don’t forget to leave the light on.

Twitter has been making me a little mad lately.

Angry mad, that is, not chop up all the vegetables and throw them in the bath tub and declare it ‘Salad Bath day’ mad… and sad mad as well – somewhere in between the two.

And by Twitter i don’t mean the whole of Twitter, and i do mean Facebook to a lesser extent as well, but christians on the various social networking sites, especially the Twitterer.

And not all christians on Twitter, thankfully. In fact, i can probably divide it into two camps [and this post in my mind originally contained a bunch of names of people but i think i will leave half of them out, so as not to become that which i am railing against – use the ‘test and see if this is me and if it is take it on and if it’s not don’t’ approach if you read this] and this is somewhat generalised but i think largely true, and of late seemingly worsely so.

THE FIGHTERS AND THE LOVERS

now i have been in the first camp for the majority of my life, i think, and so i am trying to keep my mind on that, while at the same time being able to critique why it has been frustrating me so much lately – but those who more often than not seem to be picking fights with people or issues [although the issues tend to be linked quite closely to people more often than not] and these might be people and issues that are deserving of having fights picked with them, but i think there comes a point when all you are doing seems to be picking fights and take a breather and smell a flower or celebrate something good for a change. not to say these people don’t do that, but the overwhelming nature of some of their voices has seemed more belligerent and fighty of late.

in the midst of all the fightiness and arguing and point-making and name-and-shaming [which, as i’m saying, i feel definitely has its place] on Twitter, i am hit by huge big breaths of fresh air – and this is where i will mention names – Eugene Cho [@eugenecho]talking about One Day’s Wages and the work they are continuing to do in the disaster areas of the Philippines,  Donald Miller [@donaldmiller] who is currently on honeymoon and tweeting out some gems he prepared beforehand but often sharing exciting stories from the Storyline blog he helps put together, Mike Pilavachi [@mikepilav] who generally shares exciting things about exciting kingdom happenings that he gets to be involved with all of the time, whoever is tweeting for Pope Francis [@pontifex] which tend to be inspirational Jesus-focused messages and calls to live like Him, and the Tim Keller Wisdom [@dailykeller] tweets which are often inspiring quotes or scripture verses. as well as anyone who shares C.S.Lewis quotes.

and in the middle of that, on her own planet [and what a fun planet it is] is Jamie Wright [@JamieTheVWM] who bounces between completely serious and mouth-wateringly-sarcastic and vulnerable and crazy and inspiring and fun… so often fresh air in the midst of the fresh air.

MORE LIGHT, LESS DARKNESS BASHING

i do believe there is a time to take on the darkness [slavery, woman’s rights, human-trafficking, racism] and maybe there is a case for some people feeling the need to do that more often than not [there are certainly some Old Testament prophets who didn’t get their fair share of the friendly messages to deliver] but i do believe that it is a lot more helpful and inspiring and all-around-fun to shine the light more often and more regularly and with more intensity than taking on the darkness.

so when you need to take on the darkness, by all means do so… but if there is ever a choice, rather shine some light. 

you see, light drives away the darkness simply by being light [not by any active drivingness on its part] and Jesus called us to be light [not hidden light, displayed light]

also i don’t know too much how people are swayed by Twitter fights and Facebook wall arguments and i imagine the watching world does not take away the hugest declaration of ‘You shall be known by the love you have one for another’ from a lot of what has been going on of late.

the responsibility is so huge when you have a huge following as people are strongly influenced by the how as well as the what.

may we be faithful in every aspect of our online presence and may we be surrounded by people who love us well who we invite to call us on stuff when we get it wrong.

thank you to all of you who are drawing people towards Jesus and a Jesus-following life through your efforts, whether it be light-shining or darkness-taking-on.

together for the kingdom. but let us always ‘err’ on the side of Love.

