No, I'm not harboring some kind of wish that my husband will become a Christian

Clip-art image of a bride and groom. Image source.

So JD Vance said that he hopes his wife Usha (who is Hindu) will become a Christian. Here's a link, from Hemant Mehta: JD Vance wants his Hindu wife to convert. It’s Christian Nationalism: Home Edition. 

When asked about this, Vance said a lot of things that sound nice, like how he loves his wife, they talk about this together and work out something that works for their family, he respects that people have free will and can believe what they believe. He's good at saying things that sound nice and reasonable but then when you look at the overall picture of what he's doing, the things he is actively supporting, it's the opposite of that. (JD Vance creeps me out for this reason.)

Anyway, he says they are raising their children as Christians, and that he hopes his wife will become a Christian eventually.

First of all, I want to say I don't find this surprising at all. In my experience with evangelicalism, of course we believed everyone is supposed to become a Christian. Vance is Catholic so there might be some differences between his view and the evangelical view, but yeah overall I get it. We believed that non-Christians are all going to hell. And that knowing Jesus makes our day-to-day lives so much better, and everybody else must be suffering so much, living without Jesus.

There's something kind of ... weird... about being in a marriage and believing that there's something fundamentally wrong with your spouse and they need to change. I'm not sure how to describe it. Disrespectful?

I was taught that Christians shouldn't marry non-Christians- then you will be "unequally yoked" and the non-Christian will be a bad influence, causing the Christian to "water down" their faith. This is an extremely normal thing for evangelicals to say, but I find it really offensive. They use the analogy "what if you were standing on a chair, and you were trying to pull someone up- wouldn't it be much more likely that they would pull you down?" WTF, why are we framing this like Christians are higher, better, more moral than non-Christians. Like a non-Christian can only be a bad influence on you. 

I'm a Christian and my husband is not, and we've been together for a really long time and it just really isn't an issue? Because I don't believe he needs to change. Why would he need to change? What reason is there to think that it would be beneficial to him to convert to Christianity?

(A key part of this is that I don't believe in hell. Or, rather, the evangelical version of hell, where the criteria are one's beliefs about Jesus. But surely there has to be some kind of judgment for people who, for example, go around making up dehumanizing lies about immigrants.)

Sure, if someone is interested in becoming a Christian, then yeah it would be a good thing for them to do so. But if they have no interest in it, then ... why try to convince them? How would that help anything? Even if you make the argument "well it's true, and it's better for people to believe true things than false things"- okay, so if it's true that Jesus was raised from the dead, what are the implications of that? Christians have all sorts of different opinions on what it means for us, what it teaches us about the nature of the world, morality, etc- and some of these interpretations are harmful. It's not clear that the truth of the Resurrection is enough to say that it would be a good thing for people to convert to Christianity- what if they convert to one of the anti-human varieties of Christianity? (Like, for example, one that teaches that non-Christians are lower than us and are only going to pull you down.)

For our kids, my thinking is, I want them to be able to make an informed decision for themselves. I want to teach them enough about the bible and Jesus and Christianity that they can understand why I'm so excited about it, why I find it so amazing and life-giving, why I think about incarnation all the time. To know what I love about it, so then they can decide for themselves.

Sometimes I'm reading a book about Christianity with our son, and my husband walks by and makes some kind of snarky comment about the bible. I appreciate that; we need people who make snarky comments about the bible.

I also want to tell our kids about other religions, and atheism, and that people have all sorts of different beliefs about God, and we can't ever know for sure, BUT the important thing is, we should do good and help people. We can be sure about that.

So no, I'm not sitting here in my marriage, thinking about how I've waited so long and I just hope my husband will become a Christian- no, I don't think like that at all. If he doesn't want to, then why would I want that for him? It's not a matter of "well I want him to, but I'm polite enough to not say it out loud"- no, I genuinely don't believe it's true that everyone would be better off if they became Christians.

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Related:

My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

The Second-Worst Bible Story

Ancient Jewish wedding. Image source.

In 2015, I wrote a post called The Worst Bible Story, which also included my pick for the second-worst bible story, Numbers 25. Right now I'm reading Wilda Gafney's book "Womanist Midrash," which has a section discussing Numbers 25. So let's talk about it.

The book discusses these 3 women or groups of women in connection with this story:

1. Women of Moab (Numbers 25)
2. Cozbi, daughter of Tzur (Numbers 25)
3. Women of Midian (Numbers 25 and 31)

Here's what Gafney says in the book, and my thoughts on it:

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Lumping together Moab and Midian

Numbers 25:1-2 says the Israelites committed "sexual immorality" with Moabite women, and also participated in the worship of the Moabite gods. ("Sexual immorality" is how the NIV translates it; Gafney does her own translations and puts it as "unsanctioned-intimate-relationships." She says this word can mean prostitution or promiscuity or worshiping other gods.) God and Moses order the Israelites involved to be executed.

Then, Cozbi (also translated as Kozbi), a Midianite women, is publicly killed by Phinehas the priest. And then Moses leads the Israelites into battle to get "vengeance" on the Midianites.

So, Gafney points out, wait a minute. The Moabites were the ones who "seduced" the Israelites, so why are we suddenly talking about Midianites? Why are the Israelites fighting the Midianites in retaliation for this? Gafney says (page 143):

The Moabite women, their God, and the Israelite women and men who joined their community sharing kinship ties and worship have been forgotten. This Midianite woman and her people become the focus of the saga. The Moabites and Midianites are interchangeable; they are all foreigners-- never mind that Israel is migrating through inhabited lands to a settled one, uninvited.

Years and years ago, when I was evangelical and spent my time arguing with atheists over whether the bible has contradictions, I would have reacted to someone pointing out this Moab/Midian issue like this: well, whatever, they were probably the same, right? Why do you want so badly to discredit the bible that you fixate on these little details?

And if I were reading the bible by myself, back then, I wouldn't have even noticed this switch from talking about Moab to talking about Midian. I read with an apologetics mindset, fully believing that there are no errors in the bible, and therefore with blinders on, subconsciously smoothing things over and filling in gaps so I wouldn't notice any errors. Moab and Midian, they're basically the same, right?

For me as a white Christian, this kind of thing would be simply be a philosophical argument over whether the bible is inerrant or not. But people of color have the experience of being lumped in together, even being victims of "mistargeted" racism. For example, someone hates Japan, so they bully a Chinese-American person, as if that's the same thing.

(I mean, all racism is like that though. Taking one bad example and believing it is true of a whole race. It's not like regular racism makes more sense than "mistargeted" racism.)

To believe in inerrancy, you have to racist-ly lump together the Moabites and Midianites, as if they're the same. So of course that's what I did, back then. As a white person you can just do that. But for people of color it's not so simple, because they themselves have been victims of that exact kind of racism.

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The wedding of Cozbi and Zimri

I was shocked that Gafney reads this part as a wedding. Here's how the NIV version of the bible puts it:

[content note for graphic violence]

Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. When Phinehas son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the priest, saw this, he left the assembly, took a spear in his hand and followed the Israelite into the tent. He drove the spear into both of them, right through the Israelite man and into the woman’s stomach. Then the plague against the Israelites was stopped ...

The name of the Israelite who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri son of Salu, the leader of a Simeonite family. And the name of the Midianite woman who was put to death was Kozbi daughter of Zur, a tribal chief of a Midianite family.

Here's Gafney's translation of the same passage:

Suddenly, a man from the women and men of Israel came and brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk, in the sight of Moshe (Moses) and in the sight of the whole congregation of the women and men of Israel, and they were weeping at the entrance of the tent of meeting! Then Pinchas (Phinehas) ben El'azar (Eleazar) ben Aharon (Aaron) the priest saw; he rose from the midst of the congregation and took a spear in his hand. He went after the Israelite man into the tent-chamber, and he stabbed the two of them, the Israelite man and the woman, through her inner-chamber, and the plague was stopped among the people of Israel... The name of the slain Israelite man who was killed with the Midianite woman was Zimri ben Salu, leader of an ancestral house belonging to the Simeonites. The name of the Midianite woman who was killed was Cozbi bat Tzur; Tzur was the head of peoples, of an ancestral house in Midian.

Gafney describes this as a wedding where the 2 newlyweds were publicly murdered. Where is she getting that this was a wedding? I never ever read it that way (and you know I've thought about this story a lot, it's my "second-worst bible story").

Here are the parts that lend evidence to the idea that this was a wedding:

1. Verse 6- "brought a Midianite woman to his kinfolk." This is very different from the NIV translation which just says "brought into the camp." I checked this website which has a bunch of different bible translations, and many of them include something along the lines of "to his relatives"/"to his brethren". It's like we might say "bringing a girl home to meet your family." In our culture that's a big relationship milestone. It means you're in a long-term, committed relationship, and likely to get married. And in ancient times, they had the idea of the woman leaving her family and "marrying into" her husband's family. So I suppose it does make sense that this would mean they are getting married.
2. Verse 8 mentions a "tent" or "tent-chamber." Gafney says, "instead of an Israelite wedding canopy, a chuppah, there is a foreign wedding tent, a qubbah" and "the foreign word occurs only this once in the Scriptures" and has "uncertain meaning."

So, was this a wedding?

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How I always read the story

Here's how I always read this story:

The Israelites were passing through land where other nations lived, and those sneaky foreign women came and started to seduce the easily-distracted Israelite men. Like, come on guys, focus, why can't you just do what God says? It's not that hard! They were having casual sex (gross! God says sex is only supposed to be in marriage) and starting to worship those foreign gods. This is really bad! God ordered those involved to be executed. Kinda sad for them, but they're gross and sexual and God says they deserve to die, so that's that.

Anyway, when the Israelite leaders are openly weeping because of how bad the people's sin is, some Israelite guy literally comes in right then with some slut he picked up. He walks her right past the front of the camp, to his tent where they are gonna have sex. Come on dude, read the room! What's wrong with this guy? He seriously can't keep it in his pants, even after God has spoken and said this is such a serious sin that people need to be executed for it.

And then, finally, someone does something about it. Finally, someone loves God enough to take action and stop this horrible disobedience against God. Phinehas the priest followed them into the tent where they were having dirty dirty sex and stabbed his spear right through the both of them, and killed them. Wow, that's graphic and violent, but it was the right thing to do. Phinehas is the only one in this story who actually takes sin seriously, like we're supposed to. Wish we could be as courageous and faithful to God as Phinehas.

I read this story, back then, as a good evangelical girl, and it seemed to be about 2 things: casual sex, and worshipping other gods, both of which I knew were obviously bad, and which I couldn't relate to at all. People who committed such sins were one-dimensional caricatures, mustache-twirling villains who were ungrateful to God. Maybe it's a bit extreme to say they deserve to die for that, but, sin is sin, so I felt that God was within his rights to say they deserved to die. Plus, I knew I wasn't going to commit those sins, so it doesn't affect me. (Apologetics seared my conscience with a hot iron.)

Gafney reads this as a wedding, though. And the "worshipping other gods" bit she reads as hospitality from the foreign women, inviting the Israelites to their religious feasts. More on that later.

Rather than being about "hookup culture" with those slutty slutty foreign women, she reads this passage as being about relationships of all kinds. (Another cool thing is the book says this passage is "queer" because it talks about the foreign women having relationships with Israelite men and women.) Living in the same area, getting to know each other. Some even falling in love and getting married.

So Phinehas sprang into action and murdered Cozbi and Zimri because they were an international couple, not because of their dirty dirty casual sex.

That's ... that's horrifying, and my first thought was that if I had read it that way, back when I was a good evangelical teenager, I would have been horrified.

But...

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If it's about casual sex, or if it's about interracial marriage, how different is that, really?

I looked up some other translations and bible commentaries, to see if Christian scholars read this passage like I had always read it, or if they read it as a wedding, like Gafney does. Yeah, I found many of them using words like "blatant" and "parading"... those are words you would use for casual sex, right? Some guy just can't keep it in his pants, and he wants all the random passersby to know about it, eww.

But wait... in the bible, God forbids the Israelites from marrying people of other nations. Some guy falls in love with a foreign woman, and wants to let the world see his love, wants to marry her... Wouldn't that have been seen as disgusting, in their culture? Wouldn't that have been seen as "blatantly" "parading" his sin in front of everyone? Wouldn't it be seen as something you shouldn't do in polite society?

What we're circling around here is, this is about interracial marriage. Not *exactly* interracial marriage, because they didn't conceptualize race the same way we do today, but if you think about the history of interracial marriage in US society, well, it's the same as what we see in Numbers 25. Black men were lynched for the "crime" of dating a white woman. In "Womanist Midrash," Gafney says Zimri would have been seen as a "race traitor." She says this is a lynching. (She's right.)

"But," you may say, "surely not. Surely if they were just a nice couple, in love, getting married, who happened to be from different nations, the Israelite leaders wouldn't have been so upset about it. Surely people wouldn't have made such a big deal about it, even going so far to say it was good when they were killed. Surely not. Surely it must have been about some worse sin, like casual sex."

Did you, uh, totally miss all the culture wars over same-sex marriage, or what? 

Making a big deal about how someone else's marriage which does not affect you is such a horrible sin and they are "blatantly" "parading" it in front of us just by existing... that's pretty much evangelicals' whole schtick.

When I was a good little evangelical teenager, and read this passage... see, here's another horrifying thing. Imagine I had read, in the bible, that this was about a couple being murdered on their wedding day, for the crime of being from different nations and/or religions. ("Womanist Midrash" discusses this passage like that's obviously what it's saying, but I'm not convinced. But imagine if it was more obvious in the biblical text that that's what happened.) What would I have thought?

Good little evangelical Perfect Number would have thought it was sad, but it must have been right for Phinehas to kill them, because the bible says God approved of what Phinehas did, and the bible is always right.

No, not even newlyweds being murdered would have shaken me from my belief in biblical inerrancy. I was a good evangelical. I was an apologetics nerd.

And unfortunately, I have evidence to back that up: Good little evangelical Perfect Number read the book of Ezra, back then. In Ezra 9 and 10, the prophet Ezra finds out that many Israelite men had married foreign women, and he makes a huge big deal about it, sitting around weeping because of other people's families, other people's love, other people's mixed-race children. Then the leaders come together and decide they need to right this wrong; they need to send away these foreign women and mixed children. So that's what they do. Mass divorce and abandonment of their children.

And I read that back then and thought "well, yeah, God clearly told them not to intermarry with the other nations, so, that's what they had to do." I couldn't view it any other way; I couldn't say "wait a minute, this is wrong!" I was a good evangelical.

Years later, I read the Slacktivist's posts on this mass divorce in the book of Ezra. (Links here.) Blew my mind. Why is no one else talking about how the prophet Ezra was a racist bigot who tore families apart? Why is the Slacktivist the only one?

(See also: my Ezra fanfic Love Wins, and related post This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now)

So yeah, you may naively assume that if good evangelicals read this story in Numbers 25 as being about international marriage and a murder at a wedding, rather than about casual sex, they would be more horrified and ready to throw away their belief in biblical inerrancy, but, no. Unfortunately, no.

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Hospitality

"Womanist Midrash" talks about the hospitality of the Moabite women. This was very surprising to me- "hospitality" is such a positive word, and I had always read the Moabite women's invitations to their religious feasts as a conniving evil scheme. "Mwahahaha, let's entice those people away from their god, and snare them in our evil religious rituals, worshipping our evil gods, mwahahaha."

But the way "Womanist Midrash" describes it, it was like this: The Israelites lived in the same area as the Moabites, and so naturally they began to interact with each other, and get to know each other, and develop close relationships. (Some of them even married each other.) And it was very kind and hospitable for the Moabite women to invite the Israelites to the Moabite religious festivals. Maybe from the Israelites' perspective, the Moabite religious practices weren't that different from their own, so they didn't view it as a big huge "we're abandoning our god" thing.

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Consensual marriage vs slavery

In the bible, God commands the Israelites to not marry foreign people. But, the Israelites are allowed to marry foreign captive women taken in war (see Deuteronomy 21:10-14). (And Gafney calls this "rape marriage" because honestly this isn't a romantic vision of how love can bloom in the most unlikely of places- no, it's "she's your slave and you can do whatever you want to her" and the bible uses the word "marriage" to describe that.)

So the issue here, the reason Zimri and Cozbi were judged as bad bad sinners whose murder was justified, was because their marriage was consensual. Because they chose each other. If an Israelite man takes a captive woman and enslaves her, makes her give up her culture, rapes her, and calls it "marriage", that is apparently fine. "Do not intermarry with them" just meant you can't have a consensual marriage.

It's horrifying, but at the same time, I can imagine myself as an evangelical, understanding the logic of this. Back then, of course I believed that we must not marry people from other religions, because there would be conflict as a result of each spouse's different beliefs, and the good Christian spouse wouldn't be able to win every single time, and would be influenced away from their correct Christian beliefs. But, isn't that only a problem if you go into marriage with the expectation that you are equals? What if you weren't equals? What if from the very start, the person with the correct religious beliefs dominated, and forced the other to give up their own religion and culture?

That would avoid all those "being influenced by those bad religions" problems, right?

I always heard Christians talk about mixed-faith marriage with this metaphor: The Christian is standing on a chair, and the non-Christian is standing on the ground, and the Christian is trying to pull the non-Christian spouse up, but isn't it so much easier for the non-Christian to pull them down? And that's why it's a bad idea to marry a non-Christian- you think you're going to influence them positively, but in reality, the more likely outcome is they're going to influence you negatively.

What on earth? Christians conceptualizing themselves as higher than everyone else, more moral than everyone else. Like there's nothing we can learn from each other; the Christian is already right about everything, and their non-Christian partner can only sabotage that. What on earth?

You can see how, if you're coming at it from that perspective, maybe it sort of makes sense than "rape marriage" is less bad than consensual mixed-faith marriage.

(Please note, I am a Christian and my husband is not- and I'm glad he's not a Christian.)

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Did Moses divorce Zipporah?

Cozbi is a Midianite, and after she is killed, Moses leads the Israelites in battle against the Midianites, to avenge... [checks notes] the way the Moabite women were hospitable to the Israelites?

Gafney points out that Moses's wife Zipporah is a Midianite. Or, rather, she says that Zipporah was Moses's wife, and then Moses divorced her (Exodus 18:2) and married another woman. The other woman is apparently mentioned in Numbers 12:1, "he had married a Cushite." I don't totally buy Gafney's interpretation here- I always thought it meant that Zipporah was both a Midianite and a Cushite, and Numbers 12:1 was referring to her. I certainly never was aware of the idea that Moses had divorced Zipporah. 

But, at the same time, the bible definitely says that Zipporah and her family are Midianites. (See Exodus 2.) And in Numbers 31, the Israelites go to battle against the Midianites, take the women and children as captives, and Moses is very angry that they allowed the Midianite women to live. He commands that they kill all non-virgin Midianite women, and all the Midianite boys, and "save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (Which turns out to be exactly as creepy as it sounds, my god.)

So, uh, what? Isn't Moses's wife a Midianite? Isn't Moses's wife a non-virgin Midianite woman? (Gafney points out that apparently Moses is unhappy with Midianite women monogamously having sex with their own husbands, what on EARTH.) Aren't Moses's in-laws all Midianites? Whether or not you believe that Moses divorced Zipporah, you still have the big problem of how it could possibly make sense that Moses is so bent out of shape by the Israelites intermarrying with Midian, when he himself did that.

"Womanist Midrash" points out that the bible is inconsistent on the issue of marrying foreigners. There are passages like this one, about how it was such a bad thing that Israelites married Moabite and Midianite women, and then there are plenty of bible heroes who married foreign women and the bible is apparently fine with that. Judah, Joseph, Moses, etc.

And one more thing: Moses commands that the Israelites kill all the boys among the Midianite captives. "Womanist Midrash" draws a connection between this passage and Moses's own escape from being killed as a baby, when the Pharaoh commanded that all the Israelite baby boys should be killed, and Moses's mother hid him and then eventually laid him in a basket in the river where he was rescued by Pharaoh's daughter. This is a beloved bible story; all the kids in Sunday school know about baby Moses in the basket. (Exodus 2:1-10)

Moses, who escaped the "kill all the baby boys" decree, is now saying "kill all the baby boys."

Why do we not talk about this in church?

When Moses's mother saves her baby and puts him in a basket, that's a wonderful tale of courage and heroism which we teach to our children. When Moses commands the Midianite boys to be executed, that's a footnote in an apologetics book, only mentioned in the context of "how do we respond to atheists who say the bible condones violence?" Oh, they had to kill the Midianite boys because [reasons], so, it's fine, move along, nothing to see here.

But these are the same story, Moses's story. When we tell one part without the other, we're spinning the story in a misleading way. We're not being faithful to the bible.

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Reading the Pentateuch (with a "biblical inerrancy" mindset) is an exercise in maintaining hierarchy

All of this is bringing me back to when I was a good evangelical teenager, working on reading through the whole bible. As I read through the laws that God gave Moses, my thoughts were as follows:

bible: "don't do xyz"

me: "well, yeah, xyz is a sin, they shouldn't do it"

bible: "if anyone does xyz, they must be put to death"

me: "well, maybe that feels a bit harsh, but, really, I'm wrong to feel that way- this is a sin and therefore it *does* deserve to be punished with the death penalty. So, that's fine, keep reading."

Looking back on it now, I feel that the way I read the bible back then was all about brutally maintaining rules and hierarchy. The bible says that people who do this or that bad thing are so bad they deserve to die, and I had to make myself believe it. Make myself believe that was a just law, and that those people were so different from me, I would never do something like that, so I'm safe.

It's very much the opposite of a "black lives matter" mindset. I've seen plenty of hot takes on the internet, white people making arguments about how a black victim of police brutality deserved to die because they weren't perfectly polite, or might have committed some minor nonviolent crime, or used to do drugs, and I think of the way I forced myself to believe it was right when God commanded a man should be executed for gathering sticks on the Sabbath.

Gafney is coming from a very different perspective, focusing on the victims of these laws, those who were oppressed and excluded and punished by the laws given by God and/or Moses.

I wonder if the "inerrant" reading of the bible (ie, you have to believe that all the laws given by God are good) is less of an option for marginalized people who have seen how our society's laws are used as a justification for violence against them and "keeping them in their place."

Thinking about myself, when I was a teenager, reading the last few chapters of Deuteronomy. After Moses finishes giving all the laws to the people, there are a few chapters about the blessings they will receive if they obey, and curses if they disobey. I remember thinking that this section of the bible was kind of repetitive, just hammering on the same points over and over- I felt like "yeah we get it, we should obey God, obviously, this is not that complicated, you don't need to keep saying it over and over."

Just follow these rules. Just repress yourself. Just exclude the people God wants you to exclude. It's not that complicated, why don't people get it?

For Cozbi and Zimri, it wasn't that they were irresponsible and rebellious and easily distracted from God's commands and God's blessings. No. It was because they found love, and they knew it was so much better than the narrow-minded laws that Moses was trying to use to keep everybody in line. Discovering how good it is to connect with other people, to value people, to share with each other and learn from each other and accept each other.

There's a whole world out there. Love the world. 

And I'm aware that what I'm saying here- about the law of Moses being used to exclude and punish- is also argued in the bible. In the New Testament, Paul says, "The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." He says that the law can only tell you what you did wrong- it can't save you- and that's why we need Jesus. 

But, did we really need to wait for Jesus for that? Didn't Cozbi and Zimri already know that love was better than exclusion, and they were killed for it?

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Conclusion

So. Those are my thoughts on the story of Cozbi and Zimri, which I still maintain is The Second-Worst Bible Story. I was very surprised that Wilda Gafney reads it as a wedding, rather than a story about how bad and wrong it is to have casual sex. I'm fascinated by this interpretation. My own marriage is international, interracial, interreligious. And Christians need to talk about the parts of the bible where the bible "heroes" and/or God do something wrong. The bible is not always right, and we need to talk about that.

