Can We Measure Up?

Taken from a paper I wrote for the Bryan Undergraduate Research Conference:

What if, instead of asking “how to stay pure for our husbands”, women asked how to be pure as individual sexual beings seeking to glorify God? What if sexual mistakes didn’t define the character of a woman, and what if victories over temptation were given the credence that they merit? In her book “Real Sex”, Lauren Winner asserts that “We Christians are not doing anyone any good when we perpetuate the notion that women don’t really want to have sex. Are many women likely to encounter men who pressure them to have sex? Sure. But they are also likely to encounter pressures that may seem even more urgent and be even more persuasive—the pressures of their own bodies and their own desires.” Recognizing that female masturbation, pornography, and lust are not the exception, but the common experience of Christian women, gives legitimacy to cravings for intimacy while giving space for honest dialogue about both sin and redemption.

For too long the Church has been satisfied with knee length skirts and negative pregnancy tests, and the result has been a pervasive epidemic of guilt-ridden sexuality that looks to legalism as its measuring stick. Some will hear this and say “Well, that’s all well and good, but if we let go of these reins, teen pregnancy and bikinis will come tearing out of the woodwork to smite our young people with all-powerful lust”. The gospel of grace and redemption is infinitely more powerful than the wearisome burden of scare-tactic legalism. Young women will not be spurred on to overcome addiction and pursue purity because of a new rule that is imposed or an additional message of guilt that is preached. The chains of sexual sin can only be broken by the freedom found in the cross of Christ and the power of grace. If churches present sexuality as a list of rules and measurements, which when broken lead to dirtiness and isolation, than a terrified and frantic striving for pristine abstinence will result, with some inevitably missing the mark and falling into spiraling shame. If, however, churches start not with perfection to be marred, but brokenness to be redeemed, and point to Christ as the only cure for addiction, self-hatred, overwhelming lust, and isolation, then women are drawn to the compellingly beautiful alternative of purity as an expression of God’s infinite grace.

Steak and Similes (I’m an Alliterative Sell-Out)

Writing is sinew-tough, like the steak that has the ding-ding-ding winning flavor combo but is trapped inside the chewy masses of a heavy-handed chef and an expired timer. I overuse food metaphors like a clumsy culinary cook curing his cuts, crimes of continual alliteration attempting to steal a cheaply bought ‘A’ for creativity. Personal style just feels like last year’s shoes and individuality seems inherently bound to ideas of the past. How do I avoid being a cookie-cutter copy when my recipe has already been written from the kitchen of someone else? Melodramatic rambling feels arrogant and simultaneously inept, pride and insecurity sharing a bed that ends in cold sheets of paper. Saying not enough and way too much is like an unripe first kiss, fumbling at profundity and leaving with foggy glasses. Perseverance in incompetence only gets A’s for effort in a kindergarten art class, where a buck-toothed and brave-hearted version of myself throws paint on an easel and begs that it be praised. Do the splatters matter? Does the paint taint? Someday I might give up the rhymes and similes that I stubbornly clutch in my grimy toddler hands, but until then-writing is tough.