[how about you? who do you follow on Twitter who brings life and light to your day? please leave their name and Twitter handle in the comments section]

Changing lanes.

hi there

my name is brett “Fish” anderson and this is my blog…

the FISH stands for Faithful In Serving Him and it is all about the purpose of my life being about trying to love Jesus and love people more and well and better. and to hopefully help them do likewise.

this is apparently my 1095th blog post so i’ve been doing this for a while. i don’t tend to use a lot of CAPS which infuriates some people but i generally like to keep them for highlighting important things like God and people. the beginnings of sentences don’t often feel worthy enough for me to employ CAPS. apparently the word CAPS does, at least in this post.

i also apparently have 279 subscribers to my blog. but to be honest i don’t really know a whole lot of you. and that bothers me a little bit. i don’t follow a lot of other blogs usually because of time but three that i find myself at quite often and which i generally like are those belonging to Don Miller, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary [and bronze olympic hugger if she is to be believed] and Rachel Held Evans… i don’t always agree with everything all of them say [which is good, and hopefully you won’t either, when it comes to me too] but more often than not i find them encouraging or challenging me to be a better me and to love Jesus and people and embrace life more and those are all good things.

but they all have interactions in their comments section. and that’s one thing this blog lacks and i’m not quite sure how to get that right [maybe you need 10000 followers to get 10 comments so i may have a fair bit to go] except by having it implied that i am anti-animal [which i’m not particularly] cos back in the day that used to get people going off.

[1] the one thing i was thinking was that a lot of my posts tend to be sermons or lessons, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but i don’t know if that would make me inclined to comment and get involved…

[2] the second thing is that i was doing NABLOPOMO which is the challenge WordPress has to post a blog a day for a month, which i normally do anyways [or close to] but find that when i’m trying to do one for the sake of doing one then i tend to end up writing blog posts that feel like they’ve been written for the sake of it and that just absolutely SUCKS. so i’m going to stop that.

here is what i am going to try to do going forwards [and you can hold me to it, or maybe remind me from time to time]:

[A] i am going to try and only post what i want to post… and that will probably still be a whole bunch of different stuff, but i am going to try and be more intentional on this front

[A + 1] i am going to try and post some more life blogs, so not messages, just life as i experience it or things i am thinking or experiences i am experiencing

[A + 2] i am going to try and come up with a less ridiculous numbering system for bullet points than this one which felt clever in my head, but really isn’t.

all to say that i don’t know if you will notice a whole lot, but i am wanting in my brain at least to be intentional about changing lanes and maybe there will be more cause for interaction in the months and years to come.

in the meantime if you are a subscriber who actually reads my blog from time to time [and not one who has set their settings to automatic ‘like’ which does tend to make me feel good until i realise you’re liking every single post which no sane person possibly could and so go back to being sad or really really nervous about the kind of person that might be] then i would love it if you would jump in to the comments section below and at least say hi and if you’re up for it introduce yourself and say a few words and if there was any particular post you liked or any specific type of post that you enjoy more please let me know… and every now and then when you read a post and you have an extra minute, add a thought or a comment or start some controversy about me hating animals…

and then if all 279 of you went from there directly to this link and voted on my most incredible Coke Zero sweater which i created, then there is little doubt in my mind i would make it into the top 100 and it would actually get made and that would be fun. at least for me. so please do that.

but anyways, thankx to all of you who do come in and read from time to time and i hope that some of the things i write or post or video make at least some small difference to your life… here’s to the next 1095 posts…

 

 

Meet Jamie, the very worst anti-trafficking person…

There is a woman whose name is Jamie Wright and who has a blog called ‘Jamie, the Very Worst Missionary’ which I generally enjoy reading as she is honest and sometimes in-your-face and completely real in terms of addressing different aspects of Jesus-following life… She let me use her Sex Before Marriage posts here [which are phenomenal, by the way] and has now just come back from a trip to Asia where she got to witness some of the human trafficking war [cos it really is a war – more slavery exists today than ever before in human history, a tough statistic to really take in for reals] face-on and she wrote about it here which is a great first post to read if you have the time, and then wrote this follow-up post which is a call to action [and opportunity to do so] which she has allowed me to repost here in the hopes that a few more people will see it. Please read and like and share and do whatever you have to d to get this in front of more eyes, and definitely consider getting involved in some way:

The Big Ask: How can I help fight human trafficking and slavery?

I sat across a table from a man I can tell you almost nothing about.