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Posts about the book "Womanist Midrash" by Wilda C. Gafney:

Womanist Midrash 
The Slavery We Ignore in the Book of Exodus 
The Second-Worst Bible Story
Michal wasn't here for David's worship, and now neither am I
Why did I think David was the good guy in the story of Abigail?
David's Womanizing
The Bible and "Purity"

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Follow-up post: Don't Protect God

Related:

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now 

Everyone Else's Nadab and Abihu Fanfics

The Worst Bible Story

This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now

A white man and Chinese woman, dressed in very traditional red robes for their traditional Chinese wedding. Image source.

A few days ago, I posted Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic). As I was writing it, I realized that I had never really thought much about what all those Old Testament "do not intermarry with them" commands actually meant. All those times that God apparently commanded his people not to marry people from other nations. 

Sure, I was a good church girl back in the day, I knew all the apologetics, I knew the right answer was "it was because those other nations followed the wrong religions, and those religions were like, really bad, like with forced prostitution and human sacrifice."

(Okay, yes, I now see that it's more complicated than just "here is what the bible says." My fic was inspired by the Slacktivist's posts about Ezra, and he points out that there are other places in the bible [such as the book of Ruth] which say "STFU, Ezra." But of course, when I was an evangelical, I believed there was such a thing as "the biblical view" on marrying people from different religions, as if the bible was totally consistent on it. I also didn't really distinguish between the Old and New Testaments- I felt like converting to the correct religion was seen as more of a possibility in the New Testament, but other than that, the rules were the same. If they're the wrong religion, then nope you can't marry them.)

Yeah, that was all the thought I had ever put into it, way back in the day. Just a one-dimensional stereotype to convince myself that those other religions were "like, really bad" and rules are rules. And then I moved to China, and then I quit being evangelical, and then I married a non-Christian Chinese man, and then years later I decide to write this fanfic, and oh crap, I realize that all the "do not intermarry with them" stuff was about families like mine. Turns out I "intermarried with them."

Also, I had never viewed those commands as being about race or culture at all. Yeah sure, the bible said "don't marry people from other nations" but I always thought "that's because you're not allowed to marry people from different religions, and the other nations had different religions." Like it was solely about religion, that was all. That's how I understood it, back then. Recently I discovered that there are racist white Christians who use verses like these to say that white people shouldn't marry people from other races- but fortunately I never heard anything like that back when I was an evangelical. I really understood it as being only about religion.

Like I thought it was saying "oh it's totally fine to marry people from other races and cultures! Yes totally 100%! No problem there! Why would there be a problem? But absolutely do not marry people from the wrong religions, and oh my, by SHEER COINCIDENCE, those people from other cultures all follow the wrong religions, so that's why the Old Testament says don't marry people from other nations."

So then here I am writing this fanfic and realizing, a cross-cultural marriage is about so much more than religion. It's two complex people with completely different backgrounds, coming together and making a life together. And there's so much to it- there's love, there's fascination with learning about one's partner's world, there's miscommunication, there's confusion and astonishment when you realize your partner just sees things totally different, and there's distance in some aspects- like "you have your own thing, your own culture, you enjoy it but I am not involved in it." Like how my husband doesn't know how to yell at the tv correctly while watching football.

To flatten it down and say it's just about "oh they had bad religions, with like, human sacrifices I guess"... that just so completely misunderstands it.

And my marriage... my marriage is beautiful, and the idea that the Old Testament God (as portrayed in the book of Ezra, at least) wanted a whole society where no one had a cross-cultural marriage... it's just... like, the idea of isolating yourselves so completely from other cultures, so that you can never get to know them enough to run the risk of falling in love with someone. Completely missing the beauty and complexity in the diversity of human experience, missing out on the image of God that lives in every culture. That's what was commanded back then? Really? I never thought about it that way, when I was "on fire for God" and reading the bible every day. But now I really am married to a partner from a different country/ race/ religion/ culture. Now I know.

Now at this point you might be saying, "Surely, in the book of Ezra, there was more to it than just 'don't marry them because they're the wrong demographic'- surely there must have been something really bad that those Canaanite women were doing, right? Surely Ezra wasn't making a whole big scene mourning over something that mundane." But no, I've seen literally this exact thing. I've seen Christians getting all bent out of shape over other people's marriages, other people's personal lives, other people just going about their business in a way that Christians believe is wrong. 

I've seen Christians protesting same-sex couples' right to marry. I've seen Christians getting angry over an ad that showed a same-sex couple just having a normal family life. I remember the time I was at church and the pastor said, "My niece just got engaged... to a woman" and there were gasps of horror from the congregation, like it was an example of how messed-up "the world" is. Literally just queer people going about their lives, and Christians fight and mourn like it's some big tragedy. 

(And I've heard the "success stories" about "a gay person started coming to our church, and we did not say ONE WORD about how it's a sin for them to be with their partner, we just accepted and loved them, and then eventually they broke up, yay what a happy ending!")

I've seen Christians making rules about being "unequally yoked"- ie, a Christian should not be in a relationship with a non-Christian. A podcast where a bunch of concerned Christians fretted over a stranger's personal life, trying to figure out the best way to "speak the truth" that it was wrong for her to get married to a non-Christian man. The missionary I met in China who told me I couldn't come to her Christian group because the Chinese members would think that, as a foreign person, I was a Christian role model, and they just simply couldn't have that, because I was dating Hendrix, a non-Christian. ("And sleeping with him," this nice missionary lady added. I didn't correct her and tell her no, I had never had vaginal sex. I was sure she wouldn't believe me.)

So yes, I 100% can believe that Ezra sat outside wailing and making a scene just because somebody married somebody from a demographic he didn't like. Not because they were actually doing anything actually bad.

Ezra reminds me of the conservative Christians who don't want trans children to be able to use the bathroom.

And Shimei and Nikkal from my story are like the queer American couples who worry that the Supreme Court is going to un-marry them.

Like seriously, look at this:

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

3 When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. 4 Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.

Ezra 9:1-4

People are just going about their lives, and then Ezra "sat there appalled" about it. Like, get a life! Mind your own business! Yes, I have 100% seen Christians do this. I used to be one of them.

And realizing it was families like mine- me, and my husband, and our precious little son- that Ezra targeted and tore apart... I bet those self-righteous leaders felt all sad about it too, like "oh it's so hard for us, our heart breaks for your family being torn apart, but, rules are rules, hate the sin love the sinner." I bet they felt like "look how hard it is for us to follow God's command- God will reward us for this."

This wasn't a community coming together to repent of their collective sin. This was a community scapegoating a minority, to make them feel like they themselves were godly. Easy to judge people when it's not a "sin" that you "struggle with" yourself.

I wonder what those "detestable practices" were, that the Canaanites apparently did. I have to say splitting up families is a detestable practice. (Also, why is the Slacktivist the only one I have ever seen pointing out how ****ed up this is? I even looked for some bible commentaries on Ezra recently, and they all basically just said "those other religions were, like, really bad.")

I wrote a story about a character, Nikkal, who always fears rejection. Then Ezra's God comes along and says "yes, you should be rejected." Fortunately her husband loved her more than God.

(Ah, well, whatever, I know the good "bible-believing" Christians have already decided they can ignore everything I say on this, because I am married to a non-Christian. And more than that, I don't see it as a problem AT ALL that my husband is a non-Christian. My Christianity is compatible with that, therefore I'm following the wrong kind of Christianity and no one needs to listen to me.)

And another thing I want to say about my fanfic. At the end, [spoilers!] when Shimei decides to leave behind his home, his culture, his religion, and run away with his foreign wife, and I wrote it like it's a happy ending, it's so romantic and exciting... Well, I ended the story there, and I do believe he made the right decision, but man, it's not as simple as that. Leaving behind your culture, moving to a whole new place where no one understands you- it's hard, it's hard in so many ways that I never knew about before I did it.

(Yeah, for me it happened in a different order- first I gave up my culture and moved to China, and then later I met Hendrix and married him.)

Anyway. The reason I wrote a fanfic about it is to show people, wow, this is really in the bible. Sometimes I'm astonished at the things I used to just brush past, reading the bible as an evangelical. "Ah well, God had clearly said they shouldn't marry the Canaanites" and just move on like that's that. But now I am married to a partner from a different culture and different religion. Now those verses are about us.

---

Related:

My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem

What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus)

I Didn't Know I Had a Culture Until I Lost It

Love Wins (an Ezra fanfic)

 

People gather around the rebuilt temple (from the book of Ezra). Image source.

The first time Nikkal saw him, he was laying wooden beams for the walls of the temple. She had come with some other Canaanite women to bring water to the Israelite men who were working. His name was Shimei, he told her. It wasn't just his cute curly hair or his deep brown eyes- it was his smile, his laugh, the way his whole face lit up when he was happy.

She came to deliver food and water to the workers at the Jerusalem temple every day. And every time she saw him, her heart leaped. When she handed him the jug, and he wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand, pushed back his hair and his headband, and he smiled at her... it felt like the sun was shining on her.

The other women told her, "Don't get your hopes up. You see the headband he wears- he's a Levite. They have very strict rules. A Levite could never marry a Canaanite."

But he talked with her, laughed with her, asked her about her family and her hometown. And she knew she had fallen in love with him, but she always told herself not to get too excited. He could never really be interested in her, she thought.

But every day they talked, and she felt that he really respected her and cared for her. He didn't treat her like a Canaanite dog, like some of the others did. She had never met a man like him.

---

Sometimes she came to the temple, even when it wasn't time to bring water to the workers. She watched Shimei talking with the other men. Sometimes she saw the group of them stop and pray to their God together, led by Ezra, their prophet. 

"What am I doing?" she asked herself. He could never really be interested in her... even if he was okay with marrying a Canaanite woman, he would surely reject her when he found out she wasn't a virgin. Sometimes, when he talked with her alone, she wondered if she should tell him. Was it dishonest for her to let him think she was really good enough for him?

Why would he want her anyway? She was just a poor girl who had come to Jerusalem to earn some money. Surely Shimei could find a better wife, she thought.

Sometimes she prayed to her God, Asherah, about Shimei. She thanked Her for letting her meet such a wonderful man, and she also dared to wish that maybe the gods could let her be his wife.

---

One day he came to her and said he wanted to talk about betrothal.

She was so happy, but also terrified. There was no way this was real. No way something this amazing could really happen to her. "But, but... I'm a Canaanite," she said.

Shimei smiled and shook his head, as if it was a joke. "Yes I know that."

"You can't really... you're..." she started to say.

"Nikkal, I want to be with you. It doesn't matter to me, that you're a Canaanite and I'm a Levite. I want to marry you, if you'll have me."

She couldn't believe it, and everything in her wanted to leap with joy and say yes. But she couldn't, it was too good to be true. She had to tell him she wasn't good enough for him. She wasn't a virgin. He deserved to know.

"It's just..." she bit her lip nervously, "... just, there was another guy."

"Oh!" he suddenly looked shocked, and then disappointed. "Oh, I didn't know you were already betrothed."

"What? No, I'm not betrothed."

He tilted his head, confused. "Then, what do you mean about 'another guy'?"

"Uh, that was a long time ago."

He continued to look at her, not understanding. "So... not now? A long time ago, but not now?"

"Right," she said, waiting for him to reject her.

"So... what's the problem?"

He still didn't get it. She was going to have to spell it right out for him, and have him reject her. It was so embarrassing. She twisted her hands nervously. "I... he..." she tried to say. "I'm ... I'm not a virgin."

"Oh!" his face broke out into a relieved smile. "That's all? Well that's fine, I don't care about that."

She was speechless. "You what?"

"I want you for you," he said. "Not your virginity. I want you. You make me happy."

All she could do was stare at him, wide-eyed. He reached out, and she let him hug her. "You have to ask my father," she managed to squeak out.

"Yes, of course," he answered.

She had never met a man like him.

---

Their wedding was like a dream. She never knew that she could be so happy. She wore a long dress, embroidered by her mother, with symbols of the gods. He wore his best tunic and the same Levite headband that he always wore.

