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Earl Aagaard’s opinions about everything that interests him. Og also enjoys gardening, travel, reading, woodbutchery, and lots of other stuff.

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REAL SEX: The Naked Truth About Chastity

THAT got your attention, no? Mine, too. I read a positive review of this book (I think in BOOKS and CULTURE), and knew I had to read it.

Conservative Christian churches (and conservative Christians generally) have a real problem in today’s culture, when they attempt to defend what seems so very important to us to an increasingly secular society. And that increasingly secular society includes so many (in my more discouraged moments, I would say “most”) of our fellow-Christians. In fact, if we’re brutally honest and even reasonably self-aware, we are constantly getting sucked in, ourselves.

Anyhow, LAUREN WINNER’S BOOK is a wonderful contribution to an ongoing struggle to hold onto common sense (to say nothing of God’s command) when everything around us argues that we’re just being foolish. Some of the negative reviews on Amazon seem to be from those who believe in a “living Bible” in the same way that some judges believe in a “living Constitution”—in both cases, we modern and enlightened folk simply read into the ancient and benighted text whatever the current movers and shakers see as the right thing to do.

None of that for Miss Winner. From the background of her own (sinful) earlier experiences she speaks thoughtfully and honestly about traditional teaching, and places it in context for today’s Christians. I did not “like” some parts of the book—particularly challenging is her emphasis on “community” in Christianity. She takes the view that this should include all of our lives—that Christians should hold each other accountable, in sexual matters as well as financial ones and others. Individualist as I am, this is bitter medicine, but serious Christians need to digest and evaluate the case that she makes for it - one that is well-supported by Scripture and tradition.

Winner is not optimistic that we can hold young Christians if we simply present the “Thou Shalt Nots”, or if “purity” is limited to sexual matters. She pleads for a more global look at what a Christian life is to be, and what chastity (both inside and outside of marriage) is meant for.

This is a short book and an easy read, but it bears re- and re-reading and a lot of thought if we truly mean what we say in our professions.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/25 at 05:07 PM

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