SEX

I went to see the Vagina Monologues last night at PSU. It was so good. But as I was sitting there I was thinking about how few of my friends could handle it because of the blunt way of talking, not necessarily about sex, but about the female body. At what point did we become ashamed of talking, with other women, about out bodies?

I have a reproductive disorder. It seems like every time I go to the doctors they come up with some new potential complication from this. And its sort of funny, because sometimes I feel like I need to be an advocate for what I have, because so many women are affected, and put themselves at risk by not seeking treatment, because no one has taught them how to identify when something is wrong with their own bodies. It's sad really. We hope that the video that you are shown in fifth grade about periods or a heart to heart with your mother will give you all the information you need. But it doesn't. And if we aren't willing to teach girls about how their body should be functioning, then we needn't be surprised when she doesn't know that she's having problems.

For me, the majority of my problems about how to view my own body and talk about sex can be traced back to youth group. We live in the age where youth leaders and pastors preach abstinence or evil. However, the categories this really leads to are total fear or rebellion. And for those of us who are abstinent but not fearful, in fact excited about having sex with our spouse one day, well we are placed right alongside the rebellious kids to be ridiculed. To talk about sex, honestly, and without the need for scare tactics like abortion or STD videos, is so needed in the church. We need to teach that sex was created by God. During the play last night some random facts would be announced like "the cliterous is the only organ in the human body designed strictly for sexual pleasure and has more then 8000 nerve endings, more then any other place in either the male or female body." Why shouldn't that be celebrated? God created us to enjoy sex. And I'm excited to share that with my husband someday. But even saying the word cliterous makes most of my friends blush and their eyes get big. It's not a bad word, people, I promise.

A few weeks ago I was told that youth groups preach to the 80% of kids that need to hear that sex is bad and establish all sorts of boundaries, but totally forget about the 20% of us who need something else completely. And that something else, while hard to define, is definitely not more boundaries. Youth group has accomplished making me feel like a bad person, even now, every time I break a boundary. And these aren't big things - like don't have sex. We're talking about little things, like you shouldn't have a best friend of the opposite gender. Your accountability partner should never be of the opposite gender. You know the rules. And I think I've violated most of the youth group social norms about people of the opposite gender, but there are still residual issues. My freshman year of college I heard a 4 week seminar on why Christian women should only befriend other women, that almost cost me my best friend at the time. And I still can't pray with someone of the opposite gender, alone, especially about things that are intimate to my heart, which is horrible a.) when you are becoming a pastor and b.) when it is one of the only remaining trust barriers between you and another person.

Part of our issue as Christians is that we blame everything on the fruit in Genesis. If Adam and Eve wouldn't have been tempted then our lives would be hunky-dory. Only we forget what the fruit was, "it was from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil." To compare this to something in the New Testament, we should see the tree like Paul's view of the law in Romans. It can point out sin, but not save from sin. So the tree pointed out the ways we can sin, thus, like the law, tempting us to sin. But here's the thing, we then go on this tangent of throwing everything and anything into the category of sin. Talking about sex, openly, with other people you can trust is not sin. There are many sexual sins, yes, but talking about it in a non-provocative (non-television glamorized) way isn't sin. And this means being completely honest, not just picking and choosing what's important.

We need to empower young women and men with knowledge out their own bodies. We need to be honest about God's love for sex, and his creation of it. And his utter sadness when we abuse it. We need less rules and more openness of dialogue. We need to be able to celebrate how God made us physically, instead of writing that off as a shameful mistake.