Christians Caught Between the Sheets -- How ‘abstinence only’ Ideology Hurts Us
by Tina Schermer Sellers
6/26/06


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Introduction
There are few subjects as explosive inside the Christian church as sexuality. The level of reactivity with which people discuss sexuality, parent around sexuality, silence sexuality, and judge and shame sexuality has no equal. For centuries we have fostered this reactivity through the silence and shame that fills most adult’s sexual story and later as parents, assuming a mostly “off limits” silencing stance in our homes with our children. When sexuality is brought up there is usually a swift, reactive and authoritarian response that sounds something like, “Don’t do that!” That is “wrong” or “bad” or “only for people who are married.” And then perpetuating the cycle, we assist our children in going underground with their sexuality, filling with a shame, guilt and self-loathing that finds no place to be comforted. The cycle of shame, silence, and separation of sexuality from faith, grace, and God’s relentless and embodied love is continued. Why have we allowed this? Why have we not examined this with less reactivity and more earnestness? Where is Christ’s love and grace in our sexual stories, our parenting, or the stories of our children?
After over ten years of teaching a graduate level human sexuality course at a Christian university and reading well over 300 sexual autobiographies, I am fascinated by why we as a Christian church, as parents, as sexual people, don’t challenge this view? More than 80% of the autobiographies I have read have told the same basic story.

The general story regarding the family they grew up in: ‘My parents never talked about sex and if they did it was to give me a book and tell me to ask questions, which of course there was ‘no way’ I would do. I remember being yelled at when they caught me playing doctor when I was 6 and I felt horrible, though I was not sure what I had done. I only knew it was really bad! I was also told that I was not to have sex until I was married and that masturbation was wrong.’ Girls from more conservative homes where told that they were to keep themselves ‘pure and protected.’ They were not to even kiss a boy because it might “get the boy going.” Many were told that if they did not save themselves for marriage they would be bringing a ‘used person’ to the relationship and their sexual relationship with their husband/wife would never be what it could be. The dominant message is, “The word “sex” was not spoken, nor was any remotely related topic discussed. In other words, silence about sexuality in my family meant it was shameful, scary, hurtful or controversial.” 32 year-old.
The general (hidden) personal story regarding sexual development is: I participated in age appropriate sexual play as a child (doctor), older child (often girls pretending to be married and laying on top of each other and/or kissing), pre-adolescents with masturbation, adolescence with romantic connections involving kissing, touching, and later adolescence or early adulthood progressing to genital intercourse within a loving relationship prior to marriage. And then I read either, “I felt overwhelming shame and guilt for my sexual desires and sexual experiences and still to this day I feel guilt even though I am married.” Or “I decided I was not going to feel guilty and ashamed because my relationship with my boyfriend/girlfriend was wonderful, safe, loving and tender. Sometimes I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.” The dominant message is, “For so long I’ve associated sex with negativity, but it did not necessarily need to be that way. The narrow-minded view of religion from my growing up has prevented me from incorporating spirituality into sexuality. I have always viewed them as two different entities.” 35 year-old.
If these samples represent the majority experience of educated adults from loving Christian homes (and many non-Christian middle and upper middle class homes),1 then why are we not boldly challenging the origins of the discourse that sex, sexuality, and desire are dangerous, carnal, and separate us from God?
Many people may be unaware that scholars of early church history note a significant shift in doctrinal thought in the 4th century. Prior to this time, free will given by God was a central theological principal. But during this time a notable shift began to occur in both church leadership and the cultural and political climate. Augustine, a church leader, proposed that all sexuality, all sensual pleasure, involved the triumph of the carnal will. Since sin was located in the carnal will and not the act, Augustine developed a rigorous puritanical attitude towards sexuality that would orient the Christian church until the present day.2,3
If these rigid ideas of sexuality are informed more by particular religious and political events than by the gospel of Christ, why do we perpetuate it? And when we do, what is the cost we pay? If we were to define a revised Christian sexual ethic, which in part returned us to a spiritually integrated covenant approach to sexual understanding and education, what would we be teaching and modeling instead?
When we continue to shroud sexuality in silence and an abstinence only discourse, we continue to burden faith filled children, adolescents, young adults and adults with a deep shame that interrupts their ability to fully know God’s love and grace. Shame modulates distance in intimacy and sexual expression in the monogamous relationships that are foundational to community living and a significant expression of God’s active love. When people are filled with shame and self-loathing, their affected self-esteem takes precedence in interactions with others. It dominates and eclipses a person’s ability to see and love another. In essence, sexuality encased in silence and shame keeps people from intimately knowing both God and each other, and cripples our ability as a community of believers to truly love and be a healing force in our hurting world.
Unveiling Sexual Shame

Throughout popular Christian literature now and for sixteen hundred years, Christians have dismembered themselves from their sexuality, their hearts, minds, bodies, eroticism, and their faith. Beginning in the 4th century free will and an appreciation for God’s creation in the body was exchanged for the notion of the body and its desires as sin. David Schnarch in his book Constructing the Sexual Crucible says,
“The sex affirming Hebraic roots of Western civilization has been masked by Augustine’s legacy of eroticism-hating sexual dualism, perpetuated by authoritarian-rooted Christian dogma, which negated the basic worthiness of human beings. The evolution of Western culture is a history of theologically based sexual oppression.”5

While the culture touts the objectification of the body and uses it in whole and part to fuel its consumer driven economy, Christians support a message about abstinence that dismembers intercourse from sexuality, intimacy, faith and relationships. We are in crisis over sexuality in our culture in part because the church has been largely unable to step away from the old Christian ethic and develop a responsible sexual ethic that is based on both what we have come to learn from science and experience, with the revelations of the Gospel.6 Christine Gudorf in her book, Body, Sex and Pleasure highlights this when she states,

“Traditional Christian sexual ethics is not only inadequate in that it fails to reflect God’s reign of justice and love which Jesus died announcing, but its legalistic, apologetic approach is also incompatible with central Judaic and Christian affirmations of creation, life, and an incarnate messiah. Because the Christian sexual tradition has diverged from this its life-affirming source, it has become responsible for innumerable deaths, the stunting of souls, the destruction of relationships, and the distortion of human communities. The Christian sexual tradition uses scripture and theological traditions as supports for a code of behavior which developed out of mistaken, pre-scientific understanding of man, anatomy, physiology and reproduction, as well as out of now abandoned and discredited models of the human person and human relationships.”7

