UPDATE: Boilerplate reminder: there has been a good bit of chatter about this series going on, through email, facebook, etc. The overwhelming majority of the responses have been positive. However, agree or disagree with me or the guest posters, I do want to repeat a point I made in the original post for this series. We're talking about what these Christians believe is best. How many Christians actually manage to do what is best? By the very nature of the way I've asked the questions, these men have succeeded (to one degree or another) where others have failed. Not one of them will not confess that this is by God's grace alone. Nobody's is saying anybody here is better than anybody else. They are saying that obeying God is better than disobeying, and they're sorting that out. But without any of the wishy-washiness that masquerades as piety these days. So please don't be offended.
Yesterday I posted an introduction to a series on Christian male virginity. Posts will be added throughout the week. All contributors are married Christians who were virgins until marriage, and have been posed the same series of questions as a guideline. Some of these posts will be in interview format, others in essay. Some of these posts will be anonymous/semi-anonymous.
Remy is the first guest blogger. He blogs at The Whole Garden Will Bow. He is a schoolteacher and a poet at the exact very same time.
Q: You were a virgin until you married. How old were you at that time?
I was 23 when I was married and chaste in that time.
Q: If a man is not a virgin when he marries, how big a deal is that?
Sin destroys. We have been designed to live a certain way and to deviate from that breaks us. Sexual sins are more damaging in that they have repercussions up and down a culture. In the breaking of yourself, you cause another to be broken; by taking what is not yours you defraud them and their future spouse as well as your own.
Q:I've noticed that people have a hard time believing a young man could stay a virgin by choice. That is, that sex is impossible to resist for any length of time. I'm sure that it was difficult, but how difficult was it, really? What kind of struggle was it?
I think we have been designed to want sex and having it is the norm. A strong desire to have sex is a good motivator to prepare yourself for marriage. That something is hard does not make it unnatural. For example, mastering our excretory system is a difficult practice that takes a year or two or in some case more. And that is a biological need that we are equipped to perform from the very beginning, which is not the case for sexual organs. So chastity is not a twenty plus year burden, first of all. But it is a time to master our urges.
But it is difficult and we shouldn't want it otherwise because we should want to be driven people, motivated in all things, not lax nor slavish, but directed. Relieving the pressure to act, the pressure to mature, to be a valuable contributor in the world is a suicidal urge. Putting off marriage, wherein you discover yourself (contra the current blase idea of self-discovery), is to unleash an aimless and useless halfperson upon the world. Marriage makes the man, not man the marriage.
So it was difficult, like anything good, it was sometimes torment. It was the hours in the gym to get the chiseled physique. Premarital sex is all fake tans and creatine shakes, resulting in deformed, boneweak, decrepit creeps with hard heartconditions. There will always be the temptation to go the easy way, the shortcut that only cuts you short, the selfish, unmotivated, vain way, but then there are the men...
Q:You must be some kind of wuss. So must other "wait 'til we're married" guys. What do you say to that?
We have bought into certain lies that's are flimsy as our pick-up lines. One of the most absurd is thinking that the more women you sleep with means more sexual skills, that more women equals more experience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider the man who declares his love of cities, all cities and talks about his vast knowledge of cities. He spends the night in a different city one day after the next. He gets off the bus, buys a t-shirt, notches his belt and hops back on the bus. He is suppose to be a grand lover of cities? Rather his is the most worthless of tourists, he's the doofus in the fannypack mugging in front of every giftshop across the nation. He knows nothing of the city, does not love any city at all, but rather he loves to see his greasy unshaven mug in different settings each night. The man that says he knows New York City because he was once laid-over there one rainy insignificant night is a great fool.
So too the lothario, who beds women with tricks and well worn moves. He's never had to please a woman night after night. He can only pick up women at the watering hole looking to be watered, the lowhanging fruit. A real man knows how to please the woman who's dealt with screaming kids all day, who went through the day with peanutbutter in her hair, wearing sweatpants and grannypanties because the laundry is stacked to highheaven. A real man can't rely on a couple of cheap sex tricks to please a woman, running the same two plays on an unsuspecting defense, a real man has to play the same team night after night and the things that worked last night aren't good enough for today. Real men bed the same woman every night keeping it new and fresh and exciting. Lotharios, in the extremity of their lameness, have so little game they have to move from woman to woman with their smoke, mirrors and hand dancing.
Q: What good did staying a virgin until marriage do you?
Sex without commitment is aimless sex, it has no end, there's no ability to connect in a deep way without that commitment, and therefore premarital sex is dual masturbation. Women are just a strange fist and masturbating through them stunts maturity. Sex within marriage is aimed sex, there is a pursuit to it and a sense of achievement. It is a true collaboration.
But the best part is that your desires and likes and sexual tastes are shaped by your partner. Apart from marriage our tastes are shaped by movies and strangers in the streets, jokes, magazine covers, but within marriage your desires are shaped by the person who loves you most. True lovers, a committed man or woman, have been insulated from the sexual noise around them, set apart from the winds, and they are free to create an original, unique, personalized erotic experience. Handcrafted love.
Bedhopping makes such undefined, ill-kept, unstructured lovers, incoherent messes unable to love head from tail, that they have truly lost their souls, being poured into and parceled out over their unanchored objects of lust. They are the modern Frankenstein's monster, a sexual amalgam equaling nobody. But the chaste man can say, this is my wife, there is none like her and truly no one can please me like her and I am hers and there is none like me and no one can please her as I do.
