Love Chastity. Blaze.

Tended by Jesus, chastity is fire in the fireplace: a controlled burn that heats up a cold house, eases up for tenderness, stays true to its function, and incinerates garbage.

Unchaste clutter surrounds us and deadens us. Nudity is the current fashion trend for women, while the moral atrocities some men do against women astound and sicken, e.g., Trump fav Matt Gaetz and Dominique Pelicot, who invited his band of brothers to rape his wife repeatedly.

The fallout from the mess includes the weaponizing of persons who want nothing to do with such ‘binary’ bondage. But flight from one’s sex into queer culture is a flight from God, another dungeon we pad with platitudes about how kindly inclusive we are.

We live in unchastity, amplified on endless screens; we tune out the everyday drone of shaming and blaming persons who wound self and others through sexual sin.

Our cure? Love chastity. Of all the gifts I’ve received, an accurate understanding and aspiration toward chastity reigns supreme. Chastity is HOPE for a sexually broken world.

Amid a people living in deep darkness, a Light has dawned (Is. 60:1-2). The diamond of chastity reflects His glory, an invitation to mature into a grounded and exuberant human being. Love chastity with me! Only what we love will change us. Beautifully.

Let’s explore more. Chastity means the ordering of our courts—our personal temples—so that we can direct our powers of life and love to dignifying persons and, if God wills, creating new ones. Chastity endows us with the authority to transform what is alien to human thriving into an attuned gift of self.

What chastity isn’t: mere ‘wholeness’ or abstinence. One can be very proud of virginity at the cost of exuberant connectedness. Vanilla sterility is not chastity! Nor are fluctuating, flimsy versions of ‘wholeness.’ Chastity cannot be reduced to the banally therapeutic. It seems everyone is queer, addicted, and abused. We have lost the reality of ‘this is a real affliction that needs a cure.’ We need spiritual awakening.

Chastity begins and ends with Jesus. He is the image of God in humanity, and He alone has the power to summon His very imprint from our depths—your depth as a woman, mine as a man. He made us, and He has unique authority to remake us where we are corrupt, broken, and temporarily blind. He opens our eyes, little by little.

We who seek His order for our passions keep our eyes fixed on Him. Why? He possesses power that He shares with us. He knows where we are going. He assures us that we will get there. Together.

And chastity unifies us with all persons. Jesus calls everyone to be chaste. He surpasses how we divide persons: categorical, often fatalistic thinking. While acknowledging the differing wounds and disorders of His children, He refuses our deterministic approach to defining and evaluating others. ‘What determines a life is not the mold from which it issues but the goal toward which it moves’ (Eric Varden).

No sinner of any stripe should be excluded; no prognosis should be deemed too grim. ‘Nothing is beyond God’s ordering power’ (Varden).  

Jesus authors and finishes whatever growth we make in chastity. He helps us to realize the complex fulfillment of the nature He placed in us.  

For this, we must assume responsibility. We can aspire to more than our little kingdoms. Chastity envisions us: I am created to blaze with love for God and the beauty of His creation. Yet I am derailed by fear and lust and defensiveness. An ordered life requires admitting disorder––and doing so before our fellows. How broken are we about the ways we have betrayed God’s own?  

‘The way to order is through disorder...How can I be healed if I am determined to give the impression that I am not sick?... Am I prepared to own and name what is in my heart? From that point of departure, will I let God’s call order and reform me?’ (Varden).

God gives grace to activate responsibility by placing us in family—a good enough community to surround and support us while respecting differences.  We discover at once how little we trust and how proud we are of our self-reliant thoughts and efforts. Neither has saved us; we discover how much we need love from those more chaste than us.

Slowly but authentically, we discover the restoration of desire. Our desires are not as ugly and disordered as we thought. We are capable of seeing and loving people as they are; we catch glimpses of our original dignity, man or woman. We play that dignity forward in how we care for others in a tender, honest way.

Jesus cleanses and guides our sexual ‘waters’ for a reason. We flow out to bless others.

And we blaze. Not quickly and not always. But chastity is holy fire, our most potent desire to unite with Love guiding our care for others. At times, I catch a glimpse of myself as a clean, ordered ‘fireplace.’ Like you, I am still subject to as much beauty as unchaste clutter. But training in chastity has made me good at allowing Jesus to burn up the dross and refuel chaste love for many.

Love chastity. Blaze. It is our gift to a disordered world longing for more.‘ Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn’ (Is. 60:3).