Tag Archives: christian

My Christian Brothers: Having No Beard Make You Weird

“The beard is a masculine ornament, given to us by God not for any practical purpose, but for our dignity.” – St. Augustine

(Roman Catholic brothers, consider skipping this post. I pick on you in it. And if you do not skip it, bear with me in love.)

This past Sunday I experienced something that made me realize, or at least form a theory for, why so few Roman Catholics have beards.

Think about it. This doesn’t prove anything, of course, but think about the Roman Catholics you know. Do any of them have beards? I can think of one or two of my own acquaintance, but overwhelmingly, they are clean-shaven.

Some of this, I believe, is connected with the roman-ness of the Roman Catholic church. Scipio Africanus, the man who defeated Hannibal, and scion of the mid-Republic, is said to have been the first Roman to shave. After him, the Roman fashion was always to be clean shaven, except for brief periods when imitating the Greeks might have been seen to have been fashionable. Shaving was a symbol of being Roman, usually over against being Greek, but also in comparison to the barbarian races.

Shaving was a rite of passage of religious significance for the pagan Romans, and a sign of manhood. Having a long beard meant slovenliness and squalor. The propensity of early Christians to grow a beard signaled two things: the eastern origins of their faith, and their willingness to be seen as other than Roman.

As Europe moved further into the Christian era, the barbarian Christians brought the beard back in. Men had beards. Warriors had beards. Knights had beards. Beardlessness was a sign of extreme youth, or of femininity.

Priests of the Western church began to shave. It became a symbol of celibacy. It became a symbol of control over the flesh and sin. Men have their appetites to kill and rut and grow beards, but the Roman priests overcame that through shavery.

According to a very interesting post at the Catholic Encyclopedia (the complexity of which will allow you to poke holes in this wee little post if you care to, although it will still hold water after you’re done):

The legislation requiring the beard to be shaved seems to have remained in force throughout the Middle Ages. Thus an ordinance of the Council of Toulouse, in 1119, threatened with excommunication the clerics who “like a layman allowed hair and beard to grow”, and Pope Alexander III ordained that clerics who nourished their hair and beard were to be shorn by their archdeacon, by force if necessary. This last decree was incorporated in the text of the canon law (Decretals of Gregory IX, III, tit. i, cap. vii). Durandus, finding mystical reasons for everything, according to his wont, tells us that “length of hair is symbolical of the multitude of sins. Hence clerics are directed to shave their beards; for the cutting of the hair of the beard, which is said to be nourished by the superfluous humours of the stomach, denotes that we ought to cut away the vices and sins which are a superfluous growth in us. Hence we shave our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the angels who remain always in the bloom of youth.” (Rationale, II, lib. XXXII.)

This body is a body of sin; the beard is an unleashing of the body. Therefore mortify the beard.

Thus the scholars of the West, inspired to shave by their connection to a cultural Rome that Frankish kings and Saxon peasants knew nothing of, and driven to shave by their desire to overcome concupiscence, became the clean-cheeked representatives of our faith.

But none of this, I propose, is the reason Roman Catholics today are still shaven.

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You may have heard that I have an awesome beard. A beard perhaps worthy even of El Cid, defender of Christians before the Moorish hordes, que en buenhora nació. His wife called him “the perfect beard”. His beard has a facebook page. Of his beard El Mio Cid himself hath said, “Thanks be to almighty God, it is long because it has had much loving care lavished on it. What reproach can you cast on my beard? All my life it has been my chief delight. No woman’s son has ever plucked it and no one… ever tore it.” Truly here, and not in the tonsured scriptoriums, was a paragon of Christian manliness in the Middle Ages.

But could El Mio Cid de Bivar, champion of Christendom, have taken the Lord’s Supper?

“Only if we practice intinction. That will permit the host to pass my mustache unmolested.”

My mustache runs over my lip, as I’m sure the mustache of El Cid Campeador did. This past Sunday, as one of the elders at my church handed me the chalice and I dragged deep and full of the wine, I got to enjoy a second sip courtesy of all the wine still caught in my mustache.

