 |
| Damaged food |
go on and on about virginity....and how those at the other end of
the rope are.....damaged,very filthy and unwelcome in the kingdom..
Honey, your previous relations cannot and will never disqualify you
from sharing that relationship with God and your spouse.
DAMAGED GOODS
written by Sarah BesseyI was nineteen years old and
crazy in love with Jesus when that
preacher told an auditorium I was
“damaged goods” because of my
sexual past. He was making every
effort to encourage this crowd of
young adults to “stay pure for
marriage.” He was passionate,
yes, well-intentioned, and he was
a good speaker, very convincing
indeed.
And he stood up there and
shamed me, over and over and
over again.
Oh, he didn’t call me up to the
front and name me. But he stood
up there and talked about me with
such disgust, like I couldn’t be in
that real-life crowd of young
people worshipping in that
church. I felt spotlighted and
singled out amongst the holy,
surely my red face announced my
guilt to every one.
He passed around a cup of water
and asked us all to spit into it.
Some boys horked and honked
their worst into that cup while
everyone laughed. Then he held
up that cup of cloudy saliva from
the crowd and asked, “Who wants
to drink this?!”
And every one in the crowd made
barfing noises, no way, gross !
“This is what you are like if you
have sex before marriage,” he
said seriously, “you are asking
your future husband or wife to
drink this cup.”
Over the years the messages
melded together into the common
refrain: “Sarah, your virginity
was a gift and you gave it away.
You threw away your virtue for a
moment of pleasure. You have
twisted God’s ideal of sex and love
and marriage. You will never be
free of your former partners, the
boys of your past will haunt your
marriage like soul-ties. Your
virginity belonged to your future
husband. You stole from him. If –
if! – you ever get married, you’ll
have tremendous baggage to
overcome in your marriage,
you’ve ruined everything. No one
honourable or godly wants to
marry you. You are damaged
goods, Sarah.”
If true love waits, I heard, then I
have been disqualified from true
love.
In the face of our sexually-
dysfunctional culture, the Church
longs to stand as an outpost of
God’s ways of love and marriage,
purity and wholeness.
And yet we twist that until we
treat someone like me – and,
according to this research , 80% of
you are like me – as if our value and
worth was tied up in our virginity.
We, the majority non-virgins in
the myopic purity conversations,
feel like the dirty little secret, the
not-as-goods, the easily judged
example. In this clouded swirl of
shame, our sexual choices are the
barometer of our righteousness
and worth. We can’t let any one
know, so we keep it quiet, lest any
one discover we were not virgins
on some mythic wedding
night. We don’t want to be the
object of disgust or pity or gossip
or judgement. And in the silence,
our shame – and the lies of the
enemy – grow.
And so here, now, I’ll stand up
and say it, the way I wish
someone had said it to me fifteen
years ago when I was sitting in
that packed auditorium with my
heart racing, wrists aching, eyes
stinging, drowning and silenced
by the imposition of shame
masquerading as ashes of
repentance:
“So, you had sex before you were
married.
It’s okay.
Really. It’s okay.
There is no shame in Christ’s love.
Let him without sin cast the first
stone. You are more than your
virginity – or lack thereof – and
more than your sexual past.
Your marriage is not doomed
because you said yes to the boys
you loved as a young woman.
Your husband won’t hold it
against you, he’s not that weak
and ego-driven, choose a man
marked by grace.
It’s likely you would make different
choices, if you knew then what you
know now, but, darling, don’t make
it more than it is, and don’t make it
less than it is. Let it be true, and
don’t let anyone silence you or the
redeeming work of Christ in your
life out of shame.
Now, in Christ, you’re clear, like
Canadian mountain water,
rushing and alive, quenching and
bracing, in your wholeness.
Virginity isn’t a guarantee of
healthy sexuality or marriage. You
don’t have to consign your sexuality
to the box marked “Wrong.” Your
very normal and healthy desires
aren’t a switch to be flipped.
Morality tales and false identities
aren’t the stuff of a real marriage.
Purity isn’t judged by outward
appearances and technicalities.
The sheep and the goats are not
divided on the basis of their
virginity. (Besides, this focus is
weird and over-realized, it’s the
flip side of the culture’s
coin which values women only for
their sexuality. It’s also damaging,
not only for you, but for the
virgins in the room, too. Really,
there’s a lot of baggage from this
whole purity movement heading
out into the world.)
For I am convinced, right along
with the Apostle Paul, that neither
death nor life, neither angels nor
demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any other power,
neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will
be able to separate us from the
love of God which is in Christ
Jesus.* Not even “neither virginity
nor promiscuity” and all points
between can separate you from
this love. You are loved – without
condition – beyond your wildest
dreams already.
I would say: Sarah, your worth
isn’t determined by your virginity.
What a lie.
No matter what that preacher said
that day, no matter how many
purity balls are thrown with
sparkling upper-middle-class
extravagance, no matter the
purity rings and the purity
pledges, no matter the
judgemental Gospel-negating
rhetoric used with the best of
intentions, no matter the “how
close is too close?” serious
conversations of boundary-
marking young Christians, no
matter the circumstances of your
story, you are not disqualified from
life or from joy or from marriage
or from your calling or from a
healthy and wonderful lifetime of
sex because you had – and, heaven
forbid, enjoyed – sex before you
were married.
Darling, young one burning with
shame and hiding in the silence,
listen now: Don’t believe that lie.
You never were, you never will be,
damaged goods.”
DAMAGED GOODS was re-blogged by graceleju.blogspot.com
0 comments: