My Walk Through Purity Culture: Not a G-rated Blog Post

How exactly does one get writing again after a year’s hiatus? I admit I froze up the first few times I sat down to try and compose some thoughts. Following all that happened last year (read all the tea on that over here), and knowing this news cycle could spin off again at any moment depending on the course Liberal Party Politics takes over the course of the next four years, I’ll admit I found myself feeling — a little over-exposed. 

But nevertheless, the wheels keep on turning in this little old head of mine. Since exiting my childhood church seven years ago, I’ve found myself an accidental storykeeper of sorts. Stories from those who had left or been asked to leave. Stories of those who had faced heartache and loss. Stories of people who had negative experiences in high-demand or high-control churches. Our experiences, though unique in detail and nuance, were similar in kind. And so I became part of the deconstruction movement where we who have found ourselves out on our proverbial behinds grapple with the good, the bad and the straight up hellish. 

Some of us find our way to some form of spiritual practice. Some of us find comfort in atheism. Some of us vacillate or find mental solace in the possibility of something godlike but disengage from the practice of faith because its too darn traumatic. All are fine. That was why I started the podcast (Unchurchable) a few years ago. And because I was scared, having just gone through arguably the most scarring trauma of my life in the wake of what some may call shunning, I adopted a pseudonym so I could write what I knew needed to be written without freezing up completely. 

I talked about theology, culture, and current affairs. I interviewed a lot of other people about their experiences. We laughed. We joked. We even told dick jokes and didn’t get struck down by God for doing so. Guest after guest told their story of experiencing purity culture, but I never told mine. Ironically, I haven’t sucked up much blog space telling my own story at all. Because look - ya girl is chicken shit!

So much so that it has taken me four paragraphs to get to the point. Last week on Australia’s “Four Corners” program, investigative journalist Louise Milligan did a deep dive into a Catholic or Catholic adjacent group called Opus Dei - the independent schools and school communities who engaged in some pretty hardcore practices associated with what we in evangelicalism or exvangelicalism know as purity culture. 

As I watched, I found the similarities unsurprising. I’ve spoken to enough people to know we all experienced a similar sort of artillery fired at our undeveloped sexuality. “Don’t have sex before marriage. You’ll be like chewed up gum that nobody wants.” Sexual acts, desires, or even thoughts were some special sort of sin that diminished your value permanently - especially if you were born without a penis. Girls learned to hide their bodies, because to wear anything “too revealing” would be to cause their brothers in Christ to fall. 

As a collective, we learned that our breasts were weapons of a special sort of sin. Our butts and hips were deadly weapons we could all-too-easily deploy in service of Satan. We learned body shame, strict gender roles in many cases, we were told men were visual and shouldn’t (couldn’t?) be expected to control their desires so it was our responsibility to watch for them. And so we learned to fear sexuality. We learned to shut off sexual desire. We were given either no sex ed, or worse, bad sex ed. And for so many exvangelicals, we waded into marriages thinking we would instantly become sex gods because we saved ourselves for the night that follows the big day. 

Spoiler alert: that doesn’t happen.

Instead, I am now seeing much needed services pop up around the globe as sex and intimacy coaches, therapists and sex educators help purity culture survivors learn what we were actively misinformed about - that sex is good, that women are important, that boundaries should be honoured, that pleasure is more than just okay, and well, some basic mechanics of it all in the mix. Heartbreakingly, I’ve heard stories of sex lives and marriages under pressure because of the deep conditioning against sex and desire that the nervous system has been unable to unlearn. 

Of course you know my story. I married a gay conversion therapy survivor. And while I joke about being the beneficiary of eight years of overcompensation, ultimately, our divorce settles this month. 

There are so many great resources on purity culture so I’m not going to do a big expose in this post. But beyond the broad strokes of purity culture universal - I’m going to get brave and tell you my story. Here we go folks. 

My First look at Purity Culture

I’m going to say that this part of my church life was a pretty unremarkable. My teenage years were spent in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, with a typical evangelical soundtrack including Rebecca St. James’ “Wait for me” (a love song to her future husband, who would turn out to be Cubbie Fink of that group that played “Pumped up kicks.” Weird.) We also had DC Talks “I don’t want it, I don’t want your sex for now.” Actually I think we really did want it, but that didn’t fit the vernacular. The Bible of our generation was Josh Harris’s “I kissed dating goodbye” and its younger sibling “Boy meets Girl.” The books systematically demonised dating, emotional and physical attachments before marriage and introduced ‘courtship’ as the solution for this generation of young celibates. 

