I just finished Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity by Lauren Winner. I definitely have to say that it’s the best book on arguing in favor of chastity that I’ve seen. The point I think she made best is that chastity does not equal celibacy. Celibacy is the choice to refrain from sexual relations. Chastity is the conforming of our physical desires to God’s will. She explains that sex cannot be separated from marriage and sex works best in a community setting where marriage is respected and two people are uniting their bodies in a relationship that has been blessed.

When I was engaged, my two groups of friends were the Josh Harris cult people and the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd. Both had things to say to me about my relationship with Jon and it seemed like both were chastizing me for different things. The Josh Harrisites chastized me for kissing Jon and the Rocky people told me I was utterly repressed for not sleeping with him. It was enough of a pain to wait 18 months (from engagement to nuptials) to be physically intimate with Jon and all this criticism did was make me feel guilty about my body, about my relationship, and it made intimacy a whole lot more difficult when we were first married.

It would have been really wonderful if I had been around Christians who did not consider premarital sex to be the most heinous sin in the world. There was no way I could have talked to my church about my physical relationship with Jon because on the few occasions that I tried, I got an earful. I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about it with either of my staffworkers and very few of my Christian friends were not in the Josh Harris cult. If the Church would treat premarital sex like any other sin and not hold it against the person perpetually, it might actually keep single people in the Church and give them some accountability that really does work.

Getting back to the book, Lauren makes these points and she also does a good job of explaining WHY masturbation and pr0n are such destructive things rather than just quoting a bunch of Scripture on the subject. She makes the case for accountability and WHY we should be so concerned about it.

I would very much recommend this book to all my single friends and all my married ones as well because she has words to say about marriage as well.