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The Pornification of Evangelical Christian Women
Over the years, as I’ve recovered and perhaps deconstructed my own experience in the purity culture, I’ve noticed a sad trend. It’s one I’ve written about many times, but it’s the reality that, so often, in many churches, our approach to sex and marriage looks almost identical to pornography. A friend of mine, Luke Gilkerson, recently wrote a review of a new book, It’s Good to Be a Man. I won’t link the book, but his review is here. I got partway through his review before I wanted to buy the book just so I could throw it at a wall. He summarizes the book as pointing out three “uniquely…
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Porn and Parenting: How Pornography Affected My Journey as a Mom
Over the years, I’ve tried to be very honest about how my struggle with pornography has impacted different seasons of my life. It affected me while single, and then even in marriage, and now, I’ve noticed, even in motherhood. If you’re a woman who struggles or struggled with pornography, I don’t share this to freak you out or discourage you, but just to keep things real. I share with you things that would have helped me if people had shared them with me. I have to say I didn’t think that my years of struggle with pornography would affect my role as a mom. It made sense to me that…
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Swimsuits and What the Modest is Hottest Message Gets Wrong
This was originally going to be a post about swimsuits. I wrote it. Rewrote it, and still felt stuck. It’s summertime in the States, and that means water activities. Beaches, pools, water parks, oh my! And for women who struggle with lust, it can mean hour after hour, day after day of temptation. Most of the time, when we talk about modesty and lust in the summertime, we’re telling the women what to wear. We want them to dress modestly so that men won’t lust. We forget that women can struggle with lust too. So I struggled to come up with some metric. Some balance when writing a post on…
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Should We Stop Talking About Purity?
Purity was a big deal in the 90s. I grew up with purity rings, purity pledges, purity conferences, books, and songs. But, as an adult who speaks to teenagers, I have to ask myself, is “purity” outdated? I don’t mean the idea of abstinence, but the actual language itself. Over the years I have seen the damage done by what can sometimes be a very legalistic, unforgiving, black-and-white, and very confusing so-called purity culture. Depending on where you are, “purity” can also encompass rules about modesty, dating vs. courting, kissing, hugging, etc. Over the next few posts, I want to look at the “purity culture” and challenge those who promote…
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Life is More than Sex and Marriage: Thoughts from a 31-Year-Old Virgin
I get asked all kinds of questions about sex, singleness, marriage, shame, hope, dating… you name it. Do I think I’m still single because I watched porn? Do I think I’ll never be able to get married because I watched porn? How do I acknowledge my sex drive without letting it ruin my life? Do I have hope for a future as a wife and mom? What are my thoughts on dating and courtship? …and the list goes on. Growing up, I admired single women. I remember looking up to Heather Payne, from Point of Grace, and Rebecca St. James. I would write them and ask, “How do you do…
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Kissing is Not Sex: Part 2
I started writing this followup to my previous post Kissing is Not Sex. A couple thousands words later (that is no exaggeration), I realized a few things: 1. I was still nowhere near making my point 2. Thousands of words is far too long for a blog post All of that to say that this topic is probably not succinctly covered in two little (or not so little) blog posts. Whenever we look at anything regarding relationships, there are variables and lots of them. One size simply does not fit all. A relationship between two people with past sexual experiences will look different than a relationship between two virgins in their…
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Sexting: What To Do If A Man Asks You For Pictures
I had originally intended on continuing the series on accountability today, but something on Twitter last night caught my eye. There was a conference on The Gospel and Human Sexuality in progress and many people were tweeting live from it. So, the top trending topic was #erlcsummit. I was excited to see it being talked about. The third trending topic, however, made my heart stop for a minute. Apparently, yesterday was National Send Your Man Some Nudes Day. It is an unofficial holiday to say the least and many women on Twitter were mocking it, posting pictures of their bare arms or a bottle of Naked fruit juice. Still, some…
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Hit Me With Your Best Shock: How 50 Shades Has Captured Women
Behind every tidal wave of culture is an earth-shaking pain. Everything that enrages us (or at the least offends us) as Christians, stems from a place of brokenness in the life of the offender. Somewhere a message was missed. Somewhere, we fell short of God’s glory and became OK with being there. The same is true when it comes to this new wave of erotica, spurred by the book, “50 Shades of Grey.” Fifty Shades has revealed something in the subconscious of our culture. Like an MRI gives us a picture of the innermost workings of our brains, the trends of culture gives us a picture of the innermost workings…