She moved in with him, and they made their home together. He worked in the temple, and she worked hard with the other women, carrying water and baking bread. At night he prayed to his God, and she prayed and burned incense to Asherah. Sometimes Shimei would eagerly talk with her about the work they were doing at the temple, how their prophet Ezra was leading them to reestablish the religion from old times. She supposed it was important to his people.

---

They had been married 3 months, when she heard the news.

Ezra 9:1-4

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. 2 They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

3 When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. 4 Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.

...

Ezra 10:3

Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law.

...

Ezra 10:10-11

Then Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have been unfaithful; you have married foreign women, adding to Israel’s guilt. 11 Now honor the Lord, the God of your ancestors, and do his will. Separate yourselves from the peoples around you and from your foreign wives.”

There were whispers about it among the women as they gathered around the well that day. Nikkal felt sick; her dream was coming to an end. She had known all along that it couldn't last, that she wasn't good enough for Shimei. 

They didn't even have any children yet. It would be easy for him to send her away, to move on and forget about the mistake that he had made, marrying a Canaanite.

She was so anxious. She didn't want to do anything or talk to anyone. She went back home early that day. She sat in their shared home and tried to memorize it, the walls, the roof, the way Shimei always stacked his shoes in the corner. It would be so hard leaving, but... but she had always known her marriage was too good to be true. And now she was going to lose it, go back to the life she deserved, just a poor Canaanite that no one could want.

But she could cook one last meal for them.

She kneaded the dough, with a hundred different things running through her mind. Oh, she would miss him so much. She'd never met a man like him. Where would she go? Maybe she would go live with her parents, or her brothers.

She tried to focus on the bread she was making. If this was the last meal she cooked for him, she wanted to do a good job. But she was so worried, so distracted. She put the bread in the oven and then there was nothing to do but wait. Wait for him to come home and send her away.

She paced, and waited, and prayed to Asherah for protection on her journey back home. She got the bread out of the oven when it was done. Then waited some more; Shimei was later than usual. She was too anxious to eat. Just sat there and looked at her bread.

It was the middle of the night when he finally arrived. He looked pale and exhausted. He wasn't wearing his Levite headband. He stood in the doorway and they looked at each other in silence. She wanted to say something but didn't have any words. She sat at their table, and he stood across the room, and he still had those same deep, beautiful eyes that she had fallen in love with. 

Finally he spoke. "Show me how to pray to your God."

She stood up and walked toward him. Her hands trembled as she took his hand and led him to the box where she kept the incense. She handed him an incense stick, and then a thought occurred to her. "Do you want Asherah, or... or a male God?" she asked.

"No, no," he said quickly, shaking his head. "Asherah."

She took a second stick of incense for herself, and lit both of them using the coals in the oven. She searched her mind for what to say; she had never taught anyone to pray before. She tried to remember what the priests had said when she had gone to the temple with her parents all those years ago. "Oh Asherah, goddess of ... of ... uh prosperity and ..." - she glanced at her husband's bowed head, the curls of his hair pressed down where his headband used to be- "... love. We ask you for, uh, abundant harvests, and ... uh ..." She trailed off. She didn't know the specific words, but it didn't seem to matter now.

They sat there in the lamplight in silence, as the smell of the incense filled their small home. They sat there until all the incense had burned. She still didn't know what to say. She put her hand on his arm, and he didn't move or react. Finally she got the words out: "I heard... Are you going to send me away?"

"No," he said, and pulled her into a tight hug. "No." He pulled back, held her hands in his, and looked her in the eyes. His eyes looked red in the lamplight. "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God."

The next day, they started to pack their things. Together.

She had never met a man like him.

---

Follow-up post: This "Do Not Intermarry With Them" Stuff Hits Different Now 

---

This fic was inspired by the Slacktivist's excellent posts on why Ezra is not a good guy:
A Ruthless reading in the RCL
Biblical Teaching On Divorce: Start With Ezra
The biblical genealogies summarized: STFU, Ezra
Ezra isn’t the Good Guy in this story
This generation has far too many ‘Ezras’ already, thanks

---

My other fanfics:
Strange Fire
Noah's Evangelism
Achan's Sin
In Your Anger Do Not Sin (a Hulk fanfic)

What My Marriage Is Actually About (It's Not Sex And It's Not Jesus)

A clip-art image of a boy and girl and dog and rabbit holding the letters L-O-V-E. Image source.

When I was growing up, Christians told me a lot of things about marriage. Things like, it's going to be a super huge big deal whether or not you have sex before marriage. Your spouse will really really want you to not have had sex with anyone else, and if you have then you'll feel guilty about it forever and have marriage troubles because of it. "Your virginity is the most precious gift you can give to your husband."

And, based on what people in church said, it seemed like the biggest difference between being married and not-married is that if you're married you're allowed to have sex, and it's amazing and mind-blowing and all that.

Also, they said the #1 thing you need to do in order to have a happy marriage is to have Jesus be the focus of your marriage. You and your spouse have to both be Christians, you should pray together, and so on. And the husband is the leader and the wife should submit to him.

All these ideas I had of what marriage was like. And now that I'm actually married, I'd like to tell you, no, my marriage is not like that at all.

My marriage is not about sex, it's not about Jesus, it's not about wifely submission, it's not about how guilty we feel over having exes, it's nothing like that at all. Yes, Hendrix (my husband) and I have sex [starting long before we got married], and it's important to me and as an asexual I have a lot of opinions about it, but it's nowhere near the most important thing. And no, my marriage is not "based on Jesus"- I'm a Christian and my husband is not, but I'm the kind of Christian who believes God gave us the ability to make our own decisions. I don't believe in "surrendering to God" anymore. As for "wifely submission"- HA, nope, don't believe in that at all. If Hendrix ever told me to "submit" to him, I'd laugh in his face. And our feelings about our exes... I mean, who cares? That was such a long time ago. Why would that matter to me now?

My marriage isn't about any of that. Instead, it's about all the ways we show love to each other every day- big ways and small ways. It's about how happy I am I get to see his cute face every day. How I can always talk to him about how I feel and he knows just what to say to support and encourage me.

It's about the slice of chocolate cake he buys for me, as a surprise, if he happens to be somewhere that has slices of cake for sale.

It's about how he pays more attention to dates of movie releases than I do, and so he's the one who's always asking me "do you want to go see [whatever new movie] this weekend?" Or he opens the app on his phone to buy tickets and hands me the phone and says "pick what day you want to see [whatever movie]." (And if I say "eh I don't know if I really want to go see it", he tries to convince me by saying "you could write a blog post about what 'good Christians' would think about it"- oh he knows me so well.)

It's about how I mentioned that my favorite flavor of yogurt is kiwi, so then he didn't eat any of the kiwi yogurt cups in our fridge- he always ate the other flavors so I could have all the kiwi.

It's about all the mental health stuff I've struggled with, throughout my whole life- how I've told him about it and he's been there to support me for all the years we've been together. And he knows what to say and what to do and how to help me better than anyone else.

It's about the time I told him I was having trouble scanning my Shanghai subway card, maybe because the card is a bit torn up around the edges, and he found one of his old cards that he's not using and gave it to me.

It's about the photo album I gave him, with vacation photos from the time we went on a cruise. He told me "before I met you I never really thought it was important to take so many pictures and save them and remember all the good times we've had, but now I'm really glad you do that for us." (Also, apparently when we were on the cruise I said "this is better than Disneyland" and Hendrix WILL NOT STOP reminding me of that.)

It's about going to aquariums and looking at fish. So many fish. I never knew anyone would be so interested in looking at fish! (He says "I like fish because they are weird.")

It's about one person cooking dinner and the other washing the dishes.

It's about how he knows what I want even when I don't say anything. This one time during dinner, I put my cup on the table and looked at it sadly and he said "you want me to get you more water" and I was like "???? HOW DID YOU KNOW? I DIDN'T EVEN SAY ANYTHING!"

It's about me scrolling through twitter, seeing a picture of a cat, saying to my husband "do you want to see a picture of a cat?", he says "no", and we both just continue with what we were doing.

It's about communication. About knowing each other so well, because we've lived together for so long, that we've both developed all kinds of little habits that complement each other. And actually, none of this is really "what marriage is about"- none of this was caused by us getting a marriage license and having a wedding. Instead, it's because we're in a long-term, loving, committed relationship. And as the amount of time we've been together increases, we gradually come to know each other more and more. It wasn't anything that happened suddenly on the wedding day when we made the transition from "unmarried" to "married." There isn't anything magical about the legal status of being married. No, we had a wedding to celebrate the reality of our relationship that already exists. We got a marriage license to reflect the reality of how we're already committed to each other. But other couples could be equally loving and committed and choose not to get married, and that's fine.

So all those things that I thought marriage would be about- sex, Jesus, caring about your spouse's exes- no, my marriage is not about that at all. It's about all the little ways that we love each other every day, and how we're able to do that because we know each other so well. And actually, none of those things even require us to be legally married.

--------------------------

Related:
My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem
Stats (a post about my "purity" and my marriage)

--------------------------

This post is part of the April 2019 Carnival of Aces. The topic for this month is "the 5 love languages."

My Husband Is Not The Entire Focus Of My Sex Life

Two heart-shaped carabiner clips, clipped together. Image source.

Unlearning purity culture is a WHOLE PROCESS, y'all. You think you've finished, and then you discover ENTIRE NEW FRONTIERS of messed-up beliefs you still hold.

A few years ago, I thought I had completely escaped all that Christian teaching about "sexual purity", because I no longer believed unmarried sex is a sin, I had sex with Hendrix (this was before we got married), I didn't feel bad about it, and actually it was extremely good for my mental health because I learned I don't have to be afraid of sex anymore. Sex is not some momumentally-big deal that will completely change what kind of person I am AND RUIN MY LIFE. It's just a thing I can do with my partner if I want. It is what it is.

Growing up, I was taught this "sexual purity" ideology that's OBSESSED with people's pasts. If you've ever dated anyone, if you've ever kissed anyone, if you've ever had sex, then you're not marriage material. Your spouse will be heartbroken over those things you did in the past- and they have every right to be! It's cheating on them! Or, that's what the church taught me.

I rejected that. Instead, I believe it's totally fine if you've had other relationships in the past. That has nothing to do with your ability to love your current partner. You weren't with your current partner back then; how could you possibly owe them anything?

They defined "purity" as a lack of experience with romantic and sexual things. And they said "purity" is obviously inherently good, and is the best way to guarantee you will have a happy marriage. I reject that concept entirely now. So I thought I was out of purity culture. I thought I was done.

(Note that another important tenet of this "purity" ideology is that everyone is heterosexual. Marriage is "one man one woman." Same-sex attraction is EVIL and BAD. I also 100% reject that. But I'm straight [straight, but not heterosexual] so that part doesn't affect me personally.)

It was a really really big deal for me to reject the concept of "purity." It took a long time to get out of all that "dating is bad" and "sex will ruin your life" nonsense. But, at the same time, someone might look at my marriage and say I basically did follow the rules. I've only ever done sexual things with one person- who is now my husband. We are different genders. We are monogamous and intend to be together for our whole lives. Yeah, chronologically speaking, we started having sex before our wedding date, but other than that it pretty much looks like the model of marriage that I learned in church.

And that's a problem, because I've realized there were a lot of things wrong with that model of marriage. There's a lot I still need to unlearn. Purity-culture beliefs that have nothing to do with one's past- because I've already rejected all those- but with what my marriage is supposed to look like right now. How my husband and I relate to each other in the present.

Basically, I was taught that my body belongs to my husband. He is the rightful owner of every aspect of my sexuality. In the same way, his body belongs to me, and I own every aspect of his sexuality. In theory, it's symmetric... but they taught us that in reality, men REALLY REALLY need sex and women don't like sex that much. So his body belonging to me wouldn't really mean much to me. But my body belonging to him means that I have to have sex with him basically whenever he wants. Of course I didn't think my husband would physically force me or anything like that, but I FULLY EXPECTED that if I didn't say yes "enough," he would tell me that's not okay, I'm not allowed to do that, I'm not holding up my end of the deal.

