#okcupid #Christian #andveryseriousaboutit?

The other day, some friends and I were talking about dating and before too long, we got onto the topic of okcupid.  It's an inevitability.  1 out of 3 marriages begin online, and (if my own dating history is evidence) even more people meet their dates online.  70% of the people I have dated looked through my profile and felt curious enough to meet me in person.

Before our conversation gets too far, someone asks, "so.. do you list your religion or leave it blank?"  We're given such excellent options: 6 mainstream religions (Catholicism even separated from Christianity), atheism, agnosticism, or the (always helpful) "other."  The next drop down box is even more curious:

okcupid, among other dating sites, is one of the primary mechanisms people of all ages use to find everyone from a hook up to their forever love.  Integrating the concept of faith life into the mix is so challenging.  Faith can be just as diverse as the people and sexualities we can find on many dating sites. And yet they can feel to us as superficially related as we feel about a profile that barely reflects the depths of who we are.

So where do we begin?  Sexuality has already recognized that faith is a part of a person's life- and that there are many ways of interacting with it.  Maybe faith is something we are "very serious about."  Maybe we don't exactly know what's going on and are kind of bumbling through until we settle somewhere- and maybe we won't settle anywhere.

I wonder what it would look like if spirituality approached sexuality the same way.  As something to be discovered, a continual process of exploration, something we can take seriously or something we can have fun with.

From where I sit, there is only one place to start: honest expression of both.  I told my friends that on my okcupid page, I do share that I am Christian.  I don't indicate a level of seriousness because that can change a million times a day.  I feel very comfortable merging my faith life with my sexuality. Pouring my spirit into my sexuality.  Placing sexuality as my primary identity, and putting Christianity into it.

What I invite myself to do next is to pour my sexuality into my faith life.  Be a public witness to the way body and love have come together to sustain my spirit in ways equal to that of traditional worship on a Sunday morning.  In contexts where I am asked to be a spiritual person first and everything else second, weave in elements of the way healthy sexuality and bodylove have come to form me as a spiritual being.

Two parts. One whole.