Young marriage and the conflict between God's law and God's creation

I have been trying to write a post about marrying young in purity culture: the pressures, the causes and effects. But discussion about those things felt like I was only touching upon the superficial issues that are a result or a symptom of something deeper. Stating the obvious feels pointless, but perhaps it is not. Purity culture puts a great emphasis on abstaining from sexual relations of any kind, to the point that your self-worth and even your worth to God and your spouse are supposed to be damaged by any failure in that area. The longer you go without marrying, the more chance you have of damaging yourself, because you are open to the temptation of fornication, which is having sex outside of marriage. Getting married puts you in the safe zone. Getting you to the safe zone sooner rather than later makes you and everyone else who cares about your sexual sins sigh a breath of relief.

The statistics of higher divorce rates among younger couples do not frighten evangelicals, because they believe that God will bless their marriage for following his laws or for simply being believers. There are those who believe true Christian marriages cannot fail, because they have figured out God's design for marriage, and as long as husband and wife follow the roles God has laid out for every man and woman, any couple can make it work. Happiness in marriage is something derived from obedience to God rather than relationship with your spouse. Of course, many married Christians boast about their healthy relationship with their spouse as a source of happiness, but they almost always attribute it to God blessing their union, or God having hand-picked the perfect spouse for them.

Not all Christians are marrying young. As the mainstream culture marries later and later, so do many Christians. They face the same career choices and economic struggles. They share the modern notions of waiting to marry the right person for love. They have the same options to lead a fun and adventurous life in their 20s, free of the need to settle down immediately. But when they struggle with sexual purity--that desire to be intimate with another person or to satisfy the biological urge for sex--the church's one-size-fits-all solution is to get married. To them, it's really the only option to avoid sexual sin or the struggles and loneliness that come from avoiding that sin.

A good example of this is an article printed in Christianity Today in 2009. Mark Regnarus recognizes all the problems with purity teachings and asking young Christians to go against their natural sexual urges. In fact, his common-sense assessment of the problems made me hopeful that he would have an equally common-sense solution, despite the title of the article.

Most young Americans no longer think of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the institution they enter once they think they are fully formed. Increasing numbers of young evangelicals think likewise, and, by integrating these ideas with the timeless imperative to abstain from sex before marriage, we've created a new optimal life formula for our children: Marriage is glorious, and a big deal. But it must wait. And with it, sex. Which is seldom as patient.

As an aside: I am one of those that prefers to enter marriage once fully formed. I know not all people see it that way nor want it that way, but for me, I believe that with maturity comes the ability to have healthier relationships and make better choices.

Regnarus spends the rest of the article making a case for why early marriage really isn't that bad and how we can make it better and easier for young Christians to be successful with their young marriages. I will admit I was disappointed that that was the only solution offered, though I know I should not have expected anything else. Regnarus' belief that marriage is a covenant and that sex outside of it is a sin is so widely accepted as God's law that there really aren't any other options for a traditional bible-believing Christian to offer.

I see the Christianity Today article as a classic example of our interpretation of scripture creating unbending rules that do not consider humanity. I picture God's Law as a stone wall built along a a large body of water. The water is humanity, and no matter how many times the waves, following their natural flow, crash against the wall, it does not budge.

I know that the rules we create for following God's law derive from our interpretation of the bible, because we believe the bible to be the only authoritative source of truth. But what if we also used God's creation as an equal source of truth? How would valuing natural human tendencies and instincts influence our interpretation of God's will for us? Things like fornication and homosexuality might no longer be a problem for Christians, because they would no longer be considered sins at all. Telling someone to marry young or suffer the consequences wouldn't be necessary, because Christians could live happy lives in or out of marriage without fear of God's disapproval.

To most conservative Christians I know, the above paragraph sounds like the worst heresy. But that is where I am at right now. Letting go of biblical inerrancy and sola scriptura was scary for me, but I found that my faith did not depend on it. There is always the possibility that we have interpreted the bible wrong, no matter how confident the current thinkers of the day are in their assessment. I also like to think that Jesus freed us from many more laws than we give him credit for.

What does purity even mean?

When the word "purity" is mentioned, the vast majority of people assume it is short for "sexual purity." And 99% of the time they are right, because that is what the term "purity" is most used for in Christian culture.

