Do Evangelicals Dream of Electric Toasters? | Sex – Part 1

Sex is the reason that most people are Christians, and it’s what keeps people in churches. We all know this is true.

 

Most people have come to, and have stayed in churches because of a girl or a boy that they have fallen for. Most of those encounters have usually ended up with the people becoming Christians, then marrying each other, and from there on in, they are locked into the life of the church forever. Those couples have babies who go to toddler groups run by the church, those children become friends and end up at the same schools together, then they go to the same church youth clubs, they invite their friends from school to those youth groups, become Christians, fall in love with each other, and the whole cycle begins again.

 

Obviously, this is a deliberately exaggerated point of view, and it’s not entirely accurate to say that sex is what gets people, and keeps people in churches. There are many reasons why people stay in churches, but I think there is some truth to what I’m saying. You only have to look at the churches and Christians who practice the ‘Flirty Fishing’ or ‘Flirt to Convert’ models of evangelism, where attractive Christians display sexual interest towards non-believers, in order to lure them into the church. Sex is what often gets people into church and it’s what keeps them there, because I guess Christians are sexy, and because of that, the church is are careful to let people know, how they should, or shouldn’t be doing sex.

 

Christians are obsessed with sex, or more accurately, they are obsessed with what people do with their genitals, when they should be using them, where they should be putting them, and when they should be deploying them. Perhaps this is how it should be, after all, the Bible is full of sex, people having sex with multiple wives, people having sex with servants, people having sex with prostitutes, people having sex with their parents, the list goes on. And where sex or sexiness isn’t mentioned, there is sexual innuendo, and allusion to sex all over the place.

 

The main teachings about sex that we get from the church, are usually:

 

·       Don’t have sex before marriage

·       Don’t masturbate

·       Don’t look at porn

 

There are additional topics which are taught, although not as much as the ones above, and they include:

 

·       Don’t commit adultery (with your genitals, eyes or mind)

·       How often you should be having sex (not in the Bible, but people preach it anyway)

·       What type of sex you should be having (i.e. not up the bum)

 

You’ll be pleased to know that I was a good Christian boy and didn’t have sex until I was married. That may have been because sex wasn’t offered to me, apart from the time I was propositioned by a sex worker as I was walking to a university lecture one morning. As friendly as she was, it was never going to happen. For a start, despite the moral issues around prostitution, I was never going to hand over my hard-earned student loan in return for sex. I never even bought girls drinks in bars, with the hope they might return the favour by getting off with me. Call me a cheapskate, but I wasn’t one for splashing cash around, on the off chance that I might be offered some sexy fun. I believed that God had someone for me and so I wasn’t about to squander the little money I had, when my future wife could be just around the corner, with a handbag full of free sex coupons. Besides, I made the decision to save my virginity until I was married and I’m happy that I waited. I don’t mourn the fact that I didn’t get my end away in my teens or early twenties, however, I do wish I hadn’t received certain teachings, or come across certain attitudes around sex that impressed upon me.  

 

I was probably quite lucky that we changed churches when I entered into my teens. I don’t know what my super conservative childhood church would have taught about sex, but at a guess, I imagine they would have told us that women’s vaginas had fangs that only retracted once they were married. We started going to an Anglican church when I was about 12 years old, and at that time I was starting to become aware of the nice girls who went to the church, and some of them evidently thought I was nice too, which was nice. Again, at that age it was very innocent. Some of my new friends were dating each other, and for my part, girls who I liked flirted with me whilst I failed to pick up on the signals, only realising their interest after they had given up and moved onto the next good-looking guy in the youth group. As a result of all the adolescent intrigue in each other, we received a lot of talks about sexual purity. Most of it was fairly tame, but it was drilled into us.

 

We were told that sex was only for marriage, if you had a girlfriend or boyfriend, then you shouldn’t allow your hands to wander, you shouldn’t look at porn, you shouldn’t masturbate, and basically, you that should just try not to think about sex. It was fairly innocuous compared to what some people were taught. I know some of my friends were told that they shouldn’t kiss or even hold hands with a boy or girl, until they were married to them. It was a persistent message though and it did have an effect on me, that combined with what I already believed about God, meant that I grew up feeling slightly repressed and dirty when it came to sex.

 

There were two teachings that I remember specifically. The first was a talk we had at a youth conference, where the pastor told us, to our amazement, that it was OK to masturbate. However, there was a caveat to his message, it wasn’t OK to do it over pornographic images, or whilst having lustful thoughts of girls, or women we fancied. That teaching on its own would have been good enough, if we could ‘polish the banister’ as long as our minds were empty, then that was still a win. Teenage boys were giving hairy palmed hi-fives all around the room, and girding their loins, ready for action. But the youth pastor had more to say on the matter. Perhaps, knowing the virtual impossibility of keeping our young minds clear of any thought whilst ‘stroking the otter’, they had a suggestion of something that we should think about, and that thing was toasters. Toasters for making toast. Toasters.

 

As I result of this teaching, whilst all my school friends were busily raiding their dad’s secret stashes of jazz mags, I was writing to toaster manufacturers, asking if they could send me industry leaflets and instruction manuals. I covered my bedroom walls with pictures of toasters, two slicers, four slicers, toasters finished in brushed chrome, toaster ovens, and most alluring of all, toasters with attachments on the side to poach eggs in, be still my beating heart. My obsession grew and I would spend my weekends in electrical stores, loitering around the breakfast appliances, gazing at the toasters from a distance, but then it all came to a head. I don’t know if you remember the scene from the film, American Pie, where Jim famously romances a hot apple tart, well I didn’t try and shag a toaster, I’m not weird or sick. However, I did take apart our family toaster, because I wanted to see it naked, and my dad walked in on me, licking whipped cream off a dismantled circuit board.

 

OK, you got me, I made this up. I do love toast but in a normal way, and I didn’t have a sexual obsession with toasters, that would be ridiculous, but what was equally ridiculous was the idea that horny teenage boys should ‘wrangle the adder’, whilst thinking about a Russell Hobbs 21641. Perhaps this message was well meaning, but it was also preposterous, and unhygienic if things were to escalate.

 

The second talk I remember was about the emotional consequences of sex. The preacher told us that people were emotionally like sheets of paper, and when we had sex, it was like gluing two pieces of paper together, then pulling them apart. When you did so there would be bits of paper stuck to each other, meaning that when you had sex with someone, you left part of yourself with them. If you repeated the gluing and ripping act too many times, then there wouldn’t have anything left of the sheet of paper, it would just be a torn and useless piece of rubbish. I thought this was a powerful illustration, and it made me want to keep my piece of paper intact. I didn’t want to be emotionally torn apart, and I didn’t want to be rubbish, and so I vowed to remain sexually pure, and keep my paper pristine.

 

 

I know what the Bible says about sex, and I know what Jesus says about lust, and about faithfulness to one partner in marriage, and I took, and continue to take those things seriously, but these particular kinds of teachings aren’t biblical, they’re mad inventions which are harmful to people, either scaring or guilting them into abstinence, or otherwise they don’t work and people end up having sex, and then are shamed for having done so. I don’t really see the benefit of these kind of teachings or who they serve, and whilst the consequences I have described might be extremes, they highlight attitudes held by the church, which are broken and which have been blown way out of control.

 

 

Text taken from “Unanswerable: Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music