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This post is part 2 in a sex and love series based on what I learned from my favorite parts of the brilliant book Love and Responsibility by Blessed Pope John Paul II. All quotes, unless otherwise noted or used for emphasis, come from the book.
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I used to have a big yellow bumper sticker stuck to the Spence-Mobile’s* rear windshield. In red letters, it said CHASTITY IS FOR LOVERS.
I’m fairly certain our culture begs to differ, as evidenced by various statistics (88 percent of unmarried people between the ages 18 and 29 are sexually active**) and by the reader who posited in a letter to the paper’s editor that I am a virgin not because I’m chaste, but because I’m “probably not a hot babe.”
Resistance to chastity, according to Blessed Pope John Paul II in Love and Responsibility, is a result of resentment.
The reason people don’t practice chastity is because they resent it.
“Resentment arises from an erroneous and distorted sense of values,” wrote JP2 in a chapter called The Rehabilitation of Chastity. “It is a lack of objectivity in judgment and evaluation, and has its origin in weakness of the will. The fact is that attaining or realizing a higher value demands a greater effort of will. So in order to spare ourselves the effort, to excuse our failure to obtain this value, we minimize its significance, deny it the respect it deserves, even see it as in some way evil …“
But this resentment backfires. It uncovers what people who hate chastity might not realize themselves:
They totally secretly like it.
JP2 connects resentment to the cardinal sin called sloth. “St. Thomas defines sloth (acedia) as ‘a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult.’ This sadness, far from denying the good, indirectly helps to keep respect for it alive in the soul.”
People don’t resent chastity because they don’t want to be chaste. They resent it because it’s hard to be chaste.
“Resentment,” wrote JP2, “does not stop at this: it not only distorts the features of the good but devalues that which rightly deserves respect, so that man need not struggle to raise himself to the level of the true good, but can ‘light-heartedly’ recognize as good only what suits him, what is convenient and comfortable for him. Resentment is a feature of the subjective mentality: pleasure takes the place of superior values.”
Our culture buys into this subjective mentality; it tells us that ‘hard’ negates ‘good.’
Thank God that in truth, it doesn’t.
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Click here to read all the posts in this series.
*Just one of my car’s two names. The other is the Motha Ship. Long story.
**According to the The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
This post is part 1 in a sex and love series based on what I learned from my favorite parts of the brilliant book Love and Responsibility by Blessed Pope John Paul II. All quotes, unless otherwise noted or used for emphasis, come from the book.
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In a chapter on the sexual urge, Pope John Paul II brilliantly differentiates the ‘libidinistic’ interpretation of the sexual urge (as popularized by Freud) from the ‘religious’ one.
The ‘libidinistic’ interpretation says the sexual urge is “fundamentally an urge to enjoy” whereas the ‘religious’ interpretation says the sexual urge is designed to “orient us toward another person,” according to Edward Sri. True orientation toward the beloved curbs a person’s urge to use somebody.
“Libidinistic” is a derivative of the Latin word libido, which means “enjoyment resulting from use.”
Freud’s version of the sexual urge is incompatible with life as Christ calls us to live it, for at least three reasons:
1. It’s a bummer for babies. A sexual urge based on libido requires acquiring pleasure to be the primary purpose of the urge. If acquiring pleasure is the primary purpose of the urge, “the transmission of life,” more commonly called makin’ babies, is simply a side effect. Which means orientation toward another person – be it the one with whom you’re having sex or the one you co-create while you do it – isn’t necessary.
2. It means humans are really just animals. A sexual urge based on libido requires little else of a person than sensitization to “enjoyable sensory stimuli of a sexual nature.” It encourages us to immerse ourselves in “enjoyment resulting from use” every time the opportunity to “use” arises. Then it convinces us that we have to. The result? We are governed by our urges (sort of like my dog is).
3. It masquerades as justification for contraception and abortion. If procreation is only a side effect of acting on the sexual urge (as it is when the urge is based on libido), abstinence is illogical. So when “the earth is threatened with overpopulation” but making babies isn’t a primary purpose of sex (as it isn’t when the urge is based on libido), “have less sex” makes less sense than “suppress fertility.” In other words, even when good reasons exist not to have babies (including but not limited to “I’m not ready to be a parent.”), people for whom the sexual urge is based on libido can’t conclude what JP2 concludes: “We ought to aim at limiting the use of the sexual urge.” Instead, they “aim at the preservation in full of … the pleasure of sexual intercourse, while at the same time curbing … procreation.”
My hunch is we who agree with JP2 on this are few and far between.
(But Jesus wasn’t kidding when he called it a narrow road.)
In a post today on Rachel Held Evans’s fabulous blog (1), she posed the following questions:
and
“How should our narratives surrounding sex, virginity, and purity change, particularly as they concern women?”
Whether the Christian culture idolizes virginity depends entirely on your definition of “the Christian culture.” I am reminded of the book The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti (2), which I read in 2012. In it, Valenti decries what she interchangeably refers to as “the purity myth” and “the virginity movement,” for maintaining the myths that men are uncontrollably interested in sex and women aren’t interested all, for shaming women who have sex outside of wedlock, and for fostering hierarchical relationships (in which men have authority and women submit to them).