When I started learning more about consent, I learned that no, being married does NOT mean that you have the right to have sex with your spouse even if they don't want to. So I sort of updated my model of "what marriage is." But of course I still believed my body belongs to my husband, and that the whole entirety of my sex life- all my sexual experiences, all my desires, everything- has to be about him. I had never ever heard anyone suggest that a monogamous marriage could work any other way.

Some of my ex-purity-culture friends are into casual sex or non-monogamy, and I think those could be really good and healthy ways to develop a better ideology of what sex is, and how you don't "own" another person's body. But I personally am not interested in those things. So ... so I could have been just stuck here. Thinking I've gotten out of purity culture, but still buying into its teaching on what sex is in a marriage.

But these two things got me un-stuck:

1. My husband is not a Christian
2. I'm asexual

First of all, my husband, Hendrix, is not a Christian, and WOW this is SUCH A GOOD THING. He wasn't taught any of this effed-up crap about "my body belongs to him." He has no experience with that kind of ideology at all. He has much more healthy beliefs about bodily autonomy. I find myself shocked, over and over, at how he TOTALLY DOES NOT hold these misogynistic views that I always thought were totally normal, self-evident facts about "what marriage is."

It was Hendrix who told me it's okay to masturbate and watch porn. He told me those are completely normal things that most people do, and it's not "cheating." (Yes, I used to believe that masturbation was basically cheating because you're SUPPOSED to get all your sexual everything from your spouse. If you get it from yourself then that's WRONG. One of the biggest Christian talking points for why masturbation is a sin is "what if you like it better than having sex with your spouse, so then you don't want them anymore, that would just be disastrous.")

And second, I'm asexual. When Hendrix and I started having sex, I thought he was the be-all and end-all of my sex life, that every single part of it had to be about him, or else that's "cheating." Of course that's what I thought; I had never heard of anybody in a monogamous marriage not believing that. I tried, I tried to live that way, but I couldn't. I went looking for answers, and concluded I'm asexual.

I thought I was heterosexual, and I thought sex would just *work*. I thought we both take off our clothes and lay in bed and the next steps after that are obvious and will basically happen automatically. (LOL. Nope.)

I thought we would just mindlessly "go at it" and that would feel amazing. I thought there would be no thinking, that we'd be driven by our love and attraction and just do what feels good.

I knew basically nothing about my own genitals. Not only did I have no experience with touching my genitals to know what feels good and what doesn't, I didn't even know that "what feels good and what doesn't" is the sort of thing that would be important to know about myself before trying partnered sex.

I thought Hendrix was in charge of my pleasure and whatever he did would be the right thing for me. And if it was mediocre then I would just have to accept that.

I remember one time during sex, I discovered that it felt good if I used my hand to rub my clit, but then I immediately felt ashamed, like I shouldn't do that. Because it's me giving myself sexual pleasure, and has nothing to do with him. It doesn't affect him at all. Even though it's AT THE SAME TIME I AM HAVING SEX WITH HIM, it's still kind of like masturbation, so it's kind of like cheating. It's "selfish"! (Which is one of the worst things a Christian can be accused of...) During sex, my whole attention should be on him, right? I focus on him, not myself, he focuses on me, not himself, and that's how everyone's needs get met. Right?

I tried to play that role but I couldn't. I tried to be a good wife for him, to say yes to him, to center my entire sex life around him... I couldn't. Sex was painful and confusing, because I knew basically nothing about my own body. The only opportunity to learn about my genitals and what feels good was during sex with my husband- I can't do it by myself, that would be cheating!- and I didn't think he'd really have the patience for sitting through a bunch of scientific experiments while we're trying to have sex.

I had to find answers on my own. I had to discover my sexuality on my own. I had to develop an understanding of my body and my identity BY MYSELF. For me. Just me. Separate from my husband. I have to be in control of this. I'm the only one who knows my own needs.

So I did. I did research into asexuality and concluded I'm asexual. I read a lot of sex-ed materials. (Guess what, it turns out "sex ed" can mean "learn how to have sex in a way that feels good, so many interesting possibilities, so much amazing stuff to learn" rather than "we hope that no one has sex but if they do then at least let's make sure they use a condom" which was what it was in my high school health class.) I bought some sex toys and I masturbate in order to learn about my body. I'm not interested in watching porn, but I read sexy fanfiction which I think is a good resource for learning about different feelings or motivations people might have related to sex. Like, I don't assume any of it is "realistic" or "normal", but it's better than only knowing what Christian leaders told me I'm supposed to feel about sex.

And all along the way, I found myself asking for Hendrix's permission. Will he let me identify as asexual? Is he okay with me masturbating? And so on. Because, my whole sexuality is supposed to belong to him, right? I thought that was what the deal was, when we got married. It turns out he never thought that. It turns out he doesn't believe he has the right to tell me how I can identify and what I am allowed to do with my own body.

Wow. Like I said, SO GLAD I married a non-Christian.

So I've come to this understanding: That my sex life does NOT revolve around my husband. Yes, we are monogamous. I'm not talking about doing sexual things with other people. I'm talking about knowing myself first, rather than just naively showing up in bed and assuming everything will just *work* because we love each other. 

I no longer believe "my body belongs to him, his body belongs to me." I believe we both have to be our own people first. I develop my own understanding of my sexuality, my desires, what I want, my goals. From there, we communicate with each other and do sexual things that we both want. And it's okay if he doesn't necessarily fulfill everything I want, because I can masturbate or have my own fantasies or whatever. We're monogamous so we won't do anything with other people, but that's not the same thing as saying we need to get all our sexual everything from each other.

And YES, me understanding my own body and my own desires makes partnered sex 100 times easier and more enjoyable for everyone.

Even though I consider myself to have gotten out of purity culture, I can easily imagine still being stuck in its understanding of marriage. If my husband was a "good Christian"- like I always imagined I would marry- who forbid me from masturbating or exploring my sexuality separate from him, I would have seen that as completely normal. I would have 100% believed he had the right to control that part of my life. That's what I was taught in church. I've never heard anyone suggest it's possible to be monogamous and not believe that.

And if I wasn't asexual ... Well, I used to think I was heterosexual, and I used to think sex would just *work*. I have no idea if it really does "just work" for people who really are heterosexual. But I imagine, if sex wasn't confusing and painful, if it didn't cause me to go looking for answers about what was wrong... if it was generally a good experience... I would have just continued to believe that my whole sex life belongs to my husband, and I would have continued to know almost nothing about my own body. I would have been happy with that, and I would not have known about all the cool things my body can do, and how much more enjoyable this can be.

So thank Lady God for making me asexual.

And this realization, that my sex life shouldn't be entirely focused on my husband... Feels like such a new and revolutionary idea to me. (Of course, I explained it all to Hendrix to make sure he would "allow" me to think that way... he was like, "if it all makes sense to you, then what's the problem, what's stopping you from just believing that and being fine?" and I told him I had to make sure he was okay with it... and again discovered he totally does not see himself as the owner of my sexuality, which, again, is a nice surprise.) So new, so completely different from everything I was taught about marriage and sex. And it's exactly what I need.

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Related:
A Post About Masturbation
I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
They said it was about "valuing our bodies." That was a lie.
"Is it Okay for Christians to Use Sex Toys?" (An Exercise in Missing the Point)

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This post is part of the January 2019 Carnival of Aces, an asexual blog carnival. This month's topic is "asexuality as a blessing."

My Marriage Is So Good, I Forgot "Unequally Yoked" Was Supposed To Be A Problem

A man and woman praying at church. Image source.

So I read this article, from The Gospel Coalition: Help! I Married a Spiritually Immature Man. It's about Christian women who marry men that aren't good enough Christians- how women end up in that supposedly bad situation, and what the women can do about it. Weirdly, sometimes the article seems to be talking about a husband who is not a Christian, and sometimes it seems to be talking about a husband who's a Christian but just not as "mature" as his wife. Umm... referring to all non-Christians as "spiritually immature", assuming that they're not good enough husband-material- this is Christian supremacy and it's not "loving your neighbor as yourself."

I'm not going to actually go through and respond to specific points in the article, because the writer's perspective is just so completely different from mine, it's hard to know where to even begin. Instead, I will write about my own marriage, and how my "spiritual life" is related or unrelated to my husband.

All right. I am a Christian, and my husband (Hendrix) is not religious at all. We've been married for 1 year, and in total we've been together for 5 years. And us being different religions is just... not an issue at all.

When I was a kid, I was taught that it was a HUGE PROBLEM if a Christian married a non-Christian. They would be "unequally yoked." The Christian would always worry that their spouse was going to hell. The Christian would be constantly trying to change their spouse, which isn't healthy in a marriage. The non-Christian would try to get the Christian to sin, or would convince them it's okay to not go to church and not read the bible and not care about religion. And so on.

Indeed, back then, long before I met Hendrix, I was the sort of Christian that would not have been compatible with a non-Christian. I would have believed he was going to hell. I would have worried and tried to change him, and always felt superior because I'm right and he's wrong. I believed a husband is supposed to his wife's "spiritual leader," so obviously he needs to be at least as good of a Christian as me. And I used to get all worried and guilty over my "sins", blowing them way out of proportion, and I would NOT have been happy with a husband who told me those "sins" are just normal human things that aren't a big deal and I don't need to worry so much. "Sins" like wanting my friends to care about me, rather than believing "God is all I need." And rushing through my "daily quiet time" because I'm tired. And being attracted to people.

But I'm a completely different kind of Christian now. I don't believe in hell- or rather, I don't believe in the "accepting Jesus into your heart is what decides if you go to heaven or hell" version of hell. I'm not concerned about people I care about going to hell, because I believe that God is just, so They're not going to be giving out huge unreasonable punishments like eternal torture. I'm totally not interested in Hendrix becoming a Christian. Like, I have had enough problems being a Christian... I'm proud of my faith and it's really important to me, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to other people. I don't think it would massively change anything if Hendrix became a Christian- he already has all the qualities that make him a great husband for me. I feel weird even writing that, because it's just not even a possibility, and that doesn't matter to me at all.

And back then, when I was a good evangelical, I needed "accountability" because following God meant forcing myself into things that were unnatural and painful for me. I had to repress so many emotions, had to read the bible every day (no excuses), had to awkwardly force people into religious conversations they didn't want to have (ie "sharing the gospel"), had to deny myself and give up whatever God asked me to give up, had to be fighting my sin all the time, couldn't rest, had to constantly question my motives because if I was doing a good thing for "selfish" reasons then that was a sin. On their own, nobody can force themselves to live under that many restrictions constantly, so I believed Christians need "accountability," which means your Christian friends frequently check in with you to encourage/guilt you into it. 

So of course it would be bad if I was trying to live that way and also had a non-Christian husband. He would "tempt" me into believing it's okay to relax a bit and let some of those things slide.

It was a lifestyle that I now see as anti-human and unnatural, and that's why I would need other Christians to constantly push me to keep living that way. 

But my spiritual life now isn't like that at all. It's about being healthy and loving myself and loving people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds and learning from them. And it feels so good; it's not something that needs to be constantly pushed on me. I still feel that I need other Christians to talk to about my beliefs, and my husband isn't able to meet that need, but I have Christian internet friends and I write a huge giant blog about that stuff. So I'm good. I don't believe that married people are supposed to get all their needs for human connection met through their spouse. Of course we need friends too. That's a good and healthy thing. Not a "this is less than ideal, but we make it work" thing.

Also the idea that one person can be another person's "spiritual leader" no longer makes sense to me. Back when I was evangelical, "spiritual growth" was one-dimensional: there is one ideal way to be a Christian, and "spiritual growth" means moving toward that ideal. We all knew the things we were supposed to do: read the bible every day, pray, go to church every Sunday, be more loving, be more patient, don't be angry, don't be selfish, share the gospel, and so on. A "spiritual leader" should encourage you to do those things. They would look at your current situation and tell you what you need to do to become that "ideal" Christian. Your "spiritual leader" is farther along than you, on the one-dimensional path towards that "ideal Christian" goal.