Think that’s gross? It’s just being human. Any dude with a mustache runs his lower lip over his mustache after taking a quaff of any drink, be it beer or water. But you couldn’t do that with transubstantiated wine.

So this is not a theological argument. Well, it is, but barely. It’s an anthropological one. My point is this: only dudes who shaved could have come up with a doctrine like the Roman Catholic one of transubstantiation. It is a doctrine that tries to drag earth, kicking and screaming, all the way up to heaven. But isn’t it our belief that the Kingdom of Heaven comes down to earth? This very real wine very really is Christ’s blood right here and right now. It has come down to you, and you may drink it and feast with it. Also, this very real man very really is God right here and right now. He has come down to you, and you may drink and feast with him. And while you’re at it, grow a beard with him, as he surely did.

Hence we shave our beards that we may seem purified by innocence and humility and that we may be like the angels who remain always in the bloom of youth. Here’s a question of sacramental theology for you. Do you want to be like the angels, or do you want to be like our Lord Jesus?

We are meant to be glorified humans. If we begin to reject our humanity, we will twist our glory and come up with all sorts of weird ideas.

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

When we mortify the flesh, we are to mortify our members, our arms and legs. These arms and legs are things like fornication and covetousness. We pluck those eyes out. This is very physical.

The new man is also very physical. Your new man may or may not be circumcised, but he certainly has bowels. And these are bowels of mercy.

We are not to cast aside all that is physical. We are to save it. We are to save men and their beards and their appetites. And if our priests tell us that it is best to not mate, we’ll be all weird when it comes to sex. If our priests tell us that this bread and wine is not so base as real bread and wine, we will become either aesthetes or drunkards.

And if our priests act like it’s best no to have a beard, we’ll go beardless.

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“I’m going there to see my Father. And finally get a decent shave.”

It is perilous to despise that which Jesus glorified. And we all do it. This has been a history of one weird scorn that developed in one corner of Christendom, and how it becomes part of a complex of ridicule for that which God has chosen to glorify. Ridiculing and despising that which God has glorified is what the world does. In this way the church is like the world.

If we despise wine, we will hate fellowship. If we despise sex, we will hate women. If we despise beards, we will hate brotherhood and masculinity. If we despise feasting, we will hate weddings and life together.

Don’t be like the angels. Figure out what sort of human Christians are supposed to be, and do that. Do I write you a new commandment, that all men must have beards? I do not write a new commandment, but an old commandment I write you. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

So I urge you, but do not command you: Grow out your beard, you son of a King! When he appears, we shall be like him! And if there’s beer at the right hand of God, my brother, I’ll buy the first hundred rounds if Jesus is clean-cheeked.

Why Christians Shouldn’t Say “America” When They Mean “The United States”

I admit that this is a peeve for me. So let me get that out of the way before I make my real point.

Listen, beloved, you ought not to call these here United States “America”. They’re the United States. Of America, sure. There are other United States in the Americas, such as the United States of Mexico or the former United States of Brazil, but we can acknowledge the original nature of the United States in this. We can’t grant the geographical America thing.

Americans call the U.S. “America”. But I’m not hear to bash Americans. The Brits do it too. It might, for all I know, be an English language thing. I haven’t asked enough Australians or South Africans to say. And I’m all for semantic convenience. As an American of Latin extraction this use of “America” annoys me, but I realize it’s a personal reaction. So whatevs.

Have your way on the whole “everyone knows you mean the U.S. when you say America” thing.

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What is Our Lord holding? The Law as given to Moses? The Law as given to our Founding Fathers?

Here’s the real reason you shouldn’t call the U.S. “America”.

The United States are/is a polity. America is an idea.

The U.S. can’t ever be ‘Merica!™, but America can be. It is worrying to see Christians thinking of the United States as a nation with a special role to play in God’s plan for the world, a sort of Christian Manifest Destiny. Sure, the United States may have enjoyed some wonderful blessings, but so have many others, and at the end of the day, it is part of the City of Man.

Many post- and late-Cold War Kids like me will wonder why I even bother to say this. In part, because many Christians still believe it. But mostly because, while the idea of America’s Special Christian Destiny may be on the way to bankruptcy, it needs to die. And for the health of the Church, the sooner the better.

