Sex is incredible.

I am thankful for and amazed by your stories of religious sex education*. Some lived through laughably awkward programs (I laughed out loud at Mrs. Cheeky’s story of the three-foot penis!), others of you went through the type of instruction I did, and some of you escaped unscathed, with or without religious influence. Ash’s experiences of hearing youth pastors discuss their sex lives or asking teens to talk about theirs are horrific. I don’t recall a single place in the Bible where Jesus dealt with sin by asking for a detailed account from the sinner. Several people both on the blog and in emails to me mentioned birthing videos. I think that is what I found saddest: churches—historically composed of pro-lifers!—recasting a private, divine moment into a scare tactic. What a heartbreaking approach. And on the other end of the spectrum from these experiences, there is complete silence. Lisa summed it up well, saying that in the opinion of many churches, “everything is about sex, so nothing should be about sex.” An anonymous commenter agreed in a way I found beautiful: “A church that is totally silent on sex will also be oppressive and damaging to people striving to be sexually mature and whole.” I so agree with Karisa and Cheryl who argue that if the church teaches about sex, it should focus on the magnificence of it in its proper place, not the problems its misuse can cause. Karisa likens this kind of sex-ed to preaching only about the evils of hell without mentioning the wonders of heaven.

However, wildly varying opinions surfaced about the church’s place in sex education, and I must admit that I don’t yet have a fixed opinion. What I can say with complete assurance is that in my case, all that religious sex-ed did for me was cause me to feel shame and guilt every time I kissed a boyfriend, awakened from a sex dream, or had sex with my husband. I felt dirty for having sexual feelings, and consequently I shoved them deep into the recesses of my mind. I was so successful that, as I mentioned before, I completely cured myself of my sex drive and ended up needing counseling to get it back. As Dr. B and I slogged through the messages I’d received about sex, I set out to destroy them. I prayed that God would give me truth with which I could replace the garbage. Here are some of the conclusions I came to:

1.              Sex is a spiritually beautiful thing. Let’s be honest: it’s not physically beautiful. Nothing about two sweaty, naked bodies rubbing and panting on each other is aesthetically pleasing. Every body on the planet has its eccentricities, and very few of us are “tens” anyway. Besides, the men I find attractive, my best friend doesn’t necessarily and vice versa. I’ve never cared much about muscular definition, abs, or a chiseled face; she sighs when she sees Hugh Laurie. But somewhere in all the scars, love handles, and inconveniently hairy moles, there is something spiritually beautiful about making love. For just a moment (well, hopefully longer than a “moment,” haha), the lonely condition of humanness melts away into the other person’s complete acceptance of you. You are held, clung to, and enjoyed by a fellow wanderer. Nothing on the earth can match it. In the Book of Genesis God claims that it is not good for man to be alone, and while I believe this has much to do with community, it is also applicable to sex. Certainly it is possible to live without it, but it’s beautiful that we don’t have to.

2.              Sex is a vital component of marriage. As I have already said, not being able to have sex with my husband made me feel incredibly distant from him. He didn’t cause this, but it was still a strong, heart-wrenching sensation. In my opinion, in the sexless days of our marriage, our relationship with each other felt no different than our relationships with others. Sure, we shared the minutiae of our lives in a way that we didn’t with anyone else and we looked primarily to each other for emotional support, but that most intimate act that is meant to reaffirm unity, cut through feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, and bring sheer pleasure and excitement into a committed relationship wasn’t there. Our relationship was missing the vitality that a vibrant romance and sex life lends. Book after book I read and person after person I talked to insisted that making love produces in a woman, among other things, a reassurance of closeness. A man who routinely makes love to his sweetheart receives, again among many other things, a bolstered self-confidence. (Forgive me for so ludicrously oversimplifying the issue, but I don’t have the space to get into the grit.) Without these needs being met, a woman is likely to feel detached and withdrawn, and her man may feel superfluous to her and others. It is difficult to cultivate genuine emotional closeness in a marriage without the presence of physical closeness. Of course, the reverse is also true.

3.              Sex is a gift from God. And gifts from God are never one-dimensional. The plan is for it to be mind-blowingly fantastic, and for that reason sex is perfect on several levels. Consider the obvious physical nature of the gift: certain components of our anatomies exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that sex and sexual activity feels good. Really good. Because of sex, we experience this delicious physical hunger for another human. An urgency pulls us to the other person and finds its ultimate satisfaction in pleasing his or her body. We can literally hold onto someone else, and as best as I can tell, that is a nearly universal desire. Then, there is the emotional component to sex that I’ve already discussed somewhat. Sex allows us to be vulnerable with another human and experience the consequent acceptance he or she shows us. What a gift, to be naked with another and mutually pleased by what the two of you see. Such a soul-deep beauty springs from that, from knowing that you are loved and desired, from knowing that someone else on the planet wants you close and wants to trust you with his or her vulnerability. God wants us to discover all of this and more. He wants us to explore our bodies and the bodies of our mates. He wants us to have playful sex, urgent sex, passionate sex…any kind of sex that brings us closer to the lover we have chosen. He has never once turned his face in embarrassment when I’ve had sex with my husband. Sex in its proper place is powerful and generates so much life, excitement, intimacy, and fun in a relationship.