What We Learn by Listening
While earning a graduate degree in Family Therapy, students are required to take a course in Human Sexuality, which explores the interface of sexuality with family and relational health. Because therapists will walk with clients and families in places of extreme vulnerability, it is important that they clearly understand their particular issues, experiences, values and beliefs. For this reason all students in our program are given the assignment to write their sexual autobiography through the lens of their family of origin, gender and faith. Questions are given to guide them through each developmental stage to the present. The vast majority of autobiographies reveal that these adults grew up in either a sexually evasive or sexually negative home. Well meaning parents, seeped in an unwitting hurtful sexual ethic, believed they were training up their children by protecting them from learning about sexuality or worse telling their child that sex was bad, inappropriate, harmful, a sign of faithlessness, or something to be avoided. Instead of providing a continual developmentally appropriate education about the nature and purposes of sexuality, this was exchanged for an abstinence only message sounding something like, “God wants you to have a wonderful and blessed sexual relationship with your spouse someday and because of that it is important that you keep yourself pure and a virgin until then.” It is as if the embedded message is ‘abstaining from intercourse and anything that might lead you to desire this, will guarantee an intimate, trusting, faith-filled, erotic, safe, healthy, dynamic, sexual partnership during your marriage.’ But in fact this is not the case. And unfortunately, most Christians know, deny, and repeat this. Nowhere in this absolute premarital chastity discourse is the message that sex can be healing and joyful (sometimes outside and sometimes inside of marriage), that it can lead to growth, a deeper more intimate relationship with God, and above all is created good, on purpose, as a gift, and for your pleasure and communion.8
Normal developmental desires for sexual touch, arousal, orgasm and intimacy were relegated to ‘sin’ – a place far from the God these youth loved. In fact many were taught that it was ‘this kind’ of sinful desire that separated them from God and kept them from knowing God’s love and blessing. Any attempts to gain or understand sexuality was blocked or punished. In these homes we often hear that exploring one’s body was totally forbidden and they were punished when they 'were caught.' Gudorf says, “In truth, sex-avoidant families truncate their children’s ability to feel comfortable with sexuality as adults. Sex therapists find their offices filled with people who have been socialized not to even think about sex, therefore are unable to explore enough to know what they like sexually.”9 Shame has a profound affect on people’s sense of themselves and thus on their ability to receive and accept God’s love. This affect touches every aspect of their lives and most centrally their most intimate and personal relationships.10 In 2005, the Journal of Counseling Psychology published an article on shame stating, “Many theorists consider shame to be an experience or attribution about the self as a whole; specifically, an intense negative affect about the self in its entirety. Shame theorists suggest that this emotion is likely to be promoted by a parenting style or family system that reflects a negative attitude to the child, consistently points out the failure of the child in other’s eyes (implicitly or explicitly) and activates attributions about the whole self. An authoritarian parenting style appears to be associated with such a negative orientation. As defined by one researcher, authoritarian parents are demanding and directive, place a high value on obedience and conformity and are unresponsive and even outright rejecting when the child fails to meet their expectations. They provide an orderly environment and a clear set of rules and regulations, and monitor their child closely, but they expect unquestioning obedience and will use force and punishment if they do not get it. In short, the child is held to high standards and expectations, given little control and autonomy, and punished for failure. These harsh and punitive attitudes may lay the foundation for global negative self-attribution and shame.”11
"Any sexual experience I had as a child produced guilt and fear, especially sex play behavior. For a long time I thought something as wrong with me because of this. Because of these feelings, discussing sexuality became difficult for me. I felt like sexuality was 'dirty.' I think these experiences contributed to my feeling like sexuality and becoming a woman was shameful; that my parents did not accept that part of me.” 29 year-old.