Years later, Josh Harris renounced his life’s work, left his job as a pastor, left his marriage and deconstructed his faith. His was the heavy burden of facing up to the damage he had done. Yet the truth is Josh Harris didn’t invent purity culture. The good Christian Patriarchy had been policing women’s bodies for years and it wasn’t done yet. Its not done yet. We see that in the SCOTUS reversal of Roe V. Wade, and in consistent efforts by conservative governments across the world to police access to reproductive health and options for women. Butttt thats another rant.

I completely understand that purity culture showed up as an answer to parents who didn’t want their kids screwing around. Perhaps it showed up as a way they could have their kids avoid the heartbreaks they had faced on the road to happily ever after. What parent could truly deny wanting that? I get that no one foresaw the results. So on this, I am completely unbitter. (Totally a word)

But in truth, this doctrine became our generations legalism. Virginity became the ultimate prize and a marker of pseudo-spiritual devotion, sensuality became the ultimate shame, and we wouldn’t figure out the breadth of the damage until years later. I was probably conditioned to purity culture long before we got the handbook and the soundtrack. I got the purity talk the same day I found out what a period was and the bit about purity took all the bandwidth. Only a small part of this vital chat was devoted to what the heck was going on in my young body. Purity before puberty. How icky.

My first overt taste of purity culture occurred when a group called “The Masters Commission” visited a sister church. The MC’s as we called them, were young people who had been recruited to what I would now call a high-control gap year where they signed over every aspect of their life to high-demand, high-control discipleship (My characterisation of the program anyway). But in this first year class of MC’s, their mission trip come victory lap around churches involved something called “the courtship drama.” 

The suite from Forrest Gump plays over the speakers.

An elegant dancer, clad in virginal white flowing robes enters the stage portraying naivety and innocence. Gradually, we see her being taken advantage of by all these men who only have one thing on their mind and who will take part of her heart along with it. And because you apparently can’t have sex without becoming eternally bonded in a ‘soul tie’ to your sexual partners, by the time she approaches her wedding day, she has no heart to give. She is used up. Unworthy. Unloveable. 

I didn’t see it as insidious. I saw it as inspirational. Enchanting. And there was this bit about redemption and being forgiven for having the sex (or the intimate connection). I can’t really remember the details. But I do remember being absolutely taken with the artistry and thus the message of the courtship drama. 

Something sinister happened beneath this veil of entertainment though: us girls all cast ourselves as the dancer, and cast men as those who would want to take from us. The boys likely cast themselves as deserving of our virginity (and that is something poor Josh Harris has had to deal with in his deconstruction). All of us cast sex and sensuality before marriage as evil. During that week, we heard about how we aren’t designed to switch off half way. How if you’re kissing, you’re going to want to go the whole way. Therefore, we needed to not engage with desire at all, lest we do the sex, catch pregnancy and demons, and then be judged by God and die (I exaggerate here, of course. But the fear was there in the subtext). I think, on a subliminal level, I and others likely associated sex with the abandonment of our faith. As some special class of sin, and because you can’t unvirgin yourself, it seemed to make you irredeemable. 

Years later, I recall going to a youth camp hosted by the same church. I’ll never forget how two youth leaders, just weeks short of their wedding, gave the sex and purity talk to the eager listeners at that camp. Oh the sexual tension between them! It was unbearably awkward. If any of us allowed ourselves to even think in terms of innuendo, the recognition would have been “WOW these two want to bone.” In hindsight, its kinda amusing to the point of cringey.

In my case, these moments, these books, these songs - they were all met with a discipleship culture that soon put accountability around what we wore and how we behaved. No flirting. That was ‘discouraged’ (read: shamed). No dating. That was practice for divorce. We learned that courtship was the way. We would submit our crushes to the pastor who would pray about it and become the romantic intermediary who would either approach the desired party or advise against the match. Most of us participated in this wholeheartedly, having internalised the pseudo-biblical doctrine of policing womens bodies and repackaged as a better way to love. Over the years, more than one couple in my orbit decided to “date” and I recall how many soon found themselves pressured to leave, removed from leadership or service, or even publicly chastised for their choices and their sexual ‘sins’ made fodder for the leadership and thus gossip for the whole church. The majority left, and as this happened, the ‘covenant’ relationships they experienced inside the church vanished into thin air (as numerous survivors have recounted to me. This also lines up with my observation and my own experience in leaving).