But I often hear Christians try to define purity in broader terms, especially when they are under fire for focusing too much on teen or women's sexuality. They say it has to do with purity of thoughts and emotions as well. (The phrases "guard your heart" and "do not awaken love before its time" come to mind.) Some Christian groups, usually the more conservative ones, will try to implement guidelines in courtship to avoid emotional attachment prior to marriage. Of course that practice places people in danger of worse hurts later down the road, and, in my opinion, reveals the error in believing that avoiding heartbreak is part of purity. But in a small way I can appreciate that they are truly trying to apply their beliefs to their lives.

Because in my experience, the broader definitions of purity--the ones that incorporate more aspects of being human than sexuality alone--are proved hypocritical when put to the test. I saw this illustrated really well in a talk show I watched once. Anderson Cooper was interviewing a family who attended purity balls. The episode (I can't find the full video online) also had Randy Wilson, founder of the Colorado Springs purity ball, and Jessica Valenti, feminist author of The Purity Myth. At one point, the parents explained that purity was about much more than sexual purity, that it included all different parts of life. It sounded good in theory. But further into the show, one of the daughters spoke of the teens at her school who "were not pure." Anderson had her explain what she meant by that, and her answer was that they had had sex.

That did not surprise me, of course. If anyone is accused of being "not pure," it usually means that they have done something sexually with another person before they were married. I have never heard anyone be told they are not pure because they had sexual thoughts or got emotionally attached to someone. Sure, there will be some talk in small groups about "impure thoughts," but those are easily forgiven, and no one would ever show hesitance to date or court someone who had lost purity in one of the non-sexual-activity categories. What it comes down to is that sex is the only thing that actually matters in Christian purity. Having sex automatically disqualifies you from the "pure" group, while failing in any other area but sex keeps you in good standing.

While I personally would prefer purity to be a term used to describe the goodness of a person's heart and intentions, I also think that purity is a difficult term for any area of a person's life. It implies that perfection is expected and achievable, and I don't think it is. Purity is an all-or-nothing concept. The slightest tarnish takes away the ability to be pure at all.

I suspect that the church's obsession with sexual purity did not begin with finding purity described in the bible and then trying convey it to young people. Rather, I think the church latched on to the idea of ridding sexual sin from its young people, and found that to speak in terms of purity versus damaged goods made their message have more of an impact and was easier to talk about.

As a result, I find I do not like the word purity very much. It has lost its meaning and its sway. However, I believe there are good things in this life that can be pure. Love is one of them. I believe God is love. And I don't think love is hindered by impurities.

Good intentions and justifying the means

Since I've moved away, the church I grew up in and that my parents still attend has gotten more conservative. Last year, my mother told me about an event the church was hosting for teenage girls in the community. It was a lock-in and the theme would be--you guessed it--saving yourself for marriage. They were going to decorate the church as if for a wedding, and there would be dress forms showcasing bridal gowns around the church.

The idea sort of sickened me. It was just one more message these girls were going to get that told them their value lies in how worthy they are of wearing a white wedding gown. Of being ready for a wedding night. Of being chosen by a man. Of all the themes that could have been chosen for a church youth sleepover, it had to be about sex. It is what Christians are most worried about concerning their youth.

She told me, "The woman who organized it had a child outside of marriage at a young age, and she wants to make sure these girls don't make the same mistake." Okay, good intentions. I understand what she's trying to do, I just don't like how she's doing it. But I think all people that teach purity have good intentions, and look what's become of their teachings. For most youth, it simply didn't work. And for the ones who took the teachings to heart, like I did, many of them are now speaking out against the pain it has caused them in their lives.

When I was first working through my issues with the purity movement, I asked myself, "Can the end justify the means?" If teaching sexual purity can help a few teens avoid making some sexual mistakes, is it worth it? I do care that young people don't get hurt by jumping into sexual relationships too quickly or by getting pregnant way before they're ready. The answer came to me pretty quickly. There are other ways we can help them that come with much less baggage, less lies, and have application past the short range of young adulthood.