He’s an undercover investigator working with The Exodus Road, and I was truly impressed by him. I don’t want to get all gushy, so I’ll only say that he was a total effing badass. (Like if Chuck Norris and William Wallace had a baby and the baby grew up and married John Wayne and they had a baby,that baby would be this guy.) So, anyway, he spends time doing surveillance and gathering evidence against pedophiles and traffickers. His nights go to looking for underage sex workers in brothels, taking covert video and detailed notes, he and his teammates carefully follow the trails that lead to the traffickers of children, and assist the government (when needed) in sting operations to bust them.Bad. Ass.

He took us for a drive in a car with dark tinted windows, and it didn’t take long to get to a little karaoke bar on the side of a dirt road surrounded by a high wall, its big metal doors open for business. He and El Chupacabra went in for a bit, then texted Matt and I to join them. We found them at a small table with a bench on each side. A few teenage girls were seated around them, while a pretty girl with braces and chipped nail polish was pouring them drinks. And, there, pressed in against my hulking husband was a girl no bigger than my 13 year old. A tiny delicate thing.

The girl didn’t speak, didn’t smile, scarcely made eye contact, unless prodded by the obviously more seasoned girl next to her. After a little conversation and a few seemingly casual questions, our tour guide learned that she didn’t speak the local language. “Maile” was her name, and she’d only been there for three days.

Now. Everything in me wanted to jump up and scream, “THIS IS TOTALLY A VICTIM OF TRAFFICKING!!! QUICK! LET’S GRAB HER!!!” – But I kept up appearances, as instructed to “just party”. Because that’s what the beginning of rescue looks like — it looks like average, every day dudes going to strip clubs and gay bars and brothels looking for a good time, when, in actuality, they’re super badass mofo’s looking for underage sex workers and victims of trafficking.

As we finished our drinks, a couple of the girls took their leave, disappearing into a back room, but not until she was waved in by an older girl did the little one make her hurried (and clearly relieved) escape. We got up, paying our tab and leaving a tip, and headed for the car. But I watched that hardened investigator linger. He pulled a bill out of his wallet and put it in the pretty girl’s hand, pointing toward the door the other girls left through, he said, “This is for Maile.”, and she nodded understanding.

I was completely undone – but wanting to sound like I, too, was a stone cold badass (and not some shuddering, traumatized suburbanite), I tried to say something aloof and appropriate, like, “So, you’ll go back and investigate that, right?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

First he said something about not jumping to conclusions (the mark of a good investigator). Then he said, “Yes, I’ll go back.” and “It’s hard to walk away when you have an idea of what could happen to them, but you could pull boys and girls out of brothels all day long and there will be 10 more to take their place.” And then he talked about the importance of getting to the root of the problem and the need to prosecute the pedophiles who create the demand for children and the traffickers who supply them.

Ugh! For real, I wanted to stand and clap.

There are millions (MILLIONS, you guys!) of men, women and children around the world, who, are hopelessly enslaved. They’re in dark places; in brothels and bars, brick factories, fishing boats and slums. They live and breath in places the American Church is afraid to go. They’re hidden in the shadows of a world that doesn’t care for them or about them.

But rescue is coming…

I was invited to SE Asia by an organization called The Exodus Road, a non-profit coalition that empowers freedom from sex slavery through investigation and rescue. Just “come and see”, they said. “no strings attached.”, they promised. I felt it brave for a group who knows my penchant for harsh scrutiny of overseas NGO’s to invite me in to have a close look around. If I’m being honest, I was prepared to be disappointed. I was expecting “Look at us, we’re the Saviors of South East Asia!”. I was expecting a short-sighted plan to do irrelevant work led by unqualified people. Because I’m a jerk.

I know, I know. I’m an ass! A cynical, pessimistic, hyper-critical ass.

Which is why I’m pretty excited to say that I fell in love with The Exodus Road and the work they are doing around the world. Smitten. Seriously.

2 investigators and the national
leader of a group home for victims
of sexual abuse (33 boys & 8 girls),
looking over a pedophile’s case.

Over the course of a few days, a few beers, and more than a few bowls of spicy papaya salad, Matt Parker, CEO of The Exodus Road, answered every question El Chupacabra and I could come up with, even the weird, dumb, and awkward ones. The perception I walked away with is one of a young but healthy organization, with a big picture mentality. They honor the local government, and value partnership with sister organizations (including those working in outreach and aftercare) who agree to high standards of practice. Pushing the long-standing but broken Christian model of “good intention” aside, they’ve carefully chosen trained investigators with unique skill sets to do the best work on the ground, contracting men and women with a wide range of ethnic, religious, and professional backgrounds.