We encourage the continuation of this thinking when we say America, even in our own minds. America, as I’ve said, is a special magical place. It’s a pagan place. Stop saying it.

The United States are a place (“is a place” my Yankee friends will say) that we can be honestly patriotic about. The United States are where I’m from. The country I pray for, the country I weep for. It is natural and good for an American to love the U.S. more than he loves Ecuador. All we Americans should. But let us not pray for America, lest we find ourselves praying for the idea of America.

Let us pray for these here United States, for its polity and its people. May God have mercy.

Homosexuality Among Christians: Not A Gift, But A Deep Wound

Jonathan Gonnerman recently explained at First Things “Why I Call Myself A Gay Christian”. Daniel Mattson then replied in the same publication, telling us “Why I Don’t Call Myself A Gay Christian”.

This problem of auto-naming by Christians who struggle with homosexual sin has been around for a while, and sadly the tendency seems to be toward adopting the name of the sin.

Of course, there is a sense in which every Christian can name himself as a sinner. I am a murderer, I am an adulterer, I am a thief. And this is true, as most Christians know and as Jesus taught, even if there was not an actual assassination, rendezvous, or break-in. This is a big part of the struggle for Christians. A Christian man lusts after a woman, he knows this makes him an adulterer; a Christian man lusts after a man, this makes him some sort of sinner…a fornicator, an adulterer, a sodomite, a homosexual. He feels he needs to name himself, so he does (and of course, he’s not going to choose sodomite).

This is valid in a true but limited sense. But in the ultimate ontological-identity-self-who-am-I sense it is not true. It must not be true. The thief who now servers Christ may be able to say “I was a thief” and even “I remain a thief” in certain contexts, but he no longer identifies himself as a thief. It is laughable to imagine that in response to the question “What are you?” he would say “I am a Christian thief.” No, he is simply a Christian.

That is how Christians who struggle with homosexual sin ought to identify themselves: as Christians. Full stop. No qualifications. Now if a friend says, “But I thought you were gay”, there might be explanations and qualifications. But not until then. It is important for every Christian that whatever life they have left behind and are leaving behind for the sake of Christ not be their identity.

One of the dangers of embracing the name “gay” or “homosexual” alongside Christian is the subsequent urge to justify it and to make it good. If the label is not wholly rejected, one is only a few steps from saying that homosexuality is a gift from God, perhaps because it makes one more sensitive or artistic (seriously, this actually happens). It also tempts us toward a false sense of identification with “the gay community”. I don’t mean that there should be not sense of identification…but there should be a detachment and freedom commensurate to one’s freedom in Christ. St. Paul ached deeply for the salvation of the Jews, but was the Apostle to the Gentiles. It is through the Church and its Gospel that we best minister to homosexuals, not through Christian homosexual therapy or support groups. We must all dive into the Church of Christ, and understand that housewives and engineers are closer to us than those we’ve left behind.

I am not saying, by the way, that a Christian who makes the mistake of identity I’ve described above is not a Christian. But it is a mistake we’re talking about here, and a harmful one. Our identity is in Christ.

Here end my words. Below is fully half of Mr. Mattson’s post (linked to above), which is an obnoxious level of quoting, but hey, I include it.

I think it is a mistake to view homosexuality as a gift, in and of itself. Those who identify as gay speak of the great gifts that supposedly flow from their homosexuality. But of course, any goods that are supposedly unique to homosexuality are common to man, and all that is good in man is the result of being made in the image and likeness of God. My career in the performing arts is not even indirectly caused by my same-sex attraction, but instead because God is the creator of music and beauty. I believe that great good can come as a result of living with this disordered inclination, but it only comes when I acknowledge it as a weakness, and in response, fall to my knees before the good God who looks upon me daily with “a serene and kindly countenance,” and comforts me with the words “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

The good that flows from the homosexual inclination is not an exceptional “otherness,” as Elizabeth Scalia seems to suggest. No, the good is the redemptive healing work of God that begins when we honestly acknowledge that homosexuality is a wound. If we do so, we can become “Wounded Healers,” in the way that Henri Nouwen viewed his own wounds, which we now know included same-sex attraction. Nouwen should be our model: humbly accepting the Church’s teachings, in all things, and abandoning the rest to Divine Providence. If we desire to bring the gay community into the family of God, it will not be through a celebration of homosexuality, or by changing the language of the Church in order to make it feel more welcoming to them. The path of evangelization is the cross. In recalling St. Paul’s success at evangelization, Ratzinger reminds us that “The success of his mission was not the fruit of great rhetorical art or pastoral prudence; the fruitfulness was tied to the suffering, to the communion in the passion with Christ.”

