I am an official groupie....or just a seminary nerd...

About two years ago, a friend of mine gave me a copy of Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner, and told me that I just had to read it because I would love it. So, I did. And I did (love it that is). From the very beginning her writing style caught my attention and made me love her book--her subtle sarcasm, her brutal honesty in some places, and her wit made me a new Lauren Winner fan. Several months ago I came across a new book by her, Mudhouse Sabbath, and devoured it in about a day. It's a short little book that I have written about before on my blog (see "The Liturgy of an 8-Year Old in May of 2006 for more...) but basically she connects the Jewish life and traditions she grew up with to her now-evangelical beliefs as a Christian, and discusses how much the Christian faith is missing by having done away with the traditions that the Jewish faith is steeped in. Mudhouse made me become even more crazy about her...I loved the things she was arguing in her books and found myself becoming slightly more starstruck by this young woman. So, last April I was playing around on her website (www.laurenwinner.net) and looked up her speaking engagements just for fun--to see if she was coming anywhere remotely near Los Angeles anytime soon. I remember being in class playing on the internet (shhh! don't tell my professor!) and about fell over in my chair when I read that on October 25th she would be at Fuller Theological Seminary speaking several times throughout the day. I think I put her on my calendar then and there and figured that I would just skip or cancel any obligations that day to hear her. So after months of waiting the day finally arrived. I knew chapel would be packed, they'd been advertising for her pretty heavily around campus, so I showed up early, got a seat near the front andlooked up and there she was! Definitely a surreal experience seeing someone I've adored for so long there in person. Her talk was taken from her new book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity and was entitled Lies the Church Tells About Sex. She was fabulous to listen to--this woman is unbelievably intelligent (she graduated from both high school and college early) and has such a solid understanding of community and the church's role in people's lives. Her whole premise is that the messages about sex that the church and church youth groups often send people are so unhelpful, and often completely untrue. She's very open about her own past, how she didn't grow up Christian, she had sex in high school and college, and even after her conversion that was one thing she didn't want to give up. It wasn't until she had been a Christian for awhile that she finally figured out having sex before she was married was sin, and try as she did she could not figure out a way to justify her behavior, so she embraced the mandate to live a chaste life until she married her husband 3 years ago. She made some points yesterday morning that I thought were incredibly helpful and I love that someone has finally put them into words and is being vocal about them.

One of the lies she believes the church tells people about sex before marriage is that if you have premarital sex, you will feel bad and guilty about it. Period. Her point is that if we go around telling people this as a scare tactic, it won't work. People will have sex outside of marriage and like she says, they won't necessarily feel guilty about it--they'll enjoy it. What she would love to see the church doing instead is starting by talking about sin. What is sin? How does Satan work? Sin separates us from God, but it doesn't always make us feel "bad." That's the nature of sin--we tend to enjoy the things that are sinful--so she argues that instead we need to start by talking about sin and move from there to talk about specific sins.

Another lie she believes the church tells people about sex is that women have no sex drive. Thie is often the message the is preached in youth groups--guys are told they need to control their out of control raging sex drives and girls are told that they are going to have to fend off these walking hormones coming after them. Very rarely are young girls taught that they too might have a sex drive--they will be attracted to guys, they will experience feelings of desire, and that is NORMAL. Instead girls often feel shameful and guilty when those feelings DO show up because they don't think they are normal and this lie also makes guys out to be the bad guy all the time.

The third lie she points out that many churches tell people is that if you have had premarital sex, you have participated in the unforgivable sin. Her main point here is that sexual chastity is NOT the most important thing when it comes to discipleship, yet the church often acts like it is. She belives that forgiveness and grace is THE key to understanding Christ and there is NOTHING we can do that the blood of Christ cannot forgive and heal, and when we single out sexual sins in the church it makes people feel like Jesus can forgive everything BUT having sex before they get married. She's clear that forgiveness should not be a justification for people to go out and sleep aroun, but that there IS forgiveness and grace at the foot of the cross.

After she gave her talk there was a panel discussion for another hour with her and 2 of our faculty members answering questions and that discussion lead to some great conversations. One of the comments I loved that came out of that conversation (and I'm not even sure what the original question was) is that there is a profound double standard in the church today. She used the example of internet pornography. She said for most evangelical men, looking at porn online is almost a mark of being a good Christian as long as they are "struggling" with it. Think about that--how many forums and seminars are there to help Christian men "struggling" with this addiction? Thousands. Most of us women don't even bat an eye anymore when the topic comes up in evanglical circles--we know it's an issue and it's almost expected that Christian men will struggle with this. However, like Lauren pointed out yesterday, thousands of women struggle with internet pornography as well, and in no circles in our country would that ever be the "mark" of a "good" evangelical woman. Just like the idea that women have no sex drive, and they are to be the docile, innocent girls until they get married and then they are all of a sudden supposed to flip the switch and turn into "raging sex kittens" on their honeymoon (her words, not mine!) It was a fascinating conversation and then again last night she spoke and participated in another pannel to answer questions with our own Dr. Mouw (Fuller's president). Both chapel and the night time lecture were packed, and the question and answer time could have kept going for hours, which I think only goes to show how much this book and her ideas have struck a chord and how needed these conversations are. Like she said yesterday, "churches spend a LOT of time talking about sex, yet they do such a poor job of it. If churches could figure out a way to do a better job dealing with this issue they wouldn't have to spend near the amount of time talking about it. Sexuality is not the most important piece of true discipleship, yet the way that churches talk one would think that is all that matters to following Jesus."

I have several more random thoughts about her and her talks yesterday--but I have to go babysit so I can't write any more tonight...hopefully tomorrow I'll have a chance to add another story of a question that was asked yesterday that I thought was hysterical (and I'm pretty sure by the look on her face that Lauren did too...so check back!)