It was terrible and wonderful to see and hear about Rescue in SE Asia. I was deeply moved, and I was certain I wanted to help. Having just heard from those specializing in aftercare about the difficulties getting victims rescued in order to help them move forward, I knew this is where I wanted to join the fight.

Now, I know some of you want to tell me that I didn’t need to fly to SE Asia to find sex for sale, pedophiles, ping pong shows, and trafficking. I totally get that. But the U.S. economy doesn’t rely on tourism generated by selling our sons and daughters. Our children’s bodies aren’t counted as part of our Gross Domestic Product. Our government (while super flawed) has the will and the means necessary to investigate, arrest, and prosecute criminals who sell, enslave, or traffic human beings. So, yes, the problem exists in the U.S., but, no, it’s not the same. Regardless, we, the Church, must take both to task—not choosing one as more important than the other, but by realizing that we have the financial and human resources to address both, wisely and fully.

So, this is the part where I ask you to get involved. (Oh c’mon, you knew it was coming.)

My approach will be to invest financially in global rescue, and physically in local anti-trafficking efforts.

Locally, I’m meeting with several organizations who are working in rescue and restoration of victims of sex trafficking in my region. I’ll fill you in as those details emerge, but it wasn’t hard to find interesting groups to consider volunteering with – I just googled it and invited some friends to check it out with me.  I challenge you to do the same.

Globally, I’m pledging $35 a month to sponsor an investigative team in SE Asia, through the Exodus Road.

But my gift, alone, is pretty insignificant — that’s why I’m asking you to join me in the full financial support of an entire investigative team focused in one SE Asian city, notorious for sex crimes against underage boys and girls.

My gift is small, but if 200 people come together at $35 a month each, we can fund a whole damn team! And that’s HUGE. If we pool our resources, we can make a significant contribution that puts pedophiles and traffickers behind bars, rescuing current victims and helping to prevent future victims.

We CAN help. We can empower rescue and prevention. We can RESCUE A CHILD.

To protect the investigators, I can’t publicly name the country or city of the team we will be sponsoring. (Though, I will say, it’s a city I visited on my recent trip and the investigators I met.) So to make this fun, I’m creating a private Facebook Group where up to 200 donors can join me in a safe place to talk about, celebrate, and pray for the work we’re conspiring to fund. The Exodus Road will provide us with covert footage and other super-duper-top-secret info from investigations and arrests as it comes. And we’ll even have an occasional awesome give-away. (The first one will be next week!)

Over 100,000 people will likely see this post, more if you share it *wink wink*, I only need 200 of you to join me, please be one of them! I honestly believe we can make a difference.

To join the team, click here and put “DELTA TEAM – JAMIE” in the comments section, along with the email address you use for Facebook so I can welcome you to the private group.

I wrote this in my notes, sweating in bed after that hard night out with the investigator:

What if a little band of merry men gathered their resources to empower the rescue of trafficked and enslaved women and children? What if we supported and encouraged the men and women on the ground in just one city in SE Asia? What would happen if they had everything they needed to investigate and prosecute those who prey on the weak?…Word would get out if more bad guys went to jail, and traffickers disappeared, and brothel doors closed… What would happen if we came together from all over the world to shine a bright and focused light in the dark? ….Perhaps it would create a ripple of Hope where once there was none, as rumors of escape spread and one child turns to comfort another, whispering with assurance, “Rescue is coming.”

$35 a month (or $5 or $15 or whatever!). Will you join me?  

[You can find this particular post here, but you should probably just make a point of bookmarking Jamie’s blog which is here, because she writes from the heart and more often than not provides some much needed challenge and invitation to live this Jesus-following thing for real] 

Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage – Meet Jamie Wright [aka The Very Worst Missionary] part II

Sex, part 2: Why Wait?

I pretty much hate having teenage boys. 

I hate the looks they give. I hate the smells they make. I hate the skeezy little ‘stache that creeps up, slow and sparse, on their upper lip. But most of all, I hate the autonomy they have.