The gay community will become family when those of us in the Church who live with the inclination accept it for what it truly is: a deep wound within our persons which we joyfully choose to unite with the Suffering Christ, on behalf of those we love so dearly in the gay community. By his wounds we are healed, and by the acceptance and transformation of our wounds, through the love of Christ, the Holy Spirit will draw them home to their Heavenly Father.

I Want to Talk Like God Is Real & Is Here

I was speaking with a Mexican friend the other day. I told him he had a beautiful family, and he said, almost automatically, “Gracias a Dios.” Thanks to God. I don’t know why it struck me that time in particular, since it’s a very natural and unremarkable expression in Spanish. But it did strike me. It made be think how devoid of God-language English has become.

This is especially true of the benighted Frozen Chosen, of whom I am, at least marginally, one. But even if we come from a tradition that uses expressions that actually make it seem like the Lord Jesus might actually exist in a way that affects their lives, these phrases often feel very artificial. Pentecostals and every sort of gnostically-inclined Protestant sound clunky and overly pious when they insist on appending “Lord willing” as a qualifier at the end of any definite statement of plans in the near future based on this passage in James 4. It is used almost exclusively among people who will recognize it as a sign of to-be-admired piety, but seldom at work or in the company of the father-in-law. The more sacramental Anglicans might be comfortable with more Christian phrases, many from Scripture, that invoke God’s blessings in an everyday sort of way. Sadly that is only an accident of phrasing; there is nothing everyday about the Anglican and his liturgical language. There was once, but that is a relic of the past.

Also please understand that I’m not talking about buzzwords and catchphrases that the latest megachurch or youth movement or earnest book  has introduced. I’m talking about really universal phrases.

So ingrained, for good or ill, is “Thanks to God” in Portuguese that “I’m an atheist, thanks be to God” is a natural-sounding joke. And not quite on the same level as “Thank God I’m an atheist”, relief being the only emotion the English “thank God” is able to convey.

I don’t mean to call out any particular Christian traditions. For many years I and nearly all the Christians I’ve shared the table with (not just at my current church) haven’t even made pentecostal- or Anglican-level attempts at shaping our everyday automatic English this way. I’m not calling out, but I am resolving to add certain phrases to my vocabulary, and suggesting that you consider doing the same.

Of course, there are problems with Christ-saturated language. Or even just religiously saturated language. Portuguese and Spanish are my comparison gauges. Portuguese features a word that is used very commonly, oxalá, and Spanish has the same word, ojalá; it comes from the Muslim occupation of Iberia, and means literally “if Allah wills it”. Oxalá is used as a part of everyday speech, with almost none of its users knowing the word’s origins. It replaces “hopefully” and “keep your fingers crossed”.

There is an sense in which the use of certain Christian phrases can be like oxalá, that is, said reflexively and without any real thought or awareness of its meaning. It can even be done superstitiously. But that’s no reason not to do it yourself. Many people talk of the “churched” population of the South, of the ubiquity of churches here and the religiosity of Southerners as if it were an evil to be condemned as leading to inevitable hypocrisy. While the ubiquity of some form of Christianity in the South has its own problems, it is surely better to be Christ-haunted that to have no glimpse of Christ at all. Christian culture is good, and so is Christian language, even if it gets abused from time to time (or often). Some might be superstitious, some might take the Lord’s name in vain, but there are only two ways that will change. Either everyone forgets the name of the Lord, or all the righteous call upon him. It’s because I prefer the second option that I’m going to make an attempt to use certain phrases, which I’ll here list, in my everyday speech.