"What I learned from their avoidance of the topic was that sexuality was a taboo topic, that it was not a natural part of being human. I learned it was embarrassing and shameful.” 24 year-old.
A recent article published in the Christian journal New Man (June 2006) on talking to boys about masturbation, revealed the prevalence of this hurtful and guilt filled message, “So if he (the boy) is willing to keep himself for his future spouse and focus his sexual fantasies on marriage, God will give him grace and forgiveness (italics added) for pleasuring himself as often as is necessary until he is married.” Though the message in this article is covert, it is deafeningly clear and hurtful, masturbation is sinful – in need of forgiveness and grace. When a child grows up in a family seeped in a sexually avoidant and negative atmosphere and is unable to free themselves through reading, peer experiences or talking to other adults, they will not develop a sense that sexuality is normal, pleasurable and God blessed. Sex therapist and expert, David Schnarch echoes this when he suggests, “Silence suggests that eroticism is dirty, inherently embarrassing, dangerous, inappropriate, or vulgar; silence is an education in sexual attitudes and gender roles. Like it or not, the family is always the predominant purveyor of the child’s erotic map and attitudes toward eroticism.”12 Far too many learn to associate sexual feelings, desires, and action with shame and aversive consequences. This remains well into adulthood manifesting itself both in the bedroom and in parenting.
"My husband and I both came from good Christian homes and were virgins when we married at 23 years old. Both of our families didn’t talk about sexual matters. For most of the first 24 years of our marriage I had low sexual desire and my husband was the constant initiator. It set up a bad dynamic between us. All I knew was what I ‘should’ do and nothing about what I really wanted as a wife or a sexual person. This pattern finally began to change as our kids grew older and I began to work on my own reactivity and lack of autonomy. This helped tremendously in my ability to exercise more freedom within our sexual relationship. I found that the more I grew sexually the more intriguing our relationship became. I am just now discovering how sexuality is linked to spirituality in my life. My husband has helped me to feel free to experiment and find new ways to be intimate with him.” 53 year-old.
"When I look back, I do not feel regret for any of my sexual development. I would not change any of the decisions I made, because I think I made good decisions that were congruent with where I was in that part of my life. What I do feel sad about is how I felt about myself throughout my adolescence. I lived under the umbrella of thinking that I was not normal, that nobody else felt or acted the way I did. How much I would love to be able to go back in time and comfort my teenage self." 28 year-old.
We have also long known both personally and statistically that when forbidding sexual expression is the only sex education a child/adolescent/young adult receives, this does not lower the incidence of sexual involvement. The U.S. has one of the highest incidences of teenage pregnancy, STD’s and early onset sexual activity of any industrialized country. In fact there are studies to show that abstinence-only education has been known to increase the incidence of sexual intercourse in adolescents.13 What does forbidding sexual expression or abstinence-only education do? Without an understanding of a God created normal sexual development, open communication, grace filled answers and direction, adolescents will go underground, feeling shame and self loathing each and every time they desire or act on sexual longing. This shame and silence places adolescents and young adults at risk of entering an addiction cycle with their sexuality. The child who masturbates when they have been told that it is wrong or worse are told that God does not approve, feels shame, vows to stop, obsesses on their thoughts and desires both to masturbate and to stop, acts again, feels even more self loathing… and the cycle continues carving a deep grove into the psyche, sexuality and faith of this person. The damage this does to a person’s ability to understand God’s love for them, to accept God’s grace and forgiveness, feel love, give love, or have a healthy sexual relationship, even inside the context of a committed partnership, is significant. I believe much of what we see in sexual perversion inside and outside the Christian church; use of pornography, multiple affairs, sexual abuse, sexual offending, etc. can be linked to this silence, secrecy, and shame cycle and discourse. Thomas Moore in an article on sexuality states, “Our culture segregates sexuality. We try to cut it out of every other part of life, thus ignoring the fact that it has an impact on all parts of life. By trying to ignore this part of ourselves, it starts forcing itself in unexpected and undesirable ways, such as pornography, illicit affairs, prostitution, etc.”14
"I was left to explore sexuality on my own terms and this searching continued when I started to masturbate at age 12. Although I did not want my parents to find out, I did not feel guilty about doing it. I did not think that there was anything wrong or immoral about it until I was in high school and someone at my church said that masturbation was a sin. I then started to experience an intense amount of guilt about masturbating but did not quit. I felt bad about myself for not having the self-control to stop. I thought I was weird; that other girls and Christians did not masturbate. I denied doing it and would have been extremely ashamed if anyone found out that I did.” 33 year-old.
Does it make any sense that when a child’s curiosity about the body begins as a toddler and desire to understand and relieve one’s sexual arousal cycle peaks in early teens, that we give children no paradigm or open conversation to understand the gift and desire of sexuality and the workings of the body?
The Cry For a Revised Christian Sexual Ethic

Children and later, adolescents, need verbal and behavioral guidance on how to honor self, God and their desires for sexual and emotional intimacy, while developing the maturity to sustain a committed loving relationship. The human body develops now similarly to how it always has. This means that parents need to become skilled at discussing in developmentally appropriate ways the unfolding of sexuality along the child and adolescent lifecycle. If this and coming generations in response to culture’s increasing complexity, wait to marry until well into their late 20’s or early 30’s, then a paradigm for developing sexual expression, a new Christian sexual ethic, will need to emerge. One that sees desire and pleasure as gifts from God and to be used to honor God, others, and ourselves. Thomas Hart, clergy, spiritual director, psychotherapist and author says, “Sexuality is diaphanous; the light of God shines through it. This intimate link with the Divine is the secret of its immense power over us. Wherever we experience that kind of power, we should suspect recognition has gone almost entirely unacknowledged, certainly uncelebrated, in church reading.”15 Over 80% of the sexual autobiographies I have read over the last 10 years told of sexual development involving normative developmental desires and experiences in sexual touch, arousal, orgasm and intimacy independent of the cultural or religious discourse surrounding them. The difference was not so much in what they did, but how they felt about themselves, their God, and the other. When their sexual story involved sexual touch or sexual intercourse prior to marriage it often produced a confusing dichotomy of meaning. On one hand was a tender gratefulness for the experience of loving touch inside a devoted relationship, and on the other hand, shame and self-loathing – a place that felt far from the God they loved. In fact many were taught that sexual desire and expression would keep them from knowing God’s love and blessing.
"I struggled with religious intolerance of premarital sex. I believe it is an unrealistic standard that utilized guilt to ensure abstinence. At 20 I became very disconnected from my parents because I did not feel comfortable talking to them about my relationship or sex. My junior year I began dating this really nice guy that I had gone to high school with. By the time we had been dating six months I felt ready to sleep with him. I would not change losing my virginity with this person because I know that we cared for one another and it felt mutually loving and respectful." 27 year-old.
"It was not until my late teenage years in my first real relationship that I started to enjoy sexual behaviors. I felt like I was compromising my Christian values and struggled with the question of what purity really was. I lived through the guilt by distancing myself from my faith. I thought how could I be a Christian if I enjoy being sexual with this man before marriage. Nobody had ever told me how to integrate my sexuality and spirituality. All I heard was 'Do not engage in premarital sex!'” 30 year-old.
Any revised Christian sexual ethic, like in other arenas of ethics, must first begin with a description of the lived reality of people and communities. It must also consider what we know in the physical and social sciences. Then we must subject this to a theological reflection regarding the meaning and significance of the various factual elements.