But I no longer believe there's one correct "ideal" for people's spiritual lives. People believe in many different religions for different reasons, and that's fine. For ex-evangelicals in particular, some of us are still Christian and some stop believing in God altogether. I'm still Christian but I think it's totally fine for other ex-evangelicals to stop believing in God. (Or change to another religion. Or whatever.) That's valid. I get that. And some ex-evangelicals go to church, and some don't. Maybe we find a better church and we're happy there, or maybe we've experienced so much trauma in church settings that we're just not able to go to any church at all, even a "better" one. I wish I could go to church but I haven't found one that doesn't cause me to have depression. And some ex-evangelicals study the bible, and some have so much bible-related trauma that they don't want to read the bible at all. And some pray and some don't.

My point is, everyone has to be in charge of their own spiritual life (or lack thereof), because there's no one-size-fits-all answer. Nobody else can know what you need as well as you. Nobody else can tell you what religion you should believe. Nobody else can say whether going to church would be helpful or harmful to someone who's had bad experiences in church but still identifies as Christian. There's not one "right answer." It's different for everyone. And that's why the idea of having a "spiritual leader" no longer makes sense to me. I need to be in charge of this myself.

Yes, I sometimes ask my husband "should I go to church for Christmas?" (or other religion-related advice questions) and we talk about the pros and cons, and he's very helpful, but of course in the end it's always my decision. It has to be my decision. Nobody else knows what I need.

So that's our situation. I'm a Christian, and my religion is very important to me, and my husband is not religious. And... it's just not a problem at all. I can see how it would DEFINITELY be a problem for certain types of Christians- like when I used to be evangelical and I believed non-Christians were going to hell, and my "relationship with God" meant constantly repressing myself. But I don't believe that anymore. I now believe it's fine to believe whatever religion you believe- what actually matters is how you treat people. And nobody is qualified to take charge of another person's spiritual life and be their "spiritual leader", because nobody knows your situation better than you.

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Related:
Boundaries in Dating: In which I roll my eyes so much
I'm dating a nonchristian and I want to marry him. Here's why I believe that's not a problem.

"How Far Is Too Far?" My Story, And What I Wish I'd Known

Hercules and Meg kiss. Image source.

Christian teenagers always want to know "How far is too far?" which means "I know I'm not allowed to have sex before marriage, but, like, what exactly am I allowed to do?" Typically, youth pastors are very vague about answering this- they like to say things like "you shouldn't be asking that question, you shouldn't want to know exactly where 'the line' is just so you can go right up to it. Instead you should be focused on honoring God in your relationships." And I hate that answer. It's not helpful at all. It meant I was constantly terrified whenever I was dating someone and just *had no idea* if holding hands with him was a huge sin that would ruin my life.

I now know that the REAL ANSWER to "How far is too far?" is that you need to be aware of how physical closeness affects you emotionally, and keep the emotional closeness at a level that's consistent with how committed you are to each other and how much you believe you can trust your partner. The connection between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy is going to be different for everyone, so it's important to know yourself and be honest about what you feel, and communicate with your partner- don't assume that they connect physical and emotional intimacy in the same way you do.

Or, to put it another way: If kissing is going to make you fall in love, then make sure you only kiss someone who's worth falling in love with. But of course initially, when you have no experience, you don't know if kissing will make you fall in love or not. It's fine to go ahead and try kissing, and if you realize that it pulls you in to emotions that are way too deep and therefore not fitting to your situation, then you back off. It might hurt, but you'll be okay. No long-term harm done.

See? THAT'S the answer. But I never heard ANYTHING like that from any Christian teaching about relationships. I figured it out my damn self.

So in this post I want to talk about my own experiences with the connection between physical and emotional closeness. To give concrete examples to this principle I've given as the answer to "how far is too far."

All right. Here we go.

So my first romantic relationship was when I was a freshman in college. We will refer to my boyfriend as BF 1. (I'm straight, all the romantic interests in my story are boys.) A bit of background about what brand of purity culture I was in back then: It was a confusing and badly-defined strand of purity culture, influenced by my parents, who believe in "premarital sex is a sin, but dating and kissing are fine, those are normal things that teenagers do", and Brio magazine, which promoted the I-Kissed-Dating-Goodbye, be-terrified-you-are-losing-your-emotional-purity-because-you-have-a-crush strand of purity culture. At the time, I did not realize that they didn't agree- I thought that all Christian role models in my life believed in "the biblical view" of dating [or rather, I thought there was actually such a thing as "the biblical view" of dating], and I was trying to figure out how to reconcile all these different pieces of advice into one consistent ideology. Poor little Perfect Number, she tried so hard, but she couldn't make the pieces fit. And so she was scared. She didn't know if dating was a sin or not. She didn't know if holding hands was a sin or not. She didn't know if kissing was a sin or not. And so she was scared when she did those things with BF 1.

I dated him even though I didn't really think it was a good idea. See, he wasn't a Christian, so I knew that meant we couldn't get married; I knew someday we would have to break up. (Ahem, spoiler: I am now married and my husband is not a Christian.) I dated BF 1 because I was boy-crazy and just FULL of romantic attraction and I needed an outlet for it.

The narrative I'd been given by purity teaching was that people do romantic and sexual things because they "can't control themselves" when under the influence of "temptation." So I thought it was perfectly normal that I was overwhelmed with romantic attraction and choosing to be in a probably-sinful relationship that I didn't really think I should be in. That's how it works, right? Just like how nobody *wants* to have premarital sex, it just kind of *happens* when a couple is alone at night and they "stumble" because of "temptation." What choice did I have? If I wasn't dating BF 1, then I would just be single and boy-crazy with nowhere for all those FEELINGS to go.

And I told him that too. I told him I'm not really sure that our relationship is a good thing, and that someday we'll have to break up because he's not a Christian.

Huh. I guess I didn't treat him right. But I didn't realize it at the time. Yes, of course I learned in church that we should be kind and empathetic towards other people, but apparently when it comes to dating relationships, the rules are totally different. Instead of loving my partner, I'm supposed to view him with suspicion and fight him when he tries to "take" my "purity." I didn't think about how the things I said might hurt him, because purity culture taught me that boys don't really have feelings, they just want to use girls for sex. Especially non-Christian boys.

Anyway, I eventually decided- after a lot of prayer and worrying- that I was going to kiss him. Because I really wanted to. I was very attracted to him. So anyway, then one night we spent a bunch of quality time kissing. He used the term "making out" to refer to what we were doing, and I was terrified. Because one time I read an article in Brio addressing the question "Making out isn't as bad as sex, right?" and it said that making out was bad. I didn't know what making out was though- I assumed it was something that would feel more sexual and sinful. So I was extremely worried when BF 1 informed me that we had been making out.

See? That's the kind of fear I was working with back then. It was all about uncertainty and vaguely-defined terms, so I never really knew if I was sinning or not.

Oh, and when we were kissing, I made sure not to open my mouth at all, so we couldn't poke our tongues at each other. Because years earlier, a good Christian adult told me that was bad. I remember I asked "besides the fact that that's gross, what is the reason that one shouldn't kiss with tongue?" and she said because it "gets him going" and then it would be hard for the boy to stop.

Thinking about it now, I guess she meant it could make the guy get an erection. Ugh, this bothers me so much- if you mean "erection" you should just say "erection", not these vague euphemisms that 13-year-old Perfect Number definitely doesn't understand. She didn't know what an erection was either, back then ... so follow it up with a definition and we're good.

The point is, I made sure our tongues were NOT involved in this kissing at all, because somebody said it was bad. I didn't really know why, but I just knew it was bad.

(Oh also: It wasn't until I started reading feminist blogs that I found out this stuff about "don't kiss with your tongue because then a guy might not be able to stop himself from having sex with you" is total BS. Guys can stop. It's called "consent" and "being a decent human being" and "not being a rapist." Purity culture said that was WAY too high a standard to hold a guy to. Eff that.)

Anyway. So. We were kissing, and it felt AMAZING.

I definitely felt emotionally closer to him because of the kissing. I asked him, "Does kissing make you like me more?" He said, "Well, it makes me like you more in a physical way, but I try to ignore that." I didn't understand what he meant, perhaps something along the lines of temptation to have sex, but I hardly dared to even hypothesize in that direction. Sex was a scary, life-destroying monster that lived far far away from the normal, mundane events of my life. It was unimaginable that something so awful might be in any way associated with my nice sweet relationship with BF 1.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if he meant his genitals were getting aroused. (Ha, we are talking about erections again.) Hmm. Who knows. I certainly never ever thought about his genitals.

On a related note, it turns out I'm asexual. Yeah, the question of whether I would be interested in having sex with BF 1 never crossed my mind. But I still feared it, feared that it would *just happen* if we were alone in his dorm room.

Anyway, he said kissing didn't make him "like me more" in an emotional way, and I chalked it up to boys being heartless. Because how can someone kiss like that and not feel their heart opening up, feel an overwhelming desire to just adore and cherish their partner?

I tried to explain to him about how hugging and cuddling with an attractive boy would make me like that boy more, and BF 1 was pretty much appalled and said "so if some random guy comes up and hugs you, you're suddenly going to be in love with him?" To him, it sounded like I was so shallow, to base such big important feelings on something as superficial as physical contact. To me, it sounded like he was so shallow, to be capable of experiencing physical affection- taking a girl's purity!- without being emotionally affected by it. I wondered what the heck was wrong with him.

I remember one time I told BF 1 about an advice column I read in Brio, where somebody wrote in to say "I was worried my boyfriend would break up with me, so I had sex with him, but he STILL broke up with me, can you believe it" and the answer from the Brio writer was "yeah see this is why you shouldn't have premarital sex, because boys can't be trusted to value it the way they're supposed to." BF 1 was baffled- I think he even laughed- why would this girl think that having sex would make her boyfriend not break up with her? Why would those things be connected at all? Again, I chalked it up to boys being heartless.

Because purity culture taught me that the correct way to connect sex and love is this: Sex means lifelong love and lifelong commitment- ie, marriage. That's what sex is. That's what sex means. And if anyone disagrees with that- like, for example, if they are fine with having sex with someone they don't intend to stay with forever- then they are a BAD PERSON.

But I now see it doesn't have to be that way. Sex can mean different things to different people. You can't assume anything about how it will make your partner feel or what it will mean to them, and that's why YOU HAVE TO COMMUNICATE. TALK. Nobody is a "bad person" because of the emotions their body does or doesn't produce during sex. (Or kissing, or cuddling, or whatever.) COMMUNICATE. Keep your emotions and expectations grounded in reality.

Anyway, back to my story about me and BF 1 and our kissing. So, the kissing felt so sweet and perfect to me, and it felt like we would be together forever. It really felt like that. But my mind said whoa whoa whoa whoa, this is not right, we can't be together forever because he's not a Christian.

So a few days after our first kiss, I put a stop to it. I knew it wasn't right. It made me feel things that weren't true.

And that was a good decision. See, this is what I mean about "the answer to 'how far is too far' is to keep your emotions matching the reality of the situation."

But let me tell you something. If it weren't for the "I can't marry a non-Christian" issue, I would have 100% believed that, because of the way we kissed, it meant we were going to get married.

Wow, how naive and ridiculous, right? Like, over here in reality, marriage is a HUGE BIG DEAL, a huge decision that will affect you for the entire rest of your life, and you have to spend time thinking about it rationally before you make that kind of decision. But in purity culture, marriage is always the next logical step after any romantic or sexual closeness. The alternative would be breaking up and losing part of your heart, and that's too scary to think about. So if it weren't for the "I can't marry a non-Christian" thing, it would have felt perfectly logical to me that kissing would so easily indicate that this is "the one", my "future husband."

So anyway, I told BF 1 we can't kiss anymore. So we didn't. A few weeks later (for unrelated reasons) he broke up with me. The relationship had lasted about 3 months.