When I think about the things I was taught that were so dependent on the assumption that I wouldn't need them past the age of 22-25 (because I'd be married by then), it makes me angry. Angry that I was being fed a temporary fix that wasn't meant to be a lifelong value, but something that would simply get me safely past a finish line. The adults in my life should have known better. They were old enough to know the truth. Yet they allowed us to believe that waiting would make our married sex life better than everyone else's, that premarital sex would put us in a world of hurt no matter what the circumstance, and that people who had premarital sex were damaged goods nobody would want to be with.

Granted, the majority of the voices I heard hawking purity were young ones. Single or newly-married Christians in their twenties. Maybe they didn't know better. And maybe the older ones had fully convinced themselves the lies were true, despite whatever evidence they had witnessed to the contrary. But does that make it okay? Those facts do not change history. They do not heal wounds. Good intentions do not right wrongs.

Something lighthearded for a change

I've found satire to be incredibly therapeutic after leaving a place in your life that has caused you pain. Poking fun at the monster that used to torment you feels good and bonds you with others who have experienced the same thing. Here are a couple things I've come across in the past two weeks that poke fun at the purity movement:

Christian couple maintains abstinence through first two years of marriage

http://www.larknews.com/archives/217

Is it just me, or is the logic of "If it was holy before it must be double-holy afterwards" not that ridiculous compared to the ridiculousness of what the purity movement actually believes?

Marriage announcement for Mormon couple

http://www.theonion.com/articles/alan-culver-and-brenda-hayworth,31261/

I love this so much. It perfectly encapsulates the arrogance and condescension of a successful "true love waits" couple, as well as the tall tales they tell of their wedding nights. 

Pam Stenzel, slut-shaming, and setting rules

There is a recent article on Jezebel about the religious abstinence lecturer Pam Stenzel. I've mentioned her before in my posts about my personal history with the purity movement. I've seen her speak probably three to five times that I can remember. Usually it was at my public high school, but she also appeared at Christian youth conferences I attended. Jezebel points out her harmful tactics of slut-shaming and presenting wrong information about birth control.

I can attest to the accusations about slut-shaming. I don't remember what she said about birth control, but when I was a teen with the best intentions for staying pure, I didn't need to think about birth control. Stenzel always spoke/yelled very loudly into the microphone. She used a lot of humor and sarcasm. She ruthlessly mocked people's hypothetical reasons for having sex. I can still hear her say "But I loooooove him" in a high whiny voice.

And I loved it all. She was funny and engaging, and her rhetoric validated and reinforced everything I had already decided on for my life. I was going to refrain from sex until marriage. I hoped everyone who chose differently would regret it. That's why her slut-shaming didn't bother me. I was a slut-shamer, too.

Thinking about that makes me sad. The purity movement had the unintended effect of making me a meaner, more judgmental and spiteful person. The higher the standards I tried to live up to, the more people I would look down on.

I remember her saying something like, "You get married, and as soon as you say your 'I do's,' you can have at it," [cue the laughter] "but until you have that ring on your finger, keep your hands off each other!" She could list a million direct or indirect problems caused by sex that sounded terrifying to anyone. Everything depended on that ring, that ceremony, that legal marriage certificate. Then sex was A-okay. Why is it so easy for Christians to believe marriage alone fundamentally changes everything about sex? I've written about my frustration with this before.

I think it boils down to making decisions easier for us. Figuring out what's right and what's wrong on a case-by-case basis can be tiring. Making exceptions for people in unique situations is confusing. Many Christians find it easier to make a one-size-fits-all set of rules that prevent us from ever getting close to sin. Once you have those black and white boundaries, you don't have to think anymore. Just follow and obey, it's that simple.

I used to get exasperated that people couldn't follow simple rules. Now I get exasperated when people don't want to use their brains to ask "why."

The contradiction of "sex positive" purity teachings

I grew up in a purity movement that liked to rave about how great sex was. "Sex is beautiful." "God created sex." "God wants you to have great sex." We were taught that sex was important in marriage. I was given the impression that "anything goes" in the marriage bed, that there was no wrong way to please each other. Yet despite all these supposedly positive sex teachings, I still came out of it thinking that sex was wrong, sex was dirty and naughty, and that God would punish me for having it. That's because they teach all those things, too.

