Sexual Purity Confused Me As a Male

Image credits belong to: EriMoza | Pixabay

This is a continuation of my previous post titled “Sexual Thoughts Do Not Equal Sexual Actions.” 

I am thrown back to my days of adolescence as I read this Christian book on sexual purity called Every Young Man’s Battle from 2002. 

The authors assert that you are in a “sexual quicksand” if you once found premarital intercourse to be wrong but now feel guiltless about having sex with that “girl in English class.” You are now distant from God (pg. 17). The distance is true, not only because the authors say it, but also because you feel it. Feelings always dictate reality. Right? Wrong! They are worth examining before making conclusions. 

I agree that many casual hookups can be dangerous. Sex with a woman must be consensual from both parties. She deserves to feel no pressure nor intimidation from you in any way. Her desires and wishes should be known and respected as much as yours. Get to know her before having sex with her. I agree 100%. But this no-sex-before-marriage book still promotes a black-and-white thinking that never felt right to me. I tried my best to believe it. It was not until my early twenties that I realized I was trying to force a belief into a spot where it did not fit. 

It is natural for a man to feel attracted to a woman, the authors relay. Good. But the book left me uninformed on the fact that it is natural for a woman to also be attracted to a man. In fact, I lived much of my life thinking that it is in a woman’s nature to not sexually want me as much as I want her.

I am informed that a man should never dehumanize a woman by seeing her as a mere “interesting collection of body parts.” She is not just a means to an end. 

Good. Right!  

But the book’s idea of sex as a slippery slope and freeway for men leaves me with the impression that the climactic, intoxicating, electrifying experience of sex and orgasms is more on the man’s side instead of the woman’s, thereby making men the primary pleasure-seekers. So, she is just in the passenger’s seat? The burden is always on me to control myself, and if I fail, I am an aggressor. She has less desire for me than I do for her.

Matthew 5:28 really set the tone for me in my youth: 

“But I [Jesus] tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” 

I cannot even have a thought without being accused. I now feel barbaric and bestial even if I have not acted out my thoughts. 

“God takes sexual standards seriously, and He wants to be heard on the matter.” (pg. 18) 

Cooperate with God...or else...

Author Fred Stoeker solidifies that feeling for me as he talks about his days of dissolution and entertaining four girlfriends at a time, meanwhile I have only ever entertained one at a time. 

He was thinking about an old friend named Janet who moved to Omaha after high school. He “tracked her down.” They met at “her favorite dance bar.” After closing time, they were alone in her apartment. After some foreplay, they ended up in her bed, but he could not achieve an erection! 

He then relays: 

“Deeply humiliated, my head spinning, I slunk out to the parking lot and slumped into my car. Then I clearly heard the Spirit whisper into my heart, ‘By the way, I did that to you. I know it hurt you, but this practice can’t be tolerated anymore in your life. You are Christ’s now, and He loves you.’ He didn’t have to say it twice--on the spot I recommitted myself to staying pure.” (pg. 14) 

Looking back on this, I now find this to be half-baked, amusing, and infuriating all at the same time. He failed to consider the multitude of other causes as to why he could not achieve an erection. But I was a whippersnapper at the time I read this book. I figured the divine intervention had to be real if it was written by a Christian and Christians always tell the truth as they have access to the ultimate, all-knowing Truth-teller. 

Why did I not earn my divine intervention, though? 

Throughout my entire porn-drenched and masturbation-filled days of adolescence, I never experienced any intervening event that could be remotely interpreted as divine. I figured there had to be something seriously wrong and evil about me if God would intervene for Fred but not me. 

“God takes sexual standards seriously, and He wants to be heard on the matter. When I tried to continue in my sexual ways after committing my life to Christ, God humbled me in Janet’s bedroom. God sure got my attention that night. We’re talking Joe Stud not being able to perform when it counted the most! If He’s this interested in our purity, then we need to get just as interested.” (pgs. 18- 19)

Cooperate with God...or else…

It is hard to avoid that conclusion when authors like Fred cite Ephesians 5:3-4 that make God look like a perfectionist: 

“Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place.” 

As a naïve adolescent, I could not stop masturbating and looking at porn. I must have not been as interested as I needed to be, though I was genuinely interested in becoming interested. There must have been something wrong with me, I thought. How does a malleable whippersnapper such as me negotiate with an invisible, inaudible entity that appears to be a perfectionist about forestalling my biology that has primed my hands for getting frisky? 

The authors relay this message that I have heard time and again from evangelicals: most people are falling short as they resemble the non-believers of the world. 

The authors relay a story from a teenager named Kristin: 

“Our youth group is filled with kids faking their Christian walk. They’re actually taking drugs, drinking, partying, and having sex. If you want to walk purely, it’s easier to hang around with the non-Christians at school than to hang around with the Christians at church. I say that because school friends know where I stand, and they say, ‘That’s cool--I can accept that.’ The Christian kids mock me. They laugh and ask, ‘Why be so straight? Get a life!’ They pressure my values at every turn.” (pg. 19)

I really do not like to pressure someone into giving up their values. On the other hand, why not give into your urges and feel good, if you are fated for messing everything up for the ultimate Perfectionist overseeing the universe, anyway? Anyone who knows what it feels like to be lambasted by a parent for getting a B+ instead of a straight A does not want to grow attached to that perfectionist image of a heavenly Father. His claim to be unconditionally all-loving and gracious appears to be a lie, then. 

