“Does Jesus Care About My Vagina?”: A Response to “I’m a Single Christian Woman and I Like Sex”

Update: To see the author (Candice Benbow)’s response to my response, click here.

One thing that I appreciate about my friendship with Jonathan is our ability to talk to one another about anything and everything – including our sex lives (or lack thereof) without shame or judgment.  But we don’t just talk about our lives — we pray about our lives.  He and I are prayer partners, and we end every phone call by talking to the Lord about our trials, temptations and the complicated nature of existing as (Seventh-day Adventist Christian) Millennials.

During one of our many conversations, I was lamenting my lack of sexual experience and the dearth of romantic prospects…  “I’m still a woman and I got needsssss,” I told him.  I feel like Jesus is a constant cock block, and I wondered aloud, “Does Jesus even care about my vagina?”

We laughed.  “Oh yes, He cares, I know He cares,” I started to sing.  Nevertheless, Jonathan still prayed for my pussy – that I wouldn’t become weary in my “well-doing,” that I wouldn’t just give it up because I felt like a social outcast, that there would be fellatio in my future, that penetration would be my portion, that I would be able to know what it feels like to “come” with a partner before the second Coming of Christ (heck – that I would have my own Second Coming) and that I wouldn’t die a virgin.  I happen to think that it’s important to bring everything – everything – to Jesus.

From the sounds of the article “I’m a Christian Single Woman and I Like Sex”, it sounds like the author (who I will refer to as “you”) has witnessed Black women do the same — abstain from sex, whine about their singleness and wait… and wait… and wait until they die, shouldering the burdens of life by themselves, when if they had just allowed themselves some dick every once in a while life would have been better, if not more enjoyable.  And if women of all sexual experiences and sexual histories still get married, why spend your life burning with passion?  Might as well just have sex.  God will not hold it against you (according to your logic).  You can still get married.  You’ve seen women ascribe to a theology that did not work for them and left them lonely (and horny).  What I gather from your article is previous difficulty in reconciling your faith, your singleness and your sexuality, a desire to be free from that oppressive theology and choosing instead to take matters into your own hands and satisfy your flesh as a solution.

I would like to think that Jesus does care about my vagina and my sexual needs as a woman and a sexual being.  And while I don’t have an answer on how to reconcile the many tensions (including sexual tension, lol), I don’t believe that just having sex because I want it is the answer.

But let’s start at the beginning:

“I’m a single Christian woman and I like sex.”

That’s not a groundbreaking statement. No one should be surprised that you (or anyone) like sex. Most people do enjoy having sex. God created cis-women with a clitoris — a small but mighty part of the human anatomy which has twice as many nerve endings as the penis and which has no other purpose except sexual pleasure. I praise God that He had my sexual pleasure in mind when He created me. What a good God. So I praise God for my pussy, I am thankful for my clitoris and I am grateful that He believes that sex should be enjoyed by both men and women (even when procreation is not an object or goal).

But it’s the “single” bit that probably has people tripping up, because in Christian circles, it is believed that single women should not be having sex (let alone enjoying it – but that’s another story for another day).

This belief stems from the fact that there are many Bible verses that preach against sex outside of marriage.  I’m guessing many responses to your piece will cite those verses.

I personally don’t want to go the preachy, theological route at the moment, because while those approaches will probably be Biblically based and cite sound doctrine, they probably won’t affirm you as a single person and acknowledge your experience and the difficulty of being a Christian single adult woman in 2018.

I first wanted to thank you for your bravery in sharing your story and your truth. I wanted to acknowledge and affirm you because you are not alone, and many are going to judge your piece and sweep your pain (because it does hurt sometimes) under the rug and dismiss your experience in order to address the all-important spiritual implications and ever-pressing theological arguments, as Christians are often wont to do.

I also don’t condemn you or your decision (not that you ever asked for my opinion or need my permission anyway). God gives us free choice and you have chosen to exercise the power of your free will. And I will not slut shame you, because so many “Christian” men do and think exactly as you do with narry the batting of an eye from others.  Your decision resonates with me, even though I have chosen differently for myself.  Interestingly enough, the church will probably applaud my personal choice and decry yours, even though, arguably, you win in the interim and for those of us who are celibate the reward for celibacy is sometimes more celibacy.  It would be interesting to see if either of us have any regrets later on in life.