As the pastors eldest daughter, I found myself saddled with a triple bag of fun here: purity culture pressure in and of itself. I have a naturally bubbly nature and thus innocent flirting comes naturally to me. But it was not okay. I learned to suppress part of my personality. Being a pastors kid was the second part of my triple burden. I knew people looked to our family as being an example. My parents were regularly praised as being the ideal parents. Others would model their parenting after my parents methods, and a number of ex members recall how my parents began to usurp their natural parents in terms of affection and influence. Finally, I was an eldest child and thus the example for my younger siblings. The pressure was immense. Not only was I at war with my natural disposition, I felt as if I was in an unwanted spotlight where every action and inaction had consequences. I was paralysed with fear every time a guy showed interest in me, and so I began to  mentally block out desire and try to subdue personality. 

When I was 27, my dad finally suggested a match to me that I didn’t turn down. There had been several before that, but I’d proven difficult to charm. In truth, I was in a complementarian system that believed in female submission and male headship. I wasn’t suited to that life. I wanted to think, and achieve, and fly. Finally, Dad had suggested someone who already treated me as an equal - who even looked up to me. 

As 60 minutes and The Age will tell you, that didn’t turn out ideally. My intended life-long love was gay. A survivor of gay conversion therapy which - spoiler alert - does not work and does immense harm. 

I was 29 when I married. And only days prior, I’d gotten the sex talk from my mother in the Bunnings cafe. Mortifying. Especially because she yelled it over the sound of coffee being burned to oblivion, and because she was unaware that I’d been dispensing the puberty talk to people who refused to read “preparing for adolescence” by James Dobson for quite some years now. I’d also been a bra fitter for 5 years. Don’t know how I got away with that. 

So my first kiss was - lengthy - and only two days before my wedding. 

Fast forward two days and its time for purity culture to make good on its promise to transform both of us, instantly, from chaste virgins as pure as the driven snow to sex god and goddess who are absolutely sexually compatible and swinging from the rafters. 

Yeah nah. Not what happened. 

My beloved had been promised a coy bride who would need to be coaxed and encouraged beyond her virginal timidity. What he got as a horny almost-nympho with a damn good lingerie collection, and a “hell yeah! Did not become the 30 year old virgin, let’s make up for lost time” attitude. 

It threw him for a loop and destroyed the programming he had subjected himself to with both purity culture and gay conversion therapy. 

There was probably also a “holy shit, I really am gay” moment in there too. But we got through eight beautiful, complex, incredible, joyful years of marriage before he acknowledged that this was unsustainable. And before you go thinking they were sexless years of marriage - no. I’d give details, but they’re mine. And I’m sure they’d horrify the people who read my blog for the sake of rage. (You’re welcome guys)

I never thought I’d have to deconstruct my faith. Nor did I think I’d have to deconstruct purity culture. What came next for me was a shocker.

Life after Separation

There we were: newly separated, still living together and traversing a pandemic, a massive relocation to three hours away from the town we had called home, parenting two young kids, and for me, recovering from the physical toll of two full term pregnancies (and five miscarriages). Being that I have a neural tube defect which manifests as both a congenital and degenerative back condition, I found mobility to be a huge challenge and had to relearn some basics after trimester three. So look, when the Physio wouldn’t even let me walk 500 metres unassisted, you can bet your arse losing the mummy tummy wasn’t high on the list of priorities. The stress of the years had also etched deep worry lines into my forehead. Dating, let alone adopting the “fuck the pain away” mantra so many of my more sexually liberated divorced deconstructors adopt - well that didn’t happen for me. 

I had to learn to love my body for surviving all it had allowed me to survive. I had to allow myself to spend money on my appearance - as I also had to realise that prioritising myself was prioritising my children. 

I think in that first year I went on 19 first dates and I purposefully tanked them all. It took me a long time to realise that purity culture had taught me to either shut off or want it all. And the internalised slut shaming for even wanting more than a meal together and a handshake was something I wore like an armour. I was seeing someone for about six months there. But I also had to learn that I shouldn’t just accept the guy who wants me - that I was also desirable, smart, vivacious and had the right to choose the guy I wanted. Ironically, choice-making was something I believe purity culture robbed me of. "God" chose. And we just had to hope we liked the choice.

I also had to learn to stop mirroring my date. I recognised that I would instantly, upon meeting in person, assess what this person wanted me to be and I’d switch into being that girl. It was a trauma response, no doubt. I’d somehow learned this thing where women are safe when the men we are with aren’t threatened by us. But it also came with the idea that men as these bad, sex-obsessed things with no self-control. I had to learn my way through that mental barrier (and to learn how to pick the bitcoin bros, from the fuckbois, to the nice guys who are worth your time but not quite what you’re after. Its a thing people. Stay married! Dating in your late thirties isn’t fun!)