So what do I wish I had known back then? I wish I knew how to handle my attractions better- surely there must have been something else I could have done besides getting into a relationship I didn't really think I should be in. I wish I knew that boys have feelings- I saw him as a leech trying to steal my "purity" and therefore I didn't care if I hurt him. Well, I did care, I am a human with empathy and if someone is right in front of me looking sad, my heart cares about them. But on an abstract, theoretical level, nope I definitely did NOT believe I should care about my boyfriend's feelings. (Or rather, I believed that complementarian nonsense about "men need respect, women need love" so I suppose I did care about "respecting" him. But that's all.)

I wish I wasn't so scared about everything. I wish I could have just tried those things- dating, holding hands, kissing- and evaluated my emotional reaction to decide if they were right for my situation or not. I wish I knew that it won't be the end of the world if I accidentally do something that's a bit more physically close than what I'm really ready for. If it's too much, I can just back off, no harm done.

I wish I knew that you can't communicate "we're going to be together forever" with only a makeout session. It has to be in actual words. I wish I knew it's okay if the two partners don't have the same emotional response to their physical intimacy.

I wish I'd had good enough sex-ed that I could have figured out I was asexual, but haha, I don't think that even exists. Well, we can dream.

But when I stopped kissing him because I knew my emotions didn't match reality- that was the right decision.

Moving along with the story. After that relationship ended, I re-dedicated my life to Jesus and went looking for answers about how dating is supposed to work. No more of this wishy-washy "I don't know if it's a sin or not so I'm just scared" stuff. I read purity-culture books and listened to Mark Driscoll sermons, oh god. And I was so happy because I got my answers. (Extremely conservative answers...) I built up a logically-sound purity-based ideology. It said I can't date until God says so. And if I'm dating, I need to show as little affection as possible, only the bare minimum required to gain enough information to decide if I can marry this person or not.

That's where I was for several years, but then thank Lady God for bloggers, I found some people on the internet saying "hey do you think maybe it's kind of harmful that we are teaching kids they are chewed-up gum if they have sex?" And I started to take small steps out of purity culture.

I started dating a guy we will call BF 2. I started dating him even though I did NOT get explicit approval from God. I decided I don't believe in that anymore. I decided that even though I don't have God giving me a guarantee that this guy is "my future husband", he was a good enough guy that it would be worth it to at least try it out. No longer was I letting baseless fears about "but what if we break up someday" stop me. Because yeah, I had realized my whole purity ideology was about fear.

And yes, I stand by that. It WAS a good decision to start dating him. Based on the information I had at the time, it totally was worth it to try it out.

I remember how much of a big deal it was to do tiny little affectionate things that brought me no closer to making a decision about marriage. I remember I used to text him every night to say goodnight, and he would text back to tell me how cute I was. It made me happy. I no longer thought of it in terms of "I am losing emotional purity" and "my purity is the currency I used to buy information on whether or not I should marry him." I just did sweet things for him just because I liked it.

But we didn't kiss. We never kissed. Because I was terrified- what if kissing is bad? What if purity culture was right about that? What if it ruins my life?

We never kissed. And I was so scared, so worried as I agonized over that choice. I wasn't overwhelmed by "temptation" or unable to "control myself"- so that meant we shouldn't kiss, right? Better safe than sorry? If we can avoid it, we should, right? Just in case it's bad.

When I moved to China, I was a little bit relieved that I no longer had the option of kissing him. I no longer had to think about maybe making a different choice.

So our relationship lasted about 1 year. At the beginning it was good, but at the end it wasn't. He didn't treat me right, but I didn't really have the tools to recognize that. I tried everything to fix the relationship. I tried to manipulate him into being a better partner. Occasionally he would kinda-sorta act like a good boyfriend, and it made me so happy, but it never lasted.

I didn't know that if one partner is no longer interested in being in the relationship, it's not really possible for the other partner to fix it. That's just not going to work in the long term. Maybe it was because of all that church teaching about how a wife can get her husband to change- submit more, pray for him, and so on, and he'll magically turn into a good husband. Or church teaching about how we should build friendships with people so we can "share the gospel." How we should pray for God to change other people so they give up their beliefs and agree with ours instead. Basically a lot of teaching about how to manipulate and pray for people so they start acting the way we think they should act. I didn't know about boundaries.

And I was taught in church that, when people divorce, there is sin on both sides. Which makes it sound like, if one side does the right thing, they can singlehandedly change it into a healthy marriage and stop the divorce.

Basically, BF 2 was acting like he didn't want to be in the relationship anymore, but he never actually said that out loud. I didn't *get* that a problem like this is not really fixable. Sure, maybe I can get him to at least act nice occasionally, but is that what I really want, in the long term?

I wish I knew more about breaking up, so I could recognize when it was the right time to do it. I wish I had some healthier teaching about breaking up. Not that purity-culture stuff about how it's the Worst Thing Ever and will Ruin Your Life. Or testimonies about "God is telling me I need to break up with my boyfriend" after a Christian conference. I want actual practical tips about how to tell if the relationship is not going to get better.

I didn't think of it in terms of "he's not treating me right." The only narrative I had about "not treating her right" was when "a boy is having sex with a girl but he doesn't love her." Our relationship was so pure though- we didn't even kiss! That meant it was a healthy relationship, right?

I also wish I had known that just because the beginning of a relationship was good, and your partner is really great and supportive during a hard time in your life, that doesn't mean it's right to stick with them FOREVER. It might be good for a while, but then at some point it's time to break up, and that's not a bad thing.

Towards the end of my relationship with BF 2, I was taking more and more steps out of purity culture, and embracing my desires. Sensual attraction, in this case. I was like, I like boys, I want to touch boys, I want to kiss boys- and for the first time in my life, I didn't repress it. I knew I couldn't, like, actually go kiss someone, because I was still in a long-distance relationship with BF 2. But in my own mind, I was honest about how I felt and what I wanted. And that felt good.

There was this guy, let's call him Creepy Guy. I was very attracted to him. He knew I had a boyfriend. He kissed me, without my consent, and oh god I wanted so much to kiss him back, wow I wanted it so much, but I told him no, because I had a boyfriend. We were alone in his apartment, but it never even crossed my mind to worry that he might rape me. Because he was hot, and I thought rapists were unattractive. FORTUNATELY, he was not a rapist. I told him to stop kissing me so he stopped. But then we sat around for a while and talked. And I think about that now, and I'm like, ugh he was so creepy, why didn't I just leave immediately... but when you're in the situation, it's hard to recognize what's happening.

That actually happened twice- two separate occasions, with two different guys, so we will call them Creepy Guy 1 and Creepy Guy 2. Forcing kisses on me, when they KNEW I had a boyfriend. And also when I texted with them, the way they talked to me was creepy too- as if I owed them something. Creepy Guy 1 kept asking me if I was having sex with any guys. I knew it was none of his business (no thanks to Christian accountability groups where it's completely normal to pry into people's sex lives...) but he just seemed so sad about it, so I told him the truth, which was that no, I was not having sex with any guys. I didn't tell him I had NEVER had sex. I didn't tell him I never even kissed BF 2.

But at the time I didn't really realize they were creepy because they were both SO HOT and I was really attracted to them, and I was having a lot of problems with BF 2 so I was kind of starved for attention, and also discovering my own desires and no longer bound by the rules of purity culture but not really sure how to construct an alternative. (Well, actually I had read a lot of feminist stuff about rape culture so I was able to see some of the signs of creepiness, but I had no idea what to do about it.) It was a confusing time.

Anyway. I'm including Creepy Guys 1 and 2 in this post about "how far is too far" because they did kiss me, and in purity-culture ideology, that's important. Over here in reality, it was non-consensual, so it's not my fault, it doesn't "damage" my "purity", it doesn't really have anything to do with me, it's just them making a decision to be creepy.

In both cases, I really wanted to kiss them back, but I made the right choice and said no, because I was loyal to BF 2. He didn't deserve my loyalty, but we were still technically in a relationship, so there ya go.

I guess what I want to say is, this is a post about my experiences with the connections between physical and emotional intimacy. The kisses did not deepen my romantic/emotional attractions toward Creepy Guys 1 or 2. I remember afterwards, both times, thinking about how I wished so hard I could have kissed him back, but I was sure I had made the right decision. Because I had a boyfriend. If I didn't have a boyfriend, I totally would have kissed whatever hot guy wanted to kiss me, because I was working my way out of purity culture and that's what I wanted.

I just wanted to kiss boys but not really be in a relationship. And I now believe that's a completely valid thing to want. We'll see in a minute that it wasn't really suitable for me personally, but it's totally fine if that's what someone wants and does.

So I finally sent BF 2 an email to say we were broken up. I knew he wasn't going to reply to it, because he hadn't replied to anything I'd sent him in a long time. And indeed, he didn't reply.

Looking back on it now, did it matter that I never kissed him? What if I had? Do I regret not kissing him? Well my first thought is "he didn't DESERVE my kisses" which is 100% true... but he didn't deserve a lot of the attention and affection and love I gave him. Kissing wouldn't have been different. Or, let me put it this way: Purity culture would see it in terms of things we did (holding hands, hugging on the couch in a sitting position, saying "I love you") and things we didn't do (kiss, do anything sexual) as if those two lists tell us everything we need to know about the relationship. As if moving "kiss" from Category B to Category A would be a HUGE CHANGE in the nature of the relationship. But it wasn't like that. There were other issues that were way more important.

So I really don't think it would have made a difference if I had kissed BF 2. I was already very emotionally attached to him, and kissing wouldn't have deepened that; it was already deep. And I don't regret not kissing him either, because, as I said, I now see that he didn't deserve it.

I wonder if it would have made a difference in my reaction and feelings about Creepy Guy 1 kissing me. When that happened, it had been 5 years since I'd kissed a boy. 5 years is a long time... Would it have been different, if I had kissed BF 2 fairly close to when that happened? Would it have made it easier or harder to say no?

Eh, it's been 5 years since I broke up with BF 2, and 10 years since BF 1. Whatever the status of my "purity" back then, how much of my "self" I "gave" to them, it just doesn't matter now. Purity ideology made me so terrified of all those "how far is too far" decisions- terrified because I really believed it was going to follow me for the rest of my life and it would mean I couldn't *fully* love my husband... I'm here to tell you that's a load of bullshit. I kissed BF 1 10 years ago. Who the hell cares? It doesn't affect my marriage at all. Why would it? It's ridiculous that I even have to say that.

Let's get back to the story. I told BF 2 we were broken up. The next day, another guy told me "I want to kiss you" and I let him.

We spent a bunch of quality time making out on my couch. (And used our tongues. Because we wanted to.) Then I went to work the next day and I missed him. And I was like, oh no, I wasn't supposed to miss him. I just wanted to make out with boys for fun. I didn't want to like, actually date any of these hot guys.

Ugh, I kissed him and I caught feelings from it.

He was SO into me. He SO wanted to be in a relationship. We had known each other for about 1-2 months. I definitely thought he was hot, but there were a lot of hot boys in my life. I wasn't really planning on getting into a relationship again, until after we made out and I suddenly, unexpectedly wanted to date him. I told him I would need some time to think about it.

So I spent maybe 1-2 weeks thinking about it. He was living in a different city, so we just talked online during that time and did NOT kiss or anything.

See? That was a good decision. It turns out I'm not able to just make out with a hot boy without developing romantic feelings for him. Some people are, and that's totally fine, but it turns out I am not. But it was fine to kiss him because I didn't yet know that about myself. It's fine to try it out and see what my emotional reaction would be. And then when my emotions were much different than I expected, I took a step back to think about "is this actually a person that's good enough for me to date?" Sure, I was sort of biased at that point, but I was still able think about it in a healthy way and make a good decision.

I decided, yes, he was good enough. So he became BF 3.

Or... maybe you know him as Hendrix. Reader, I married him. <3

So I told him yes we are now boyfriend and girlfriend. We immediately started sleeping together whenever he came to visit. By "sleeping together" I mean literally just sleeping together; I never use the term "sleep together" as a euphemism for sex because that's just ridiculous. Sleeping and having sex are such incredibly different things, it BOTHERS ME SO MUCH how people use language that implies they are the same. As an asexual, I have A BUNCH OF OPINIONS about this.

So right from the beginning of our relationship, whenever he visited me, we slept together. With clothes on and not doing anything sexual.