Yesterday I posted an introduction to a series on Christian male virginity. Posts will be added throughout the week. All contributors are married Christians who were virgins until marriage, and have been posed the same series of questions as a guideline. Some of these posts will be in interview format, others in essay. Some of these posts will be anonymous/semi-anonymous.
Remy is the first guest blogger. He blogs at The Whole Garden Will Bow. He is a schoolteacher and a poet at the exact very same time.
Q: You were a virgin until you married. How old were you at that time?
I was 23 when I was married and chaste in that time.
Q: If a man is not a virgin when he marries, how big a deal is that?
Sin destroys. We have been designed to live a certain way and to deviate from that breaks us. Sexual sins are more damaging in that they have repercussions up and down a culture. In the breaking of yourself, you cause another to be broken; by taking what is not yours you defraud them and their future spouse as well as your own.
Q:I've noticed that people have a hard time believing a young man could stay a virgin by choice. That is, that sex is impossible to resist for any length of time. I'm sure that it was difficult, but how difficult was it, really? What kind of struggle was it?
I think we have been designed to want sex and having it is the norm. A strong desire to have sex is a good motivator to prepare yourself for marriage. That something is hard does not make it unnatural. For example, mastering our excretory system is a difficult practice that takes a year or two or in some case more. And that is a biological need that we are equipped to perform from the very beginning, which is not the case for sexual organs. So chastity is not a twenty plus year burden, first of all. But it is a time to master our urges.
But it is difficult and we shouldn't want it otherwise because we should want to be driven people, motivated in all things, not lax nor slavish, but directed. Relieving the pressure to act, the pressure to mature, to be a valuable contributor in the world is a suicidal urge. Putting off marriage, wherein you discover yourself (contra the current blase idea of self-discovery), is to unleash an aimless and useless halfperson upon the world. Marriage makes the man, not man the marriage.
So it was difficult, like anything good, it was sometimes torment. It was the hours in the gym to get the chiseled physique. Premarital sex is all fake tans and creatine shakes, resulting in deformed, boneweak, decrepit creeps with hard heartconditions. There will always be the temptation to go the easy way, the shortcut that only cuts you short, the selfish, unmotivated, vain way, but then there are the men...
Q:You must be some kind of wuss. So must other "wait 'til we're married" guys. What do you say to that?
We have bought into certain lies that's are flimsy as our pick-up lines. One of the most absurd is thinking that the more women you sleep with means more sexual skills, that more women equals more experience. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider the man who declares his love of cities, all cities and talks about his vast knowledge of cities. He spends the night in a different city one day after the next. He gets off the bus, buys a t-shirt, notches his belt and hops back on the bus. He is suppose to be a grand lover of cities? Rather his is the most worthless of tourists, he's the doofus in the fannypack mugging in front of every giftshop across the nation. He knows nothing of the city, does not love any city at all, but rather he loves to see his greasy unshaven mug in different settings each night. The man that says he knows New York City because he was once laid-over there one rainy insignificant night is a great fool.
So too the lothario, who beds women with tricks and well worn moves. He's never had to please a woman night after night. He can only pick up women at the watering hole looking to be watered, the lowhanging fruit. A real man knows how to please the woman who's dealt with screaming kids all day, who went through the day with peanutbutter in her hair, wearing sweatpants and grannypanties because the laundry is stacked to highheaven. A real man can't rely on a couple of cheap sex tricks to please a woman, running the same two plays on an unsuspecting defense, a real man has to play the same team night after night and the things that worked last night aren't good enough for today. Real men bed the same woman every night keeping it new and fresh and exciting. Lotharios, in the extremity of their lameness, have so little game they have to move from woman to woman with their smoke, mirrors and hand dancing.
Q: What good did staying a virgin until marriage do you?
Sex without commitment is aimless sex, it has no end, there's no ability to connect in a deep way without that commitment, and therefore premarital sex is dual masturbation. Women are just a strange fist and masturbating through them stunts maturity. Sex within marriage is aimed sex, there is a pursuit to it and a sense of achievement. It is a true collaboration.
But the best part is that your desires and likes and sexual tastes are shaped by your partner. Apart from marriage our tastes are shaped by movies and strangers in the streets, jokes, magazine covers, but within marriage your desires are shaped by the person who loves you most. True lovers, a committed man or woman, have been insulated from the sexual noise around them, set apart from the winds, and they are free to create an original, unique, personalized erotic experience. Handcrafted love.
Bedhopping makes such undefined, ill-kept, unstructured lovers, incoherent messes unable to love head from tail, that they have truly lost their souls, being poured into and parceled out over their unanchored objects of lust. They are the modern Frankenstein's monster, a sexual amalgam equaling nobody. But the chaste man can say, this is my wife, there is none like her and truly no one can please me like her and I am hers and there is none like me and no one can please her as I do.
This is a great series already! As someone who saved myself until I was married at 27, I can definitely attest to the incredulity most people would show upon learning that I was a virgin. It was generally second only to the incredulity shown at the fact that I have never tried pot...
ReplyDeleteI could add a lot more, but typing on my tablet is a bit of a chore...
Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Well said, Remy!
ReplyDelete[...] a man and a woman who seek brute physical gratification as quickly as possible. These words from Remy Wilkins on this awesome blog should encourage those of us who are still single and painfully abstinent to [...]
ReplyDelete