You and I would both agree that we’ve been taught a lot of crap about sexuality in church.  That’s why I believe that women should read the Word for themselves and go to God with any questions on how He would have them steward their sexuality (whether married or single).  I think purity culture is a sham.  I think it has ruined a lot of lives.  I think that if you are being celibate for any reason other than your own best interest and the glory of God, you will be sorely disappointed.  There is no pot of gold at the end of this road just because you kept your pants zipped.

I think it is wrong and patriarchial to tie a woman’s worth or worthiness as a spouse to her sexual purity.  I think it is unfair that Christian women are often held to a standard of purity to which men are never socially expected to ascend.  I do advocate that women, including Christian women, become acquainted with and not fear their sexual selves.  Sex is good and holy and sexuality is natural and God is very pro-sex (I mean, He created it), and it is so, so, very unfortunate that the church is more known for controlling women’s bodies than for disseminating this truth.

I’m not convinced, however, that liberation from purity culture finds its answer in having all the sex one wants or needs as a single person.  It is always important to remain critical of what we are taught and the baggage with which we grow up, but we must make sure that those criticisms don’t force us to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Touch yourself, dance, wear makeup, flirt, and feel the horniness — do whatever you need to be free from your sexual hangups, but make sure that Jesus is okay with it.  We need to find sexual freedom that does not transgress the edicts of the Bible.  And this is possible, because the Bible is a book about freedom, and who the Son sets free is free indeed. Jesus is pro-freedom.

But it’s not carte blanche freedom.  We are not free to do whatever it is we want to do — sexually or otherwise. It is freedom within the principles set out in the Bible and the revealed will of God.  And God, through His word, has shown us time and time again that while He can redeem anything, fornication produces heartbreak.

Society believes differently, but the Christian believes that our bodies are not our own.  They belong to Christ, and we present our bodies as living sacrifices unto God.

I’d like to think that I get it, but I’ve chosen differently.  I’ve chosen to be abstinent, celibate and virginal, and (in a nutshell) here’s why.

I always told myself that at the very least that if I’m going to have sex, I should have sex with someone I love and who loves me.  And because I have never been in that situation, I am a thirty-year-old virgin.

I’m not a virgin because I believe that that will guarantee a great sex life (it won’t. It may even be the opposite. Only time will tell).  I am not a virgin as proof of my piety and  Herculean amounts of restraint (in fact, I don’t try not to go around talking about being a thirty-year-old virgin — it’s so awkwardddddd).

I’m not a virgin with the hopes that it will ensure that I get married (and to a Christian man at that).  Like you, I have realized that God is gracious and merciful, and that (praise God!) He does not hold our sexual histories against us. In fact, contrary to popular belief, getting married is less about doing and more about being.  There is nothing we can do to deserve a great spouse (more about this later).

I don’t abstain from sex because I believe that it is my surefire way to get married to a virgin, Bible-believing good Christian man. After this long period of abstinence, nothing keeps me from ending up with a man with eight children from different women whose sole and highest ambition in life is to ride a Zamboni (like one of the men who is currently trying to holler at me *shudders* Pray for me.).

I don’t even do it for Jesus (*gasp*). Like, that’s not even my prime motivation.

I abstain from sexual intercourse because I am convinced that it is the best decision I can make for myself in light of all of the risks and what I see (or think I’m seeing) God do in my life and what I want for myself.  I am trying to protect my heart and I want peace for myself.  And I knew that having sex with multiple men over the course of my life, outside of a committed relationship, wouldn’t bring me that peace. I knew I would struggle with it.  I knew it would tear me up inside. I knew that it would be harder to break up with a guy once I have had sex with him, and I also knew it would be easier to break up with guys the more I had sex and I didn’t want to get to that point either.

I know me and I’m a relational person, and sex is better relationally than transactionally and with what little I know, I personally believe I need a committed relationship to feel safe and secure (and to actually orgasm with another person). And I personally did not want there to be a pool of men walking this earth who have intimate knowledge of the inside of my vagina and who are acquainted with all of my erogenous zones and sexual responses. I wanted to restrict that number as much as possible.  I don’t want a lot of people knowing me like that nawmsayin’? In a world where everything is for public consumption and one in which I put a lot of myself out there, I wanted at least that intimate information about myself to keep between myself and my future husband.

