• Hännah @ Wine and Marble has an important, insightful post about how Christian youth tends to be ruled by “the worst possible state of mind: horny celibacy”:
Here is my best advice for good Christian kids looking to get married: have sex already.
I’m watching too many couples play Russian roulette with their lives because they aren’t listening to their gut instincts about who they want or need to spend their lives with because they happened to have found one person somewhat enchanting and willing to play the Christian marriage game and the stakes are: your whole future on this decision, made in the worst possible state of mind, horny celibacy.
Is there an e-mail masterlist for all evangelical youth pastors? Because it would be a very Good Thing to send every one of them a link to that post. Read the whole thing.
• Researchers at Case Western have published a study — “Transgression as Addiction: Religiosity and Moral Disapproval of Perceived Addiction to Pornography” — which “found that on the whole, religious people were just as likely to view pornography as nonreligious people.”
Well, yeah, duh.
But that’s not the interesting part. This is: “The differences arose when it came to how they felt about their pornography viewing. God-fearing participants were much more likely to think they were addicted to porn than those who were not religious— even if they viewed the racy content only once.”
• Via Kate Schell, I learn that in some Christian circles, single adults have embraced the term “pre-married.” Ugh. Good Lord, no. I appreciate the intent there, I think, which is to avoid becoming defined by one’s singleness. But defining oneself by one’s not-yet-marriedness is no solution.
My surrogate grandma Myrt liked to say “There’s a lid for every pot.” She meant that as a hopeful expression — there’s somebody for everybody. And she meant it as cautionary advice — don’t settle for a lid that doesn’t fit.
But she most certainly did not mean that lidless pots are useless and worthless and should be defined as being in state of pre-lidded limbo until they attain the legitimacy that can only come from finally finding a lid.
• This is horrible news. I’ve known and admired many wonderful people who were part of the JPUSA community. The Cornerstone music festival was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.
Yet it’s also a place where I heard one of the most disturbing talks about sexuality I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t then have the mental vocabulary to make sense of the victim-blaming horrors of purity culture in that talk, but I recognized it as the same cruel ugliness I’d heard elsewhere. And hearing it from a “rock star’s” wife while seeing a tent-full of kids with tattoos and piercings nodding along was somehow even creepier and more unsettling than when I’d heard it in a room filled with freshly scrubbed kids who were destined to go off to Bob Jones or Pensacola.
That’s why seeing this trailer last week was shocking, but not surprising.
• Boz Tchividjian, “Christians and the struggle to report child abuse”
Why do some churches and Christian organizations seem to struggle with encouraging members to report the suspected abuse of a child? At the heart of the struggle is a fear that is rooted in the need to self-protect. It is a fear of losing the “good reputation” of a ministry, it is a fear of losing ministry donors, it is the fear of losing congregation members, it is a fear of losing a ministry altogether. All such “fears” are usually masked by a rationale that the reporting of such abuse may “damage the reputation of Christ”. Do you see the great tragedy? It is a fear fueled by protecting self. This has nothing to do with Jesus.
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