The purity movement views premarital sex and marital sex as two completely different things. One is really bad and one is really good. One will heap negative consequences on you, like a poor marriage, heartbreak, unwanted prenancy and STIs. One will bring blessings untold, like pleasure, intimacy, happiness, and beautiful children.

The problem is that sex is the same thing, whether it's had inside or outside of marriage.

Certainly there are factors that can make a sexual experience a positive one or negative one. But those factors do not divide neatly over a marital boundary. They have to do with a multitude of circumstances that can be found in or out of marriage. Things like consent, relationship, communication, health, mood, confidence, or experience.

So when young people are taught that sex is both horrible and amazing, what are they to do when they find out sex is just sex? How do we rationalize that sex is supposed to have two separate meanings without leaning one way or another?

For me, sex wasn't real. It was a concept, and I could give it duplicate meanings in my head, seamingly without problem. That is, until I had to apply it to reality. It was really easy to see it as dirty and wrong when unmarried people did it. Judging them was easy. But to view it as normal and good within a marriage was hard for me. Conceptually, I knew it was true. But realistically, I felt that married sex was having permission to do a naughty (but fun) thing. I never would have described it that way because I didn't realize I felt that way. But that's the way I and most of my Christian friends treated it when we spoke about married people. Married people were privileged. They had won at the game of life. They no longer had to live by the rules. Lucky.

Even to this day, I find remnants of my negative views on sex infiltrating my otherwise very positive views on sex. I have a hard time believing that most of the couples around me have frequent sex, or even have sex at all. Because I lived sexless for so long and didn't expect it to be a major part of my life (I thought I might be single forever), I tended to view others as the same way.  Also, sex was this rare gift put up on a pedestal for so long. If it really was as amazing (within marriage) as I was taught, the married people I knew would be more changed if they were experiencing that, wouldn't they? But they seemed just as average as me.

Also, I sometimes feel a sense of rebellion and pride in regards to my current sex life, that I wish there was no cause to feel. Pride that I'm getting to enjoy sex before others who are waiting for purity reasons, and before my Christian friends and teachers think I should be allowed to. Pride that I've discovered the truth about healthy sex and relationships, pride that I know better. Rebellion in that I'm living out everything I was taught was bad--and am happier for it. Rebellion for breaking the rules I upheld for so long. It feels good to rebel against the people and teachings I feared being judged by. But this isn't normal, this isn't right. I would never have had a cause to feel these ways if I had not been taught that sex was wrong. If I had never been taught to judge people based on their sexual past or status.

While religious leaders who teach "sex is great within marriage" may be better than those who pretend sex doesn't exist, their teaching is still not good enough to lead people to healthy views on sex. Just because people believe sex can be good does not mean they are equipped to handle it. It doesn't mean that the negative teachings won't bleed over into the good.

A man's experience in purity culture

Most discussion on purity culture has centered around women, probably because purity culture itself appears to focus on women. Women are held accountable for a man's stumblings, and women are the ones most devalued on the basis of their virginity status. And it's been mostly women who have been the loudest voices speaking out against the harmful messages of the purity movement. But men have suffered, too. The same messages that told women their worth was determined by how they've been touched by a man told men that they were uncontrollable sexual freaks and rapists at heart.

There's a really good post over at Homeschoolers Anonymous that describes the confusion and guilt experienced by one man when he was taught that he was something he didn't feel he was. I recommend reading the whole thing. An excerpt:

But really, what I took to heart from all this talk about how obsessed men were with sex was not just that there was a rapist inside of me. It was that apparently I had a broken rapist inside of me. Because, honestly, I never felt so overwhelmed by semi-exposed skin that I couldn’t control myself. I spent years thinking there was something wrong with me. Men were supposed to “stumble” when they saw a midriff, or a shoulder, or too much leg. But I never “stumbled” like that — meaning, I never saw a midriff and went home and masturbated about it.

So I decided when I was sixteen that I must be gay.

In retrospect, that only made me feel worse.

Because men never made me “stumble,” either.

Because I’m not gay.

I was actually straight. And as far as straight people go, I was actually normal, too. Apparently normal people — straight or gay or whatever you are — don’t obsess about sex as much as homeschooling parents do.