I found sexual freedom by coming to my own conclusion and making my own choice about how I experience my sexuality and inhabit my sexual being.  And to the extent that it is important, I’d like to think that my decision honours God.

So what’s the point of being celibate?  The point of being celibate is not to get anything from God or for my abstinence to serve as recompense for something I want.  The point of my life is to point to Christ.  And my reward? Well, my reward is more of Jesus and less of me. I know — not very compelling when you really could use a shoulder to cry on or would rather feel the fullness of a penis inside of you… but true nonetheless.

This path is not for the faint of heart.  It is awkward and uncomfortable and just plain hard. It is lonely, not only because you walk this world unpartnered but because, at least for a virgin, you are unable to relate to and haven’t experienced a really fundamental, enjoyable part of the human experience. I regularly feel like a celibate social misfit in a sea of people who are having sex.  I would, for the love of God, like to feel a man’s hands on me before I die, to quote Nicole Hardy. I recognize that this decision may increasingly make me a social pariah or ward off men, but I did not make this decision without counting the cost, and I knew that it would be better for me than spreading my legs and entertaining any and all willing penetrators.  I am convinced that this is the right decision for me.

And that’s not to say that next week I won’t join you.  I may just say screw it – imma get me some.  But that act or change of heart would not change the truth of my words.  If one day I do decide to depart from celibacy, it’s because I got tired or discouraged or felt pressured, and not because anything I’ve written has become less true than before.

“What if I never get married?” (which is among the scariest questions that all singles face). “Should I not still experience physical pleasure and joy? There is something unholy about a God who would require that I maneuver through this anti-Black, anti-woman world without a soft place to land.”

I was just reading Gabrielle Union’s chapter on colorism in her book We’re Gonna Need More Wine and so this really resonated with me.  I am a not-small, dark-skinned Black woman in a world where I do not meet the standard of being classically beautiful.  I struggle with my singleness in a way that my white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed single sisters will never struggle.  There are so many reasons why the desire for marriage feels like a lost cause at best.

To live in a world where I don’t fit in and where people hate my being (as a Black woman) and the prospect of companionship grows dimmer with every year, to see my friends easily fall into relationships and get married off while I remain single and sexless — it does so often seem unholy.  One of the hardest parts of being a Christian is trying to reconcile a holy God with an “unholy” situation — a good God with tests and trials and experiences that are anything but good.

There are so many seemingly unholy situations in life.

I think it is unholy for God to allow Joni Eareckson Tada, who already lives with quadriplegia, to suffer through chronic pain daily.  It had always seemed so unholy to me that after a lifetime of celibacy C.S. Lewis lost his wife to cancer and she died just a few years after he had married her, leaving him to raise his stepsons by himself.  When I read about Brian and Christyn Taylor in Max Lucado’s book, You’ll Get Through This, I thought that after all she had gone through in one year alone — multiple hospital stays with her seven-year-old daughter who was hospitalized for more than six months with six surgeries for a disease of the pancreas and whose future health was unknown, Brian being laid off, the death of several family members, having a family member diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer, being hospitalized with placental abruption at seven-and-a-half weeks pregnant with her fourth child — that it was utterly unholy (cruel even) that God would allow her to deliver a stillborn child.

It is unholy that there are children dying from malnutrition while I put my oxtail in my slow cooker.  And is utterly unholy that God has not saved everyone from sexual assault, molestation, and abuse.

I have no answers, and this is on my list of things to clarify when (if?) I see Jesus. But what I have come to understand is that the Christian is called to see a holy God in the most unholy of situations.

I believe you conflate the word “unholy” with “unfair”, the unfairness being the thing that obfuscates the holiness of God. Because in reality, I think many of the things we call “unholy” are the very things which He would deem “holy,” because those things which we deem “unholy” often have holy use in the hands of a holy God and they allow for His glory to be seen (although I will admit that it is hard to care about the glory of God when all you want to do is climax. That’s not an indictment against you or anyone – it’s the truth. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak).

What I have had to painstakingly and begrudgingly realize is that God never promised me that life would be fair. He promised to hear me, save me from afflictions, but not that my life would be fair.

