"Part of Me"

Let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious.

1 Peter 3:4

Link to video for mobile users here.

I'm sure Katy Perry had a concept in mind when she wrote this song that is different from what I think of when I listen to it; however, I am going to borrow all the resonating power behind her idea (whatever it was) and apply it to my idealism. 

When you feel ordinary and disposable as though you are on menu of women from which a man can pick and choose multiple courses (and you feel like the comfort food and not the delicacy); remember that God doesn't measure your value that way.  If a man follows Christ, he is going to see you as sacred and precious; he isn't going to look at you (or any woman) as an object of lust (Matthew 5).  Wait for that man who sees you as truly beautiful beyond compare and makes you feel as precious as you are. Don't give yourself away for less. The goal isn't to find a man who values you above all others but to find a man who values all women (and people in general) as precious and sacred and simply recognizes you as "the one" God intended for him. It should never be a competition. You should never feel stacked up against anyone else.  You should never have to defend your worth or the truth behind why you wait to someone who says they love you. Wait for a man who can say something like: 

You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.

Song of Songs 4:7

and who also treats you in a way that makes you believe those words.

Now, I abhor the common perspective that women should be treated like "princesses" while its ok for women to talk about men like they are dogs. So any men reading this, take note. The same goes for you.  Your love should be as devoted to you as the church is devoted to Christ (Ephesians 5) and she should value your body as this amazing, sacred vessel which carries your heart and soul. You should be able to trust her implicitly and you should be the focus of ALL her desire.  There are certainly a LOT of women lusting after Ryan Gosling, Tom Hiddleston, and etc- even if less women than men are into porn, they are still absolutely sinning when they lust after actors or musicians or flirt with "cute" guys at work even though they have a boyfriend/husband etc. And while the Bible verse above was specifically for women, here is one for you guys:

Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature..for the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.

1 Samuel 16:7

Your heart is where your gorgeous-ness comes from too.  I said gorgeous-ness because I wanted to say "beauty" but maybe you guys wouldn't like that.  Is beautiful not manly? I think men can be beautiful. If a guy wants to suggest a better word, please let me know. Any ways, wait for a woman who can say:

My beloved is radiant, distinguished among ten thousand.

Song of Songs 5:10

and who treats you in a way that you believe it. You should be her one and only. You shouldn't be measured against previous relationships or who ever is hot in Hollywood.  You shouldn't feel like you are compared to or have to compete with any other man she happens to know. Thats not love. She must be able to say:

I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.

Song of Songs 6:3

End of story, no competition. Forever and ever.

Most importantly, you both should be able to say:

I have found the one my soul loves.

Song of Songs 3:4

If you can't say that about the person you are with, then you are lying to them and yourself; and you are simply using each other.

I typed "beautiful" into Google to try and get a random picture to pair with this blog post. However, since most of the search results were naked women (which immediately made me hate Google and society in general), you are getting an old picture of me. 

"Truth is Eternal"

Every word. EVERY. WORD.

CLICK HERE

Ok, in my first version of this post I followed the link above with a long commentary of my own. However, I read Matt Walsh's post once more and, as I sobbed once again through more than half of it, I realized I didn't want to add any of my own words. It needs no commentary.  It's perfect. Perfect.

So, I just ask that you do click the link above and you read it. Fair warning, if you are reading it on a mobile phone you'll have to scroll past some advertisements.  But please read it.  Every word. I just, forgive me, I can't even.

Be a rebel.

"We forget how great we are."

THIS.

So, you know how people "binge-watch" tv shows on Netflix?

You know, you get hooked on Sherlock or Dr.Who or Downton Abbey and end up watching all the episodes in like 12 hours straight?

Well, I binge-watch/listen to sermons and Christian "talks".

We need a term for me that is like "geek" but pertaining specifically to Christianity.

Anyways, as I was driving home from NYC today, I listened to three Steubenville Conference talks by Chris Stefanick (who gets me more excited than Orlando Bloom or Brendon Urie ever did- but in an entirely different way, thank God) and then ended up listening to Leah Darrow.

Now, this woman.

This woman.

Awesome.

She talked a little too much about shoes in her women's session (I'm not a "girly" girl) but everything else, just…. thank you, God for your amazing grace on us all. Love it.

Please, just take half an hour and watch this first video and if you like it; watch the second.  The first video is aimed at both young men and women (but applicable to all ages) and the second is from a women's session but I think men could absolutely benefit from a listen as well.

Leah Darrow's general keynote speech from Steubenville 2012

Link for mobile users here.

And her women's session from Steubenville 2013

Link for mobile users here.

Picture source here.