Where Do We Begin – Hard, yet Telling Questions
So what are the questions we are failing to ask and why are we failing to ask them? Here is a set of questions. They are not the questions but rather a portion of a discourse of questions integrating sexuality and a deep Christian faith.
1. What messages did I get as a child that helped me integrate my sexuality with God’s love?
2. What messages did I get growing up that helped me see God’s love in my body, its senses and responses, and my developing sexuality?
3. How was I encouraged to cherish and know my body and sexuality?
4. What behaviors and messages helped me develop this?
5. Who taught me about my body, my sexuality, sexual health, and God’s intention for us to experience His pleasure and love in and through our bodies, our senses and our developing sexuality at each stage along the way?
6. How did I learn to marvel at my arousal cycle, an orgasm, and God’s love woven through?
7. How does God express His love through my sexuality and how have I learned to cultivate that through my life. How did my parents help me to do this? How did the messages in and from my church community help me do this?
8. Re-ask yourself questions 1 – 7 adding what you would have wanted if you did not receive the messages needed to develop a sacred and integrated sexuality.
9. What helps me now and what has helped me along my life to understand the beauty and gift of my body?
10. How do I open myself to an integration of faith, gratefulness, joy, pleasure, God, eroticism, my body, and my partner (if/when I have one)?
11. What kind of sexually and spiritually integrated partnership would we most want and most hope for our children?
12. In light of our own experiences, hopes, desires and hard earned wisdom, how do we help children understand the gift of their body and their developing sexuality at each developmental stage?
Why Have We Failed to Ask Ourselves These Questions that Align With the New Covenant?
Could it be that if we ask these questions we (partnered adult Christians) will have to answer to the pain and isolation in our own sexuality and sexual partnership? Will we have to confront how we continue to keep our sexual desires separated from God and our deepest faith? Or how we keep our deepest faith from our partner? If we as a church were to embrace these questions and others like them, how might it change the way we raise our children and invite them into the redeeming gift of God’s love with respect to their sexuality? Would we have to confront the effects and earthly cultural origins of the puritanical discourse espousing the ‘dangers’ of the flesh? How the religious and historical context had eclipsed our ability to hear Christ’s redeeming message of love and grace as it related to our bodies and our sexuality? Would we have to face how we were hurt by the shame and silence of this message during our developing years? How that pain still lives on in our lives? How our self-condemnation is still present in how we think about our bodies and ourselves sexually? Would we have to face how we have dutifully passed this shame, silence, and self-condemnation on to our adult children who now struggle to create a sacred relationship with their bodies, sexuality, faith and partner? Could we face the pain that has been unwittingly passed on by our hands?
When we spend time exploring these types of questions, we expose ourselves to the wisdom gained from our life. Wisdom held in our hearts and shaped through an integration of our faith, relationships and lived experience. We all too often do not access this wisdom and instead only privilege information generated outside of us, told to us, preached to us. When we honestly examine the knowledge gained from our experience, we do so knowing the full context of our time and culture. This gives us an opportunity to know something inside the context of the when, where, and how of the series of experiences. All too often when we absorb information outside of us, preached to us in churches, media, from others, we fail to know the context of that information or ‘truth.’ The teller speaks the truth for God, scripture, or as an expert. Understanding historical context, culture, norms and expectations gives a framework for understanding the information as it was meant to be understood, yet gaining this contextual information is often time consuming and unrealistic. This is why it is critical that people resource the knowledge and wisdom of their lived experience. Draw on this, examine this and hold it up next to the current Christian cultural discourse being espoused. This is a valuable untapped resource.

Wisdom From Sexual Autobiographies – What Makes a Difference?
Sifting through sexual autobiographies over the last several years has highlighted two primary repeating themes fostering a life of celebrated and integrated sexuality. I believe these themes will be fostered in a new Christian sexual ethic, and I believe this will heal many wounds and relieve a great deal of silent suffering:
1. Being raised in a home that does not shame the body, the desire to enjoy the body, or developing sexual desire.
2. A home that gives a context for this desire wrapped in God’s deep love and intention. This will be housed in an ongoing open age appropriate conversation that helps a child at every developmental stage develop ways to celebrate their bodies and senses, and act in ways that include God’s love and produce gratefulness. And as they enter adolescence, helps them define and author a story of their unfolding sexuality that feels honoring to them - their values and goals, an other, and their God, while they look forward to sharing this within a committed partnership.
“My brothers and sisters and I have all struggled through the wall of silence to find sexuality to be a joyful thing. I am pleased we had the strength to persist, believing that sex had to be something better than what our parents suggested.” 42 year-old.
“I am encouraged to stop the legacy of sexuality being silenced, shamed and seen negatively when I have my own family. I want to openly discuss topics of sexuality with my children and not shame them for their experiences. My hope is to embrace sexuality as a normal and wonderful part of being human so that my children can feel that I love all parts of them, even their eroticism, and they can learn to love and respect all parts of themselves too.” 27 year-old.
Building an intimate, sexual, sacred, trusting, loving, strong and spiritually integrated partnership takes depth of skills, character, faith, courage, integrity, and practice. And most achieve only a small portion of the extent of relationship possible. In fact those who have long struggled to create such a spiritually integrated and trusting sexual relationship have done so without the help and support of popular Christian literature or the church. Far too many have had to unravel years of deeply woven emotional and physical shame (beliefs and responses) from their years of silence and self-degradation in childhood through young adulthood.
Spiritually Integrated Sexuality – The Vision
A deep faith and a heart filled with gratefulness often produce a spiritual person deeply interested in the contemplative dimension and mystery of sexuality. I see this in my students as they spend time in their sexual development stories and as they increase in wisdom, intention and attention to the integration of sexuality and spirituality in their lives now and as they craft their future. I see an increase in their concern for the quality of human relationships, and an increase alignment with this aspect of Christ’s ministry – that the central role of all relating is genuine love. It is this lens that calls out all abuses of power and all self-gratification without regard for the well being of the other. They can see this in and out of marriages, with and without sexual expression, in the withholding passive stance, as well as the aggressive or manipulative stance. They can begin to call forth in themselves and in the people they serve, a clearer application to sexual relating involving both authenticity and responsibility.16 If we are to act in a way that is shrouded in God’s grace and love, then we need to commit to being honest, in and out of our sexual relating. And we must be responsible and genuinely concerned for the welfare of ourselves, our partners, and any life that may result from a sexual relationship. Being responsible and authentic will help to eclipse most sexual concerns and abuses: exploitation, STD’s, careless sex, and unplanned pregnancy. All of these hurt our selves, others, and violate our call to love.

