Every Young Man’s (Real) Battle
Finding your shipwreck companion
Featuring Ben Christenson in the Fiery Philosophies series.
THE MOST SEXUALLY EXPLICIT BOOK I’ve ever read is the Christian bestseller Every Young Man’s Battle. While purportedly a book meant to teach teenage boys the importance of abstinence, it’s full of the authors’ humble bragging about their own exploits.
I’ll offer one of the tamest examples I can find and ask you to take it on faith that the stories get more graphic and self-congratulatory:
Just one year out of college in California, I found myself with four “steady” girlfriends simultaneously. I was sleeping with three of them and was essentially engaged to marry two of them. None knew of the others.
The authors of this book claim they share all this so you understand the “fiery draw” of premarital sex, but I’m not sure any young man picks up a book subtitled Strategies for Victory in the Real World of Temptation hoping to learn more about the temptation itself. The books in the series—Every Young Man’s Battle, Every Man’s Battle, Every Young Woman’s Battle, etc.—have sold over 4 million copies. I guess what’s true for marketing is true for Christian publishing: Sex sells.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME these books were taking off, the show Friends was winding down. From the pilot episode onward, it had broken television taboos with its free sexual ethic. The coarsening of sitcom humor filtered into Christian culture with “pornified” books like Every Young Man’s Battle. In an era where sexuality had to be more open, tolerant, and experimental, Christians couldn’t fall behind.
The dreaded hook-up culture was telling young people that sex was “just for fun” and “didn’t really matter,” and Christians like Joshua Harris were here to say, “It is really fun, but it does matter”—so kiss dating goodbye and say hello to courtship.
But the hedonism of the early two thousands has given way to the heteropessimism of today. If Friends presents sex as fun and carefree, a show like Euphoria demonstrates how serious it can be. Conservatives get upset about the nudity and perversion in Euphoria, but there’s a strong case that the show is a critique rather than a glorification of these characters.
By the end of season 3, Rue (Zendaya) dies of an overdose, Nate (Jacob Elordi) is buried alive for ripping off loan sharks, and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) is left a grieving widow. Cassie’s OnlyFans career is not presented as the triumph of an empowered woman but as a desperate grasp for money and attention that leads to a life that is little better and not much freer than that of the sex-trafficked women at the nearby strip club.
I’m not saying Euphoria is the new VeggieTales, but, more than most modern media, it realistically depicts the gloominess and desolation of evil. Far from glamorizing sex and drugs, Euphoria offers an unflinching portrait of a generation in a spiritual wasteland crying out for water. Of course, we Christians believe we have found that living water. But if the Christian response to media like Friends was a part of creating purity culture with all its attendant baggage and ex-evangelical memoirs, how should Christians respond to Euphoria?
THE SUMMER AFTER I got married, my wife and I worked at a Christian camp. I’d attended it growing up, but coming back as married staff led to new conversations. As we sat by the lake, an older staffer asked me how I found married life. I told him it was the first time I’d had a relationship where I made unambiguous mistakes yet was unconditionally forgiven.
I was going on about my great wife until he cut in. “Well, right, because marriage is an image of God’s love for us,” he said. Immediately, my chest tightened. Here I was, monologuing about my great wife without once mentioning JC. Apostate much?
As I thought about it more, I realized that I was a believer before my marriage, but the love of my wife allowed me to understand the love of God rather than vice versa. That conversation was a first step toward understanding how marriage can be a vehicle for God’s grace.
DESPITE PURITY CULTURE being an ostensibly Christian movement, it often ignored the spiritual aspects of marriage to focus on the physical.
I understood chastity to mean you were a virgin on your wedding night, not a lifelong spiritual virtue that needs cultivating. I was told the problem with sexual immorality was that it would ruin my married sex life: You don’t want to be comparing your wife to your ex or some video you watched. While that may well be true, it was basically an argument for delayed sexual gratification—make sure your spouse is the best you’ve ever had—rather than a spiritual appeal.
The very first story in Every Young Man’s Battle describes one of the authors going for a drive and ogling a woman so intently that he crashes his car. He writes that his young marriage was hurt because he was cheating his wife out of his full devotion. The takeaway—besides that this guy really knows what he’s talking about with that temptation stuff—is that your wife needs to be the hottest jogger in your life.