I chose to sleep with him because it was sweet and warm and comfortable. When I was in purity culture, of course I believed it was a sin to sleep with one's romantic partner- even with clothes on and not doing anything sexual. It was a sin because, as I was told, "don't be so naive, everyone who's sleeping together is having sex." Apparently, if you sleep in the same bed, the temptation will be too strong, so you'll definitely end up having sex, even if you don't intend to. Again, as an asexual I have Some Opinions about this.

I wanted to sleep with him, and it felt good, and he wanted it too, so we did. As simple as that. Just doing things because I want to do them, not overthinking it, not spending all my time and emotional energy trying to puzzle out "is this a sin or not?"

Well, I say "simple as that" but the reality was not simple. Intellectually, I believed [unmarried] penis-in-vagina sex was a sin but everything else was not a sin... but I still had so much shame and guilt because of all the internalized purity beliefs. We very gradually started doing more physical things- touching genitals through a layer of clothes, then seeing each other's genitals, then touching directly, then stimulating them, then stimulating enough to get an orgasm. But at every point along this progression, I felt so much shame. While I didn't count any of that as "sex" (I only counted penis-in-vagina as "sex", which is, uh, a bit silly) it was still definitely "impure" and "sinful" under the rules of purity culture. It was sexual even though it wasn't sex, and so for my entire life I had believed it was dirty and should only happen after one gets married.

So I would feel so bad, and I would tell Hendrix "no we can't do X anymore", where X was whatever new sort-of-sexual thing I was experiencing for the first time in my life, so we would stop doing X for a day or so. But I would feel like "okay, this is ridiculous, I no longer believe X is a sin. I like X, so why should I let this shame hold me back?" So then we would do X again.

We cycled through that a bunch of times, with different values of X. It was hard. I loved being with him and I loved everything we did together [though I now realize that I loved it for reasons that had nothing to do with sexual attraction], but the shame was overpowering. Those of you who are longtime readers of my blog know about how that shame caused me to have depression back then.

So coming back to our question of "how far is too far": Sometimes I would choose to stop, because of the shame, and sometimes I would choose to say yes, because it felt good. And all of those were good decisions. Even though I felt that logically I shouldn't feel shame because I don't believe any of this is sinful, that emotion was still real, and so it was worth taking into account when I made those decisions.

Basically, see how the physical intimacy affects you emotionally, and make changes if necessary.

As far as the connection between physical and emotional intimacy with one's partner, I don't remember any times in my relationship with Hendrix where I felt like "I feel very emotionally close to him and this might be a problem because the actual reality of our relationship isn't really at that level." Except, of course, right at the beginning when we kissed before we were dating and I caught feelings from it. I guess from the beginning of our relationship, we were very committed to each other, and it just kind of grew in a gradual and healthy way and everything worked out. (Or, I was just winging it and doing what felt good in the absence of any actual rules...?) There weren't any moments where I discovered some huge character flaw of his and thought "ohhh that's quite a red flag, am I sure I want to be so emotionally close with somebody like that?"

And then eventually I decided I no longer believe unmarried sex is a sin. But I was still terrified and decided we weren't going to do it, just in case purity culture was right and it would ruin my life. And then eventually I decided nope, I am done living terrified of this decision over whether to have sex, it's time to just face my fear and do it and prove that it doesn't ruin my life.

(Wow, what an asexual reason to have sex...)

So we finally did have sex- before we were married, before we were even engaged- and that ended the shame and fear once and for all. It didn't "ruin my life"; I didn't feel any different, except that I wasn't afraid anymore. Awesome!

Penis-in-vagina sex didn't make me feel closer to Hendrix. It felt just as intimate as the other stuff we had already been doing. It didn't change our relationship- it just changed my own emotional state by making me not afraid any more. That's all. I guess for other people, sex does make them feel more emotionally connected to their partner. But not for me. Which is fine, everyone is different. Actually in my view, it seems there are some necessary steps that you need to take before it's possible to have sex- like being naked or partially naked together- and it's those things that feel the most intimate to me. Not the actual having of the sex. I mean I could take it or leave it.

(And to be honest, I'm really curious about how other people feel about that- if you compare "being naked with a partner" vs "being naked with a partner AND ALSO having sex with them", which one is better, which is more intimate, etc. And also, having sex with some random hot person sounds good in theory but do you realize that would mean you have to show them your genitals? So like... surely one-night-stands don't actually exist in reality????? I mean I know that they do but like I just can't wrap my ace mind around it...)

What do I wish I had known, when I started dating Hendrix? Ha, well some basic sex ed would have gone a long way. I wish I had known what genitals I had. I wish I had used my hand to feel around "down there" and get a sense of the basic layout of things. But I was far too "pure" for that.

I felt so rebellious when I took a small mirror and looked "down there" for the first time. Was that before or after I showed it to Hendrix? I don't remember. I don't remember if Hendrix saw my vulva before my first time seeing it. Kids, don't do this. Don't be this pure. I wish I was familiar with my own body before I tried to share it with someone else. I regret that.

I wish I believed my body belonged to me. Not "my future husband."

I also felt quite rebellious the first time I bought condoms. I had absolutely no intention of using them for sexual purposes- I just bought them as a way to rebel against purity culture. Just to "be naughty." (Wow, what an asexual way to "be naughty." Buy condoms and then don't have sex. ~Wild~ ) Because I felt that the act of purchasing condoms was dirty and shameful, and I wanted to grab that feeling by the throat and face it head-on and defeat it. Maybe it helped that I was in China... news of my purchases at some random Chinese grocery store is never going to make it back to my nice Christian friends in the US. I wish I wasn't so scared of condoms, so horrified by their mere existence. Over here in reality, condoms are GOOD and IMPORTANT for HEALTH REASONS. I wish I had adult role models who told me that.

I wish I hadn't been so terrified of everything related to sex and genitals. I wish I had friends who just talked about sex like it was a normal part of their unmarried lives and not a big deal, and I wish I could have understood that- while at the same time I would also need to understand myself as asexual. I wish I had known that living with one's [unmarried] partner is totally fine and normal- and some of my friends even saw it as a big relationship milestone and congratulated me, can you believe that? When I felt so much shame and I didn't want to say it out loud.

I wish, when I first went to the doctor for help with depression, I could have just opened my mouth and said I live with my boyfriend and that's why I have depression. I couldn't say it. I couldn't bear to say it to anyone, because surely they would judge me and think I was dirty. Surely the doctor would say, well yeah, you're not supposed to live with your boyfriend, so of course you're feeling the emotional consequences of that *sin*. (Note: Ha. Nope. When I finally said it to my therapist, not only did he not think it was "dirty" at all, but he assumed that when I talked about starting to work my way out of purity culture several years before, he assumed that I started having sex back then, and didn't bat an eye at that. Well LOLOLOLOLOL nope when I told him all that, I was still firmly terrified of the very concept of me having sex.)

I wish that, when I was a child and good Christian adults told me that living together is a sin because every couple who's living together is having sex, and I said "well couldn't they just be living together but not having sex?" and they said "don't be so naive"... I wish somebody had challenged that. I wish that, when a Christian "friend" "confronted me about my sin" of living with Hendrix "and sleeping with him", I could have had some other thought spring to mind besides "I can't try denying that, she'll never believe me and I'll end up looking even more sinful- nobody would ever believe I could be living with my boyfriend and I've never had sex." Yeah, we lived together for a while without having sex. I was dealing with all that purity-culture shame and fear, and also it turns out I'm asexual. If you don't believe me then **** you.

I wish I had known more about my own desires and attractions. But in purity culture I couldn't explore that, couldn't think "so what kind of person do I find hot? and what do I mean by 'hot'- like what specific physical acts would I want to or not want to do with them?" That would be lust. I wish I could have explored that. I wish I wasn't trying to figure out a healthy way to deal with my attraction to boys who are not my husband DURING MY FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE- ugh, that should have been a skill I figured out a long time ago, but instead I just repressed it back then (and thought that marriage would magically make all those other attractions go away. Spoiler: it doesn't).

I wish... oof, I don't know if I wish this or not... I wish I had figured out I was asexual... or... do I wish I had known I was asexual before dating Hendrix? What if I thought it meant I wasn't good enough for him, or I wasn't going to enjoy doing sexual things with him? What if I thought it meant I shouldn't even try?

I'm blogging about all of this to show what I mean about the connection between physical intimacy and emotions in a dating context. That connection is going to be unique for each person, and they might even experience it differently at different times in their life or in different situations. So the important thing, the #1 thing, is to know yourself. Check in with your emotions and see how they are affected by the physical closeness with your partner. If your emotions end up in a place that it's not healthy to be in (for example, if you feel like you're totally in love and will definitely marry this person but actually you've only known them for a week) then remind yourself of what the actual reality is and adjust your acts of physical intimacy so they produce emotions that better match that reality.

Yes, I realize this is easier said than done... when you're infatuated with a specific person it's hard to truly convince yourself "no, this is not a healthy thing to do." But there's no alternative. Nobody else is qualified to run your love life. Sure, you need role models and general advice about what healthy relationships look like, but nobody can tell you what your desires are and what's important to you.

It's probably not possible to do this 100% perfectly. Perhaps you'll realize you've gone "too far", like I did when Hendrix and I first kissed and then I had *feelings* for him. But that's FINE. That's not something to fear, it's not something that will ruin your life or damage your "purity." (I don't believe purity exists anyway...) Just make the necessary changes, and it might hurt emotionally, but it's okay. How can you learn your own emotions and desires without some trial and error? Everyone is different, so you can't rely on other people to tell you what you feel.

There was something kinda-sorta like this in purity culture. They said "don't do X because it will make you feel Y" (for various values of X and Y). Yes, I agree that the key is in the way physical actions in a dating context affect one's emotions, BUT you can't tell other people how something is going to make them feel- you can't assume that. Everyone is different. Everyone needs to figure this out for themselves. And so I tell my story here in this blog post to show a concrete example of what it looks like to "figure this out." Perhaps some readers will feel the same way I did about some parts. Perhaps not.

I stand by this answer. This is THE ANSWER to "how far is too far?"

This post focused on just the physical part of those relationships, but I'd like to make it clear that that was DEFINITELY NOT the most important aspect. There were other issues and problems and emotions and happiness and growth going on with each of these relationships. Purity ideology talks as if the most important measure of a relationship is "how far you went" physically. That's ridiculous. That's nonsense. Yes, in my experience the physical part is an important component of the relationship (though that may not be true for everyone) but it's nowhere near being the most important thing.

Like... the idea that I could write you a few lists of all the physical things we did in each of these relationships, and that you could learn anything meaningful from that information alone... that's absurd. It's laughable. But that's the entire focus of purity culture. How far? How far? As if that's the only question that matters. Try to keep the physical aspect as low as you possibly can, and that's the #1 predictor of how good your future marriage will be. How on earth did I use to believe that? WTF?

I focused on all the wrong things, back then.

Any physical things that I did in a dating context in the past, they don't matter now. No, they don't affect my marriage. No, I don't think about BF 1 every time I kiss my husband. Like, WHAT ON EARTH, why would I even need to say that? OF COURSE I don't think about BF 1. Eww, why would I think about him? What an absurd thing to even talk about- but I am writing it out explicitly here because purity culture LITERALLY SAID THAT and purity culture was WRONG. Purity culture told me that if I have any physical/sexual experience with anyone before my husband, then I won't be able to love my husband fully and I'll always have those exes in the back of my mind, always comparing my husband to them. They'll always have a "piece of my heart." Wow, what a load of bullshit.

ALL RIGHT well this post has gotten super-long and I haven't even said all I wanted to say. (I might do a follow-up post, if any of you readers are interested in more on this topic?) Anyway, remember, the answer to "how far is too far" is different for everyone and is based on you knowing your own emotions and desires. You have the ability to make healthy decisions about this. Nobody else can decide "where the line is" for you.

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Related:
I’m Really Really REALLY Glad I Had Sex Before Marriage
For This Asexual, Purity Culture Was All About Fear
They said it was about "valuing our bodies." That was a lie.