Let’s Not Talk About Sex!
My belief in God is founded on more than whether or not I am a virgin, a heterosexual, or strongly against pornography. I start with this rather obvious statement, because I find it deeply worrying that we seem to have reached a state of affairs where, as far as a lot of people (and a lot of the media) are concerned, Christianity is defined by its attitudes to sex. This was recently brought home to me by a small boy, who demanded to know whether a friend of mine was a Christian or a lesbian, because “You can’t be both”. While further questioning revealed that he was somewhat hazy about what either word meant, it did serve to suggest that we are perpetuating some worrying ideas about what it means to be a Christian.
When I decided, aged 13, that I wanted to become a Christian, I did so because I knew, with a sudden and blinding certainty, that God loved me enough to die for me. This completely blew me away, and whenever I feel myself on shaky ground, I try to reclaim the absolute certainty of that moment. There have been several shaky times since then, times when I have felt that my faith is under threat. I don’t think that I was ever naïve enough to think that becoming a Christian would make my life easy, but what I never expected was that it would call for having so many opinions! The times when my faith has been most threatened have been the times when someone (occasionally myself) has tried to convince me that being a Christian means believing in something that I cannot bring myself to agree with, whether it be condemning ear-piercing (very important when you’re a fourteen year old girl!) or subscribing to a particular belief about the devil.
The biggest thing that we seem to be required to make up our minds about is sex, and I’ve never been quite able to understand why. Christians seem worryingly obsessed with it — or rather with avoiding it — and the media are quite happy to run with this view, focussing all their attention on the latest scandal about vicars having affairs with their churchwardens, or homosexual priests, or celibate teenagers in Texas, and ignoring whatever else is going on in the Christian community. Christians often complain about this, but if you listen to us talk, you can hardly blame people for getting the impression that all we think about is sex. Christis is just as guilty of this as anyone else, but this would seem to be a simple reflection of current thinking, rather than evidence of a dirty-minded committee! As a group, Christians (especially young Christians) seem to be thinking about sex more than anyone else. We have retained a huge amount of Victorian prudery, and this painful intertwining of faith and sex doesn’t help anyone. I find it baffling and infuriating that so much discussion concerning Christianity is about sex, when there are so many more interesting things to talk about! One could be forgiven for thinking that sex and abstinence were Jesus’ favourite topics, when in fact the decisions we make in this area are no more or less important than a whole host of other decisions that we make about our lives. Of course this is a refection of the fact that people are now much more able to talk about sex, but surely this should allow us to promote debate, rather than encouraging us to dig our heels in and bellow about chastity before we’ve thought the matter out for ourselves.
I’m not advocating a ‘pick and mix’ approach to Christianity, where we simply filter our anything that we find uncomfortable or inhibiting. Being a Christian involves making some tough decisions, it involves handing control of our lives over to God and doing things that will completely change our lives. But I would refute that these choices need to be the same for everyone. God is not out to create ‘identikit Christians’: we are a diverse community and this should be one of our strengths. Not everyone is going to come to the same conclusions, and it can take more thought and strength of mind to come to a decision that is right between you and God than it can to simply mindlessly follow what you are being told by someone else. Perhaps this panic is because we are encouraged to think of our decisions about sexuality as irrevocable: while you can (for example) make a decision to never touch alcohol again, virginities do not grow back. This seems to make the decision making process even more agonising, but it frustrates me immeasurably that so much of the Christian teaching that young people get seems geared towards keeping them chaste rather than equipping them with the tools that they will need for a lifetime of decision making.
Christianity has its grey areas, and we can approach these by negotiating our way through them with thought, prayer, and Bible reading, or we can just accept the stance that those with the loudest voices tell us we should take. I would suggest that approaching these decisions with thought and prayer is ultimately likely to be far more fulfilling than just following the herd. There is no hurry. We have our whole Christian lives to make up our own minds. There is no need to be bullied by people who think they know best, and it is truly sad that people are forgoing the wonder of God’s love because they feel that they cannot fit into the mould that we have created for modern Christians. Of course we need to make decisions, and it is very likely that God is going to require us to make big changes in our lives, but these are all secondary to the enormous decision to believe that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again. This is what matters. Whatever else we decide, that is the basis of Christianity, and our decisions will not alter the essential truth of our faith. In all the shouting that we create, all everyone else hears is that we cannot make up our minds, but nor can we peacefully agree to disagree. And they miss out on the blessings that come from a deep and abiding faith in God that is founded on far more than whether or not you can say you were a virgin on your wedding night.