1David Schnarch discusses this in detail in Constructing the Sexual Crucible. 1991. WW Norton & Co., New York. Pg 316-318.
2Though later in life Augustine converted to a Christian faith, Augustine at the age of 29 years in 373 joined a sect called the Manicheans. Manicheism attracted Augustine because it taught the harsh but strangely comforting doctrine that sex was synonymous with darkness and bore the marks of the evil creator. http://www.augnet.org/default.asp
3Throughout the Confessions, Augustine uses harsh language to describe his sexual impulses reflecting images of disease, disorder, and corruption. Desire is almost a compulsion, an irrational impulse that he feels incapable of controlling without God’s help, a bondage that he is too weak to escape. Desire becomes an overbearing obstacle between Augustine and a complete commitment to God, because he is certain he cannot live a celibate life.
4Pagels, E. Adam, Eve and the Serpent. 1988. First Vintage Books, New York.
5Schnarch, D. Constructing the Sexual Crucible. 1991. WW Norton & Co., New York. Pg Pg. 548.
6Gudorf, C. Body, Sex and Pleasure – Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics. 1994. Pilgrim Press, Ohio.
7Ibid
8Furlong, M. Sexuality and the Sacred – Sources for Theological Reflection. Ed. Nelson, J., Longfellow, S.
9Zoldbrod, A. Sex Smart – How Your Childhood Shaped Your Sexual Life and What To Do About It. 2005. Page Free Publishing, MI.
10Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 2006.
11Mills, R. Journal of Counseling Psychology. 2005
12See Schnarch, D. 1991.
13Francoeur, R., Taverner, W. Taking Sides – Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Human Sexuality. 7th Edition. 2000. Dushkin/ McGraw-Hill Publisher.
14For a more complete version of this work see: Moore, T. The Soul of Sex – Cultivating Life as an Act of Love. 1998. Harper-Collins, New York.
15Hart, T. Spiritual Quest – A Guide to the Changing Landscape. 1999. Paulist Press, New Jersey.
16Ibid.

 
    carrie: It is true that sexuality should be talked about, and not avoided. However, there is a big difference between talking openly about sex, and engaging in it before marriage. Sex binds you to another person. This person is meant to be your spouse. Your spouse is your life partner, who you are one with, and sex is a very imprtant part of this exclusive, wonderful, binding relationship.



Of course there is forgiveness and healing for premarital sex, but it should not be encouraged. This is not just an opinion. This is what Scripture says. (1 Corinthians 6:12-20 and 7:1-9.) Please read these passages carefully before taking the opinions of this article as fact.



Sex is definitely a beautiful expression of Christ's love, inside of marriage. But before marriage there are a million other ways that Christ will share his love with a person. Jesus himself was fully human, yet never engaged in sex.



Before marriage, God is able to give self control and fullfilment through the Holy Spirit, to those who value waiting for the person who will marry them. Sex should only come from the one person who has pledged to love you for your entire life. Sex is "becoming one". It is an outflow of the deep love and freedom experienced in marriage.



Jesus Christ is our ultimate fulfillment in life, not sex. Therefore we can trust him when he asks us to wait until the time is right.		  
 
 
    tsellers: Sexuality is difficult to discuss without the temptation to reduce it to a set of behaviors. I believe when we do however, we radically reduce and simplify a complex gift and responsibility from God. I believe, as I would imagine many do, that God desires that we each be in relationships that nurture and nourish the mind, body, soul and faith of our partners. This choice to love and be accountable to the effect of our words and actions encompasses our covenant relationship with our husband/wife, and stretches beyond to our children, friends, etc. It is the way in which we answer the call to love others as Christ loved the church. It is one way God makes his love tangible in this world.



When we reduce sexuality to a set of behaviors (premarital sex, “everything but” sex, sex within the context of marriage, etc), we blind ourselves to the complexity of this accountability. Let me use an illustration to reveal the inadequacies of reducing sexuality to a set of behaviors. I know a man who lost his wife to cancer. He later fell in love and remarried a wonderful woman. Even though he had been sexual for many years with his first wife, he can know that God will bless them as they commit to build a sacred, loving and sexual marriage. It would seem we serve an unjust God to assume that he could not experience another wonderful bond of love in his life. In examples like this, and many others, the reductionistic behavior focused paradigm breaks down. It fails to be transformative.(see footnote below)



While choosing to not engage in intercourse prior to marriage might be an important element in the crafting of a loving partnership ... it is but one element. Not more or less important than choosing a partner that shares your level of integrity, commitment to love, tenacity to learn the intricacies of loving you and serving the world, has life experience, supportive network, etc., etc. A rabbi once said, “The key to a happy marriage is working to choose the right person and then making that relationship work.” It cannot be reduced or simplified without inviting ignorance and disappointment.



The context of sexuality prior to marriage and after marriage will be an expression of the personal, relational and spiritual health of a person in relationship to another person. It is complex and multi-layered. If a person is self focused, their loving will be self-focused. If they are preoccupied or ashamed their loving will likely be preoccupied and tentative. These complexities of our experience and worldview will be evident in our most intimate relating – sexual and non-sexual.



Can people bond through sexual encounters? Absolutely, yes. And people bond deeply through other shared experiences as well. Can sexuality be an outflow of deep love and freedom experienced in marriage? Yes it can. But partners need to have a degree of courage, maturity and desire to craft this together. It is not guaranteed just because a person did all the right behaviors and did not have sex before marriage.

Should we continue to teach our children that waiting to be sexually intimate until they are ready to experience a more complex partnership? Yes. And we should teach them to cherish their bodies and the bodies of others, as they learn to cherish all of God’s creation. We should help them develop skills of critical thought as they see how the culture we live in objectifies and uses people and their bodies for personal gain. And help them develop critical awareness of how we can all be subtly co-opted into this kind of 'using' of each other. How this is contrary to our call to love, serve and heal.



Sexuality is a piece of this. It is not meant to be carved out of the whole of our call to be transformed and to transform. When we are taught and modeled accountability to the effect of all our behaviors/encounters (sexual and other) then we can know that sexuality will be handled with care as we grow into adults and partner, and then behind the closed doors in our marriages, without being reduced to a set of behaviors.



_______________________

footnote: To learn more about how this paradigm originated in the history of the Christian church read The Heart of Christianity or chapter one of Emerging Christianity both by Marcus Borg.		  
 
    sadie: I am incredibly grateful to have come across this article in my web browsing. I have long felt but been unable to articulate my dissatisfaction with the so-called Christian position on human sexuality (where it is even possible to get a clear statement of such a position). I read so much of my siblings and myself in the included sexual autobiographies. Like these brave people, I have to believe there is more to our God-given sexuality than what we've been led to believe. Other than the references listed in your reference list, are there other resources you might recommend to a grad student eager to explore these essential questions further?



