Pure Freedom

“Have you had sex with this man?” Dannah Gresh asked that question of an audience staring at a big screen photo of NFL football player Tim Tebow during TEDxPSU on March 16^th. The audience of nine hundred, mostly Penn State University students, was challenged to consider if it was possibly intolerance of virginity that led the media to print the question along with the offer of a one million dollar ransom for anyone who could prove they’d taken Tebow’s virginity. She then used social science to debunk the myths that perpetuate the lie that those who embrace their virginity are doomed to have bad sex, proving not only that those who reserve sex for marriage have great sex but when you have sex with anyone “your body makes a promise whether you do or not.

TED is a globally recognized, by-invitation-only think tank of speeches used by educators and students and is billed as “ideas worth spreading.” Dannah proposed that tolerance for virginity was an idea worth spreading and was invited to present. If Gresh’s speech gets enough traffic it will be moved to the main TED website and the idea of tolerance for virginity will be promoted across the globe. Please consider sharing it on your Facebook page, Twitter feed, or through email.

Get Lost by Dannah Gresh from waterbrook multnomah on Vimeo.

Waterbrook Multnomah invites you to the book launch of Get Lost: Your Guide to Finding True Love.

Celebrate Dannah’s recent milestone of reaching the one million mark in career sales as she dedicates her most recent book to Heather Bullock whose life was transformed by And the Bride Wore White. Dannah will also share brief remarks on our communities cooperative effort to bring sexual wholeness to Penn State students and give you a sneak peak of her yet to be released TED Talk.

May 13, 2013
6:30-8:30 pm

Ramada Inn State College, PA
1450 South Atherton Street

Hor D’oeuvres and Drinks Served

RSVP by phone or email required.
814-234-6072 • eileen@purefreedom.org

An appeal will be made to support the ministries of Pure Freedom and its projects including our Secret Keeper Girl New York City Outreach.

Take a breath. Slow down. Dating doesn’t have to be so rushed. It does have to be right.

[Bonus material from Get Lost.]

A recent Wall Street Journal article inquired, “Where Have All The Good Men Gone?” A current Amazon best-seller asks, Is There Anything Good About Men? Since the 2004 coining of the word “adultescent,”[i] we’ve had something to call the young adult male who is so busy playing Call of Duty on his Playstation 4 that he doesn’t actually have a real life call of duty. No honor. No integrity. No goodness. Just a seventh grade mind-set and responsibility-level trapped in the flabby body of an adult who often still lives at home or in a tacky bachelor pad with other adultescents. I’ve written at length about this in a book for mothers entitled Six Ways To Keep The Good In Your Boy, and I don’t think it’s all the fault of men and boys. Women have something to do with it, too, but it’s a very real plight and as you seek a life partner you should be aware of it. The phenomenon is what has caused Kay S. Hymowitz to pen the book, Manning Up, in which she writes:

“Not so long ago, average mid-twentysomethings, both male and female, had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: high school diploma, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days [the males] hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance.”[ii]

High school English teacher Joe Carmichiel has written a book entitled Permanent Adolescence: Why boys Don’t Grow Up, because “A large number of today’s teenagers especially boys see no reason to accept or pursue adulthood since it is of so little value to the larger culture.”[iii]

And women are frustrated with this. I spoke to one nineteen-year-old who had already worked her way through beauty school and was paying her bills with a great job, but lamented that she had to date someone at least thirty years old in order to find a maturity level that matched hers. She was looking for a good man. Just one good man.

As she should be.

Robert Coles, a pioneer in the field of moral intelligence, brings clarity to the definitions of goodness:

“good…boys…have learned to take seriously the very notion, the desireability of goodness—living up to the Golden rule.”[v] Whereas bad boys display a “heightened destructive self-absorption, in all its melancholy stages.” In essence, we go bad when “we lose sight of our obligation to others.”[vi]

Goodness is the quality that makes us put others ahead of ourselves. It’s the moral compass that keeps the world safe, happy, and working. It’s the drive that makes us want to function in families rather than isolation. It’s the internal road sign that takes us away from our own desires and toward the destiny of meeting the needs of others.

The New Testament Greek word for “goodness”—used here and in other places— appears in three forms, all of which are rooted in the Hebrew word “tod”, which meant “usefulness.” You need a man who is “good.” That is, he is looking beyond his own desire to eat wings and play Call of Duty until 3:00am to be useful for others.

Men are called to goodness in a way that women are not within marriage. Ephesians 5:28,29 says that they are to be so outside of their own desires that they treat their women with the same respect they would treat their own bodies, including feeding and caring for her. This requires him to be able to provide for her and willing to do it. Does he have a job? Or is he working hard in school so he can get a good one? Do you see a work ethic in the way he treats his assignments and chores?

Does he know how to work?

NOTES: This blog series is extra material that I had left over after I wrote Get Lost: Your Guide To True Love. It is clearly stated in the book that the purpose of getting lost in God’s love is not to find a guy. But for those girls who are contemplating a relationship or marriage, I’ve expounded upon my thoughts on what kind of guy that might be.

Take a breath. Slow down. Dating doesn’t have to be so rushed. It does have to be right.

[Bonus material from Get Lost.]

Celebs like Ashton Kutcher, Bradley Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Justin Timberlake and more joined forces to collaborate on a campaign to stop men from using girls to mop up their own selfish sexual needs.  Whatever you think of the self deprecating humor they used in their commercials to raise awareness of sex trafficking, the message is loud and clear: “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls.”

A watching world applauded the celebs as heroes.

Sex trafficking is an issue that is important to me and very personal.  I have one adopted daughter whom we rescued out of a rape culture. And another who has chosen to be a student activitist fighting it. Her work began in one of the vilest places on the planet where girls are intentionally bred to be sold by their families into the sex industry when they turn twelve. I know what a culture that endorses rape looks like. And I despise it.

