True Advent Waits Again
I know some of you have been listening to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” since the day after Halloween. You know who you are! The church is currently in the liturgical season of Advent. Tis the season of waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Christ.
It is also the season of expecting Christ to come again. Waiting and longing for the coming of the Messiah was a long-standing tradition in ancient Israel. It’s a season of already-not-yet, we already experience the hope, peace, joy and love from the first coming of Christ. And yet we await Christ’s triumphal return where the world will be made right.
So speaking of waiting, as a teenager in the church in the '90s, I got a heavy dose of purity culture. If you’re not familiar with it, many conservative Christian churches taught teenagers a very skewed view of sexuality that was rooted in patriarchy and control. You’ve probably heard of the True Love Waits movement, where daughters pledged their virginity until marriage and wore promise rings as an outward sign of their morality. Joshua Harris’ book I Kissed Dating Goodbye became the barometer for the truly spiritual young person, who refused casual dating and instead only courted a future partner. You were really holy if you didn’t even kiss until your wedding day. And the guarantee was that the pure and prayerful person would live happily ever after and suddenly, magically have the best sex life once they were married.
On the flip side, anyone who engaged in premarital sex was considered damaged goods. Your body is not your own, it belongs to your future marriage partner, and why would they want a chewed up piece of gum or a torn rose? On top of all this, purity culture perpetuated patriarchal stereotypes that men have insatiable sexual urges and women are largely asexual, so it’s up to women to be modest to protect men from themselves, and it’s up to women to perform in the bedroom whenever their husband demands it. Purity culture is fundamentally rooted in shame, it victim-blames and gaslights women, and for men either resulted in misogynistic entitlement or a total fear that their sexual urges would send them to hell.
So yeah, not a fan.
But what I AM a fan of is mashing up purity culture with Advent in this week’s ridiculous comic! They’re both just all about waiting! And I’m sure all of us know at least one Advent purist who gets outraged when they hear a Christmas song before December 25! I hope you enjoy!