Thank you,

Sadie



P.S. Have I yet said how thankful I am for your bravery in writing this article?		  
 
 
    tsellers: Sadie ~

In addition to the books listed in the article, you might be interested in 3 books by Jim Nelson:

The Intimate Connection: Male Sexuality, Masculine Spirituality; Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology; and Between Two Gardens: Reflections on Sexuality and Religious Experience. An excellent sourch for perspectives on the sexually negative side of religion is Brown and Bohn, eds., Christianity, Patriarchy and Abuse. These are monor classics in the field and are recommended by Chris Gudorf author of one of the books listed in the article. 		 
 
    slogan: Children are so often raised with skewed understandings about love. I think parents quite often neglect to talk about the ways they express their love toward one another because they don’t really love one another to begin with. Not only do they not love one another genuinely, they often neglect to genuinely love their children. Just look at divorce statistics.



To add to the tragety of home environments where love is neither seen nor experienced, our culture speaks relentlessly about experiencing “sex,” or “sexuality” etc. The culture speaks of “sex” because that is largely all it has been taught. Love has been forgotten.



To understand “sex,” one must understand love.



According to the Bible, this is what love is like: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)



In marriage, love looks like this: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5: 25-33)



This true allegory shows the way love was meant to be expressed in marriage. Jesus profoundly knows his people (the Church, His body). He knows our guilt and our sin. He knows everything about us. He loves us anyway, to the extent that He gave Himself up for us. As members of Christ’s body, we take communion into our bodies as a reminder that He gave Himself up for us.



That is what intimate love (including “sex”) is meant to be like. It is profoundly beautiful. That is what children need to be raised to understand.

  
 
 
    jm: Tina, thank you for your thought-provoking article. Would you consider responding to a couple questions that came to my mind after reading your piece?



1. Is the practice of masturbation also to be considered a celebrated expression of the Christ-Follower's sexuality outside of marriage?



2. When and how would you encourage Christian parents to navigate the issue of masturbation with their children so that they know and experience not only that God, Dad, and Mom love them, but that they understand and embrace God's instructions regarding our sexuality as found in the Bible?



3. Outside of marriage, is the act of masturbation anything other than self-gratification?



Thank you again for your comments. 		 
 
 
    tsellers: JM – thank you for your questions. Raising questions about masturbation highlights an area where pain, suffering, shame and silence has had a deafening effect on the developing sexuality and spirituality of countless people. It is a topic loaded with years of private and public humiliation and condemnation … worlds away from the grace that draws us gratefully into the arms of a loving God.



Before I reflect on your questions however, I want to again reiterate my previous comment about the shortsightedness of speaking about the complexity, breadth and depth of sexuality through a lens of behaviors … masturbation obviously being one. Though I believe your questions are shared by many people raised under sexually oppressive religious doctrine, I believe these questions are not the questions we ought to be asking. The questions produce answers that assume a mistaken validity in their paradigm.



Masturbation, eating, sleeping, holding a loved one, comforting a friend, walking in stillness on a mist covered mountain trail, listening to the birds and crashing waves while sitting on a sandy beach, being consumed in the rapture of loving a partner, turning your face into the sun’s warmth, are gifts of pleasure offered to us by a loving and intentional God. Are these acts (or other acts) of pleasure in and of themselves good/bad? Or is how I celebrate and participate in them the variable of concern? If I decide that I am going to leave my home before sunrise to climb Mt. Townsend because I heard it was going to be hot and clear the following day, and ignore that I have two sleeping children that need me to parent them the following day, I place that form of pleasure (hiking) above my call (and pleasure) to parent responsibly. If at the close of a day, a person masturbates while praising God for the countless ways He guided and nourished him (or her) throughout the day - he celebrates and integrates his faith, God’s gifts of pleasure, and the nourishment of worship in self , other and God, in honoring ways. The questions that can lead to a transformation of heart and action around issues of masturbation and other acts of pleasure are: “When we seek to absorb the gifts of pleasure given by God, is God honored?”, “Are we as God’s creation, honored?”, “Are others honored?”, “Is God’s presence invited in our acts of pleasure?”, “Our acts of service?”, “Our acts of worship?”, “Our acts of contemplation?”, “Our acts of stillness?”



When you ask your first question, (1. Is the practice of masturbation also to be considered a celebrated expression of the Christ-Follower's sexuality outside of marriage?), it begs a yes/no answer that assumes the paradigm housing the question has a Christ centered new covenant legitimacy. However, history suggests that it may not. I would say that the question of concern needs to be, “How can masturbation be a celebrated expression of a Christian’s sexuality in and out of marriage”, or better yet, “How can masturbation be a celebrated expression of a Christian’s sexuality throughout his/her life?”, “What are the contexts that allow masturbation to be a form of worship, honor, gratefulness and pleasure in such a way that the faith and sexual development of a person is nourished.” In this same vein, the 3rd question, (3. Outside of marriage, is the act of masturbation anything other than self-gratification?), wraps in its paradigm an assumption that self-gratification is wrong/bad, or has some other pejorative meaning. I wonder where the root of this assumption lies. When you sit on a hot day enjoying your favorite ice cream cone with a group of friends, do you question your self indulgence? Or do you question it only if you are “outside of marriage”, or if it is a cold day vs. a hot day? To have moments of gratification is a gift. Our responsibility, the effect of our words/behaviors, is revealed through the lens of honor – God, self, other. There are many scenarios INSIDE/and outside marriage where masturbation and other sexual acts, alone and in partnership, are hurtful and damaging to the faith and soul of a person(s), to the relationship represented (if there is one), to the relationship with God, etc. The behavior: masturbation is not the issue …. It is the way (the how) in which we participate with or without a God, self, other centered mindfulness in our sexuality.



