Seeing as I'm preaching about sex on Sunday, I've been thinking about it for a few weeks now. Of course, if you go by the "statistics" men think about sex every 5 seconds, so nothing's changed really.
I'm reading Every Young Woman's Battle because I'm trying to understand the issues of a single Christian woman. Actually I'd like to understand the issues for women in general, but I figure that's too broad, so I'm just going with the single Christian ones. If there are any women who wants to tell me what it's like being a woman, feel free. I've never been one as far as I know.
Anyway, there was one line at the beginning of Every Young Woman's Battle which said about some promiscuous boys "Each time they had sex with a girl, they took a piece of her soul." This worried me. While I understand what the writer is saying, I'm uncomfortable with saying that girls who have sex lose their soul. I think what the writer is saying that having sex outside of marriage does real spiritual damage, which I'm quite happy to agree with. But if a girl having sex outside of marriage loses some of her soul at some point she'll have no soul, which is almost like saying she's lost her humanity. It seems to imply that somehow a girl who has had sex is less valuable than the girl who hasn't.
Of course I know this isn't what the writer is saying. The gist of the book is "You're too valuable to be giving yourself away to people who aren't going to be committed for a lifetime." But it's the language that worries me. Probably because I think it reflects how Christians often talk about sex outside of marriage. We seem to say that sex cheapens a girl. While we should be saying that we can cheapen the act of sex, but we can't cheapen the person.
The other issue I have is that the language seems to be used much more often in conjunction with women. So the girl who has sex a lot loses her soul and cheapens herself. The guy who has sex a lot is expressing his masculinity in an unhealthy and selfish way. If I had to choose I'd rather be the person who expresses my nature wrong, than person who loses their nature.
Isn't it just as true of girls as it is for guys? A girl who has sex outside of marriage expresses her feminine sexuality, her desire for love, intimacy and pleasure in a way that is in essence unhealthy and selfish. The issue is not that she becomes less, but that sex should be so much more.
Anyway, I could say a whole lot more on the issue of sex at the moment. But I have to save up the gold for Sunday. That's just something I've been thinking about.
Photo by Cazpoo - I'm not sure why I picked the photo. I thought it was less obvious than a flower I guess.
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