But the longer I’m married, the more I see the truth in J. R. R. Tolkien’s statement that men and women are “companions in shipwreck.” In a fallen world, men and women must band together, united by love for one another and for God, to weather the storms that come.
Tolkien warns against the temptation to worship “true love”—while it might encourage some virtues of sacrifice and self-denial, it eventually proves inconstant and shallow. Nowadays, though, we have the opposite problem.
RATHER THAN WORSHIPPING “true love,” young people today say that true love doesn’t exist. It’s just lust or a dangerous myth or an attachment disorder. Sacrificing for your beloved is for fools. On top of that, each sex now has an army of influencers telling them that either women are crazy and vindictive or that men are incompetent and abusive. The distrust and animosity between the sexes is palpable when you go online, and that algorithmic incentive structure is not likely to change anytime soon.
In my conversation with Freya India, she explained it to me like this:
From what I know of young women, there’s a lot of risk aversion and a lot of fear around the opposite sex. And I think sometimes that hardens into contempt and hatred…Both sides, men and women, seem more scared than ever to be vulnerable and take the risk and bet their lives on someone else.
The stakes of this mutual distrust between men and women are not only fertility collapse or opposing voting blocs or aimless young men tearing down society. The stakes of men and women hating each other are salvific. The same logic that tells you to put yourself first, trust no one, and commit to nothing will crowd out God just the same as a spouse.
Conversely, as I was reminded that day at summer camp, loving and sacrificing for your spouse and receiving her love in return can point you toward God like no other.
IN THE SHIPWRECK OF LIFE, my wife has less in common with the jogger on the street than with the angel watching over me. By her presence, she offers a counterfactual to gender-slop discourse. By her example, she challenges me to live a holier life. And by her patience, I am able to ask forgiveness when I fall short.
I don’t have a full regimen to replace purity culture, because that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. It took something good—abstaining from fornication and pornography—and made it the ultimate judgment of the Christian life. In doing so, it often lost the Christian part along the way.
So the response to Euphoria doesn’t need to be simply denouncing OnlyFans or extolling monogamous sex. It needs to speak to something bigger. A generation that has lived prodigally can sense that something is broken, but they can hardly believe that the Father is standing and waiting to run toward them. He is ready to throw a feast for those who have grown accustomed to scraps.
In the end, every young man (and woman) is not just wrestling against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph. 6:12). Lust is but one front in this raging cosmic battle, and your spouse is a soldier who stands by your side, a companion to keep you afloat in the shipwreck.
I was told that my wife would save me from porn. Turns out, she’s saved me from hell.
Ben Christenson
Writer
Ben Christenson is based outside Washington DC where he and his wife raise their growing family, throw ambitious parties, and take care of three dogs, one cat, and many chickens. His essays have been published at Mere Orthodoxy, Front Porch Republic, and his Substack, Living as Creatures.
📸 Photography by Elizabeth Sanders
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Yeah, well, sort of. Your article doesn’t deal with the spiritual meanings involved when your souse is not “there for you.” Ultimately, this is inevitable and any view of marriage must deal with it. You espouse the importance and inherent goodness of monogamy, and I agree. But monogamy operates differently when one views it not as a commitment to one’s spouse, but a commitment to one’s self.
Excellent! It’s as if the narrative of purity culture that fixates on the physical paints men as helpless victims who may fall prey to a lustful temptation at any moment. Obviously, this narrative places incredibly unhealthy and unnecessary expectations (and responsibility) on women. I do think whatever takes the place of purity culture within Christian circles must be holistic, fusing the physical, spiritual, and emotional by helping men understand the neurological workings of the brain, how to face emotions and respond in health to triggers, and that "because we are already accepted and loved [in Christ], we are really free to say no to sin." (from Grace-Based Recovery by Jonathan Daugherty).
Tolkien’s analogy of men and women as “companions in shipwreck” as well as the picture of marriage as “a vehicle for God’s grace” are both fantastic inclusions. I also appreciated the reference to Rachel Joy Welcher’s article from 2021 (one I hadn’t read). Thank you!