It's a thorny issue

I come from a Christian background and this is what shaped most of my world, church and the Bible was all I knew when I grew up.  While little girls were dressing Barbie, I was dressing my Bible because I was not just an ordinary church member, but I was a PK; now that is a story for another day.  Today I have thoughts going through my mind and I would love to express them, might be a bit too uncomfortable for the more conservative folks, in fact, you need to read this, the more conservative, the better.

Growing up, my parents were very open about the bees and the birds topic.  My mother bombarded me with sexual education pamphlets when I was at the beginning of my primary school career and I was already a peer counselor and facilitator at the tender age of 10.  My brothers and I did not get to explore one of those fantasy worlds where babies came from airplanes or from the bush (he he he), instead, we knew exactly where babies came from, so to us, there was no excuse for not understanding the "purity doctrine".  Just like every child in Sunday school, we were taught about purity – that sex before marriage was not allowed and it is not something to be desired. We were also taught that as a Christian lady, "thou shalt not be seen with many boys and desire after sex lest you be called the village bicycle". So this created a psychological conditioning in our minds that sex is a NO GO ZONE!

I remember while in grade 8, a girl in my neighborhood fell pregnant, I also remember that it was never the boy's fault but rather the girl's fault. So as good christian girls, we grew up with the notion that sex is bad and psychologically our minds did not allow us to ponder or explore a sense of curiosity because it was bad and you will be looked upon in shame, hence sex became a taboo and shaped certain behaviours as the girl became a lady and eventually got married one day. For the boy child who later becomes a man, the general word is that a man is a "sexual" being hence he is allowed to have temptation issues.  We grow up knowing that men struggle in the areas of sex and that all they think about is sex, while on the other hand, women should not even dare think about sex before marriage.  If a unmarried christian woman starts a "sex" topic, she runs the risk of being judged.  This is where I think we fail ourselves.

Being a psychology geek, I live to analyse human behaviour and one gets to learn and discover a lot about this very complex being called "a human being".  In actual fact, women do struggle with sexuality, the older you are, the harder it gets.  We are living in a society where single christian women cannot be vocal about their sexual challenges because in the christian community such things are to a certain extent, not discussed.  One lady once inboxed me on Facebook asking if I could post her issue on my wall for my friends to comment as she needed to see if she was the only one who was struggling with this certain issue or if she really was this huge sinner damned for condemnation.  Her issue was that as a christian lady, she is trying extremely hard to keep herself celibate until marriage but her libido was giving her a problem.  I posted the issue as per her request and the range of advise was really interesting, those who did not subscribe to "no sex before marriage" said that she should get a partner to relieve herself, while my christian buddies said, "take it to the LORD in prayer".  Although that is the ultimate advise, I feel we do a disservice to ourselves by not addressing such pertinent key issues in our circles, we merely shy away from them and prescribe prayer alone to sort out the issue forgetting that as much as we are spiritual beings, we are human beings too and a practical solution which involves spiritual intervention would be more welcomed.If I have a weight issue and my diet is poor, I cannot simply pray the fat away without eating healthy and exercising.  I need to incorporate a healthy schedule around my prayer life.  For example: when I go running in the morning, I ask the LORD to help strengthen me during my run, Faith without works is simply dead.

I think this is the very thing that leads people to leading double standard secretive lives; you struggle with this ill alone and once something is a secret, it is open for temptation.  I once had a client who could not understand her urge to have sex all the time and thus was a very promiscuous individual. No one could ever imagine that this individual had such a behaviour - to some this might be normal but to what she believed, she did not want it to be a part of her life and she needed to get to the bottom of things.  I took her through her life mapping and discovered that as a child, she was sexually abused and most sexually abused individuals can resort to behaviours which include being promiscuous for many reasons (will explore this further in another post) , as a 5 year old, she was not ready to deal with being sexually stimulated and problems arose in the future trying to cope with this stimulation.* With identifying this, we could now deal with the root problem and give her some responsibility on how to manage her issue, this intervention through prayer and God's guidance has helped her a great deal.

Women also face sexual temptation issues and in no way does that make them jezebels, if we were more open around topics such as this - going further than the "sex before marriage is wrong" message and actually addressing what happens when temptation knocks at your door. How to apply the WORD into your life during such confrontations.

Whenever I work with teenagers, I speak to them like  the adults they are.  The teenagers of today know a lot and experiment more, and sometimes, do not totally grasp the concept of consequence.  That is why you can teach them something and five minutes later, they go against the very thing you have taught them.  Teenagers prefer openness and honesty and knowing that they can take responsibility for their decisions.  I create a very open platform for the teenagers I work with, making them understand that I know the challenges that they are facing and discussing practical solutions of how not to get intertwined in them.  That is why a teenager at any given time, will not hesitate to contact me should they be faced with any temptation.  I use certain phrase words with them, that even at the point of temptation, they will remember "Big Sister" - this obviously does not work for everyone, but it has shown to be extremely successful.  This I believe builds a great foundation for them in understanding why "no sex before marriage" and not just see it as a RULE set up by an angry GOD.  This will in turn build up a mature christian who sees the walk with God as in their blood and not some rule they are trying to uphold. 

*Individual has granted me permission to use her story in this blog

1 Corinthians 6:13

New Living Translation (NLT)

¹³ You say, “Food was made for the stomach, and the stomach for food.” (This is true, though someday God will do away with both of them.) But you can’t say that our bodies were made for sexual immorality. They were made for the Lord, and the Lord cares about our bodies.