I believe that youth group attendees should know these things, that we should teach them with as much fervor as we have taught STDs and pregnancy. More than anything I wish that someone had given me the information—the positives of sex where it belongs and the negatives of sex used to fill a void—and allowed me to make decisions for myself. Discussing why it is important to treat sexuality with respect is a stark contrast to, “Don’t do it because God will punish you.” This is why I loved Erin’s comment that there are plenty of non-religious reasons to be discriminating with sexual partners. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, sex is a part of life that everyone reckons with, so considering the emotional and physical ramifications of sex is not an inherently religious exercise. For those who do profess a particular faith, spiritual ramifications like two of the ones I mentioned are just added on. If young people were presented with all this information, they would be empowered to make their own decisions without having to be “put in line” by their youth pastors. Of course, we are all imperfect and we all make mistakes. But I think that respecting students enough to give them a fuller picture of sexuality can only help matters.

*I refer exclusively to comments on the last post.

Sex and church do not mix.

At least they didn’t for me.

For the first 22 years of my life, I attended two Church of God churches. At Church #1, whose doors I marched through every Sunday of my childhood and for a year and a half in my early twenties, you’ll find healing, grace, and a profound sense of community. Church #2 is where I spent my adolescence, and since much of that revolved around the youth group, that is the only aspect of the church I’ll discuss here. The youth group at Church #2 was a place of emotional highs, legalistic rigidity, and statistics. It was more important to obey the rules than to have a real relationship with Jesus, for example. It was more important to bring in new people than to disciple the committed attendees. And it was very, very important not to have sex.

Like most churches, Church #2 believes in a trinity of sexual sins: homosexuality, adultery, and premarital sex. At Church #2 the third tended to be the most frequently discussed, usually during an abstinence campaign. Church #2 taught me a number of inaccuracies about sex, the gravity of which I didn’t fully realize until discussing them with Dr. B. I’ll share some of the subliminal messages I received from the youth pastor—not in an attempt to air my grievances, but to bare the reality of much religious instruction about sex.

1.              Sex is sex. This is the most detrimental of the lessons I learned because it paved the way for the rest. In sermons about sex at Church #2, no caveat was given about the difference between misuse of sex and monogamous sex. No sex seemed condoned by God. In the absence of a clause about the necessity of sex in the right kind of relationship, the resulting message is that sex, period, is sinful, not that immorality has its consequences. It’s true that when sex is used to fill a void, when it is carelessly tossed about, or when it is preceded by pressure, it will eventually lead to destruction of relationships and/or self. However, sex as an expression of commitment and love is a completely different ballgame. A gulf exists between those types of situations, one that was never addressed (to my knowledge) in Church #2’s youth group.

2.              Sex is disappointing. Over and over we were told that a virgin’s reaction after having sex the first time is typically, “That’s it?” This argument is that the media blows sex way out of proportion, leading people to believe that sex is neon awesome every time, whereas the truth is that it’s not all that. I assume the intent was to make us think we weren’t missing much. I find this unfair because as with anything in life, sex comes with a learning curve. The first time you make biscuits from scratch, they come out burned or doughy. The first time you clean your windshield, you streak it. The first time your child misbehaves, you suck at correction. That doesn’t mean you stop making the biscuits, cleaning the windshield, or correcting; it means you work at it and improve. The story doesn’t stop with “you’ll suck” (That’s what she said.). You probably won’t rock each other’s worlds the first time, but you learn. By saying sex is disappointing, you distract from this awesome gift of God.

3.              Sex is divorced from love. Never did love come up in a lesson about sex except in the context of “if he really loves you, he won’t force you to have sex.” (Of course, even this seemingly innocuous statement has an edge: if love is present, sex is not. Also, love is good; sex is bad.) Sex is not about expression here: it’s little more than the result of human biology and a sinful nature. Keep an eye on your hormones, and you’ll realize that your sex drive has to do with your youth and/or gender, not the loving relationship you’re in. Even terms like “making love”—a term I have come to prefer for several reasons—were banished from discussions about sex. No one ever told me that when you’re in a relationship with someone you love and admire, your heart fills with all sorts of desire for that person—you want an emotional and a spiritual connection, sure…but you also long for a physical connection. No one told me this was a normal and beautiful reaction to being cherished, being special to someone. Instead, I was taught that sex drive resulted from hormones or making out (or a combination of both), and that it would destroy my capacity for logical thought, fairly forcing me to unzip my shorts if I wasn’t vigilant.

