself to Precious?

Book Review Disembodiment Embodied Faith Poverty Precious Push Racism Sapphire Sex Sexuality Social Justice

Bringing Sexy Back?

I want to wrap up this series by reflecting on the conversation PETA has started with these ads, and what we might learn from them.

PETA’s work is important, and worth our attention.

While I don’t agree with all of PETA’s values or methods, I believe their message and voice are important. Our culture has made the exploitation of creation for our own convenience and pleasure the rule of the day. We seldom give second thought to what we eat, wear or drive and how it affects the world around us.

Christians do have a responsibility to Creation, and we would get a lot further by partnering with organizations like PETA. We don’t have to agree with everything they do, but instead of condemning them, we can offer a helpful voice of critique. And if we listened a little bit more closely to what they’re saying we can learn something as well.

PETA’s ads raise several important questions we must take seriously.

1. When did you last give thought to where the products you use originated?

If you’re like me, the answer is: a long time ago. I use animal products – I eat meat, I wear leather, etc. And I’m not against killing animals as a rule.

But take a look at this horrifying video of a fur farm (if you have the stomach for it). I don’t wear fur, but this video gave me pause because in watching it, I realized that I need to be more conscious of what I consume. The way we treat creation says a lot about our picture of the creator, and I believe we can treat animals more humanely than they’re usually treated in our mass-production mills. (Another great resource to get you thinking is the film Food, Inc. You can get it on Netflix OnDemand if you’re a subscriber!)

2. What are we doing to live out our convictions?

A lot of the power of PETAs ads comes from the status of the persons they feature. Each of these persons (allegedly) has some sort of influence over a number of other persons and they choose to leverage that influence to support a cause in which they believe.

PETA works very hard to change your mind. They work so hard because they’re passionate about their message. They’ll stop at nothing to save animals from unethical treatment.

I have an important message to communicate. I’m passionate about it as well. I bet you are too. I want to go to the next-next level. I want you to walk away from an encounter with my message unable to get it out of your head. I want you to find it compelling. I want you to mull it over for the next week (or more!). PETA has encouraged me to step up my game.

3. Why are PETA’s ads so effective?

These ads are brilliant. They’re smart and sexy (and for the record, I don’t think sexy has to be bad). They communicate the same message on multiple levels and they have generated an enormous amount of attention. I haven’t seen anyone in the Church do this effectively in a long time.

Which brings me to…

We would do well to learn from PETA’s communication techniques.

PETA is not the devil; they’re doing some good, and they’re working harder and more creatively than most faith-based organizations I’ve encountered. They’re using the resources they have at their disposal and they’re using them well. For me, they call to mind Jesus’ parable of the shrewd manager (Luke 16:1-12).

Listen to what PETA had to say in defense of their ad campaigns: “As for the sexy women in our ads, the silly costumes, the street tableaux and the tofu sandwich give-aways, in a world where people want to smile, can’t resist looking at an attractive image and are up for a free meal, if such harmless antics will allow one individual to reconsider their own role in exploiting animals, how can it be faulted? Yes, Peta could restrict its activities to scientific work, but how often do you read of that in the papers? It could just hand out lengthy tracts about ethics, but how many people would stop and take one, let alone read it? Any peaceful action that opens eyes, hearts and minds should be commended, not condemned.”

I would debate whether the ads truly are peaceful – there’s a violence in pornography and in misappropriation – but that (important) debate aside, notice what PETA is doing: they recognize that just talking at people doesn’t effect change, that facts and figures (and, I would add, casually quoted Bible verses) don’t move us to alter our lifestyles. So they appeal beyond our reason, to our emotions and to our identities.

I wish that within the Church our communication was more creative and intention in the ways we communicate. I don’t think that everything PETA did in these campaigns was right, but they are effective, original and creative – three words we can seldom apply to anything coming out of the Church.

PETA’s ads make me ask, “Am I using all my creativity to generate compelling and original incarnations of the Gospel? Am I working at what I’m communicating, or am I stuck in a rut, talking at instead of talking with?”

What we need is a better picture of healthy sexuality.

The short takeaway from this for me is: Until we as Christians develop a healthy picture of sexuality that is indebted more to thoughtful exegesis of Scripture than it is to traditional (read: Western, post-industrial revolution) gender roles and unreasonable, culturally-formed sexual expectations, we’ll never be able to do anything more than stomp our feet and throw a temper-tantrum when we discover cultural texts such as the PETA ads. To borrow a line from Andy Crouch, our posture will always be one of condemnation, never one of critique and certainly not one of creativity.

And we desperately need creative and clever pictures of healthy sexuality in our culture right now. If this study has taught me nothing else, it’s how broken we all are, how fully our culture screws up our picture of what it means to be sexually healthy. I don’t have much of an idea of what this looks like yet, but it’s something I’m exploring pretty heavily for an upcoming series of posts.

For now, though, I’d really like to hear your thoughts about what constitutes a healthy sexuality. Pretty please?

Coda: Better Late than Never?

One last note – one of PETA’s more recent campaigns is “Ink not Mink”, which features various tattoo-bearing celeb in an anti-fur message. And best of all, most of them are male – from R&B artist Mario and rocker Tommy Lee to “Miami Ink”’s Ami James and “Jackass” star Steve-O. And, of course, Dennis Rodman. The ads are no less pornographic (with the possible exception of Steve-O, who is just absurd), but at least including men in the ads is more… balanced?

And in case any of you are unsure, these pictures are great examples are what NOT to do.

Church PETA Sex Sexuality Tattoos Theology