1. God be with you/Be with God. You can say it coming and going. You can use it to salute Christians and to bless unbelievers. And as these depart, you can say Go with God. The word “goodbye”, by the way, is an alteration of “God be with you”. Portuguese, like Spanish and French, says goodbye by saying “to God”.

2. God willing. I want to avoid using it after any mention of plans or the future, as in “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.” I grew up around people who felt guilty making any declarative statement about the future (I won’t say I wasn’t one) without using that phrase. But that can end up being a piety-stick that risks being as boastful as the men mentioned in James 4 were. I do, however, want to use it as an invocation, as an acknowledgment that although breathing and going to the supermarket are gifts of God, this other thing would be a special gift from my father. “God willing our baby will be born healthy.” “God willing my parents get here safely.” Or even, if you wish, “I’m going shopping tomorrow…God willing.”

3. Thanks to God/Thank God. This is the most awkward one to use in English, but the one I am most anxious to introduce into my vocabulary, since I’m an ungrateful sort of fellow. In Portuguese it sounds very natural to say “Our baby was born healthy, graças a Deus.” Or “My parents got here safely, graças a Deus.” Using “thanks to God” in those sentences sounds stilted, but using “thank God” only sounds relieved. Relief is all that is left of that phrase in English.

4. God bless you. This is one in which English has a leg up on the Latin languages, which merely wish a sneezer “health!” But I, as have most English-speakers, have been trained to say simply “bless you”. Since I intend to invoke the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I will say “God bless you”. This is the one I’ve had the most success making a part of my speech patterns, because it’s the one that takes the least courage. If the mood is lighthearted I will say to a sneezer, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace.”

I’m going to go for it. I’m going to use the phrases. Lord willing. And I’m going to try not to sound like an ass. I’m going to try to sound like I am a son of God, and that God is with me. Ask me in a while how that went.

Ordinary Time Is Awesome Time: Your Joy No Man Taketh From You

El Greco, “The Pentecost”

Please find here the text of Peter’s post-Pentecost sermon, a.k.a. The Sermon. One of the best things about The Sermon is that it is a response to mockers; to those who in another age would be known as player haters.

The mockers say “These men are full of new wine.” Peter doesn’t try to justify himself to the haters, as is the compulsion of so much of the modern church. It would be easy to read the passage that way if your only way of thinking of the pulpit was as a place to “meet people where they are”. He doesn’t hasten to explain, “No, no, no, don’t worry guys, this isn’t what it looks like,” then spend time making excuses and explaining away, nor to say that God longs to be accepted by them as they are.

Peter pricks them in the heart. He hurts them. He tells them that Jesus has been exalted as king and will put all his enemies under his feet. He accuses the listeners of being traitorous regicides.

He tells an amazing drunken story of resurrection, repentance, baptism, and salvation.

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There are a lot of separatist “fundamentalists” in my neck of the woods. These Christians separate themselves from the world, refuse to drink alcohol or expose their arms, and leave tracts instead of money in tip jars.

Who are these people? What do they matter to you and me?

They don’t matter at all.

They haven’t filled themselves with excuses and a longing to be liked by men, but neither have they been awesome. No one accuses them of being full of new wine. No one is amazed, or in doubt, or says to another, what meaneth this?

Pentecost Sunday is past. We are now in Ordinary Time. You have been given the Holy Spirit. The Kingdom is come in you. The Kingdom makes demands, it pricks in the heart. Live a life that demands the question, what meaneth this?

And if I may suggest it, perhaps you’d like to do that with the emphasis that I’ve chosen for my own good-spell telling: unapologetic feasting. Listen, these are not drunken as you suppose; they are filled with joy, and the Holy Ghost.

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We are a special people.

Yes, special like the short bus.

Special like Batman.

If you are single-mindedly obsessed with saving the world, you will look ridiculous. If you act as if God is your joy and comfort, as if all your needs will be met by him, you will look ridiculous.

