Or…Maybe this isn’t the case and I am making gross
stereotypes, but if it was anything like the stuff I listened to growing up, I
hit the nail on the head. There is
nothing innately wrong with any of this, but let’s be honest…for anyone past
the age of 21, the true love waits speech we heard (and heard and heard) in
middle and high school isn’t exactly cutting the mustard anymore and I'm not really sure it did before that point either.
Remain pure until you are married. Okay. Good.
I can do that. My word, I hope I can do that, I mean, my salvation
depends on it after all doesn’t it?!
This is the only mandate God ever made! Pure. Pure. Pure!! Done. Good. Consider my legs crossed.
Fast forward four years and you’re in the basement alone
with your boyfriend. You’re “watching a
movie” which is also known as making out passionately and you’re rounding the
proverbial bases at frightening speeds.
It may be in this very moment, when it occurs to you to ask the
question, “what does being pure mean, anyway?” At this point, your boyfriends
hands are making his way up your shirt, and OH MY GOSH it feels so good, so how
am I possibly supposed to stop him, even though there’s this nagging voice in
the back of my mind screaming PURITY at me!?
At this point, it is impossible.
IMPOSSIBLE. It doesn’t matter if
you are the Virgin Mary herself, six months pregnant with Jesus. If you have
the sex drive of a sugar snap pea, you aren’t stopping him. You just aren’t.
It’s not until you are at home that night, probably starting
to feel a little guilty, that you start to wonder what exactly they meant by
purity all those times they talked about it at church because if we are being
honest…no one ever defined it. They just
told us to be pure, which you probably, as I did, took to mean don’t have
sex. Okay…but guys…there are a lot A LOT
of things you can do between a peck on the lips and full-blown penetrative sex.
I guess that just wasn’t ever covered? Or did I just miss that Sunday? (Doubtful...I did not miss church).
I remember attending a seminar at some point in high school,
where a woman (wearing a white dress…how subtle of her) told us that she viewed
all girls as wrapped gifts to be presented to their husbands. Every time we sinned sexually (keep in mind,
this term “sexual sin” was never defined), a piece of our wrapping paper was torn,
or the tape was peeled up and this was a tragedy because, “think of how sad
your husband will be, to receive an opened gift.” Thinking back on it, I wish I
had run up on that stage and punched that woman in the face. Okay, maybe not. I’m sure she had wonderful intentions. BUT.
GIRLS. You are not, nor will you
ever be an opened and torn up gift! You may sin sexually, whatever that may
mean, but you are NOT a torn up gift and you are NOT, let me repeat myself, NOT
unworthy of ANY man because of your sexual past and you should NEVER let
someone tell you that you are. At the
end of the day, we are ALL (male and female) sinners and not one of us is
worthy of the grace we are given through Jesus Christ.
As a singleton, who has spent four years living on my own, dating a few men and having “adult relationships,” (I use that term VERY loosely) I can tell you that the church did not prepare me for this phase of my life in more ways than one, but specifically in the area of “sexual purity.” They work on the assumption that everyone is getting married, and more specifically, they work under the assumption that everyone is getting married pretty young, specifically if you are a girl. This is, of course, grossly inaccurate.
As Christian females, there is the constant notion that we
must be pleasing to the men in our lives.
We must be good girls, good daughters and ultimately good wives. Where does it leave you when you are no
longer living with your parents, you are a full-blown adult and have no one to
please? Lost. That’s where that leaves
you. Confused, and mad and lost. At this point, you have spent your entire
life living up to the standard of you father, or working toward getting a guy
to like enough to marry you, so you can be his “perfect gift.” When that
doesn’t exist anymore it leaves you totally and utterly wayward because you’ve always
had the notion that you would leave your father and fill the role (in a
non-creepy way) with your husband because that is what you’ve been taught. I can tell you that when that doesn’t happen
in a timely (or what you deem to be timely) manner, it can leave you very forlorn and whats more, VERY bitter.
Girls. It is time
that we stop placing our worth and our importance in men. We struggle with this because the Bible calls
for men to lead women, both in the church and in the home and that is fine and
good. However, in reality, there is a
very real possibility that one day, you will find yourself no longer under the
leadership of any human man. At this point you cannot depend on men to lead; instead you are going to have to
start depending on God to lead you and you are going to have to take
responsibility for your relationship with Jesus Christ.
BUT this is not an easy task! Why? Because at this point, we
are mad! We are mad we're 26-year old-virgins, we are tired of being made a spectacle of
at the doctors office when you get a PAP smear (“What form of contraception do
you use?” “Um. Abstinence?” “WHAT??!! WOOWWW!!! REALLY???”) and we want to have
sex. BADLY. And heaven knows every opportunity you never
had in high school is there. You don’t
have to make out in the back seat of your car…you can do it right there on your
couch, or even in your bed, because there is no one there to stop you. You will
probably mess up and you will probably mess up a lot, because waiting is
HARD! BUT GIRLS! LISTEN TO ME! Your
worth is not found here! Your worth is not in your virginity, or lack of
virginity. Your worth is in Christ.
Period.
Do not read my words incorrectly. I am not telling you to go have sex: vaginal,
oral or manual. Heck, I am not even telling you it is okay to participate in
“heavy petting,” as my grandmother once called it. The
reality of the situation is that the Bible doesn’t give us specific guidelines
as to what is and is not acceptable. It
simply says to abstain from sexual immorality and that there should be one
husband for every wife. The very real
and sometimes hard to swallow truth is that the Bible doesn’t have a lot of
guidelines specific to 26-year-old single Christian girls. However, it does have a lot to say to
Christians: married, single, divorced, widowed, whatever. Things like “Go therefore and make disciples
of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit.” (Matthew 28:19). Crazy how that
verse, widely deemed to be one of the most foundational in the New Testament,
never once mentions sex. Ladies, your worth is not found in your ability to abstain
from sex until marriage, just like it is not found in the amount of money you
give, or the works that you do. Your
worth is found in Christ. It always has
and it always will, whether or not your prince charming comes along.