What I learned about Sex at Church last week

Each church is different.

The one I regularly attend is quite new agey as far as churches go. Or at least, far from traditional. The band is a modern rock style band that play guitars, and the style of the sermons and music is very much in line with Hillsong which is a church that a lot of people are familiar with. I go to the service aimed at Young Adults that is held on Sunday evenings and tend to resonate quite well with it.

They tend to have a different series or topic each month that the sermons revolve around and August happened to be all about relationships and marriage. As most of the people attending the service are in their early-mid twenties, marriage is something that a lot of us haven’t experienced yet but most likely will in the next decade or so of our lives. This specific sermon happened to be based around sex.

When the preacher said he was going to talk about sex, I immediately got uncomfortable. I was expecting an abstinence only sermon that shamed people who had sex, but I was pleasantly surprised. The tone he took was more about why and how God designed sex to be within the confines of marriage, and that the reason why was because he cares about our bodies, and our souls. Sex is the ultimate bonding exercise on every level, emotionally, mentally, physically, and sexually.

He talked about how in this day and age people don’t value sex or look to the creator of it (God) for their knowledge, instead we learn about sex through friends, the internet, family members, or a magazine.

I am of the belief that people should be able to sleep with whoever they want, whenever they want as long as both/all parties consent. But I do agree that people in our current society don’t value sexuality, or their bodies which has led to this Tinder culture replacing courtship or dating culture.

There are positives and negatives to these new attitudes about sex. Positives being people (mostly women) are reclaiming ownership of their bodies from the men that have owned us for generations, and the negatives being that sex is not valued as it is so easy to come by in our current society. Men used to take out women on several dates, meet her parents and family, and months or years later they would have sex. They had to earn trust, respect, approval, and have patience. Why would they choose to do this now when they can go on their phone, swipe right a couple of times, send an unsolicited dick pic and send a direct message saying “wanna hook up?”

We have become lazy and entitled when it comes to love and sex, and I don’t think it’s our fault. It’s a result of our culture, and the technology now available to us. This is the first time in history where it is possible to communicate like this so easily with billions of people around the world, and we are all figuring out how to do so. Our teachers and parents have been unable to show us how to use it, because they have no idea.

Millennials are the internet’s test subjects.

Love, sex, and marriage have never looked like this before. Flirting and dating is almost non-existent for millennials. Getting to know someone takes a click, a scroll, and thirty seconds later and you know all their friends, their dating history, their previous hair styles and fashion choices, where they work, what like they to watch, read, and listen to. Why bother getting to know someone the old fashioned way when we can do it the quick and lazy way?

Since 1950, the average age of people getting married has risen from 20 to 27.5 years old. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this is a bad thing – young people these days have so many more opportunities and goals for themselves. Back in 1950 the goal of young people was find a husband, get married, buy a house, have children. Nowadays our goals look more like: get an education, get a good job, travel, pay off debt, live our own life how we want to, find purpose and meaning, then find someone, get married, and buy a house.

The path forward isn’t as clear and focused. No wonder we are confused.

The Huffington Post wrote, “Young people want to have sex, connect and relate in a loving way with others, but cannot offer anyone their commitment when they themselves are still in flux.”

It’s hard to buy into the concept of life long commitment with another person when Gen X and Y are children of divorce. Very few of us had both parents in our lives until we were 18, let alone parents that were still together and HAPPY. When you experience that kind of abandonment or lack of a long term committed happy couple to look up to, it’s hard to believe it exists at all.

Both my grandmothers had very different experiences when it came to sex. My dad’s mother had several partners, and her children had different fathers. She was unlucky in love, and married my dad’s father one month before giving birth to my dad (to his surprise when he found out 35 years later after she passed away).

On the other hand, my mum’s parents were together for over 50 years. Her mother once told me when I was 18 years old, sitting next to her reading New Moon from the Twilight series, “I was still a virgin when I married your grandfather”. Literally nothing had prepared me for her to say it so it was very out of the blue and awkward to say the least.’

I, myself, have never had a slutty phase, and in fact, I’ve not had sex at all. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it or wanted to, I just haven’t been in a situation where it would happen before. It feels strange to write this on the internet for the world to see as it is a very personal thing that for some reason I’ve got a lot of shame and embarrassment around. I think because it’s rare to have someone my age who hasn’t grown up religious to still be a virgin at 26 years old.

In a lot of ways I’m grateful and lucky that I’ve been in control of it – peer pressure hasn’t got to me, and I’m very fortunate to have no experienced any abuse in my life, whether it be from partners or strangers. In a way my virginity is a gift that I have – the gift of choice. I know for a fact when I do meet someone and choose to have sex that it will be my choice, I will be ready, and I will be educated.

I have realised since going to church that if I started dating someone who was saving themselves for marriage, I could wait with them. I no longer have the desperation to lose my vcard that I once had. I don’t necessarily need my first time to be ~special~, but I do want it to be with someone I trust and like. For some reason it’s nearly impossible these days to find someone of the opposite sex that is trustworthy but I know that is one thing I won’t compromise on when it comes to having sex.

I’ve been a late bloomer in general this lifetime. I moved out of home and got my driver’s license at 25 years old. When others were learning to drive and experiencing relationships and intimacy for the first time in high school, I struggling with grief and depression, just trying to survive each day without tears. During university when everyone was dating, drinking and partying, I would go home, binge watch my favourite tv series by myself, shop online, and practice makeup tutorials I found on YouTube.

Being a late bloomer is okay. You’re still blooming, just in your own time.

These days we ask ourselves how long after sex are we dating, instead of how long do we date before we have sex?

I may be someone with traditional values when it comes to love, sex and marriage. I want to date someone, feel all the butterflies and excitement, and then decide together once we’ve talked about it to take that next step in the relationship when both of us are ready.

Going to Church has made me feel normal for my beliefs and values in so many ways, and like a weirdo because of my new age beliefs about what life is about and what happens when we die, as they don’t align with Christianity. I believe in Jesus, I now believe in God, but I don’t agree or believe in so many things from the Bible. I also believe we can learn from Buddist and Islamic teachings. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reconcile it all, nor do I want to. Not every belief system has to be completely defined or confined to one thing. My openness is one of my strengths and I’m grateful I live in a country that allows me the freedom to have my own beliefs and express them.

Am I going to become a church blogger instead of a new age one? Absolutely not. But I do think it’s important to share some lessons I’ve learnt on both sides and recognise the different messages I’m getting and how they connect.

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