I hate that my baby boys have grown beyond arms reach and can now wander freely in this little corner of the world. I hate that they get to choose what they’re going to do and say, and that I don’t get to hover over them, correcting them and coddling them and giving them the WTF-are-you-thinking-?!-eyebrow every so often to keep them in line. Hate it.

Ugh! They’re independent. They are young men, responsible for their own actions. That is so scary it makes me want to barf.

And, perhaps it’s because I got knocked up at 17, but, of all the choices my kids are faced with and all the opportunities in front of them, I feel especially preoccupied with their choices regarding sex. Naturally, they love this. I mean, what teenager doesn’t want their Mom constantly reminding them that it’s gross and creepy to engage in sexual activity in public parks, behind strip malls, or in the recessed corner of the movie theatre?! What high schooler would hate it if their Mom sang, “Please do not have sex todaaaaay!” every time they walked out the door?! Surely not mine.

…Yeah. The eye rolling gets pretty intense around here…

But I want my kids to be armed with the truth (and maybe with condoms, but mostly with the truth), and the truth is that they should wait to have sex.

There are obvious reasons why:

1. You could accidentally create another human being (like I did, oops).

2. You could cause yourself or someone else emotional harm by sharing intimate behavior in an irresponsibly casual way.

3. Most compelling, you could contract a horrible, painful, itchy, burning, smelly STD, and your penis could fall right off.

But I believe there’s another really good reason to put sex on hold. 

It’s that when you wait to have sex, you are creating an important connection between the very powerful urges to do things that feel really good and the ability to control those urges. Otherwise known as self-control. This practice of self-denial and delayed gratification makes you a healthier, more poised, and better moderated person (who definitely still has a penis, phew!). Ultimately, self- control is a character trait ~or *ahem*, fruit of the spirit, for the Christian folk~ that will help you be a better long-term partner in your ’til-death-do-we-part relationship.

Listen. I don’t want to kill anyone’s romantic ideas about marriage, I really don’t – but it’s not like you get married and then you’re unfailingly super stoked to have sex with the same person three times a week for the rest of your God given life. I mean, married sex can be amazing – the longer I’ve been married, the better it gets (19 years, Suckas!!). But it really shouldn’t shock anyone to hear that married, monogamous people still have sexual thoughts, desires, and impulses which do not include their spouses. Porn happens. Crushes happen. (Seriously, everybody has crushes. Even Christian bodies have crushes.) The problem is that, in a culture that demands instant gratification and consumes sex like a drug, a quick brush with porn or a simple crush on a coworker can quickly spiral into something devastating.

To top it off, we’ve done a really bad job of teaching about sex in the Church. Our approach has been to shame girls for having it, and shame boys for wanting it. And when the smart kids ask, “Why wait?”, we shrug our shoulders like a hillbilly and say, “Because the Bible says.” Then we give the girls a purity ring and we give the boys nothing and we cross our fingers and hope they’ll cross their legs. So dumb.

We’ve made virginity the goal, when it is purity that we should be aiming for; They’re not the same thing. Sexual purity is a life long spiritual practice that doesn’t begin or end with a single sex act, just as it doesn’t begin or end on a wedding night. So when we are asked, “Why wait?”, we should have an answer that empowers and prepares people to choose wisely for a lifetime. We should be teaching people something they can carry with them beyond their first roll in the hay.

Why wait? Um. Because you need to learn some freaking self-control. That’s why.

No kidding, the person who is a slave to their sexual desires will have a difficult road to hoe. ←Heh. See what I did there? 😉 But the man or woman who has a sense of mastery over their own sexual appetite will be far less likely to fall into the easy traps of addiction and infidelity that plague marriages today. I don’t mean to imply that postponing sex guarantees fidelity – it certainly doesn’t. And I don’t think this is a fail safe for a long and happy marriage, but I think delaying sex is a pretty solid beginning.