Live the sort of profligately joyful life that the world could only call foolhardy. As if the resources of all of Creation were yours. Because they are; your Father has promised them to you. Suffer and rejoice. Feast in your poverty. Give alms; care for widows; you will always have enough. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

This summer the Swait family is throwing a party, our second “Swait Summer Soiree”. Last year’s was a blast. We bought all the beer and provided all the food and hosted over a hundred people in our back yard. We made a huge deal out of it. Friends came from all over. We invited everyone we knew, and so many people came. There were children running all over, kicking beach balls into the street and making Kimberly fret about her newly planted blueberry bushes. There were young married couples sharing beers with divorcees on the stoop. There were rugby players and artists playing poker and smoking cigars under the dogwood trees. I tell everyone this, so you’ve probably heard me say it, but I went to sleep around two and left a dozen people hanging out around a table in our yard, keeping the party vigil. It might have been the most awesome party ever.

It was a wonderful refresher and source of joy for us.

The reason we decided to host that party last year was because I was not getting enough work, and not getting payed enough. We couldn’t pay our bills. We were struggling and weary to the point of exhaustion. We were dry and lost and grieved.

So we threw a party. Seriously. It was crazy.

And now that we’re not in crisis, and haven’t been for months, we’ll throw another party.

Let the mockers say that you are full of new wine. The truth is that you are full of the Holy Spirit. You know that you are held in the palm of God’s hand; that is why you behave the way you do. That is why you are full of joy.

This year we’ve hit Ordinary time. Easter and Pentecost are over. Where is my Risen Lord? How can I live without you here, Lord Jesus?

I have a Comforter.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.

Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me.

But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence.

Now Jesus knew that they were desirous to ask him, and said unto them, Do ye enquire among yourselves of that I said, A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me?

Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.

A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.

And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.

And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

Giant Chaste Guy #1: The Erotic Poet

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.

Introduction To Several Former Male Virgins

UPDATE: You can click on this link to follow the guest posts as they are written this week.

This week The Giant is featuring several guest posts on a topic near and dear to me: sweet virginity.

Okay, well, maybe not sweet virginity. The posts are on male virginity until marriage.

There is an ocean of articles, stories, and opinions on American sexual behavior we could explore together. These works are largely untrustworthy, given the nature of the subject, the biases of sociologists, and the straight freakiness one would never be far from (Alfred Kinsey preferred to masturbate by inserting a toothbrush into his urethra; this was the least of his perversions, yet he was trusted as the defining word on American sexual behavior). Still, many trends and tendencies are obvious even to those of us who only use toothbrushes for toothbrushing.

Many many most Americans have sex before they marry (I’ve seen numbers as high as 95%), and most of them not with the person they end up marrying. I’m not going to link to any reports. As I said, I am very skeptical of such reports, but they’re very easy to find online, and even if they’re not factually accurate, they tell an accurate story.

So most people have sex before they marry, which we are told is natural and healthy. We hear of the existence of strange people who fall outside the pale of normal behavior, and we raise our eyebrows but affirm their right to healthy alternativity; strange creatures such as asexuals and nonsexuals who prefer not to have or never have had sex but are distinct from virgins. Strange, perhaps, not normal, but since they claim to lack the appetites the rest of us have, how can we expect them to need to satisfy them?

The true perversion is evident in people who claim to have sexual appetites, but wait an unhealthy amount of time, until they’re all grown up and married.

In a fun little twist on top of that little idea is a touch of misogyny. We say it’s unhealthy to suppress overmuch our sexual drive, and we include women in that statement. After all we, unlike those stupid Victorians, know that women have robust sexual appetites. Yet if we hear a woman claim that she was virgin until she married, we might feel a touch of condescension and pity, but we’ll believe her. We don’t believe men when they make the same claim.

I was a virgin when I married at twenty-two. When people hear this they are absolutely blown away. Seriously. They are blown away; they look as if they cannot believe it. Some have outright claimed to not believe me. The only way I can think to explain it is that I am a handsome healthy male free of any crippling social handicaps. Many people firmly believe that the only way a male would make it into early adulthood without having had sex would be if it had been against his will.

This is the dominant view of sexual development in the young American male: a single-minded obsession with mating grows with each passing post-pubescent moment until the subject is in agony, an agony which is only relieved when the male find a female to mate with. Countless stupid movies testify to this.

