The biggest news on sports-talk radio this week was Lolo Jones’s admission in an interview that she’s still a virgin at 29. Jones is a world-class hurdler who will compete in the London Olympics this summer.
“Google her picture if you don’t know who we’re talking about,” various talk-radio hosts told us. “She’s hot!” The subtext was, “How could this bright, attractive young woman, who seems to be so normal and have so much going for her, still be a virgin?”
Regardless, I was pleased that the guy-talk surrounding Jones was universally positive. Men—at least the men who listen to sports-talk radio—approve of this young Christian woman’s decision to wait until marriage to have sex.
It does expose a curious double-standard: earlier in the year, they discussed fellow athlete Tim Tebow’s virginity as if he were an alien from outer space—or gay. (Meanwhile, as if to illustrate how sexually confused our culture is, the online adultery service, Ashley Madison, has offered $1 million to any woman who can prove that Tebow is no longer a virgin.)
Jones says that postponing sex until marriage has been harder than graduating from college or training for the Olympics.
It’s hard, by all means. But she also wants the world to know that it’s not impossible—or weird. As Jones and Tebow both know, waiting is the Christian thing to do. It’s a part of what it means to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
Shame on us pastors, youth ministers, or church leaders if we communicate anything other than that to our young people.