So I tell my kids, much to their horrified chagrin;

“I know it’s hard to be near the person you’re aching to touch and kiss and do… um… other… likenaked things with. I know! I get it. We all get it. But the person you’re with right now? That person isnot the last person you will have those feelings toward, and you need to know what it feels like to not act on those feelings, because a day will come when you will have to exercise self-control for the sake of the relationship you’ve given your life to – and, trust me, you will want to know how to do that. Do not relinquish that power without a fight. So, really, consider the wait. There’s value in waiting. (But if you don’t wait? Condom. Please. Because babies. And emotional wounds. And your penis will rot off…)

Waiting is an act of maturity and discipline that can help refine your humanity, and that of your mate. And while I still don’t think sex before marriage is the biggest deal of all the deals ever, I do think waiting is a good start toward a long and healthy life with the person you’ve chosen to love. Plus, statistically, married people have WAY more sex than single people. So exercise self-control while you’re waiting to get married, then use that well honed skill to help you stay married and – BOOM – buckets of sex for a lifetime! …That’s bad math, but still.

So, Why wait? 

Wait because self-control is a virtue necessary to living a life of purity, and waiting is just good practice. 

That’s it. That’s all.

[This is a reblog of a post that Jamie originally posted on her own blog which you should read and follow and subscribe to and tell all your friends about, or at least the less conservative ones, which you can find over here]

[If you missed part I of the series simply titles ‘Sex’ you can catch up to it by clicking here]

Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage – Meet Jamie Wright [aka The Very Worst Missionary] part I

aka Jamie the very worst missionary’s position on sex [part I]

My youngest son is about to turn 13, so for the next 9 months, until my oldest turns 20 (holy ape balls!), I will be Mom to three teenage boys.

That means our dinner table feels like a locker room… if locker rooms were full of nerds. The conversation tumbles easily from Xbox to music to girls to MineCraft to push ups to girls to movies to farts to money to girls to YouTube, and then back again, in an endless loop, so that over the course of one meal we come around to the subject of “girls” at least 9 times.

At least

Girl talk inevitably leads to sex talk. And, let me tell you, if there is one thing these guys like to talk about more than girls? It’s sex. So we talk about sex. Kind of a lot. And since (as far as I know) none of my children have gone and gotten married, we’re mostly talking about sex of the pre-marital sort; y’know, Virginity and stuff. The Big “V”. The Sacred Gift. The Golden Ticket…. These chats are exactly as awkward as you imagine.

Obviously, my children know that I had sex before marriage because I had a kid before marriage, so there’s really no getting around it. That same kid towers over me now; a full two years older than I was when his own fluttering heartbeat wound itself into mine. These days, I look at him and I think, “He can’t even keep his own room clean – how the hell did I manage an infant and a full time job at that age?!”

So, yeah, I was an unwed teenage mother. Classy, I know.

But oh, it gets worse, because before I invented MTV’s Teen Mom, I was a little bit of a ho-bag. Yup. I willingly did regretful things with my body, and I allowed myself to be used in regretful ways by some regretfully sleazy douchebags, perverts, and (in retrospect) probably pedophiles. Gross, I know.

I believed that sex was the best thing I had to offer the world. It was the only thing about me worth loving. And I learned, too young, that I could leverage sex to get what I wanted. My female parts had become my greatest asset.

Then I found my way into the Church, 19 with a baby on my hip, and while I lingered on the outskirts of the Christian bubble, guess what I learned… I learned I was right! Apparently, even God was super concerned with my vagina, and where it had been, and what it had touched. Apparently, my genitals were like a portal that led straight to my soul. I had been muddied – and everybody knows that once you muck up clean water, you can’t unmuck it.

It took me a lot of years and a lot of conversations with God (and with people who know more about God than me) to understand that everything I believed about my own sexuality was built on two huge lies.

The first comes from our culture, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage isn’t a big deal.

The second is from the Church, and it tells us that sex outside of marriage is the biggest deal of all the deals ever.

One allowed me to give it away freely, convinced I would carry no burden. The other forced me to carry a spirit crushing load.

Both are complete crap.

Sex matters. It’s the most vulnerable thing you’ll ever do with another human being. Commitment breeds intimacy, and intimacy is what makes sex freaking amazing. I’m not gonna lie, you can have hot sex outside of a committed relationship – but mostly it’s gonna be like… clumsy… and goopy… and ew. The better you know your partner, the better your sex will be. So basically what I’m saying is that wedding night sex is kinda “Meh.”, and five years sex is all “Yes!”, but 18 years sex is like “WOAH!!!” So go ahead and wait. Wait and enjoy the waiting, and then bask in all those learning experiences with your most trusted friend.

But.