What’s wrong with rape and sex trafficking, which we might well think of as corporately fueled and organized gang rape? These crimes are the ultimate offense against the value of a human being. The perpetrators—and those who turn a blind eye—fail to see the victim as a mother or girlfriend, student or co-worker, friend or lover with desires, hopes, and abilities. Humanity loses its humanness when one is allowed to treat another as a tool to fulfill desires so twisted that they cannot be excused as anything but demonically-fueled evil.

At its core, rape twists an act that is meant to be a mutual exchange into the most depraved disrespect of another human being. This strikes at the very heart of God’s intention for sexual expression. The Old Testament uses the word yada for sex. It means: “to know, to be known, to be deeply respected.” God’s very definition of sex transcends the physical act and emphasizes the emotional knowing and exchange of respect that is the essence of his intended design.

Real men respect women.

I find that some people aren’t comfortable with a Christian dialogue of men respecting women when it moves into the territory of protecting them sexually. Some say that teaching women modesty and purity promotes rape culture. Others say a woman can take care of herself. Still others…well… frankly, I can’t quite wrap my mind around the reasoning, try as I might.

I will keep speaking out as one who teaches that women are worthy of the respect and that men need to step up to protect them as Christian brothers. This is a dialogue that God himself initiated through his servant, The Apostle Paul. He charged men in Ephesians 5 to “present her a pure and spotless bride.” While men and women are both charged to express self-control for their own individual purity, only men are charged specifically with being responsible for the sexual wholeness of the opposite gender. According to God, it’s the man’s responsibility to act in integrity regardless of how a woman acts or dresses. This seems to place the ultimate responsibility for respecting human sexuality squarely on the shoulders of men. Protecting a sister’s sexual integrity is one of the highest forms of respect that a man can show to a woman.

Were he alive today, the Apostle Paul might well have taken up a sign with Ashton Kutcher with an important addition: “Real men don’t buy girls…they protect them!”

We applaud our modern day celebs when they stand up to say women are worthy of respect. Can we embrace Paul’s similar challenge?

NOTES: This blog series is extra material that I had left over after I wrote Get Lost: Your Guide To True Love. It is clearly stated in the book that the purpose of getting lost in God’s love is not to find a guy. But for those girls who are contemplating a relationship or marriage, I’ve expounded upon my thoughts on what kind of guy that might be.

 Take a breath. Slow down. Dating doesn’t have to be so rushed. It does have to be right.

[Bonus material from Get Lost.]

In the darkness of night a twenty-something woman steps out of her plush towel sheet and dips her toe into a descending stairway leading to a secluded, spa-like pool. It is the night before her wedding and she is bathing for it in a special body of water. This mikvah, as the traditional Jew calls it, isn’t for just the traditionals any longer. More and more modern women are turning to the ritualistic cleansing bath to prepare them for their wedding day.

Down she dips herself. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven times. Each dunk cleanses her of her old life and prepares her for a new one as the wife of one man.

The pool is filled with with what is called “living water.” That is, it is water that has been in existence since the beginning of time. Usually, it is filled with rain water that has recycled and again and again through the earth’s atmosphere. In this way it is not unlike the water the water in ancient mikvah’s that existed during the time of Christ. Back then, the bride-to-be was making one of many trips to be re-cleansed for her marriage bed. She would return after each period to be cleansed before she could have sex with her husband. What a burdensome task!

But Jesus said something about “living water” when he was here on earth didn’t he? He told a sinful woman at a well of water, ““If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” HE is the living water. Maybe that’s one reason why the Apostle Paul took the cumbersome burden of a woman’s ritualistic bathing and replaced it with something different. In Ephesians 5 he charges husbands to make their brides holy “by cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.” As I wrote in What Are You Waiting For:

The apostle Paul’s language here is pure, 100 percent Middle Eastern, circa first century A.D. … The spiritual parallel is that Christ has washed his bride, the church, through His death. But his once-for-all sacrifice means the old ways of “making things clean” are gone.” So Paul introduces a new way to cleanse a bride. Now she will be cleansed ceremonially by one thing and one thing alone. Not water, but the Word…and not before marriage, but as a continual action after marriage.[i]

Now the husband is charged with the task of cleansing her with the words of Jesus. It is not the words of the husband, but the words of our Savior that should be drenching a woman’s spirit and cleansing her!

Cleansing her of what? I write about this at length in Get Lost, but we women are certainly prone to hang on to words that wound. For example, I remember clearly the words of a student leader who crushed my heart when I was a freshman in college. Having persistently asked for an allowance in where and how I interacted with another student, this over-stressed young woman eventually blurted out: “Dannah Gresh, your heart is black!” How I ruminated on those words through the years, letting them wound be even further.

Bob Gresh has helped me to heal. There’s nothing quite like waking up to someone who has chosen you.  Each morning, I roll over in bed to find that someone found my heart beautiful not black. But mine has been a man mindful that he alone cannot handle all of the aches in my heart. I fell in love with him most profoundly as a teacher of a college Sunday school class. There I could see that he was able to handle the Word of God. That he knew it. And loved it. On occasion, I would find a note in my P.O. box from my favorite Sunday school teacher explaining how the verse he taught on spoke of my gifts, my calling, my beauty, or my purpose. Few things have cleansed my heart as completely as those notes..and others like it that have come through the years.

A guy can’t grow into a man who will bring the Word of God to your heart unless he is putting it in his heart now. If you’re going to consider a guy worthy of a date, be sure that he knows and loves the Word of God. He doesn’t need to be a Sunday school teacher or trying to go to seminary. He just needs to treasure the word of God to be a worthy consideration for a date!