4.              Sex is sinful and provokes divine judgment. The predominant arguments against sex were venereal disease, pregnancy, and emotional trauma. Any of these could be multifaceted, but pregnancy was the Big Problem. Church #2 essentially looked at it this way: 1) Choose abortion, and you’re a murderer. 2) Choose adoption, and you have to deal with the pain of losing a child. 3) As a teenager, you’re too much of an ill-prepared screw-up to try to raise the baby yourself. There was no way to win. And all this cause-and-effect was a virtual certainty: it’s God’s design for punishing sexual partners. To me, this God is a God of judgment, indeed a heartless God, who carelessly doles out life and death to teach a lesson. The miracle of birth becomes flesh-covered punishment. The heartbreak of fatal illness is your just desserts. So…have sex at your own risk, bucko.

You can see why these messages, all of which I deeply imbibed, contributed to my sexual struggles. There are others, but for the sake of space I will omit them for now. I’m sure that some who grew up in my youth group went on to have lots of great sex, but I also know I am not alone. Dr. B told me about a study he conducted with some colleagues years ago. The research team interviewed literally hundreds of people who fit into one of two groups: people who had been sexually abused and people who had been raised in sexually repressive religious environments. Would you believe that the effects were exactly the same? Dr. B’s research team discovered that both groups ended up with either sexual addiction or severe dysfunction—and sometimes both. The mental, emotional, and physical symptoms the two groups described were indistinguishable.

All of this then begs the question, “How should we teach about sex?” I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I have some ideas I’ll include in the next post. In the meantime, I would LOVE to hear the messages you received—good or bad—about sex from authority figures in your life. What has been your experience with religion and sex? How do you think we should teach about sex? This issue is really close to my heart, and I covet your insights.


EDIT: I went back and read what I wrote in my journal the day Dr. B told me about that study. I need to correct that he was not on the research team as I claimed above. He was apparently one of the reviewers or something along those lines.

And so I began talking about my feelings.

One of the first questions Dr. B asked me was, “What are your feelings about sex?” You’d think after months of obsessing over it, this would be a no-brainer. But after a knee-jerk response of, “Anger,” I had little else to say at first. What were my feelings about sex? As I thought about it, the proverbial dam broke, and I found myself emptying my head of quite a lot of thoughts.

“I’m angry—angry that my body doesn’t work, angry that God won’t answer my prayers, angry that my mind is apparently causing problems, too. I’m angry because I imagine everyone else in their lovely homes gets to have lots of wonderful sex with their partners. I’m angry because it feels like there’s a huge aspect of life that I don’t get to be a part of. I get angry when I hear my coworkers talk about sex…it seems like no one else struggles with the stuff I’m struggling with. And I’m angry that no one listened to me for so long, so I’m in this frustrating place now where I simply can’t make sex work for me. Of course, even if that first nurse practitioner had mentioned the scar tissue, I’d still probably be sitting here. But it would’ve been one less obstacle to deal with after the wedding.

“And I’m really, really disappointed. Sex is built up to be this great thing that makes you feel good, makes you feel close to your partner. I haven’t had a moment of that. It hasn’t made me feel good, and it hasn’t made me feel close to my husband. If anything, it’s been the complete opposite on both accounts. I can’t believe how stressful sex has made my life. I wish God hadn’t created it to begin with, honestly. All it’s done for me is made me feel estranged from my spouse and hate my body even more than I already did. I mean, the honeymoon period is supposed to be all sex and rose-colored glasses…we haven’t had sixty seconds of that. This marriage and sexuality business has been nothing but heartbreak, stress, and frustration since the very first days after our wedding.

“I’m scared. I read a sentence in a book by a Christian marriage counselor that terrified me: ‘If you don’t have a passionate love affair with your husband, someone will.’ I can’t! I can’t have a passionate love affair with my husband! To be completely honest, I wouldn’t blame him at all for finding someone else. I mean, he’s waited for 26 years to have a sexual relationship with someone, and I can’t do that for him. It’s not fair for him to kiss it goodbye forever. And who knows? Maybe I’ll never be able to have sex. Some women never can—I read that somewhere. It would certainly hurt me if he cheated, but in the end…I’d understand. I can’t give him what he needs. And it just seems wrong to think after four months of marriage, ‘I wouldn’t blame my husband for cheating on me.’ That’s not normal.

“But I mostly feel hopeless. I’m still determined to make this work—I really am—but my hope is waning. It seems like we’ve already explored so many options—counseling, surgery, now this—and nothing is helping. Granted, you and I have only just started talking, so I have some hope there. But I have a hard time believing that it’s this hard for other couples. It seems like talking to someone in the beginning should’ve been enough. Surely surgery should’ve been enough. It’s gotten to the point where it’s embarrassing. I feel like I missed a day in school or something, and I’m being punished royally for it. The students I teach at the high school know more about sex than I do. I feel like an idiot, like an inadequate idiot. And I feel like everyone can see it.”

After I’d finished my monologue, Dr. B nodded. “We need to talk about your past.”