Like Valenti, I neither believe that men can’t control themselves nor that women don’t have sex drives.
I am opposed to shaming people who have nonmarital sex.
I am so opposed to hierarchical relationships that I had to stop reading blogs by the people who are for ’em, for the sake of my health (I’m lookin’ at you, Tim Challies.).
But I’m also a 27-year-old virgin.
Who sometimes speaks to youth groups about saving sex.
Who won’t date guys who can’t handle no sex until marriage.
I don’t save sex because I will be “impure” if I don’t. I save sex because I believe saving sex aligns with love like Jesus defines it.
And because “in not knowing what I’m doing [on my wedding night], I can express confidence in my spouse’s commitment to me. In not knowing what to expect, I can infuse my vows with authenticity.”
And because the pursuit of premarital sexual compatibility is at the expense of something more valuable. Because “maybe it’s to a relationship’s disadvantage to pick a partner with whom you’re effortlessly sexually compatible over a partner who is willing to work through conflict. Maybe we do each other a disservice when we search for consistently gratifying sex but avoid opportunities to become people who can communicate when it isn’t. Maybe how willing we are to practice and communicate, and to be uncomfortable and vulnerable in sex [i.e., on the wedding night, if you haven’t slept yet with the guy or the girl you just married] predicts how willing we’ll be to do those things in other parts of a relationship.”
Valenti reserves the right to define “the purity myth” and the “virginity movement” however she wants. But in the book, she did it with disregard for shades of gray. The truth is this isn’t always either/or. It can be both/and. I both am a proponent of chastity (and therefore of abstinence until marriage) and agree that most of what Valenti decries in the book should be decried (I decry it myself!).
All of that is to say this:
If you define “the Christian culture” the way Valenti defines “the purity myth,” then the Christian culture puts virgins on a pedestal. It says “Girls have to cover up so boys don’t objectify them,” which implies it’s the woman’s fault if she stumbles, and it’s the woman’s fault if he stumbles. It perpetuates the maintenance of gender roles at the expense of authenticity. It always says you’re “good” until you’ve had sex, and never says you are still good afterward.
But is that Christian culture the same one that walks the narrow road?
I have a hunch it isn’t.
Which brings us to RHE’s second question: How should our narratives change (presumably in order that they won’t perpetuate Valenti’s purity myth), particularly as they concern women?
We must include men. The “Christian culture” – as implicitly defined by the bloggers RHE quoted in today’s post – takes the onus for upholding purity and puts it on women. Women have to cover up so men don’t sin. Women have to be virgins for their fathers first, and then for their husbands. The result is stuff like the kind but frustrating emails I get in which fans of my work write they wish more women lived like I do, that if all women were chaste the world would be a better place.
As if men have no influence on the state of the world.
We must talk more about sex. People who host purity balls, or call sexually experienced single people “damaged goods,” routinely say “don’t have sex until you’re married” but provide few reasons other than “God says so.” They say “don’t have sex until you’re married” and never talk about sex. But is sex what sex is in our culture because kids got too much accurate information about it?
And we must be explicit. The world doesn’t get to define chastity. I get to define chastity. (Technically, the Catholic Church gets to define it, and I get to borrow its definition. But you catch my drift.) And I have to define it explicitly. The chastity Valenti describes is not the chastity I practice. If I keep my mouth shut about the difference, then I say “I practice chastity” and a lot of people hear “I promote rigid gender roles.” The result, when we aren’t explicit, is a world (plus a segment of the church) that thinks “Christian culture” is a culture that damages women.
If that is “Christian culture,” I frankly want no part.
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1. Click here to read the post on RHE’s blog.
2. Click here to read what I wrote last year about The Purity Myth.
This post originally appeared on Sept. 2, 2012. I repost it today because today is the fortieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.
Texting and driving.
Not to do it is a no-brainer. Am I right, or am I right?
Wrong.
People text and drive all the time. This is because people don’t know how to wait.
In my state, the fight for a law that bans it has been in the news for years.
And there are a couple of things about this that boggle my mind: First, that a law designed to make texting while driving illegal is shot down. Second, that there needs to be a law.
A law, while when necessary is good, is also like a Band-Aid. This is because the problem is not that it is legal to text and drive. The problem is that we are raising people who need to be told not to text and drive.
Apparently, we as a culture are not instilling in our children the values or the sense that make a person able to conclude on his or her own that it is a bad idea to text and drive. Apparently, we are instilling in them the opposite: that you, your needs, your wants come first. Which is why kids become adults who don’t know how to wait.
So a law that makes it illegal to text and drive is a Band-Aid. It aims to make the result of the problem disappear, but it doesn’t solve the problem.
The other law fight I hear about a lot is the one to ban abortion. And that law is like a Band-Aid, too. It aims to make the result of the problem disappear, but it doesn’t make the problem disappear.
This is because the problem is not that it is legal to abort a baby. The problem is that we are raising people who need to be told it’s a bad idea to have sex when you aren’t prepared to be a parent.
Apparently, we as a culture are not instilling in our children the values or the sense that make a person able conclude on his or her than that sometimes, it is better not to have sex. In fact, we are instilling in them the opposite: that you, your needs, your wants come first. Which is why kids become adults who don’t know how to wait.
What if our culture raised kids who could wait?