A-list celebrities often go to extreme lengths to keep their private lives private, withholding details about their family life, love life and even their faith. But in the digital age where doing so is becoming harder and harder, some celebrities are using the spotlight to motivate others by sharing details of their personal struggles, challenges and decisions.
The pressures to have sex are often magnified in the entertainment industry where young people are catapulted into an adult world. Regardless of their pre-showbiz attitudes surrounding abstinence from sex and the importance of marriage, when thrust into the limelight some struggle to hold onto these values. For the stars who do maintain or renew their vows of abstinence, sharing their reasoning behind their choice and the realities of it can be useful to believers and non-believers.
Actress Meagan Good and her husband, Seventh Day Adventist minister DeVon Franklin, have recently released a book, The Wait, which details their abstinence journey and aims to give advice to others doing the same. The book has become a New York Times best seller, proving that the topic of waiting until marriage remains one of interest.
Good and Franklin are not the only ones open up about their abstinence journey. Singer Ciara and her boyfriend, NFL star Russell Wilson, have both spoken publicly about their decision to wait until marriage, and before marrying in 2009, Adriana Lima, the Brazilian Victoria's Secret model, opened up about her decision to abstain from sex: "Sex is for after marriage," she said in an interview. Carrie Underwood, the country singer and American Idol winner, also went public about her decision to wait until after marriage to her husband Mike Fisher in 2010.
There are various passages in the Bible that advise against sexual immorality. "The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery," (Galatians 5:19). Verses such as Galatians 5:19 can motivate Christians to refrain from sex until after marriage, as can those which refer to the intimacy of marriage. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh," (Genesis 2:24).
An individual's decision to remain abstinent until marriage should not be a news story, but in the context of modern attitudes towards sex and marriage it's understandable why these types of revelations do make the headlines. The choice to disclose whether or not you decide to remain abstinent until marriage is a personal one. Opening up can help improve understanding about the value that sex and marriage has in the Christian faith, and be a source of encouragement to others doing the same.