I had to learn to say no. I had to learn to understand consent, in the beginning I didn’t even know consent could be withdrawn. I had to make my way through the mire of forming my own sexual ethic, realising the soul-tie thing as complete BS, and had to unlearn a lot of taboos and non-facts I’d adopted into my bag of beliefs. I also had to learn that if I wasn’t comfortable with sex outside a genuine connection or a relationship, that was absolutely fine too and I didn’t need to explain that to anyone! This was a process I mostly went through by myself. And hey! If I wanted to (as my comedian friend Sam puts it) "ride a carousel of cocks," that would be fine! Oddly, I found it more difficult to justify not doing so. Turns out I think I’m maybe a bit demisexual. The almost-nympho is there, but she will only show up in the context of a genuine connection that fits with my personal sexual ethic. So yeah. I’ve probably got a way-less than average body count going on and I’m absolutely ok with that. Who cares about body counts anyway. Thats slut shaming and I won’t do it.

What I’m not okay with is this: purity culture didn’t just do a number on my mind, on our minds because I’m talking about the collective here too. It did a number on our bodies. There is an element of conditioning on a nervous system level that goes on here. If all our lives, we think sex is some cardinal sin, some special class of wrongdoing that will throw us into a special sort of hell populated with the ghosts of conquests past - it requires undoing on a body level not just a mind level. You can’t think your way to normal sexual arousal if your brain connects sex with the fear-type fight or flight arousal which actually represses sexual function. Who wants to be making a baby when you are running from a bear?  When that baby-making action is the bear you’re running from, friend you’ve got some deconditioning work to do.

I’ve spoken to so many purity culture survivors who are learning this. Some of us struggle saying no, because we think if we’ve let a date kiss us goodnight we also need to submit to their sexual desires. Some of us struggle to say no because we don’t understand consent, as women just do what they’re told. Some of us feel shame at enjoying sex outside of reproductive purposes, or shame at developing a healthy sex life with a partner of our choice who we aren’t married to. In a world where ethical porn and erotica is available, some of us feel crippled by even casual use of the genre - instantly thinking ethical porn use is an addiction and shameful. 

I don’t have the answers here. I happily refer people who my favourite sex educator, Erica Smith who works specifically with what she terms “purity culture dropouts” and my favourite sex and intimacy coach, Meg Cowan, who works with a broad spectrum of couples and individuals who experience issues with sex, sexuality, intimacy and connection. 

Where am I at now?

Well in truth I don’t have to tell you this. And that is growth in and off itself. I didn’t really date at all in the last year and a half, save for a couple of ill fated dates that I actually think could belong quite happily in a comedy bit. Needless to say they didn’t go far! But I also recognised I had some baggage to move through and this wasn’t an experiment I’d want to run with any participant other than myself. 

So here we are. Valentines Day 2023, and I’m happily owning the space I’m in. I’ve got a firm idea of my sexual ethic. I know what I’m looking for in a man and indeed in a relationship now that I’ve got the modern woman thing down. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I finally understand consent and healthy boundaries.  And I finally own the fact that it is okay for women to like sex. How am I celebrating V Day? I’m going to a girlfriends house to bitch about the guy she just dumped from the emergency room of a hospital, and to laugh about my latest clangers on the dating apps. We will eat burgers and not care if we get bloated. 

And I’m going to listen to “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, recognising that she stopped one revelation short. It is so okay to buy your own flowers, but you can also buy your own sex toys. Because pleasure isn’t the demon we thought it was. Its alllll good. You do you, boo. 

Good luck making your own way through purity culture. If you need to, contact Meg or Erica. They are the OG’s! 

Surrendering the Fated Romance

Earlier this week, I jumped on a Zoom call with a dear friend of mine (the fabulous, insightful and brave as heck, Carrie Maya). We were just two friends, chatting, catching up, pretending to attempt to do some work side by side because this whole work from home jam can be tough. And then we started talking about dating. And purity culture. And the fated romances we had both been taught to wait for. In past lives, we had sung the songs (Cue Rebecca St. James’ “Wait for me”), and we had read the books, the most famous of which would be Josh Harris’s “I kissed dating goodbye” (although now, as I dive into the archives, purity culture had gone before him. Long before him. I kinda feel like he was set up, just like we were).

