Sex, Booze and ... Jesus?

This entry's title expresses the thoughts of the local media and student body as we advertised Theology on Tap this week. A South Jersey "chapter" of the young adult fellowship had its debut outing yesterday at the bar right down the street from campus.

Never would I have pictured myself at a bar with 80 other people ages 18 to 35 listening to a talk about chastity and rocking out to Kutless over drinks. But it happened, and it was awesome. =) (For the record, I didn't drink anything of my own, thank you very much. One more month!)

Our speaker for the evening was Dawn Eden, a rock journalist and Catholic convert who published The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On in 2007.

"God wants you to have great sex," she joked, earning a hearty applause from the crowd. She quickly followed that up with the clarification that great sex is the kind that is given to one person freely, fruitfully and for life in marriage. But it doesn't mean we have to shut ourselves down and become asexual as long as we're single.

It's funny how so many people believe the way to stay pure is by viewing anything sexual as perverted and evil. The problem with this way of thinking is twofold: first, it backfires in the sense that resisting it is like ignoring an elephant in the room; you will go crazy if you try to act like your sexuality is nonexistent. When Dawn told us this, there was a sense of shuffling feet and people shifting awkwardly in their chairs. One of my girl friends nudged me knowingly in the ribs. Clearly, Dawn knows how we suffer. ;)

The second problem is that if sex is evil, then so is your body, your emotions and your thoughts. Too often people end up resenting any sort of pleasure under that philosophy, and that's gnosticism, which is unhealthy on a lot of levels (not to mention heretical, haha).

So if abstinence is the wrong way to stay pure, what's the right way? Chastity is different because it doesn't ignore sexuality or try to force it away. Instead, it just shuffles our priorities to a place where emotional intimacy and communication are number one. You can be very intimate and very happy without ever touching the person you love -- and as someone who was in a long-distance relationship for three years, I can attest to that. :)

Is it difficult? Absolutely. Do you screw up sometimes? For sure. But there is something so freeing in not having to worry about providing for a man's (or woman's) "needs," being judged or compared or disrespected or used. When you commit to being chaste, you commit to loving a person for the way God created them, and not just for the what they can do, if you know what I mean.

On a college campus, chastity is a laughable concept. Just about everyone feels like their goal in life is to get physical as quick as possible, and for some, with as many people as possible. My college paper runs a weekly sex column that has actually stirred up fierce debate on campus. Some are calling him a pig, and many others are saying "Hey, that's just how guys are." It's a mess of confusion, degradation and hurt.

It might be unpleasant a lot of the time, and I might be waiting a lot longer than my peers because of my commitment to stay a virgin until marriage (I hear people like me are avoided because of that! Their loss.), but in the end, the lack of baggage is totally worth it.