Does Abstinence Make Sense?

I heard (or read) recently that someone said abstinence doesn’t make sense outside of community.  I wish I could remember who said that.  When I first heard it, I wasn’t sure what I thought of it.  But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed.  Let me explain…

I counsel at a pregnancy center in my area.  One of the most difficult issues I face is teaching abstinence.  It seems like it wouldn’t be that tough.  I believe God created sex for marriage alone.  C.S. Lewis made an excellent point when he said,

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union,” (Mere Christianity).

I have started to use this as an explanation when I counsel.  So far it has provoked the most “light bulb” moments in young womens’ minds.  But I do know one thing.  When they leave the counseling room and go back to their everyday lives, waiting for that part of the union no longer makes sense in the culture of their community.  They are taught by the world that sex can be isolated (yet they will still date and live looking for the union only marriage is supposed to give: emotional union, spiritual union, physical union, etc).  What a confusing world we humans have created for young women, telling them one thing when they are created to live something different.

So how do we fix this?  First, I really believe that only the Gospel can truly transform a heart.  Purity only really makes sense in light of biblical truth of how God originally created us to live: one man, one woman, total union in marriage.  To give them stats about STI’s will only take them so far in their community.

Many Christian girls may feel they know this, but living it out still doesn’t make sense.  They are in two cultures.  One culture (church, for example) says God created sex for the joy of marriage.  The other culture, which dominates about 99% of their time (media, for example) tells them that sex is freeing and they should get to use their bodies however they want (as if doing whatever we want, whenever we want always has good outcomes….???)

I have been rolling around the idea (partially from Tullian Tchividjian’s book, Unfashionable) that the answer is not to run away from culture and put young women in convents, nor is it to let culture barrage them with sexual immorality, assuming they can stand strong.  Perhaps the answer is that we have to create culture and community.

Many of the Christian young women I come in contact with do not come from families in which their parents will build this culture and community in their lives for them.  The challenge we now face is how to inspire young women to create culture.  This can really only happen in community.  Fourteen-year-old girls aren’t good at being lone rangers (no one is).  A young woman has to understand that if abstinence makes sense in one of her cultures and not the other, then the culture that is eating away at her beliefs must be sacrificed.  She now has the task, through God’s grace, to begin to create culture.  Women were made to be life-givers (Eve) in many spheres of life, not just through birth.

The best culture-instillers are parents.  But when the parents no longer create culture and community, how do the children boldly forge ahead in their teen years?  Many of the greats in Christian history were just such people and I do know that the gospel was their starting point.  The question lingers in my mind…

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