(DON'T) GIVE ME THAT CHRISTIAN SIDE HUG!

Don't think about pink elephants.  No!  You just did it, didn't you?!  Your mind flashed to an image of a cute little pink elephant you're not supposed to think about.  Come on now.  You can do it.   Let's draw our attention away from elephants as a whole.    Don't think about Dumbo or circus elephants.  Don't let your thoughts wander to their trunks or to their tails.  No elephants in your thoughts, you hear?

Chances are, the more I talk about avoiding elephants, the more they'll be on your mind.  According to psychologists the brain doesn't hear words like "don't";  it bypasses "don't"  for the tangible word in the sentence: "elephants."    Sports enthusiasts know that focusing on where they don't want the ball to end up often leads the body to send the ball to that very place.   Tell a child not to pick the grass, and even a child who'd never considered the idea, suddenly wonders how much fun it might be to pick the grass.

So why do we think we can take teens who live in a culture where they've been constantly exposed to sexuality since childhood, throw them a few "don'ts",  and expect this to miraculously curtail the pull of biology?  

The documentary Sexy.inc: Our Children Under Influence dramatically shows how sex is being used to sell and market to even young children and consumers.   All their lives they've been exposed to everything from half-dressed pop stars and Bratz dolls, to seductive billboard and magazine advertisements (see 17:13 - 18:13 of Sexy.inc in which an audience is shown two images, one from a teen magazine and one from a porn magazine and struggles to tell which is which).   And now Christians really think they can waltz into the midst of all that and say "no" and "don't", and that's going to be good enough? 

Well it hasn't been good enough yet. Statistics reveal that 90% of teens and young adults engage in premarital sexual activity, and churched youth are only slightly behind, at 80%.    The church has accepted and often encouraged the delay in marriage that is prominent in society, with its well-intentioned messages like "finish your education,"  "marriage isn't for everyone", "take your time and don't settle too soon", "marriage is hard work and singles can serve the Lord with fewer distractions."    Puberty's onset is now earlier than it used to be, and marriage is happening at least five to ten years later than what was the norm thirty years ago.   Is it any surprise that in a culture bombarded with sexual imagery, fifteen to twenty years becomes too long a time for most teens and young adults to battle against their sex drive?   

But just when we thought it couldn't get any worse...   "Christian Side Hugs" show up on the scene!

  

Born predominantly out of a Christian youth conference known as Encounter Generation the idea was brought forth that frontal hugs are impure because they involve momentary contact between chests, and sometimes the brief bumping of pubic bones.  The rationale is that if sex is out, chest contact is out too, (and don't even think of kissing or holding hands, they're being all but obliterated in these new purity circles).

   

If you haven't seen the Christian rap video yet, do watch it, in its palm-face entirety.   Seriously.  Stop right here and watch, I'll wait:  

And there you have it:  One more "no" to add to the long list of forbidden acts.   Because so far, the "just say no" preaching of the married youth pastors has succeeded in keeping only 20% of youth out of bed - so why not get even more legalistic?   

The idea is well intentioned and could certainly be appropriate to those who struggle with maintaining physical boundaries or those who feel uncomfortable with physical contact.   Side-hugs aren't a bad idea per se.   But to categorically label front-hugs as "inappropriate" and "sin" is to invent  new sins - the very thing the Pharisees of Jesus' day were guilty of doing.

Hugging is NOT a "gateway-drug" to further sexual activity.  For many of us it is quite the opposite, in fact. In Confessions of a Christian Cuddler Andre Traversa writes of his struggle to maintain his virginity until marriage: "As I look back at the times when I’ve been most sexually tempted, they’ve been during times of isolation from others and an absence of human contact. During times like these, singles can very easily confuse their need for love with their need for sex, making choices they may later regret."   

Hugging acknowledges that touch is a human necessity essential to emotional wellbeing - whether you're an infant or an adult.   

Touch is not sex.   Touch can become sexual, yes, but it's all about the attitudes that we ascribe to it.   Do you get turned on by bare feet?  Does the sight of ankles crank your sexual engines?  It might if you'd been raised in an environment that hid and made a big deal of feet.  Conversely, If you'd been raised in Africa, you might laugh at the thought of bare breasts being a sexual thing.   Our sexual make-up is hard-wired to the messages of culture regarding what is sexual and what is taboo.  The more something is forbidden and hidden, the more it becomes alluring.  Pushing the line of sexuality further and further back may ultimately result in doing little more than creating new taboos and rendering sexual what wasn't previously thought of as sexual.

And  isn't it ironic that "Christian Side Hug" can declare front-hugging to be sin, but sending your kid home in a coma is perfectly fine?   As to the declaration that "Jesus never hugged nobody like that" (referring to front hugs), what crock!  In the culture of Jesus' day, not only is there no evidence that they ever engaged in "side-hugs" (those are quite a modern invention), but friends used to "recline upon one another's chests"  as Jesus and John did in the embrace seen in  John 13:23,25.   Let's not try being holier than Jesus.  And certainly let's stop writing such cheesy lyrics to pretend like we're as "rough" as the secular world. 

Finally, can we have a little "yes" please?   As a product of the abstinence movement myself (and of the remaining 20% I might add),  I am saddened by the guilt and negatively in the "don't" mentality.   Rather than celebrating the romantic side of choosing to love and be faithful to your future mate before you meet them (as a teen I wrote love letters to mine), today's emphasis tells us "Here's the line, and bad things will happen if you cross it".   I believe that is a pathetic way of instilling sex-positive values in young people.  

 
So don't think about pink elephants.  Don't - don't - don't think about sex.  Don't even think of thinking of hugging someone because then you might think about sex.  Sex sex sex.  It's all about sex.   Gee... wonder why 80% of unmarried church youth are having sex?