True Lust Doesn’t Wait

“Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.”

Remy du Gourmont

“So how old were you when you lost your virginity?” she asked.

I admitted that I was 22.

I grew up in the “purity culture.” The purity culture suffuses much of conservative Christianity, placing a premium on sexual abstinence before marriage. True Love Waits®, we were told. “Sexual purity means saying no to sexual intercourse, oral sex, and even sexual touching. It means saying no to a physical relationship that causes you to be ‘turned on’ sexually. It means no looking at pornography or pictures that feed sexual thoughts,” explains one ministry. Even sexual desire seemed to be forbidden before marriage. Our sex “education” consisted of abstinence-only messages. Young women were admonished to dress modestly and avoid flirting lest they lead men into temptation. (Some girls wore only long dresses and skirts, believing that a girl whose skirt ended above the knee would be a “stumbling block.”) Girls who had succumbed to lust, I came to believe, were somehow soiled, “damaged goods” so to speak. (I heard one speaker compare a girl who has lost her virginity to chewed-up bubble gum.) Pregnancy was grounds for dismissal from my private Christian high school. Young men memorized “fighter verses” from the Bible to recite when inclined to sin. I was taught that if a pretty girl arouses sexual thoughts, I must immediately those thoughts captive (cf. 2 Cor 10:5). I taught myself to look away when I saw something arousing, whether it was a provocative billboard or a woman’s cleavage. Several girls I knew wore purity rings, placeholders for wedding bands, as they waited to save themselves for their future husbands, striving to become the woman exalted in Proverbs 31. I signed a card pledging that I would remain chaste for my future bride. Through it all sex was spoken of in hushed tones, shrouded in secrecy, and the message I received was, “Sex is dirty and you should save it for someone you love.”

I strove for purity during adolescence. It was central to my identity as a young believer. Although I was amazingly naive about sex, the intersection of my intense desire to remain pure and my active imagination produced angst. To compensate for the shame I felt, I tried extra hard to be “righteous” and keep the commandments. I suppressed my sexual impulses for a long time. I experienced the same flood of hormones any teenager does, yet I was extremely anxious around girls. I didn’t date. My lack of personal experience didn’t inhibit me from having a vivid fantasy life, although I had no detailed understanding of female anatomy. When I slipped, I was riddled with guilt and prayed for forgiveness. I attended a small Christian college, and my shyness and social awkwardness continued to inhibit me. Dating was hard. I did have a girlfriend in college for 6 months—she was the first girl I kissed—but we remained chaste. (She strongly believed that True Love Waits®). I believed in the sinfulness of premarital sex. To my surprise I discovered that even at my small evangelical college, many of my peers were having clandestine sex. My resolve was buckling under the pressure. What exactly was I waiting for? True love may wait, but lust doesn’t. I could not escape from the gravitational pull of sex, which is, in A.S. Neill’s words, “the most fascinating and mysterious thing in the world. To make fruit forbidden is to make it delectable and enticing.”

Shalom Auslander provides an interesting exegesis of the Fall in Genesis:

Having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve suddenly knew of good and of evil, of morality and of immorality, of sin and of virtue, and they were ashamed.

Genesis 3:11 – God busts them.

Genesis 3:14 – God curses them.

Genesis 3:24 – God chases them from Eden and bars the Gates of Paradise so that they may never return.

And what’s the first thing they do? What is the very first thing that they do?

Genesis 4:1 – And Adam knew Eve.

They fucked. The very next chapter. The very first verse.

And Adam knew Eve.

The very. First. Verse….

The moment they knew sin, they fucked.

(Shalom Auslander, “Where’s the Sin? An Anti-Sermon”)

The moment I knew sin, I fucked.