Your second question invites confusion. (2. When and how would you encourage Christian parents to navigate the issue of masturbation with their children so that they know and experience not only that God, Dad, and Mom love them, but that they understand and embrace God's instructions regarding our sexuality as found in the Bible?). It is stated in such a way as to juxtapose “navigating masturbation” when raising children and knowing they are loved, with understanding God’s instruction regarding sexuality. I am not sure how these issues are juxtaposing each other? Teaching a child about the marvel of God’s love found in their family, nature AND in the beauty and magnificence of their body, is a wonderful way to help a child KNOW God’s tangible and very personal and intentional love. How do they care for a caterpillar, how do they care for their body, how do they show love in their family?, these are a part of many ongoing conversations that begin when children are still in diapers. In utero infants and babies unconscientiously comfort themselves by touching their genitals. Toddlers will begin to conscientiously touch their genitals. They may also suck their thumb, twirl their hair, rub the corner of their favorite stuffed animal’s ear. These are acts of self-soothing. They are gifts. Our job as parents is to teach them at each developmental stage, how to integrate their desires for self-soothing and other acts of pleasure, with their growing love and active relationship with God, and with their love and active relationship and responsibility to others in and out of their family.



I hope this adequately addresses your questions, JM. Thank you again for raising these important issues. 		 
 
    anne: Tina, Thanks for this article. I am rethinking all my "Christian" values these days.

Here's my question: For me, the sex-before-marriage thing is tricky because I don't see how it honors, respects, and truly loves anyone; either yourself OR the other person. To bond yourself so emotionally and thoroughly to someone who is more-or-less intending to leave you . . . that's looking to me like giving more than you can afford to lose. Like saying, "OK. Being used is the best I can get, so better this than nothing." Or if it is a more casual, let's say "comforting" kind of sex, which would not represent a major emotional investment, then isn't that like lying? Deceiving? Because no matter what words of disclaimer we might say (ie.: "Let's just have a great time here with no emotional strings attached.") sex is a language of the heart that says: You can count on me. You can trust your vulnerability to me. I love you and will not misuse it.



I understand that when we speak of love and respect we are talking ideals that none of us have actually attained to, and that our growth is on a continuum. I don't think ANYone has sex (or a marriage either, for that matter)in a completely selfless act of love--married or no. Would you say then, that gentle, considerate intercourse may actually speak to a person's heart of the love of God at times when no other form would reach them? And that 'though it isn't a commited relationship, it is an indicator of what love COULD be? and, actually, an indicator of the passion of God that IS?



As a medical person too, STDs are no gift and are rampant. They are a much more likely risk than pregnancy. And yes, condems, etc. are not failproof. I have to ask myself if a transient relationship is worth the sorrow of viral infections that last a lifetime--for which there is no treatment, and have to be admitted to any other potential sexual partners.



My friend has been through 5 sexual relationships since his divorce 5 years ago and is thinking of a live-in arrangement for a year to "try" his current love who he is considering for marriage later--if she 'passes' the preliminary year. Is this Love? I don't know.



Thanks for shedding any light you have.		  
 
 
    bishop: Having discovered your article, along with the posted comments, must be God answering my prayers. We are a Christian family with one son who is now 18 1/2. We have raised him to respect himself and others and to view his sexuality as God given and completely normal. We have also impressed him with our desire, and we believe God's desire, that he not become sexually active until he has found and married his one partner for life. Sadly, to our way of thinking, we have discovered that he deceived us for several years and was active beginning at 15. Now he has come to feel so bad about himself and his activities that he says he has "quit". I notice however, that he is sad most of the time and lacking the energy for life he used to have and display. He seems to avoid looking at me. His dad and I have told him there is nothing he could do that would cause us to not love him, and I have told him I forgive him because he knows how much the revelation hurt me as a mother. But honestly, I am now more worried about his personal safety, because of how "down" he seems. He also tries to stay over night as often as possible at one buddy's house or another. He has told me coming home just makes him feel so bad. I am going to print your article and the posts and offer it to him to read. He is almost a man, and is a wonderful person. He loves the Lord, and is active in church and youth group. I hope your article will help him where we have failed to and give him comfort and respect for himself again.  
 
 
    Joey77: Hi, Bishop! I wish your son well, and I pray that he comes to grips with his sadness and struggle. Your comment only proves that all parents, Christian and non-Christian, need to be made aware of how they choose to bring up their children. Everything you do will have an impact on them in one way or another. A healthy attitude begins at home, where children are free to explore their natural curiosities without any shame or guilt. I only wish the church would stop taking the Bible out of context by forcing the rest of us to suppress our sexual needs and desires. I don't support those "abstinence-only" sex education programs, either. All they do is cause more shame and guilt on our young people, plus because they don't work, not only are kids going to have sex anyway, but these programs are also a waste of time and money. I think we should educate our kids about sex without making them feel bad about themselves, then let the kids decide for themselves what's appropriate and what's not. If we shame them, they will rebel. But if we're open and honest with them, and we allow their sexuality to blossom in the way that God intended, then they will be more likely to wait until marriage before having sex and less likely to experiment with sex before they are ready. Do you agree?  
 
    CB: I've been in counseling with a colleague's colleague of this author for almost 2 years. The entire process has been incredibly healing, life altering, and challenging. I've rethought a *lot* of my Christian values and a LOT of them have changed. I've realized that there is a lot of failures in the church in regards to bringing up believers. All of my root basics remain (Jesus is God, trinity, etc), but almost every secondary and tertiary issues have been reapproached infusing my own decisions and volitions instead of choosing my beliefs based on small amounts of personal reflection and intelligent analysis.



This subject is among the many. One thing that is disappointing about this article is that it doesn't take any room to address Bible verses. I know the Bible is NOT God and we need not to exalt it do divine status, itself, but the Bible is living and is the word of God. The difference is subtle but very important.



In my growth I've realized the Bible can mean different things and it can be dangerous to project your own conclusions on everyone else for each subject. Preaching is good, and there is truth. (This does not undermine universal truth, I'm just saying with all of the black and white thinking we Christians are used to, there is more gray area than we first thought).



I went back and read verses on this subject. Nothing is spelled out super clearly except with words like "sexual immorality" (What is that really?) or "do not unite with a prostitute" and Paul makes implications that if you burn with passion, you should marry, or if you desire sex, you should marry. These are only implications, and there is a lot of gray area floating around.