Sex and Stupid Expectations

In my last post "If you ask Andy", I mentioned an anti-purity blog that had me very riled up.  The blogger was raised as a conservative Christian but then became an Atheist as an adult.  Therefore, she gives her anti-purity perspective very confidently- as though she fully understands "purity" from the inside, since she came from a conservative Christian background. 

If you remember from my last post, my problem with this woman's blog was her statement that premarital sex with multiple partners does no "actual harm" to a future marriage relationship.  "If you ask Andy" was kind of a "get ready for the beat down" warning to those casual Atheists/Agnostic/Secular Christians/etc who try to say sex is "just physical".  However, as I continue to ruminate on this woman's (poorly written) words; I realize there is another aspect of her blog post that actually bothers me more.  

Truly, the worst thing she talks about is how she valued purity before she became an Atheist.

She got the whole purpose of it entirely backwards. It doesn't surprise me that she became an Atheist and dropped purity, because she clearly never understood the basic fundamentals of Christianity.

So, I'm not going to beat on those who want to pretend premarital sex is really "just physical" and has no consequences (which is like a smoker pretending cigarettes don't cause cancer). Today, I want to refute a distorted view of purity that is not uncommon among ignorant, legalistic Christians. 

Yeah, I'm going after the self-righteous virgins.

Before we continue, here is the blog post in question:

 Sexpectations: Purity, Courtship, and Dating

To summarize, this blogger, Libby Anne, writes that the entire value of purity lies in expectations.  If you expect that your future spouse is going to be a virgin, then virginity will matter to you.  It is her opinion that this expectation is taught.  Therefore, if you aren't taught that purity is important and to be expected in a spouse, than it simply doesn't matter.

For something things, this is true, that expectations = worth. Take a dollar bill, it is only worth what you expect to get with it, right?  50 years ago, it was worth a lot more than it is today. 1950's kids were raised to "know the value of a dollar", because it was actually worth something.  In 1950, you could buy five loaves of bread for a dollar.  Today, you can't even get one loaf of bread with a dollar. Kids grow up today with an entirely different concept of the worth of a dollar bill.  I think the last time a dollar was exciting to me was when I got them from the tooth fairy. With inflation, it is hardly worth anything at all. In fact, the worth of a dollar bill today is only 10% of its value in 1950. Even though the dollar bill itself, as a physical object, has not changed, the value has changed based on what you can expect for it in return. 

Is that how we judge the worth of our bodies? Is the worth of our bodies determined by what we expect to get with it?  Are we only worth the pleasure others expect to get from us? 

So, Libby Anne grew up expecting to get someone's "virginity" in exchange for hers.  When she fell in love with a man who wasn't raised to value purity and was not himself a virgin, Libby Anne's expectations were left woefully un-met.  Not only was she disappointed that her husband didn't "wait" for her, she was resentful that he didn't value her virginity:

"When I first started dating the man who is now my husband, I was horrified by the fact that he had dated other women before me, and been physically intimate with them. I felt angry, angry at him and angry at those other girls. I knew one of them – she lived in my dorm – and I have to say I almost hated her. I felt that she had taken something from me, something precious, simply by dating my husband. He had given away a piece of his heart, I believed, and now the heart he would give me was incomplete. We could never have the best, all because he had dated before...

Weirdly, my now husband told me that he wished I had dated before. He even wished that I wasn’t a virgin. This completely threw me. Wasn’t he supposed to be thrilled that he was my first? Wasn’t my intact heart (and hymen) supposed to be some sort of present for him, some sort of gift? But he was serious. He really truly wished I had had previous boyfriends, and in fact he told me that not only would he not have cared if I had had sex before, but in fact he actually wished I’d had. 

I was so confused. I had saved myself for him – wasn’t that supposed to mean something? The reality is that it would have meant something if he had been a fundamentalist or evangelical boy raised to expect sexual purity and emotional purity. But he wasn’t, so it didn’t."

As I said in my last blog post, I entirely disagree that the value of purity lies only in the expectation of it. Premarital sex with multiple partners before marriage has a vast array of scientifically proven physical, psychological, and sociological consequences (as well as spiritual- but I can't say that is "scientifically" proven). In "If you ask Andy", I mentioned just a handful of the research that proves premarital sex with multiple partners does indeed cause "actual harm" to future marriages.  Also, the reaction that this blogger's husband had toward her virginity is shameful.  To value his wife so little that he wished she had played Russian roulette with disease, pregnancy, increased risk of depression, increased risk of divorce, etc etc? Shameful. 

BUT

It is just as shameful that this woman expected her husband to be a virgin as if this was something she deserved because she waited.  Secondly, how dare she think that saving sex for marriage made her more valuable! To insinuate that her husband was worth less, that he was incomplete/damaged because he wasn't a virgin? Shameful.