As Carrie started talking about the fated romance and musing about how brave I was to actually be tiptoeing into the weird waters of dating, I mused that in a way, I felt like I was still saving myself for marriage, and found it difficult to get past that notion. It rang true for both of us - unnervingly so. In a “Why the heck did I acknowledge that?” kind of way.

Carrie and I come from slightly different places on this, because our deconstruction journeys and our romantic lives have been different. But it affected us both anyway. You can read her courageous dialogue on it here, and it wouldn’t even slightly do it justice for me to try and explain the complexity and honesty with which she approached this topic. Trigger warnings apply.

My position is this: I waited for “the one.” We were set up by my dad, who was also our pastor. After our breakup, our reunion didn’t happen until it was essentially green-lit by the presiding apostle/prophet over our then-church’s network. I was surrounded by “prophets” and people in the know. But nobody saw it coming that gay conversion therapy wouldn’t work. And nobody mentioned to me that there was any inkling of the possibility that he was truly gay. I walked, completely naive and uninformed, into a situation that could not be won. This relationship was always destined for divorce.

It’s complicated. Knowing all of this, knowing I have the absolute right to be angry (and I am), I would also do it all over again if I had of known how our lives would pan out.

I had the fated romance. A beautiful, decade long relationship with an incredible man. We rescued each other. We had two incredible (and cute) kids together. We moved mountains. We laughed. We cried. We gained. We lost. We were meant for each other.

I’m also divorcing. Because you can’t cure gay. Because gay isn’t a disease. It isn’t wrong. It isn’t even unbiblical when you read that book without bias or bad translation. I’m proud of him for taking on deconstruction and the navigating of his sexuality (and acceptance thereof) with such selflessness and integrity. Our marriage didn’t dissolve. It evolved beyond.

Anyway. Here I am at age 37, dating for the first time in my life. Completely clueless about how to go about that. I know I’m attractive, stable, intelligent, financially solvent, funny, capable, and fascinating. But golly gee wouldn’t it be nice if I could actually feel anything.

Purity culture, courtship culture, the message that you shouldn’t allow emotional entanglements or any physical contact with a person until you were sure they were “the one” left me feeling almost disembodied. It sure made the honeymoon…different. Upon reading other accounts of purity culture deconstruction, I see that is a common thing.

Disembodiment seems like something a lot of ex-evangelicals feel. When you were raised in an environment that relied so heavily on the “prophetic unction” you learn to look for the feeling. You learn to join that feeling with what you believe to be the “still small voice of God.” You also learn in many circles that, when it comes to relationships, a woman’s worth is connected to her marital status. So as a woman, I let myself dull a bubbly personality lest I be confused for flirtatious. I learned to pray about how I should approach certain relationships so I could get the cosmic green light to feel for anyone. After my first breakup with P (my now ex-husband), I remember heading around to my parents place to confide in my mother. To cry on her shoulder. She ended up 'anointing me with oil’ and praying to cut the soul ties between me and P.

Comfort came in the form of deliverance (which those outside church would call a slightly gentler form of ‘exorcism’). It wasn’t…comforting. Although I think its possible my mother may have been doing what she was instructed to do, or perhaps what she thought was best. I don’t blame her for this. We were all part of a system.

So I guess what I’m saying is this: we deconstructed ones, we post-Christians, or exvangelicals, or whatever you want to call us - we have a mixed relationship with our bodies. On one hand we learned to look to our gut feeling as a way to connect with “God” and hear from him. We also learned to divorce ourselves from our bodies as we navigated courtship and relationships. What is chemistry? Golly gee, I dunno.

All I know is that I can sit across the table from a good looking, employed, stable, financially solvent, intelligent, witty, nice-smelling (hey that’s important) man and feel nothing. Only the feeling that I should be attracted to him.

I can’t quite run with should. And my conversation with Carrie made it clear why. I’m still waiting for God, or some higher authority to give the green light. I had three higher authorities say “yes” to my marriage with P. Three people/entities I could blame for my divorce. P isn’t one of them. I’m not one of them. Dammit, I don’t even call our relationship a failed marriage. I view it as wildly successful.

But still, isn’t it nice to have someone to blame. People often ask me why people join cults. The truest answer is, you don’t. You join the nicest group of people you’ve ever met, make the best friends you’ve ever had, are introduced to the highest “truth” you’ve ever heard, enter a thought reform process and then find that its too darn hard to leave because of all that you will lose or of all the ways you’ll be exposed if you do. But there’s another inkling that nips at my heels.