Desires are stubborn. They are stubborn to change. Quite often, you cannot change them. But change of desire is non-negotiable in Fred Stoeker’s perspective: 

“At a single moment, salvation gave us a new life and a new desire to be sexually pure for the first time. But this new desire alone will not bring full intimacy with Christ. We must say yes to this new desire and refuse to ignore it. We choose oneness and intimacy with Christ. We must choose sexual purity.” (pg. 21)  

How many times have you heard this from the evangelical, purity culture: it is not enough that you feel like a Christian or seem like a Christian. You must act like it. You must have consistency all the time. Participating in church activities throughout the week but watching porn in your home is not consistent purity. That is not moving toward Christ. 

“While His love for us never changes, our intimacy with Him wanes. Distance grows. But when we choose sexual purity and walk in the light, we’re one with God’s essence. Intimacy grows. True relationship flourishes.” (pg. 22)

So, if intimacy is waning or lost, that is on you. It is your fault. Now, you have to perform in a certain way to regain it...or else. Or else what? I do not know. I could never ascertain the answer, as an adolescent. Is there Hell to pay? Am I a lecherous idiot who is not worthy of the strong Christian woman who has achieved intimacy with Christ? Is my love-life doomed? What is next? I never could exactly know what to anticipate. Although, Fred Stoeker gave me a vague and bedeviling idea. 

Here it is: 

When it comes to sex, life is not worry-free as they say in The Lion King. There is no Hakuna matata. When it comes to sex, life is more like Pinocchio’s story where he expected to find pleasure on Adventure Island. Instead, the day’s end resulted in the boys transforming into donkeys and pulling carts in the coal mines. You think that going to the forbidden place will be inconsequential, but you cannot find out otherwise until after you get there. For Fred, the consequence is being unable to forget all the pornographic images he once indulged. 

The first time I ever confessed my porn-watching to a Christian female friend, she spoke to me as though I was equivalent to a rapist. She distanced herself from me and I knew that I never wanted to experience that humiliation again. 

Was that my consequence or punishment? Who knows! 

The most paranoia-inducing part of Fred Stoeker’s philosophy is this:

“If you think the law of reaping and sowing has been suspended during your teen years, then Satan gleefully uses this to his advantage. He does everything in his power to hook you sexually before marriage.” (pg. 32) 

There it is. The core antagonist of Christianity: Satan himself who is symbolized as a prowling, roaring, devouring lion (1 Peter 5:8). Anytime you think a sexual thought, there he is. Your sexual thoughts could come out of nowhere, and he will also come out of nowhere too if he is the tempter. 

Seeing how evil is weaved into the topic of sex, it makes sense why the topic has been shrouded in mystery for so long. Evil is already a mystery, alone. Couple that mystery with sex and how we self-consciously feel about each other and we have a great, big ball of anxiety. 

Symbols to Explain the Unexplainable 

I do not have a source for the next ideas. They are original to me.

Considering all the frustration, importance, and mystery of sex and evil, it makes sense why humanity would want to invent symbols to explain the unexplainable. And still keep sex as a taboo topic. 

Humanity invented peace with God as a way to describe your best imaginable self and future. Humanity invented the war with Satan as a way to describe your worst imaginable self and future. Thoughts and emotions are so complex and intense that we often prefer to define it as a "war." However, I wonder if this plunges us into too much black-and-white thinking.

The God vs Satan dichotomy represents two different extremes of humanity's collective psyche, history, and trajectory, which cannot be articulated in just a few pages. God versus Satan is a vivid and succinct symbolism. It gets the point across so we can get the job done quicker...at least we think. 

In the mind of my former Christian female friend, I had to be identified as evil or an accomplice to evil, to justify her ending our friendship. 

The problem is that the God vs. Satan dichotomy often fails to inform us on how things literally and essentially are. Was I truly evil or a mere man trying to control and sublimate his urges? Other people are hardly ever as Godly or Satanic as we assume them to be. These are images that we always project onto others when judging them. Rejection from the opposite sex made me feel quite evil at the time though I feel less evil now. 

Mythology may be a good motivator for fighting your inner battle, sometimes. Mythology may serve as an appealing cognitive schema (i.e. your internal structure helping to arrange and interpret information). But mythology is not fair for determining who lives and dies, who should be accused and acquitted, who should be imprisoned or released, etc. 

Mythology and cognitive schemas can work together in sneaky ways. They can be hard to control, together. The problem with schemas is that they can contribute to stereotypes and make us fixate on confirming our pre-existing beliefs instead of testing them. Schemas make it hard for us to learn new information. In my former friend’s case, I think she had a pre-existing belief about men, porn, and evil that she was unwilling to challenge and change based on new information.

Now, it makes sense to me why we invest  over-confidence in dogmas. We cannot afford to stop fixating on the information that is pertinent to those dogmas when the antagonist of our story is an invisible, unpredictable entity who is constantly threatening humanity's survival, and our only recourse/salvation is an all-powerful, invisible protagonist that may punish us for failure to defeat the antagonist.

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