If you’ve already gone down that path, you knocked boots, you got ‘er done, you did the nasty…. and now you’re not sure, or maybe you feel dirty and you’re rocking the walk-of-shame-face day in and day out, you need to hear this — I mean it, you really need to hear this…

You’ve had sex outside of marriage? *gasp* So what! You are so much more than your sexuality. And the God of the Universe, the one who turns whores into heroes, and drunks into prophets, and liars and murderers into leaders and kings – that God? He made peace with you and me and our promiscuous, pathetic attempts at love a long, long time ago. He gave you a Redeemer. Shame is no longer your burden…

Do I want my boys to wait? Absolutely. And they know it! But I refuse to tie their value as a human being to their junk like a shiny red balloon.

I want them to know that sex is sacred. And I want them to believe that it matters. I hope they will esteem the bodies of the girls in their lives, as they hold their own bodies to the same high standard.

But I also want them to understand that the kind of sexual purity the Bible calls us to doesn’t begin or end with Virginity – It’s way bigger than that. It’s way more significant. And it’s way harder to hold on to.

… ….. ….

To wait, or not to wait? That is the question…

[This is a reblog of a post that Jamie originally posted on her own blog which you should read and follow and subscribe to and tell all your friends about, or at least the less conservative ones, which you can find over here]

However, this particular blog post has a sequel to it, which Jamie has just recently written and which you can find right over here…

Taboo Topics: Sex Before Marriage [Intro]

I remember the first article I was invited to write for Truth magazine back in the day had the title, “How far is too far?” so I wrote, “Belgium. Belgium is too far!” and then proceeded to write the rest of my article [for some reason, they let me stay.]

And the main point of the article was that if we are asking ‘How far is too far?’ then we are already in trouble because we are asking the wrong question. From the Christian perspective, basically knowing that ‘Sex before marriage is the greatest evil’ [it’s not, but you’d think so from the trailer!] the ‘HFITF’ questions is pretty much asking, ‘How much can I do with my girl/boy-friend before I have to feel bad?’ ‘How close to the cliff can I get without falling off?‘ [where falling off was a metaphor for ‘having a baby’ or something] or else quite simply ‘How close to evil can I sneak without being called it?’

In essence, the question we were all taught to ask was ‘How much can I get away with?’

And it’s the wrong question!

But we never knew that, because sex was such a dirty topic. It was a dirty topic at home as our parents were from the ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ generation [who must have all had sex by accident one day when they tripped on top of each other and their clothes burnt up in the friction as they fell, or something] and it was definitely a dirty topic at church [Sex was pretty much the ‘Voldemort’ of church. Voldemort being the ‘Saying Macbeth before theatre productions’ of the Harry Potter world. And so on.]

And so, because we couldn’t learn about sex from our parents or our church leaders, all that left was our friends and their illicitly-smuggled-from-deviant-older-brother ‘smuggled in brown paper bag’ magazines [which in my day had these little white stars posted over the n_p_l_s! Who, by the way were not always the best of teachers. [Our friends and magazines, I mean, not n_p_l_s. Although they weren’t much help either]

Oh parents. Oh church leaders. How you might have saved us much trouble and confusion and who knows what other kinds of traumas and complications had we just been able to sit around and have an open and adult conversation about S-E-X. We don’t blame you for it, because you had your own story passed on from your parents and society, and I really think you did the best you could. But it would have helped.

Today all of that is history as we have our good friend Uncle Google who has all measure of wikipedia entries, how-to videos and image galleries to walk us through it. [But it would probably still go a lot smoother if you just gave us the chance of a decent potentially-awkward-but-we’ll-get-over-it conversation before we turn 30 and without merely tossing a pamphlet, book or website URL on our pillows when we are out]

Let’s talk about sex.

This is a relevant conversation for Christ-following people for sure, but I believe it extends way beyond that. I think that healthy sexuality, purity, intimacy and self-control and other aspects  linked to relationships and sex are relevant for everyone because I believe that getting a healthy grasp on them [hee hee] is more about living well than merely living christian. So I hope you will find these posts useful:

First up I have two posts by the incredible Jamie Wright who blogs as ‘The Very Worst Missionary’ and has written two extremely helpful blog posts, in her own very unique style, which I think really captures the heart of at least some of what this topic is all about:

Meet Jamie Wright, aka The Very Worst Missionary