Its this: We all want to live empowered lives. But we also don’t want to be held responsible if it all comes crashing down. If you invest in the wrong business, or marry the wrong person, or if you fall ill, or are the victim of a crime. Cult’s and high demand groups, even healthier religions, give us an out. We can say ‘God’ willed it and we just have to make sense of it all. We can say ‘we followed God’ or whatever deity we are following, and absolve ourselves of the feeling that we got it wrong. We also can’t take credit if we get it right. Glory be to Jesus. Who ironically never sought glory.

So back to that disembodied feeling. I didn’t really bother with dating during Covid. I just did a rough count and I think over the last 13 months I’ve been on 16 first dates and 3 second dates. I’m a conservative type when it comes to dating - I’ll tell you that up front. But I can say that every single date I’ve been on included wonderful conversation (apart from that one dude who really just wanted to sell me ice - not kidding). But I left feeling nothing. I left feeling confusion over what chemistry should feel like. I had a glass of wine with an old friend and, at the time I was in the early stages of dating a lovely guy. But my friend asked “Does any part of you want to jump the table and pash him?”

I said no. On paper, he was everything. But I couldn’t feel a damn thing. So the third date never happened.

My “aha” moment happened with my therapist. She helped me discover that the way I coped with leaving the prophetic movement, the way I coped with the PTSD from abuse that happened in religious settings, was to move out of my feelings and into my head. While I can aspire to feel things and rationalise things, the former is deeply uncomfortable for me while the latter gives me a feeling of safety and even superiority. I can rationalise what happened to me, and what my experiences of life have been. It’s easier than feeling them.

But you can’t rationalise love or chemistry, can you?

So I’m learning a few things. I’m learning to ask myself “what do I think about this?” and then move quickly to “what do I feel about this, both physically and emotionally?” And then to repeat that cycle of “head” and. “body.” I say “body” because a gut feeling is literally in your gut (enteric nervous system if you want to be techy about it). Our emotions also manifest in physical tells - shaking, elevated heart rate, fuzzy head, sweating, other uh, happier sensations. But we in church were erroneously taught that the body was evil. As it turns out, it isn’t. Our body is a temple. A life-sustaining, intelligent, and sacred thing that should not be absent from our experience of life.

It is but one of the many ways church taught me contradictions that I’m now unravelling. I was taught that my thoughts could not be trusted. Only the spirit. I was taught that my body was to be subjugated, but also that it was a temple. There are so many things left to unravel.

Think and feel. Think and feel. It’s okay to do both. My body isn’t evil. My thoughts are not evil. I am not evil.

I suppose dating is a small act of courage. It is so because I am deciding to own my future; mistakes and successes. I am deciding to ignore the threats of judgement and accept that my own assessment of risk and my efforts to keep myself safe are okay. I am unlearning shame. I am unlearning fear. I am unlearning the idea of the divine as an old white man in the sky who watches everything with a judgemental eye and a trident full of lightening ready to strike me. I am learning to laugh at the “cloud of witnesses” notion that literally had me wondering whether they watched me all the time, or whether I got to sit on the loo, or lather myself up in the shower unsupervised.

Do I need to date? No. Am I unhappy single? No. But this small act of courage helps me reclaim who I always should have been: a woman who experiences life fully, who is present in her body and not divorced from it, who can feel life and not just rationalise it.

I don’t think I believe in “the one” anymore. I certainly don’t believe in one “gold standard” future and anything else being substandard. I believe we get to design the lives we want. We get to create a beautiful masterpiece. And if there are mistakes or “didn’t expect that” moments, so be it. It doesn’t affect our value as people.

I write this today because I know there are so darn many of us who feel this way. Or think this way. This is deconstruction, hey. Its confronting the things we were taught, both implicitly and explicitly, and in rebuilding the lives we deserve, having left behind the Calvinist bullshit that has us believe that we are dirty, depraved and unworthy.

Hey - you are worthy, you are good, you are beautiful, not defined by your mistakes, not prohibited from fully revelling in the joy or success your life may bring. Read that line as many times as you need to. It’s the truth.

Josh Harris, Purity Culture, and the Power of Saying “I Was Wrong.”

"There is transformational power in admitting you got something wrong." 

I just listened to the most amazing Ted Talk. The speaker talked about how you can't rush the process of transformation, and that process involves owning up to, rather than sweeping aside, the things you were wrong about. He spoke about how admitting you were wrong will tick some people off, because they were invested in the old you. He talked about how, when someone can't admit they were wrong, they are not growing. And this should serve as a warning to those who follow them.

