Let's talk about SEX, part deux ('cause French is sexier, ya'll)

On Monday I started talking about sex.  Or rather about how we shouldn't talk about sex.  Today I'm wrestling with how we should talk about it.

I’ve written and rewritten this post about sex too many times.  I’ve wrestled and struggled with what to say.  I’ve typed and deleted and typed.  I’ve put ** marks next to incomplete thoughts with the intention to return and flesh out again later.  And I’ve opened a new document and started again.

If I were to only speak from my own experience on this subject I would have very little to say.  I was a 24-year-old virgin on my wedding night.  I’ve been with one man my whole life and I have very few sexual encounters of the awkward, painful, negative variety. 

And if I’m being truly, deeply honest- there is a part of me that wishes I had more stories.  I know this isn’t what you are supposed to say, but when I watch movies or hear my friends retell their tales there is a small part of me that wonders if I didn’t live enough.  I wonder if I missed out on experiences because I followed the rules.   I wonder if I could have ended up in exactly the same place only with a few more interesting stories to retell in my old age.

Because the truth is I have plenty of friends who had sex with multiple people before they were married and are doing fine.  I have plenty of friends who didn’t get STD’s or pregnant.  Who met and married the men of their dreams and weren’t disqualified from happily ever after.  Who had sex and weren’t left feeling damaged or vulnerable, used or manipulated. 

So when I start to write about why one should save sex for marriage these friends come to mind.  When I think about a different way to talk about in contrast to the shaming of the purity culture, every logical reason gets shot down by an example of someone for whom this wasn’t true.  And this is why I am struggling with what to say.

I work with teens.  We talk about sex all the time.  And my kids all want to know why.  Why should they wait? 

I think about my own kids.  My two small children who will one day be teens.  What do I want to tell them?   There is a part of me that panics when I think about my kids having sex outside of marriage.  It’s a voice of fear that worries not about how sex may hurt their hearts or put them at risk for STDs or unwanted pregnancy but rather what that says about their faith and commitment to God.  This is the voice of a recovering fundamentalist.  And so when I think about sex I have to quiet this voice and give it a lot of grace.  I have to sort through what is Pharisee speak and what is true.

And as I’ve sifted through this and thought about how I want to talk to my own children about sex I want them first and foremost to know that no matter what they decide to do on the matter nothing would or could separate them from the love of Christ.  That no matter how much the Pharisees try to bring them center stage and hurl stones of shame and guilt and grief, Jesus condemns them no more.

And I want them to know that physically sex is dangerous.  There is the risk of STDs or AIDS.  Sex can get you pregnant.  (And if I’ve learned one thing in the last two and a half years, it’s that kids are dangerous.)

And I think God made sex physically dangerous for a reason.  It’s physically dangerous because it’s also emotionally dangerous.  We pay attention to the physical dangers because we can’t always understand the emotional danger.  Sex is vulnerable and exposing.  We can manipulate and abuse each other with sex.  With sex, especially casual sex, it’s really difficult for two people to really be on the same page.  What is a fun but maybe unimportant encounter for one can be a deeply intimate, vulnerable experience for the other.  What is no big deal for her is actually a huge deal for him.  What was not far enough for him was too far for her.

And I want my kids to know this.  To understand this.  To hear this.

But I also know that it is entirely possible for my kids to have sex outside of marriage and remain pretty unscathed.  I understand that they will be surrounded by people who will be telling them, from their own experiences, that sex is not actually all that dangerous, physically or emotionally. 

To which I say, you’re right. 

But here’s what else I know.  For some reason, God tells us to keep sex within the structure of a committed, monogamous marriage.  This is God’s desire for sex.  He created it to be fun and powerful and intimate and enjoyable and bonding and healing and all around great.  And it is his desire that we experience all that wonderfulness with our spouse and only our spouse. 

And so maybe, just maybe, we wait to have sex quite simply as an act of trust that God’s ways are better than our ways.  Maybe we wait because not doing so could temporarily damage the intimacy we have with Christ.  Maybe abstinence is a (difficult) act of faith. 

At the end of the day I don’t want my kids to save their virginity as some sort of a gift for their future husband or wife.  I don’t want them to believe their abstinence somehow makes them better for their future spouse (or worse yet, better than others!).  I don’t want them to abstain from sex because they think they aren’t real Christians if they don’t.  I don’t want them to care more about their virginity than their tendency to gossip or judge or lack compassion. 

I do want them to value intimacy with Christ.  I want them to love Him so much that they desire to honor Him with their words, thoughts and actions.  I want them to trust that God’s plans are best for them and to live up to that in every way, whether it’s His plan to unleash unprecedented compassion on the world, to care for the poor and the orphans, to spread the word about the Prince of Peace and the love He gives, or to keep sex within the confines of their marriage.

Here is what I can speak from experience.  When I was flirting the line of physical intimacy with my husband before we were married I found it very hard to find intimacy with God.   It was hard to come to God in the morning when I had played with fire the night before.  Sex is like any other kind of sin; when we are entangled in it we are not free before Christ.  And I desire for my children to live lives free in Christ. 

If I’ve taught my kids to worry more about what exactly they can and cannot do than whom they are doing it for I’ve got them asking the wrong questions.  I think we need to take the focus off the shame of the sin and put it back on the One who saved us from it. 

So I guess that’s what I would want my kids to know about sex.  And I’m sure that both ends of the liberal/conservative spectrum will be able to find something wrong with what I have to say.  Which again, makes me thankful that no one is really reading this anyway.