A while back I read a post that really upset me, it was written by a woman of about the same age as me, who in this post said she used to be a Christian. The given reason for her departure from the church was that as a young teenager they had encouraged her to stay a virgin until marriage through the silver ring program, and she did it, but after her wedding night and the loss of her virginity she went into a deep depression. She didn't enjoy intimacy with her husband and felt ashamed of herself each time they made love because she wasn't a virgin anymore. She said that after a year of this she finally confessed it all to her husband. Her husband was an only child raised by a woman that in this article written by her daughter in law is described as a feminist, and it was also said that neither she or her son were really into the church.
The husband and his mother soon encouraged her to see a secular therapist to 'deal with the trauma the church had caused her.' The therapist by her account, said that the trauma came from her identifying herself as a virgin first, allowing it to become her identity, and I very much agree on this point, but he too blamed the church for this. This article said that because of the praise she had received and the pats on the back for her decision to wait that she allowed 'virgin' to be who she was, it was a point of pride for her, and the loss of her virginity took that all away for her and along with it her sense of who she was. Her response to all this was to through therapy and marriage counseling to help get past this and I applaud her for getting help, but what upset me was that she now uses this experience and shares it with young girls through her writing as a means of encouraging them to have premarital sex with different partners. She says that they should 'experience life and all it has to offer, experiment and figure things, and avoid falling into the same trap.'
Her current stance on sex alone is enough to upset me, with all the STDs and typically unwanted teen pregnancies as it is, but what is most upsetting to me is that no one bothered to correct her in her belief that the church was to blame for her problem. Yes the church did encourage her as most churches will to save herself for marriage, and yes I am sure that the congregation at the church she went to did pat her on the back a lot and give her a lot of praise and encouragement for the choice, but she was the one who allowed it to become her identity instead of Jesus. She was the one that got so wrapped up in being a virgin that she forgot that first and foremost she was a child of God, and that's really what I wanted to show you with this story today because it is something that anyone of us could do, and probably have or will do at some point.
We must be careful not to get so wrapped up in titles, or works that we forget who we are and what our purpose is. We all need to recognize and remember that we are the children of God redeemed by the blood of the risen lamb, our Lord Jesus(Galatians 2:20). We need to remember the cross and be humbled by it, we need to be focused on Him first, and allow His love in our lives to reach out and touch others with the gospel. We can be pastors, virgins, authors, singers, lawyers, mothers and fathers, etc. those are all good things, but they are just titles, we cannot let them replace Christ as our identity. As shown with this story, anything that we let become our source of identity other than Jesus can have major, damaging effects on our lives, and our relationships with God and others. I encourage you today to take a minute to examine your heart now, is there a title or something else in your life that you have allowed to replace Jesus as your source of identity? Is there something pulling your focus from Him? Be blessed in Jesus holy precious name.
Romans 14:7-9
7 For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. 8 If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
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