I also had to swallow the bitter pill that God owes me nothing.

There is nothing we can do to deserve a great spouse.  We are also not entitled to a spouse. Or sex. Or sexual pleasure.

Sexuality is a part of me, but God does not owe me a sex life. Why would God create human beings with strong desires and allow them to go unmet?  Why does the God who says that He will supply every need seem to ignore ever-present sexual needs?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know.  Some would say that this, in itself, demonstrates the cruelty of God (I am reminded of a friend who is marrying a widower, and her fiance the widower told her that he missed having sex and to be a widower for as long as he had been did feel like a cruel fate).  I can tell you where I am at on the matter though: I think an unmet desire is an opportunity for stewardship and an invitation to participate in the suffering of Christ.  It forces me to my knees — not to give head, but to recognize the headship of God and His Lordship over my life and to continually go to Him for comfort.  It is the unrelenting prick of the thorn that reminds us of our weakness and Christ’s strength.

If the only thing He did was allow His Son to die on the cross and never did another thing for me, it would already be too much.  We’re already in a deficit and I’m already indebted.  God can’t deny something to which I was never entitled in the first place.

I too would love to enter my empty apartment after a long day filled with microaggressions and annoying people and crumple and melt into the warm, loving embrace of a chiselled (chocolate?) man with strong arms a rock-hard body and dazzling Dwayne-Johnson-like smile. But my life has taught me that Jesus is my only soft place, and I will always find and have always found more comfort under His wings, nestled in the cleft of the rock than in the arms of any man (or anybody for that matter).

Men have so often proven to be a disappointment.  They are often unreliable, despite the best of intentions.  When or if they are not unreliable, they are sometimes unavailable – emotionally and physically.  Some of them cheat on you. They die. They are disappointingly human.  I am rarely understood by them. They don’t get it.  They often don’t get me.  The best of them would make great husbands but still very poor gods.  I’ve never met any man who could comfort me the way Jesus comforts me. And so I have found myself time and time again burying my tear-streaked face in the lap of Jesus as opposed to the lap of a man, and I am not convinced or don’t know how being in a relationship – even with a good, caring, loving, kind, Dwayne-Johnson-like man – would change this.

(I know this because my happily married friends who are presumably having good sex and married to good men still find themselves turning to Jesus in moments of discomfort.)

And it sounds so cliché to say, but I bear the truth of it every day – the only reliable soft place to land is Jesus, not a man. Not my girlfriends or my parents.  It has always been Jesus.

God does see us in the totality of who we are and never as a sexual being fighting to become a spiritual one.  It’s the idea that we’re not good enough if we are sexual.  But the fact of the matter is that we were always good enough. Yes — we can be sexual and spiritual, erotic and prayerful. They are not mutually exclusive.

And this is what I love about God. He already knows how horny we are, how nasty we are, how pure we are, how sinful we are, how much we struggle and triumph and fail.  He has seen every orgasm, every erection, every sex toy, every position, every wet dream, every lustful thought, every login to PornHub.  He knows our search histories, He knows who we follow on Instagram and Tumblr.  And so I find it so easy to go to God and say, “Lord, I want to have seeeeexxxx.” He made me thus.  I never thought that the spiritual side of me was separate from the sexual side of me.  I’ve always believed that the sexual is spiritual, which is why I have tried to abstain from getting into sexual experiences that will harm my spiritual being.

He knows when we are sleeping and knows when we’re awake. He knows if we’ve been bad or good but because He is not a celestial Santa He doesn’t always give us what we want or what we ask for.  He gives what is good and only as He sees fit.  It is the call and the challenge of the Christian to trust Him as Father and get to know Him as Friend, to mine his goodness in the midst of uncomfortable situations, to discover that if He notices when one worthless sparrow falls to the ground and if He numbers the hair upon my head, that He does care about my vagina.  He does care about the sexlessness of my life, the sex that you are having in yours, and He is an advocate of sexual enjoyment for everyone.

Your moans and your prayers are both sacred sounds, and I pray for lives that are filled with the melodies of both. I just never want to be in a situation where my moans hinder my prayers, and I don’t want the sounds of my moans to overpower the voice of God.  I’ve decided that I need to hear the voice of God more than I need vaginal penetration.