The whole talk had me nodding and murmuring my agreement (somewhat geekily I guess, given I was sitting in a café.)

Honestly, it was an amazing talk. You should give it a listen (I've pasted it below, but don't ruin the suspense by scrolling down to see it just yet). The guy giving the talk only just gave mention to what he was wrong about. It wasn't the true subject of the presentation, but gosh, it was massive. It took a lot of humility to do what he did - stand on the world stage and say "I got something wrong."

If you were anywhere near your teens or twenties at the height of the 90's evangelical purity movement, you know this guy. You were probably handed his book by a youth leader or mentor, and you might have felt a little kick of something like shame when you realised why you were reading it.

The speaker was none other than Joshua Harris, author of the international bestseller "I Kissed Dating Goodbye." This is the book that made him famous. Its the book literally sitting on millions of shelves, that was translated into several languages. At the height of the purity movement, this was the guidepost that urged us to guard our hearts and keep our desires in check. Now, after it's first readers have grown up, Harris is noting that it seems to have had a few not-so-positive effects.

Harris recounts an interaction on Twitter in which a reader told him his book was used against her as a weapon. Harris did an uncommon thing, when it comes to big name Christian celebrities. He apologised. It wasn't tokenistic either. He went on to open his website up to stories of the impact his book had. Some of them were resoundingly positive. Others were heart-wrenching. He is now making a documentary on it, one that is saying, "I was wrong about this." He's not throwing the whole baby out with the bathwater, but there's a lot he is copping as not quite right.

"Wow.  Just wow," I thought. Its the same thing I said to myself when Benny Hinn admitted he was wrong about the prosperity gospel, or rather the extreme he used it for. (Read my take on that here). Its the same thing I thought when I read Billy Graham's take on what he would do differently. (Read that here).

I truly believe that, when people say "I was wrong" about something, especially if they do it on a potentially humiliating public platform like Harris did, we ought to sit up and listen. These are people who are deeply conscientious, who are growing in their faith and the expression of it. These are people who are safe to listen to. (Don't base your entire life on their expression of faith. That's dangerous. Your relationship with God is your business and responsibility. But they've been doing some soul-searching and they've changed because of it.)

Harris's Ted Talk is about the transformational power of admitting you were wrong. Honestly, its liberating!

But I can't really call this a complete review unless I talk about the subject he says he was wrong about: his book.

I can't say honestly that it hurt me. Much. The stories on his website vary a lot in content. The sadder ones include claims that it was legalistic, a flyswatter to whack people who stepped out of line, or that it was used to control people. I can't disagree with those points, whether through reading these accounts or recounting my own observations that spanned multiple churches I encountered over the years.

Many a story on Harris's website came from Christians in their 30's who are still waiting for their life partner. Some stories came from people relationally paralysed either by fear of giving too much of their heart away, or by the strength of their desires. One particularly unsettling story came from a 30 year old guy who simply cannot accept a mate who has had sex, even if it was just a mistake from her past. I read that account with two types of heartbreak - one for him and all that he may have lost by never finding love, and one for the girls he has rejected. Has this book given rise to a pseudo-Biblical form of "slut shaming", even in a time when we understand more about grace and forgiveness than we ever did? Quite possibly.

In hindsight, I remember reading the book and feeling a certain pressure to marry the first guy I "courted." (Spoiler: I did, and he's the best thing that ever happened to me). I am the eldest daughter of Christian ministers. There was a whole church and a whole network of churches that would see my every move. It was like living in a fishbowl. Oh the pressure to get this right!

I remember one lady in the church telling me off for flirting with a guy. She wasn't my mother, and it wasn't her job to police my behaviour. And I wasn't flirting! I had zero feelings for the guy. But the shame I felt over that was huge. It wasn't the only time I was pulled up for flirting. I truly believe this had a big impact on my ability to interact with members of the opposite sex. I tried my utmost to relate out of a stoic, "I have no sexual desires, I don't even want to get married, you know, unless its God's will for me," kind of persona. If even flirting was sinful, then gosh, I was evil! I'd done it more than twice. I have a naturally bubbly personality. I love to connect with people. Part of me died.

University was a particularly interesting time for me. When I was "outed" as saving myself for marriage, and when my fellow students discovered my flirting-disability, bets were laid. I felt so humiliated, and then all the more on guard with my peers. I was just a girl trying to find her way in the world. Now I was a trophy. A scalp to be claimed. A virgin. And that became the thing that everyone knew.

