Chastity - An Confusing Virtue in a Sexually Chaotic World
We live in a hyper-sexualized culture.
“The impact of the sexual revolution on the Christian community is enormous. Even as the culture has deviated from the traditional understanding of sexual ethics and marriage, so have Christians… there is good reason to believe the sexual revolution has more profoundly impacted the behavior of twenty-first-century Christians than has the Bible. George Barna and other social scientists provide abundant evidence concerning the degree to which the sexual revolution has affected the church in terms of sheer quantity of adultery, fornication, and use of pornography by professing Christians. Remarkably little difference can be found between sexual behavior of Christians and that of non-Christians in the United States.” – Dale S. Kuehne, Sex and the iWorld
Consider the following:
* Most kids are exposed to porn by age 11 and see over 14,000 sexualized messages each year.
* Over 1/2 of Christian men and nearly 1/3 of Christian women struggle with compulsive porn use.
* The majority of pastors say that pornography is the most sexually damaging issue in their church.
* The porn industry fuels demand for sex trafficking, which is estimated to affect about 300,000 youths in the U.S.
We don’t know how to respond. On the one hand we fight human trafficking. On the other music, movies, and media press sexualized images onto our screens in rapid succession. We celebrate ‘consent’ and fight ‘rape culture’ on the one hand and our colleges sponsor ‘sex weeks’ on the other.
Chastity
The classical Christian solution to a sexualized culture is the virtue of chastity. Unfortunately, the word chastity is a confusing virtue with a number of unhelpful connotations. As far as I can tell these unhelpful connotations include the ideas that:
1. Chastity is synonymous with celibacy.
2. Chastity is repressive and anti-human.
3. Chastity is impossible.
1. Chastity is the same as celibacy.
Chastity and celibacy are related, but they are not synonymous. According to Webster’s Dictionary, the first definition of chastity is abstinence from unmarried sexual activity. The second definition is abstinence from all sexual activity. The third definition is purity in conduct and intention. And the fourth definition is restraint in design or intention.
So of the four definitions of chastity available it’s only the second definition that is synonymous with celibacy. The other definitions are applicable to all people whatever their marital status. This distinction is important because too often the virtue of chastity has been focused on single people, as though it’s primarily a virtue oriented toward the policing of single people and their sexual practices. The wisdom of the Christian tradition in a sexualized context is not that singles in our midst need to adopt a form of sexual repression or “purity culture,” but that the whole Chrisitan community shares and practices a common sexual ethic.
2. Chastity is repressive and anti-human.
Expressive individualism is a powerful story about what it means to be human deeply baked into contemporary culture. This story celebrates the authentic individual who is unencumbered by the expectations, traditions, or constraints of others. This story might be expressed in a syllogism. (A = B. B= C, therefore A = C)
- Authentic people are fully human.
- Authenticity is following and acting out one’s individual feelings and desires.
- Acting out individual feelings and desires makes one fully human.
In an article, about a chastity club at Harvard University a few years ago, the NY Times magazine interviewed as a counter example a woman named Chen. Chen’s perspective was stated simply. Chen said, “For me, being a strong woman means not being ashamed that I like to have sex,” she said. And “to say that I have to care about every person I have sex with is an unreasonable expectation. It feels good! It feels good!”
Notice the logic. Being a strong woman means acting out your individual feelings and desires. To suggest otherwise, according to the logic, would be oppressive, anti-human, anti-woman.
But actually, the syllogism above has some significant flaws. Authenticity is a terrible arbiter of morality. In his lecture “Learning the Language of Life: New Creation and Christian Virtue” N. T. Wright joked, “What if your authentic desire is to cheat as many people out of as much money as possible?” Additionally, there is no imperative contained in the syllogism about recognizing and honoring the humanity of others. What if your authentic desire is to sexually exploit others for profit or for pleasure? Does acting on this desire make you more human? (Of course not.)
In the Christian worldview we are made in the image of God for relationship with God. This creates a separate syllogism.
- Relationship with God makes us fully human.
- Some behaviors and attitudes damage our relationship with God and others.
- When we reject behaviors and attitudes that damage our relationship with God and others we become more fully human.
These ideas about chastity aren’t simply academic to me.
I grew up in church. My earliest memories are in church. I can remember the smell of wooden pews and the coolness of the wood on my face as I lie on them. When I was in 3rd grade my parents initiated what became an incredibly messy divorce. There were many factors contributing to their decisions. But inescapably in the midst of these factors was the fact that my mom had found another man and my dad had found other women.
The violence and chaos that ensued in our home during that period did incredible damage to everyone who lived there. Did their choices make them more fully human? Did they create the conditions for intimacy and flourishing? No.
But here’s the scar. Both of my parents were leaders in the church. They knew, or should have known, that life with God makes us fully human. They knew, or should have known, that some behaviors damage relationship with God and others. And they should have, by God’s grace, with God’s help, under God’s mercy, chosen to say no to those things so that both they and their children could have experienced life.
3. Chastity is impossible.
A third objection to chastity is to dismiss it out of hand because it’s difficult. Freud basically said, a sex drive is going to do what a sex drive is going to do. Contemporary anthropologists say, we can see evidence of both pair bonding and infidelity in human culture throughout history, therefore infidelity must have an evolutionary advantage and we should just live with it. Historians look at church history and recognize that even during periods where chastity was emphasized it wasn’t always followed.
In the 12th century St. Dominic de Guzman founded an order of preachers whose mission was to live out their preaching and teaching ministry in the public square. One of the most commonly articulated objections to his order was that it was implausible for Dominic to be able to expect these young men (mostly students) to be chaste if they’re out there in public and not sequestered off in a monastery somewhere.
What do we say to this? First, I think it’s important to point out that chastity is practiced and has been practiced. (Simply pointing out that practicing chastity is difficult and therefore impossible to practice is like saying that calculus or chemistry is difficult and therefore impossible to learn. The challenge of a beautiful mathematic proof or of insight into atomic composition is part of what makes the endeavor worthwhile.)
Secondly, I think it’s important to point out that the practice of chastity created the conditions for single women and men to make celebrated contributions to the church and to the world throughout Christian history. In an age where women would be expected to marry and have children Teresa of Avila, Clare, Monica, Catherine of Sienna, and many others were able to make significant cultural contributions as single women. The contemporary western church finds it difficult to honor singles because (at least in the protestant tradition) we hold up marriage as the norm. (This is true for single men as well.)
Third, holding our sexual desire before God is ultimately humanizing. Look at the Psalms. Some of the Psalms, particularly the Psalms called imprecatory Psalms, have shocking language. “Break the teeth of the wicked, Oh Lord…. Happy is the one who takes your children and dashes them against the rock.” We think… woah! What’s that about? Is the bible invoking violence and hatred? No! The Psalms invite us to pray our rage and hold it before God. Rage, anger, disillusionment, are all a part of life in a fallen world. If we act out our rage on our sisters and brothers we dehumanize them and we dehumanize ourselves. If on the other hand we pray our rage, hold it before the Lord, and entrust it to him, then we can be free…we can be transformed. It is the same with our sexual desire. We hold it before the Lord honestly. We bring our desire and frustration to God and entrust ourselves to him. And then…we can be free. We can be whole. When we act out our sexual desire and frustration on our brothers and sisters we diminish them. We diminish ourselves. When we pray our desire, loneliness, and frustration we experience healing and freedom.
We live in a hyper-sexualized culture. If the church has a valuable contribution to make within this culture it’s likely to be in the recovery of the virtue of chastity.