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We were sitting in a crowded coffee shop, with everyone around us going about their mornings rushing to and from the counter when her eyes filled with tears and time began to stand still. The background noise to our conversation went muffled and all I could see was her as she told me her story. She had been assaulted. Amy had just started coming to our church. New to town, she had “walked away from her faith” years ago and now she was “back,” she told me, on her first Sunday at church. Now, weeks later, we sat at a coffee shop to get to know each other. You can’t pastor someone that you don’t know. That is a lot of what I do as a pastor. Get to know people and hear their stories. Amy went on, “I was drunk, at a party, and he assaulted me. As I became conscious after the victimizing events, I blubbered out loud to myself, ‘God will hate me. God and Jesus will hate me for what I’ve done.’ For years she blamed herself for that night. Even after all the therapy from the assault she still carried with her this deeply embedded belief: God hates me. God hates me because of what happened to my body.
The greatest lie of purity culture is that our bodies are barriers between us and God instead of resources for knowing God. This lie has plagued women and men for decades. It has impacted victims of assault as well as victims of empty promises about virginity, wedding nights, and married sex. This woman, an innocent victim, believed that God hated her because of what happened to her body.
When we believe the lie that our bodies are barriers between us and God then the goal is to do whatever we can to hide our bodies, to cover them, oppress them, subdue them, and keep them tame. If we can “master” the desires of the body then we can achieve holiness. Purity culture didn’t make this up. The ancient world had a similar belief system called Gnosticism. This was the goal, to subdue and surpass the body to attain true spirituality. Gnosticism is one of the birthplaces for the separation between sexuality and spirituality that we see today.
Many Christians today are not Christians. They are Gnostics. This is what I told Amy.
I asked Amy to tell me about the God (and Jesus) who hated her because she was victimized. She told me about a cruel tyrant whose love depended on the degree of sexual chasteness she had.
I told her that wasn’t the God of the Bible. I told Amy that the God of the Bible is one who loved bodies so much that God became a body. I told Amy that the God of the Bible loved victims so much that God became a victim. I told Amy that the God of the Bible loved her with a love so intense that it had nothing to do with her sexual chasteness. I told Amy that the God of the Bible wanted to heal her very real broken heart and broken body and that we could all heal together. That is what the church is after all I told her, a healing place for hurting people.
I have sat for nearly two decades listening to stories like Amy’s. Both men and women. Young and old. Whether it is a young girl being assaulted and then believing that God hates her for it or a married woman who has only had one sexual partner and never had an orgasm, the lie is the same. My body is a barrier between me and God. I am on a mission to tell the Amy’s of the world about a God who became a body, a God who became a victim, a God who loves them deeply, a God who heals bodies, and a God who speaks, counsels, and reveals God’s self to humans through their bodies. What if you saw your body as a resource for knowing God instead of a barrier between you and God?
(This blog post was written by our guest this week, Kelly Edmiston, and you can find it on her website HERE).
This Week on the Podcast:
Body and spirit marry in the chapel of the soul. They marry every minute of every day, in all activities and in all inactivity, in all thoughts and in all actions, or they marry not at all. (If) They don’t marry, we do not know sexuality with soul, and therefore our sexuality remains incomplete and insufficiently human. We do not find the soul of sex by spiritualizing the body but by coming to appreciate its mysteries and by daring to enter into its sensuousness. --Thomas Moore
Our episode this week is with Dr. Kelly Edmiston, who erves as the Lead Pastor at the Vineyard Church in Stafford, Texas. She enjoys suburban life with her husband Ben, and their three children. Kelly's passion is the intersection between spirituality and sexuality and providing space for all people to learn to live free from shame.
If you have been harmed by purity culture, don't know what to do with yourself and your own sexuality or if you struggle with receiving pleasure and especially if you don't know how to broach the subject with your kids, this podcast episode is for you.
Some of the topics we explore are these:
The harm of purity culture and why parents who are "deconstructing their faith" struggle to talk to their kids.
Contemplative practices for kids of every age when it comes to the intertwining of the body and the soul.
Why pleasure matters and how it can lead us to God.
How parents can embody a "sex-positive" message.
Difficult topics such as hookup culture, masturbation, pornography or sexual identity within the framework of spiritual sexuality.
Our favorite words from this podcast episode were things like "toenails" and "reparent" and "desire" and "practices" and "authority." Find out why when you listen.
You can find Kelly at the following:
Substack: Kelly Edminston
Instagram: @kmedmiston
Facebook: Kelly Michelle Edmiston
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Resource Alerts:
Wondering where to get really good information on how to walk the tricky tightrope of parenting and deconstructing?
What about when church fails us?
What to do about original sin? Is it a thing?
What about nurturing a faith our kids won't have to heal from?
HERE are our TEN FAVORITE BOOKS for parenting and deconstructing and reconstructing a new way to go about this raising ourselves and our kids!
And how fun?!? We have a whole page devoted to this on our website.
CHECK THEM OUT HERE!
Can't wait until Tuesday and need just a little snippet from our podcast episode that's coming up on October 15, with Kelly Edmiston.
One last thing. We want to remind you that we are so glad you are here. We wouldn't be the same without you. You will always find GRACE for where you've been and who you are now, and SPACE for who you are becoming and will be.
Carry on, our new-found friends. Welcome to the twisty-windy, full -of-adventure faith path that's laid out before us all. Love,
Lizz & Esther
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