Alright now, this is for the few of you who are going to save sex for marriage. Pay close attention to what I am about to tell you. I have three very important points for you regarding (1) the value of virginity, (2) what you deserve for your virginity, and (3) expecting your spouse to be a virgin.

1)

Saving yourself for marriage has nothing to do with being someone's "first".  

Let me repeat.

SAVING YOURSELF FOR MARRIAGE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING SOMEONE'S "FIRST".

Saving yourself for marriage has EVERYTHING to do with the love of your life being YOUR one and only.

"It's not just about knowing the standards you expect somebody else will meet for you; it's knowing the standards that you should live up to because your future spouse deserves them of you"

-Jason Evert
from How to Date your Soulmate without Losing Your Soul

Look, if you value purity than obviously you value your own body and that is as it should be, your body was made as a temple for your soul and for God. But the act of saving yourself for marriage is a giving, loving action that you do FOR your future spouse (and of course to honor God and how HE designed love to be). You don't save yourself for yourself.  You don't do it to increase your value and be worth "more" some how.  

Get this straight:

ALL of your worth comes from being made in the image and likeness of God. 

You can do nothing to add or subtract from that worth.

It is GOD who determines your value and He made it clear that YOU and every other human being is worth dying for.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Therefore ALL people have the same worth, regardless of whether or not they have had sex with someone else. The physical status of your "virginity" has nothing to do with your value.  Saving yourself for marriage shows that you recognize the inherent value of human beings- both in yourself and others.  Saving yourself for marriage shows how YOU value the physical, emotional, and spiritual health of your future spouse.  It is about THEM, not you. 

You save yourself for marriage so that one day you can say to the love of your life:

• I didn't want to jeopardize your health or put your life in danger. 
• I couldn't imagine taking the risk of creating a child with anyone else because I wanted my legacy on this earth to be made with only you.
• I didn't co-habitat with anyone because I wanted to share all those little intimacies of life with only you.
• I didn't abuse the sexual bonding processes in my brain so that I could be perfectly one with you. 
• I saved every little orgasm for you because I wanted my greatest pleasure and joy on this earth to be shared with only you. (Remember, sex is the very highest physical pleasure you can experience in a healthy life. Only heroin produces more physical pleasure than sex.)
• I didn't want to put our life together at risk (because statistics are statistics for a reason and ALL research agrees that on average virgin's have more stable marriages with a much lower rate of infidelity and divorce).
• I wanted you to be the only person with whom I shared the most intimate act two people can experience so that it truly is "intimate", sacred, consecrated to you alone.
• I waited for you because you are worth waiting for.

It isn't about you, it is about the love of your life.

2)

Regardless of how you live your life, nobody OWES you ANYTHING.

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Isaiah 64:6

There is no one righteous not even one.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 and Romans 3:10

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

1 John 1:8

We "deserve" nothing.

For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.

Roman 3:22-25

Got it? Because we all are sinners we "deserve" nothing. If there was true justice, God would have wiped out mankind a long time ago and left it that way. Every good and perfect thing that we are blessed with comes from God as a gift of His grace (James 1:17).  Your righteousness comes from faith in God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to atone for our sins- not by your actions.  You don't obtain righteousness through your good acts and obedience- you do good things and obey God's commandments because HE deserves that from you for saving your sorry soul. Just because you waited for marriage doesn't mean God "owes" you a virgin, got it? You are no less a sinner than the spouse who gave up his/her virginity before marriage.  Was it sin to have sex before marriage? DUH but that doesn't "disqualify" them from life as God intended.  And YOU are not perfectly pure, understand? No one is. I guarantee you have struggled with sexual sin even if just within your heart and mind. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. May the one with no sin cast the first stone (John 8:7).

3)

Here is the problem with "expecting" your future spouse to be a virgin:

Only 3% of people in the United States save themselves for marriage successfully.  

That means 97% of people DON'T.

The odds suck, guys.  It is very, very important that we, as Christians, are grounded in reality.  Only 20% of us young, conservative Christians are even trying to wait.  Hey guess what?  

The temptation to sin is hard to resist.

No!? Really?! 


Paul said it best:  

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Romans 7:19

Even those of us who LOVE how God designed love to be; even those of us who BELIEVE that it is true and right; even we make mistakes, we are taken advantage of, or we go through periods of doubt and rebellion. We mess up.  Only 3% make it guys.  You think you're too good for the other 97%? You think God would only plan for you to be with a virgin? You're out of your mind.