(Side note: Apologies to the guy who asked me out for dinner, and who was greeted not only by me but also the other 11 members of our study group. I totally missed the "its a date" memo. I will never forget the look on your face.)

(Another side note: I don't blame my parents at all for being among hundreds of thousands of church ministers globally who embraced this book and used it! Heck, we were all in the 90's purity movement. And you don't need a shot-gun or baseball bat if your teenagers are afraid of dating to the same degree that they're afraid of hell. My parents were just doing their best! I'm just sharing how I feel about Harris's book and its effect in hindsight.)

For many people, this book was a lightbulb moment. For me, and apparently for a lot of other Christian kids, it was fear-inducing. I was afraid of natural desires God had given me. Guess what: I wanted to get married. I wanted to love and be loved. I wanted the full experience of that and I felt all sorts of guilty about it. Imagine my mortification when an itinerant minister with the boomiest of voices began to call my parents church his home and insisted on loudly "Blessing" me with a husband - Every. Single. Sunday. (I still cringe)

I finally married when I was 29, and I don't regret for an instant that I saved myself for my husband - my soulmate,  best friend and life partner. I guess, in some way, I have "I kissed dating goodbye (IKDG)" to thank for that. I guess in some way we do. Truly, I'm happy about it.

But post-marriage, we had a thing or two to learn about switching-on the desires that we had been told all our lives were bad. Yeah, yeah, you can kiss and hold hands and stuff when you are married. You can even flirt, you know, if you want. But the guilt doesn't go away instantly. (There's a whole lot I could write on that topic, but I won't yet because its a whole lot of disarmed honesty! Haha!)

I have a number of good looking, educated, eloquent, funny, amazing, single Christian friends who are of an age now where they look around at other friends with kids and wonder why its not them. They're still waiting for "the one." I've often ranted to my husband "Why don't guys just ASK HER OUT? I mean, she can even COOK! Wife her already, someone!" I sometimes think this is the legacy of IKDG. We can't go out for dinner with someone unless there's a bloody strong chance they are "the one." It carries a disproportionate feeling of failure if that dinner date doesn't result in a second date, a third, an engagement ring, a white dress, a picket fence, 2.5 kids and an SUV.

I wonder how many others felt guilty for even flirting. I wonder how many others felt bad that they wanted so darn much to get married and have kids. "What if it isn't God's will for me?" and all that.

My thoughts on flirting now - It lets you know what good chemistry feels like. And chemistry matters. If you are dating someone and there's none, then hold up honey! Warning bells.

My thoughts on Christianity and sexuality now - Can we stop pretending that because we are Christians, sexuality doesn't play a central, sensitive part in who we are? Can we take it off the list of things we don't talk about? Sure there is a Biblical approach to sex, and I don't for a second regret saving myself for marriage. But gosh - sex, relationships, sensuality, desire for connection - they're all God-designed. Can we not feel shame over owning something that is God-designed?

I applaud Josh Harris for standing up and saying he was wrong, and for expressing his regret at the legalistic fly-swatter his book became in more than a few instances. I hope he can also see the good it did (and I think he does). But adjusting our stance is a good thing.

My husband and I have two beautiful kids now. I adore them and hope they never face heartbreak. I'd love it if they fell in love with and married the first person they dated. I'd love it if they saved sex for marriage. I really hope they do and I'll raise them to believe that true love waits. But I'll also raise them to believe that flirting isn't bad, and our desire for love is normal and good.

Hopefully they'll marry younger than hubby and I, and I'll get a lot of years with my grandkids! If I have to wait until I'm in my 70's to chase the grandies around the park, I'm gonna be pissed.

If you've read Harris's book, if you love it, if you hate it, if you feel it helped, if you feel it hurt - I urge you to check out his Ted Talk and his website. At the very least it will make you view change and the admission "I was wrong" as a wholly good thing no matter what it applies to. It might even release you from some baggage you have felt over the years. It doesn't have to reframe how you feel about faith, sexuality, relationships or desire.

But you should know me by now! I like to think. I like to challenge thinking. And I have a firm belief that truth will prevail. I hope no one looks back on the 90's purity movement with bitterness. A lot of good came out of it. But one perk of the passage of time is that we build on the generation before us. That doesn't and shouldn't involve taking their word as gospel. It should involve extracting the truth, and discarding that which is harmful, then moving on to a closer, better, more compassionate expression of faith.

Oh and if you want to check out his Ted Talk, its here.

Just some thoughts!
Kit K.

Over and out.