{"id":31497,"date":"2017-01-02T14:15:55","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=31497"},"modified":"2017-01-02T14:15:55","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:15:55","slug":"jesus-waits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html","title":{"rendered":"Worth Waiting For"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2016\/december-web-only\/genealogy-in-matthew-waiting.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">This Christianity Today article<\/a> popped up in my feed reader today.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-31500\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2017\/01\/CT-Jesus-Waits-1.jpg\" alt=\"CT Jesus Waits\" width=\"504\" height=\"210\"><\/p>\n<p>The title reads \u201cJesus\u2019 Family Tree Shows Us He Is Worth the Wait.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0article is about Jesus\u2019 genealogy, but that\u2019s not the way I read the headline\u00a0the first time through. Evangelical purity culture played such a central role in\u00a0my upbringing that the phrase \u201cworth the wait\u201d is intrinsically tied to\u00a0abstinence teachings. As a result, my mind went straight to Jesus, and sex, and then froze\u2014<em>that can\u2019t be right<\/em>. I sent a screenshot of the headline to several friends with similar evangelical upbringings, and their reactions were the same.<\/p>\n<p>Looking back,\u00a0\u201csexual purity\u201d was\u00a0perhaps <em>the<\/em> defining feature of\u00a0evangelical teen culture. Not missions or evangelism, not serving the poor\u2014abstinence. \u201cDon\u2019t have sex before you get married\u201d became the central mantra of evangelical youth outreach. Which is interesting, because Jesus says an awful lot about loving our neighbor and giving to the needy and absolutely nothing about not having sex.<\/p>\n<p><b>I have a <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/lovejoyfeminism\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><b>Patreon<\/b><\/a><b>! Please support my writing!<\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The article is about Jesus&#8217; genealogy, but that&#8217;s not the way I read the headline the first time through. Evangelical purity culture played such a central role in my upbringing that the phrase &#8220;worth the wait&#8221; is intrinsically tied to abstinence teachings. As a result, my mind went straight to Jesus, and sex, and then froze in horror&#8212;that can&#8217;t be right.<\/p>\n<p>Click through to read more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":31505,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","category-purity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Worth Waiting For<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s interesting, looking back, to note the extent to which &quot;sexual purity&quot; became perhaps the most defining feature of evangelical teen culture.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Worth Waiting For\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#039;s interesting, looking back, to note the extent to which &quot;sexual purity&quot; became perhaps the most defining feature of evangelical teen culture.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Love, Joy, Feminism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-02T18:15:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2017\/01\/window-1737240_1920.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"742\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Libby Anne\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html\",\"name\":\"Worth Waiting For\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-02T18:15:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-01-02T18:15:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\"},\"description\":\"It's interesting, looking back, to note the extent to which \\\"sexual purity\\\" became perhaps the most defining feature of evangelical teen culture.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2017\/01\/jesus-waits.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Worth Waiting For\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/\",\"name\":\"Love, Joy, Feminism\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/#\/schema\/person\/fae465c1bbb5cbdf26c9e73bfd1b73d2\",\"name\":\"Libby Anne\",\"description\":\"Libby Anne grew up in a large evangelical homeschool family highly involved in the Christian Right. 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