People want sex and very few people value themselves or eachother enough to bother keeping it as the sacred, bonding ritual that God intended it to be.  Few people bother with the self-control. They turn it into just another recreational activity people do with each other.  Even though they are gambling with their brain's ability to bond and to be truly intimate, with disease, with emotions, with the very wellspring of life (I don't know if you noticed but babies come from sex, and children of all things on this planet aught to be considered sacred, don't you think?). They disregard all of that and just do it for the endorphins, or they justify sharing this sacred bonding intimacy with various people along the lines of polyamory.

But the point is, almost everybody is doing it, and you're truly a fool to expect your future spouse to be a virgin. Even most conservative Christians are giving their bodies away to various people long before they walk down the aisle. Only 3% are making it to their wedding night, people! 

I was at a Rebecca St. James concert when I was about 14 or 15 (she's a very famous Christian singer for those who don't know).  I remember standing there in the audience while she sang:

Darling, did you know that I
I dream about you
Waiting for the look in your eyes
When we meet for the first time

And darling, did you know that I
I pray about you
Praying that you will hold on
Keep your loving eyes only for me

'Cause I am waiting for
Praying for you, darling
Wait for me too
Wait for me as I wait for you

Darling, did you know
I dream about life together
Knowing it will be forever
I'll be yours and you'll be mine

I stood there shaking my head and thinking, "Ain't nobody waiting for me." Even though I truly did have that dream since I was 11 years old. I dreamed about the one. I waited for that look in his eyes. I prayed for him. I waited for him, however as a moderately intelligent person and I knew the chances were slim that anyone would be waiting for me. I had no expectations. It is better to be prepared for reality.

Is it best to wait? YES.  Are there very, very serious and sometimes life-altering and even deadly consequences for those who do not wait?  YES.  Are you hurting yourself, the people you sin with, and your future spouse? YES. Does it mean you can "never have the best" if you don't wait? NO.  Dude, do you even understand the Gospel? 

God's favorite love story is not two perfectly pure virgins marrying each other and living happier ever after.  

Don't get me wrong. Two people saving themselves for marriage and being virgins together on their wedding night is perfect.  That is how God designed it to be; it honors God and it gives you the very best foundation for a long happy sex life and marriage (statistically proven).  It is this magical, lovely thing; and I don't want to take away the significance from that. Saving yourself for marriage is an incredible feat of self-control, devotion, adoration, commitment, and love. I urge everyone to wait for marriage. However, two virgins pairing up isn't God's favorite love story.  What? Well, what is His favorite love story? Have you read the Bible? Don't worry, I'll tell you...

This Woman.

Check out the following blogpost:

From Forte e Bello: Date a Man who Pursues your Heart

This woman is marvelous.  I recommend perusing her blog. So many great posts.

<3

  

Read more about this awesome woman here.

If you ask Andy...

My mind has been preoccupied with a blog I read recently.  This blog was written by a woman who was raised a conservative Christian but is currently a very out spoken Atheist.  She attacked the doctrine of "purity" with gusto. Her typical point of view is most concisely summarized by quoting the illustrious Andy Warhol:

"Sex is the biggest nothing of all time."

She asserted that sex had nothing to do with love and that having multiple pre-marital sexual partners did no "actual harm" to a future marriage.  

As I'm sure you can imagine, this ruffled my feathers more than a bit. I can only take so many people in the media and society telling me that my body, the highest intimacy I am capable of, and the conception of new human life has no inherent, sacred meaning. I'll admit, it's hard not to take this sort of thing personally.

However, what was infuriating was that this blogger presented her case as though it were fact when it was based entirely on her own personal feelings and (faulty) logic; no scientific research, no statistics, nothing.  No real evidence to support her position at all, and it was this that insulted my intelligence.

See, I don't mind if people disagree with me.  You can think I'm stupid and sexually repressed and fanatical if you want.  You can hate the stereotypical Christian doctrine of "purity". You can even hate my God, go ahead.  But don't be ignorant about it. Know the science. Know what you are talking about.

So, I have done hours upon hours of research to arm myself with truth in order to confront the very common assumptions and misconceptions about sex and purity/chastity that I have encountered from various Atheists, Agnostics, and "secular Christians" (aka people who call on the name of God but don't think they have to bother following His commandments or Jesus Christ).  I've made sure that ALL of my research has come from credible, nationally and internationally recognized sources that are not affiliated with any conservative Christian organizations or people.  I've tried my best to eliminate bias from the research I will present. 

