In the Fall semester, I met with four different women who each had woken to discover that they had sex the previous night, but had no memory of it. In each case, the women had been drinking. In two cases, a date-rape drug may have been used. In one case, the sexual partner was a male “best friend,” whom the woman had assumed she was safe with. In another case, the woman went home with an acquaintance. In the third case, the woman went home with a total stranger. In another, the woman had passed out drunk and a man had sex with her while she lay unconscious – this wasn’t the first time this had happened to her.  Each woman felt a combination of anger, personal responsibility and shame.

Legally, these are stories of rape.  But, each of these women felt responsible for what was done to them.  And, they felt shame.

These women, and so many others, describe a campus culture in which men expect to have sex on any given night, even if it requires pressure, manipulation or the use of illegal date-rape drugs. If refused sexual intercourse, other options are requested, and expected.

When a woman is brave enough to come to me, she often describes her shame by speaking of a loss of “purity.” I define purity as not what you have done or what has been done to you, but what you choose to do from this step forward.  But, my definition often falls on deaf ears, and the shame remains.

As a pastor and as a “Dad”-type figure on campus, I am broken-hearted about the situations of these young women. I have cried with too many women who believe that they are now “spoiled” for any future relationship, who think that no good man will ever want them, who feel that they don’t have a choice about their sexual activity, and who feel they have to be sexually active to be wanted. I often find myself angry at the young men who have caused this, and even at the fathers who have not provided the love and affection that their daughters have needed.

Are men entirely to blame?  Of course not.  Often women choose to give into pressures – their own desires, the casual sexual attitudes around them, and often a strong desire to be wanted and desired.  Sometimes women regret their first sexual experience, but now that they are “spoiled” there is no reason to stop.

Don’t men feel sexual shame?  Yes, some do.  But, from my experience, women more consistently carry the greater burden of shame.

I think the reason that brilliant, accomplished young women are degrading themselves sexually is that their identity is too often based on finding a man to love them, who will find them beautiful, who will make them feel worthy of being loved. With all of my heart, I believe that God made us for relationship; God said that it is not good for us to be alone. But our identity is in Christ. Worth is not based on accomplishment, external beauty or the validation of another person. But most college women do not know this and are desperately looking for male acceptance and affirmation. Many of the Christian women I know seem almost desperate for a man to validate them. There seems to be a deep insecurity about beauty (contributing to eating disorders), desirability (leading to promiscuity) and worth (leading to all kinds of issues like anxiety, depression, substance abuse, cutting).

How does a young man or woman deal with the shame associated with sex?  Ask and accept God’s forgiveness, which God gives generously.  They need to forgive themselves, which is harder.  They need to allow the past to be the past, and determine a personal sexual ethic from this point forward. “Purity” is about what they do in obedience, not what they have done or has been done to them.

We feel guilty when we’ve done something wrong, and we all have.  Thus, the necessity of the cross.  Shame, though, is more insidious.  Shame is my belief that there is now something wrong with me.  The cure to shame is also the cross.  “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).  The cure for shame is accepting our standing with God – covered by grace, restored, renewed, adopted, loved as God’s own sons and daughters.

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