Virginity pledges. Chastity balls. Courtship. Side hugs. Guarding your heart. Evangelical discourse on sex is more conservative than I've ever seen it. Parents and pastors and youth group leaders told us not to do it before we got married. Why? Because the Bible says so. Yet that simple message didn't go very far in shaping our sexual decision-making.
So they kicked it up a notch and staked a battle over virginity, with pledges of abstinence and accountability structures to maintain the power of the imperative to not do what many of us felt like doing. Some of us failed, but we could become "born again virgins." Virginity mattered. But sex can be had in other ways, and many of us got creative.
Then they told us that oral sex was still sex. It could spread disease, and it would make you feel bad. "Sex will be so much better if you wait until your wedding night," they urged. If we could hold out, they said, it would be worth it. The sheer glory of consummation would knock our socks off.
Such is the prevailing discourse of abstinence culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. It might sound like I devalue abstinence. I don't. The problem is that not all abstainers end up happy or go on to the great sex lives they were promised. Nor do all indulgers become miserable or marital train wrecks. More simply, however, I have found that few evangelicals accomplish what their pastors and parents wanted them to.
Indeed, over 90 percent of American adults experience sexual intercourse before marrying. The percentage of evangelicals who do so is not much lower. In a nationally representative study of young adults, just under 80 percent of unmarried, church- going, conservative Protestants who are currently dating someone are having sex of some sort. I'm certainly not suggesting that they cannot abstain. I'm suggesting that in the domain of sex, most of them don't and won't.
What to do? Intensify the abstinence message even more? No. It won't work. The message must change, because our preoccupation with sex has unwittingly turned our attention away from the damage that Americans—including evangelicals—are doing to the institution of marriage by discouraging it and delaying it.
Toward the end, he writes:
Abstinence is not to blame for our marital crisis. But promoting it has come at a cost in a permissive world in which we are increasingly postponing marriage. While I am no fan of the demographic realities I outlined earlier, one thing I will remember is that while sex matters, marriage matters more. The importance of Christian marriage as a symbol of God's covenantal faithfulness to his people—and a witness to the future union of Christ and his bride—will only grow in significance as the wider Western culture diminishes both the meaning and actual practice of marriage. Marriage itself will become a witness to the gospel.
(HT: Chris Brauns)
3 comments:
I won't lie, marrying early is hard. But the blessings far out weigh the struggles.
I've always argued against long engagements for the same reasons. We see a difficulty arising in our church, where quick or early marriage is definitely discouraged: now young professionals, post-college, struggle to even say "yes" to a date. Time alone with the opposite gender is "too risky". I fear for this next generation of youth in our church - that they will either succumb to temptation outside of marriage, or will become so stoic in their self-denial that they may never realize the fullness of freedom - and consequent blessing - in Christ.
My mother often says that people thought she would end up an "old maid," when she was still unmarried at 21 in the early 60s. She married Dad soon after, and they are still married. A pastor I had in college was married at 18; still married. To her. A lot of my high school friends, though, married their "high school sweethearts" and are now on their second marriages.
Just how, early may be the question. 18? 21? mid-20's? I agree, though, that marrying early probably has its benefits...the aforementioned, PLUS...the older you get, single, the more set in your ways and stubborn you can become. You may be more mature, but...also not used to yielding in the way that's required. Not unteachable, though!
Granted, I'm saying that as someone who is 34 and never married, not that I didn't have at least one who I "let slip away." I put that in quotes because, despite my occasional nostalgia, I have a stronger sense that marrying her was apparently not God's will. SDG.
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