Therefore, I am fully prepared to talk about the higher rate of infidelity and divorce among people with more than one premarital sexual partner and/or a history of cohabitation prior to marriage compared to those who wait for marriage (research that is corroborated by the Kinsey Institute which pioneered the sexual revolution in the 1960's).  I am ready to share the groundbreaking neuroscience research on the formation of intimate bonds due to oxytocin (known as the "love hormone" with higher levels found in females) and vasopressin (known as the "monogamy hormone" with higher levels found in men) released during sexual activity (with the greatest amounts released during orgasm).  I want to present the research that shows how breaking off a sexual relationship is like someone trying to give up heroin.  From brain studies, scientists have discovered that, with the bonding/habituating effects of oxytocin and vasopressin as well as the addictive levels of dopamine released during sex, a brain on sex does indeed look like a brain on drugs (Fun fact: only heroin releases more dopamine/causes more physical pleasure than sex).  There is an actual "withdrawal" process that takes place in the brain while you are disentangling yourself from a sexual relationship and you can not fully erase that bond in your brain.  Does all the relationship drama that happens around you make more sense now? This also explains why, during years 3-5 of a marriage (when the rate of infidelity is at its highest) an estimated 42% of unfaithful people commit infidelity with an "old flame" aka a former sexual partner. As they say, "old habits die hard".   I am anxious to share with you the frightening statistics about HPV (which is not effectively prevented by condoms since research shows it can be passed just by touching and possibly even kissing) and cervical cancer (which kills more than 4,000 women a year in the U.S.), as well as oral cancer (which is also caused by HPV and projected to far surpass cervical cancer over the next ten years).

So, I've got all this research and I'm ready to go!  

But I don't want to talk about any of that tonight.

I had an attack of nostalgia today.

I don't hang on to my ex-boyfriends.  I find it to be nothing but destructive to keep people close to you after you have shared something with them that was always meant for someone else.  I felt this way even before I knew there was scientific support for that idea.  Love never ends so if a relationship ends, it wasn't love. It is painful for me to think of the counterfeit version of "love" I shared with my mistakes (aka ex's) so I leave them in the past (may they live long and prosper). 

However, there are a few moments I cherish.  They are learning moments, moments that now make me shudder with the most comforting regret.  Regret is comforting, when it is simply an indication that you now know how much more you are worth, specifically who you are worth.

I like to think about the moment I told my first boyfriend that I loved him and knew deep down that it was a lie. I like to think about how I cried all the way home after my first kiss with my second "rebound" boyfriend because I hated myself for giving up on the vision I had when I was eleven and settling for the games most people call "dating". 

These moments are great, but I'm going to share my favorite moment with you.

Despite my emotional reaction to our first kiss, I kept things going with the "rebound" boyfriend for quite a while.  We were on and off because I wouldn't have sex with him; I think he kept coming back until he realized I really wasn't going to sleep with him after all. I kept things going, I think, because I wanted to prove to myself that I could keep a guy interested without giving him sex. I was also trying really hard to date like a "normal" person. One night, this "rebound" boyfriend was driving me home from the movies or something, and a OneRepublic song came on.  That song was "All This Time".

Take all the time lost

All the days that I cost

Take what I took and

Give it back to you

All this time

We were waiting for each other

All this time

I was waiting for you

We got all these words

Can't waste them on another

So I'm straight in a straight line

Running back to you

I could go into the details of the epiphany I had in that car, an epiphany over a decade in the making, but I won't.  For right now, its frankly too personal.  I'll only tell you this: God gave me a vision when I was eleven, not a hallucination-type vision but a kind of supernatural conviction.  I say supernatural because I can't take credit for it. I don't want to take credit for it. I didn't save sex for marriage because I am superior and think I am better than other people. I saved intimacy for marriage because by some grace of God I had this conviction. My belief in that conviction is what fueled this colossal effort to "wait"; and you know what?

I was right.

And God is faithful and merciful to those who want to love as He loves.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, here is the wedding video I stumbled upon while I was being nostalgic about this song. You can thank Youtube for randomly offering up this video when I simply wanted the original recording, sending me into all sorts of sentimentality, and preventing me from writing a more argumentative blogpost tonight. You'll have to wait a while longer for that one.

Link for mobile users here.

Different song- but absolutely my favorite wedding video:

Link for mobile users here. 

Andy Warhol "Love" print found here.

My Body

Haven’t you read, that at the beginning God 'made them male and female,' and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together,

let no one separate.

You are hard of heart, but it was not this way from the beginning.

These words of Christ are found in both Matthew (19:4-8) and Mark (10:5-8)

I have come that you may have life and have it to the full.

John 10:10

Be a rebel and want more.

Video link for mobile users here.

Oh, it's my road
It's my road

And it's my war
It's my war

His eyes are open

Oh, cause I want more

I want more

Picture found here.