I used to be the Christian that would immediately respond to this with like, OMG, why is this being questioned? It's obvious its wrong because of A, B, and C. I think it's a greater testament of faith to hang on to your faith and yet question your beliefs.



...still struggling with this topic.		  
 
 
    scott: Patent Nonsense.  
 
 
    Joey77: What is patent nonsense to you, Scott? Can you explain yourself more clearly, please?  
 
    tom: Ron Rolheiser writes in his book, The Holy Longing, "we are fired into being with the fury of the gods." He specifically references sexuality as part of this fire. This passion is as much a mystery as the God who created it. We will never completely understand sexuality. Acknowledging the beauty and the mystery of it is the first step in approaching this universally profound human experience. After that the 4 legs of a stool approach is a favorite of mine (Scripture, Tradition, Science, Experience). Many of the comments here speak to different legs of the stool and there is much truth contained within. I am saddened by the disservice Christianity has done and continue to do to sexuality - with a rigid don't ask don't tell policy. Psychology is helping us dig out of this Augustinian hole. Yet the reality of STD's and emotional impact points to a tempered even reverent approach to sexuality which many of the Scripture passages speak of here. It is with this polarity in mind that each person must walk his or her own journey under the guise of a deep relationship with a powerful loving God.  
 
 
    Joey77: Actually, Tom, some Christian churches do preach on human sexuality, even masturbation. Unfortunately, instead of telling us to masturbate in privacy and in moderation, and in a way that glorifies God (meaning, think only of your spouse if you are married and focus only on your body's responses and not on what you are thinking about if you are single), the church forbids us from doing it at all, and often in a negative, shame-based manner. The church even instructs parents to stop their children from doing it, which causes a lot of these poor children to come away feeling ashamed and confused about their bodies and their genitals, and they, in turn, grow up suffering from depression, severe anxiety, and psychologically damaged. And while the church that I belong to does teach us a lot about marriage and the pleasures of married sex, it does a very poor job of looking out for the sexual needs and desires of the single man or woman. Instead, it simply tells us not to have sex or enjoy any kind of sexual pleasures until we are married (which takes away the joy of pleasure for someone such as myself who never marries), forcing us to suppress our sexual needs and desires completely until we are married, and then have it all suddenly spring to life like magic and expect us to enjoy sex and being married right away the night the wedding is consummated (and beyond). This may work for some people and married couples, but it doesn't work for everybody, and that's why I think the divorce rate among Christian couples is so high, and why pornography, adultery, and incest is such a big problem in some of these Christian marriages (even homosexuality as in the case of that Haggard pastor from Colorado). Bottom line? Use a common-sense approach to human sexuality and masturbation, and maybe we can reduce or even eliminate some of the problems and sexual anxieties that a rigid, shame-based church are causing us and our children.  
 
    joliverevans: Though helpful in a few areas, this article lacks the theological and biblical depth to justify this so-called radical approach to Christian sexual ethic. For starters, the author claims to rooting this approach in God's love, grace, and justice. Though well meaning, Sellers doesn't take into account the other attributes of the Holy Trinity such as righteous, holy, and that He is judge who establishes the Law that Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill. The argument that sexuality is more complex than just mere behaviors (which I would agree) doesn't not justify direct disobedience of God's Word. The original purpose of the Incarnation is that God tabernacle among his brethren and offer Himself as a sacrifice for our sins- including fornication, adultery, incest, etc. There is nothing 'radical' about disobedience. The telos of humanity is to be formed into the image of Christ Jesus, the One who did nothing but the will of the Father.



I would propose a theology of holy intimacy rooted in the Triune Life, exemplify in the union of Christ and His Church, and in the covenant of one-flesh union of man and woman. Though Augustine may have had a negative effect of much of Church tradition there are other church Fathers that rejoiced in the creation of the body, and marital love between man and woman. Even many Puritan theologians weren't puritanical as we often caricature them to be.



Our allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ and the authority of Scripture. Experience is essentia l but not primary in our interpretation. Holy Scripture reveals God's will concerning our minds, wills, emotions, desires, behaviors, and identities. May we seek the wisdom of the Divine more on this matter before we journey into something the Spirit has not lead.		  
 
 
    Joey77: I've suspected all along that the Bible was being taken out of context regarding human sexuality and masturbation. But it seems as if every time I try to get my church or even my Christian friends to listen to reason, I never get anywhere. Instead, I'm treated as if I'm the one who's wrong, not them, and I'm forced to remain silent on the issue because I can't get anyone to open their eyes and take a good, hard look at the damage that they are causing. I also end up struggling with my faith, and when I become rebellious, I tend to bad-mouth anyone whom I believe is wrong. I even have a close friend who claims that masturbation is indeed mentioned in the Bible, but when I asked her where the Scripture was, she all of a sudden could not remember and would not disclose the information. If Christians aren't able or willing to point out Scripture that mentions masturbation as a word or description, then how am I supposed to trust in the so-called belief that masturbation is wrong? I can't, and I won't unless or until someone does come forward and shows me where this so-called Scripture is. I can bet it isn't anywhere, which only proves that the Bible is being taken out of context, and we Christians are being led astray by false doctrine. Anyway, back to the main subject: As a Christian, I believe that God loves us all just the way we are, and He doesn't want us to be something we're not. And just because the majority rules, it doesn't mean we all have to agree. In other words, just because someone believes that what you are doing is wrong, it doesn't mean that you should stop doing it. No one, not even our parents, our church, our church elders and leaders, or our friends, has the right to tell us what we can and can't do with our bodies and which pleasures we can and can't enjoy. Sexual curiosity is normal, masturbation is normal, and sexual exploration of the body is normal. So is looking at naked body parts. All of these are a healthy part of growing up. What's not normal, but dangerously unhealthy, is sexual oppression, when others impose their unnatural and impossible-to-achieve ideals on you, then turn around and either punish you or call you a sinner because you are unable to live up to their expectations and doing what only comes naturally to you. Just because some Christians are able to deny their flesh until marriage, it doesn't mean that we all can. What works for one doesn't always work for the other, so I am 100% supportive of this Blog. It's about time someone opened their eyes to the truth!