Sex and money: worth talkin' about

Lauren Winner, Real Sex

Too often the church, rather than giving unmarried Christians useful tools and t hick theologies to help us live chastely, instead tosses off a few bromides—“True love waits” is not that compelling when you’re twenty-nine and have been waiting, and wonder what, really, you’re waiting for.

Indeed, the instruction to just zip perhaps fails to recognize that one resists strong bodily urges like sexual desire not primarily through willpower, but through grace.

But if we see scripture not merely as a code of behavior but as a map of God’s reality, and if we take seriously the pastoral task of helping unmarried Christians live chastely, the church needs not merely to recite decontextualized Bible verses, but to ground our ethics in the faithful living of the fullness of the gospel.

Perhaps the revelatory thing for me about money is that I have the power. I could, work a couple hours and baby sit on Friday’s and use that money to donate to providing after-care for young women rescued from trafficking in Cebu.

What am I willing to go without so I can have more to give, to save, to spend if necessary?

Can I understand money? For most of my life—frankly, until now—I thought it was some esoteric entity comprehensible only by an elite few. Certainly not lower-middle-class moi. Money is mysterious in some ways, but still understandable.

I could buy x, or I could not buy x. Having the option to buy something was revelatory to me, almost as much as the option of not having to buy x.