This has always offended me. It makes men seem like animals. Sadly, the longer we portray men as animals, the more they actually behave as if they were.

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I don’t claim that I was absolutely “pure” before I married. I got involved in some situations that in a different cultural context would have placed me in serious trouble, regardless of whether I was “technically” a virgin or not. And I don’t get hung up on being a virgin. What I do get hung up on is the disbelief and condescension that accompanies claims by Christian males to be virgin. And this is because I was far from unique. My wife and I met at a Christian student union in college. I knew lots of guys who were virgins, I knew guys who weren’t virgins but were celibate, and I knew guys who were almost certainly not virgining, if you’ll allow the term.

The point is, I grew up in a milieu in which it was not crazy that a male might be a virgin by choice. And I didn’t grow up Prairie Muffin or King James-only fundamentalist. Nor did I grow up at 1st Mainstream Baptist or Megachurch 3000.

When I thought of doing this series of guest posts I thought I’d ask a few guys who met these criteria to contribute:

  • Christian
  • married
  • cool guy (to be free of the dismissive “he couldn’t get laid if he tried” charge)
  • had been a virgin until marriage (obviously)
  • good writer
  • different perspective from the other guest bloggers

Believe it or not, I don’t go around asking my friends and acquaintances whether they were virgins when they married. Now if a friend of mine spent time, say, as an actor and a drug fiend (I don’t know which is worse), I assume he wasn’t. So take that into account. But I just asked a half-dozen guys I knew who I thought were good writers, and only one responded back that he wasn’t “qualified”.

There’s nothing scientific about that. I’m just illustrating that there are entire communities out there where being a young male virgin is pretty normal. These are not freaky little cult communities, just Christian cultures full of people who study civil engineering or play football or listen to Neutral Milk Hotel or love history or watch too much TV. I’m not surprised to know lots of men who were virgins until they married.

Some of my Christian friends grew up in the church and couldn’t wait to get out from under. They hated the notion that as youngsters they couldn’t have sex, or that the price they’d have to pay was so high. But the truth is, at the time those young men hated Christ. They didn’t want anything to do with Jesus and his Church, but they were too scared to up and leave, so they were full of resentment. When I was in high school I knew plenty of guys like that. What was normal for me, however, was hanging with a bunch of virgins who expected to be virgins until they married, and while it might have been a struggle, it only made them look forward to marriage, not resent their situation.

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Today I had a conversation with wifey that is tangentially connected to all this.

Me: “We’re pals.”

Wifey: “Don’t call me ‘pal’. We’re not pals. We’re…”

Me: “Lovers?” *suggestive eyebrow waggle*

Wifey: “No! ‘Lovers’ isn’t enough! We’re husband and wife.”

That is correct. You will notice, if you choose to read the guest posts throughout this week, that intimacy is a big part of what is being discussed. It’s not just popular Christian “mean girls” played by Mandy Moore who believe that premarital sex can make intimacy in a marriage more difficult. It’s also dudes with beards and plaid shirts.

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I hope that no one will be offended for the wrong reasons during this series. That is to say, I don’t mind if you’re offended, but don’t be offended because you or someone you love isn’t a virgin. Love covers a multitude of sins. I don’t care if you’re not a virgin; I do care if you’re faithful to Christ. And I’m not going to write a million myriads of posts to preserve everyone’s feelings. We’re talking about this thing right here. Pose your what-ifs, but don’t get pissed about it.

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Below are the questions I asked of these guys, and I hope you’ll find their responses interesting. Expect one or two a day for the rest of the week.

You were a virgin until you married. How old were you at that time?

If a [Christian] man is not a virgin when he marries, how big a deal is that?

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?

You must be some kind of wuss. So must other “wait ’til we’re married” guys. What do you say to that?

What good did staying a virgin until marriage do you?

If you haven’t already answered this question, how would you say it impacted your marriage? your sex life?

There it is. Hopefully this will be theologically, sociologically, and phenomenologically interesting. And yes, I know the preceding sentence sounded douchey. Enjoy the posts. If you want to send in feedback without using the comment form, email me here.