"Give Me Sex Jesus"

I watched Give Me Sex Jesus, a documentary about the Christian evangelical purity movement, for the first time last night.

That title though.

The film is streaming for free on Vimeo. 

Background: I've had my eye on this documentary ever since the Kickstarter campaign in 2012 when the title was "Jesus, Don't Let Me Die Before I've Had Sex." I attended the same church as Matt Barber (the director) for a few years, and I know some of the people interviewed. 

No, I never signed an abstinence pledge (though memories of doing so are notoriously tenuous) or wore a purity ring--though I might as well have. 

Purity culture raised me, and I fully embraced its principles. 

So, watching this documentary, I had quite a few thoughts and emotions--

I laughed. I cringed. Many of the interviews were some combination of funny, poignant, and heartbreaking. In the end, I wanted more.

I wanted to know how it all turned out--how the gay son of a prominent Christian family worked out his faith and his sexuality, if his dad ever spoke to him again or invited him to family dinners.

I wanted to know what happens when getting married doesn't give you the amazing sex life you were promised, how purity culture affects Christian dating culture, and how the filmmakers came to make the film that they made. 

Truthfully, it is the story behind the story that intrigues me the most. And it's a quite a story: 

Matt Barber left his faith and his marriage during the making of this film, as he details in this Life After God podcast. He is currently in a relationship with producer and co-filmmaker Brittany Machado.

Machado tells a similar story about leaving Christianity. She writes about having sex for the first time in college after a youth spent embracing purity culture:

"If my faith were a Jenga tower, then this brick of sexual truth was pulled from the bottom of the stack. From there everything started wobbling a bit."

This. This is the story that I'm interested in. Matt and Brittany's stories make plain what I have long suspected: That if you give up on the sex part, then you might as well give up on the Christian part too--

Richard Beck at his blog "Experimental Theology" writes about how purity is a metaphor, and not a good one, for sexual morality. Unfortunately, the purity metaphor seems to hold true in another way: 

Essentially, just as there is ONE way to have sex (in heterosexual marriage), there is also only ONE way to think and feel and talk about sex. Anything I might think or say or feel about sexuality that contradicts this doctrinal purity throws my entire faith into question. 

It feels like heresy--which is probably why I find stories about leaving Christianity so fascinating.

Watching this documentary, I realized that for me, sexual morality and what I do with my body are so intertwined with my identity as a Christian, that I can't even begin to untangle them. 

It's hard to imagine other aspects of my identity in the same way:

For example, if being a feminist or a writer or a college graduate or heterosexual or writing about racism seemed to be incompatible with Christian faith, would I have left long ago?

Maybe this happens to us all. We hit a wall--something that seems irreconcilable--whether it's our sexuality, our beliefs about the nature of men and women, racism, evolution and the study of science, "Christian" political beliefs, etc. 

In the end, I don't think it's about sex (YES IT IS! EVERYTHING IS ABOUT SEX!), but about purity--about a certain kind of certainty that I can no longer embrace.

It's about asking the kinds of questions that I want to ask, having the kinds of conversations that feel taboo, writing about what I want to write about.

Wanting these things and pursuing them doesn't feel like leaving Christianity, but it does feel like leaving behind being a certain kind of Christian, if that makes any sense.

Even if I didn't have to give up faith itself, I would have to take a leaving of a different sort--leaving behind evangelical Christianity and the community that has felt the most like home here in Los Angeles.

More conversation:

Watch the film HERE
Life After God podcast
Hot Buttered Shame on the Dana Gould podcast
How Christians Have Sex - Personal response to watching "Give Me Sex Jesus" from a lapsed Christian (?) slash LA comedian

If you've watched the film and want to talk about it, or you haven't the watched the film and want to talk about it, I'm here. Let's talk.

What About Grace?

These three words have stuck with me.

I had just set clear-cut boundaries in a relationship. Someone I had been close to hurt me--intentionally or not, I have no idea. I set boundaries in order to protect myself, not punish him. And he responded with anger:

"What about grace?"

I remember how much he seemed to hate me, even as he uttered these words.

What I was doing was the opposite of grace: Not-Grace--condemnation, judgment, bitterness, unforgiveness (a sin for Christians).

By setting boundaries in a relationship, I was refusing to extend "grace." How often is grace invoked when a public Christian figure has an affair, sexually abuses children, uses shame and ostracism to control church members. How often is grace invoked by Christians in an--as far as I can tell--ungracious tone of voice.

Here, let me lecture you about what grace is, right before I bash you over the head with it, you sinner.

Grace as artillery. Forgiveness as a weapon.

What is grace, anyway?

I picture something beautiful. Something quiet, yet unrelenting.

In that moment, I didn't feel grace. I felt anger, hatred, and blame--if he hated me, if he abused me, it was my fault for not being graceful, or full of grace.

In this lopsided arrangement, grace is always for the perpetrator, never for the victim. It shames you for not being more forgiving. It reminds you that you too are an imperfect person in need of grace. It urges you to forgive, well before you are ready. It puts the burden on you to restore the perpetrator to wholeness.

So, what about grace?

Reflecting from a distance, Grace was setting boundaries. Grace was asking for help when those boundaries were violated. Grace was having the courage and the freedom to leave. Grace was feeling safe again. Grace was and is refusing to blame myself for the actions of another person.

Grace is not intimidation or threats. Grace is not a tool of manipulation or coercion. Grace is not an angry, 6'4'' man cursing at you, getting in your face, and demanding that you forgive him.

I crave the grace of small, tiny moments when I am allowed to grieve. When it is okay to be not okay. Where my reactions are not judged or rejected.

Grace. What about it.