"In the face of hypersexualization, educate the body to love".Erik Varden: "No truly edifying word has ever been uttered with contempt."Jason Evert begins the interview on the phone and in the car. He and his wife work intensively outside the home, and with eight children, it's important to be as effective as possible, even on the road. Together they founded "Chastity Project", a platform through which he talks about chastity.
As soon as he can, he parks the car to talk about this topic, with words that combine reflection and experience. He is convinced that "the peace and joy that come from chastity are worth more than all the pleasures of the world".
Evert does not speak about this virtue with accusations or by stirring up sorrows. He considers that living chastity is the only way to realize that for which we were created, "to receive love and to give love".
To better understand his message, based on the theology of the body of St. John Paul II, we asked him about sexuality in couples, the hope of young people and the beauty of chastity.
Can you give us a positive definition of chastity?
– Pope John Paul II said that the word “chastity” needs to be rehabilitated. There’s so many negative connotations associated with it. But one thing he also said was that the virtue of chastity can only be thought of in association with the virtue of love. And I think that what he meant by that was that the function of chastity is to free us to love and to be authentically loved.
How does it free us to love? From a man’s perspective, if I can’t say no to my sexual impulses, then saying yes to them means nothing. If I don’t have self-control, I can’t make the gift of myself to my wife. And if a man never learns self-mastery prior to marriage, I don’t think he’ll ever make love to his own wife, he’ll just use her body as an outlet of what he thinks of as his sexual needs. And a woman knows the difference.
Chastity also frees you to know if you are being loved. From a woman’s perspective, if a guy is unwilling to date you if you are not going to give him certain sexual pleasures, then it shows that it’s not you that he desires, but the pleasure that he can get from you. And so chastity can really help a woman to discern if a man loves her or if he just wants to use her.
Chastity it’s a virtue that is not simply abstinence. The virtue of chastity is more synonymous with purity, purity of heart. And one of the benefits of that is that it makes you free to see God. Not only to see God in Heaven, but to see God in your girlfriend, in yourself and in the created universe. So, chastity gives you clarity of vision.
Chastity is not a negative and prudish attitude towards sexuality, it’s a virtue that frees you to love.
You have stated that purity is the only way to authentic intimacy. What do you mean by that?
– Lust blocks intimacy, because lust is not sexual attraction or desire, those in themselves are good things. Lust is the reduction of a human person to their sexual value. And there’s really nothing intimate about that. You don’t see a person, you see a body.
Lust blocks intimacy, but chastity makes it possible., because you are seeing the person as a person, not just as something that you can extract pleasure from.
Sexuality is experienced very differently between men and women. How can we find balance in the couple, both in dating and in marriage, when living in chastity?
– It’s important that we have regard for one another’s weaknesses. The other might be tempted in areas that we are not. And I think that the word ‘modesty’ is important. We have reduced it to clothing, but that’s not all of it.
Of course, clothing is a part of modesty and we tend to think about it in relation to women. But modesty is also a male thing, in particular we need to talk about the modesty in the men’s intentions. Because sometimes the intentions of a man towards a woman could be far from immodest than any outfit that she could possibly put on. So men need to check if they are being emotionally impure.
Girls can fall into the opposite side. They need to check if they are trying to physically manipulate the guy in order to obtain emotional pleasure from him.
So we have to understand our own weaknesses and challenges, and understand those of the other sex, in order to have regard for that. And that’s why John Paul II called modesty the “guardian of love”, because it opens up a way towards love and helps you to fall in love for the right reasons.
You founded the “Chastity Project” with your wife. Why did you start this project?
– I started it for two reasons. One is I led many high school retreats and on these retreats the high school students would share with me all the struggles they were having and a lot of them were related to chastity, or the lack of it. There was a lot of confusion in the relationships and they had no formation, no guidance on this subject.
At the same time, he counseled women who were considering abortion. He did this as a "sidewalk counselor," so he would talk to women just before they had an abortion. But I felt I was late. Yes, I was talking to a woman but she had an abortion appointment 45 minutes later. There I was wondering why I couldn't have met her when I was 16. Because maybe then, if she had learned about chastity, she wouldn't be in this difficult situation. You don't save babies in front of an abortion clinic, you don't do that by trying to change the supply of abortion. You do that by reducing the demand for abortion. You have to act first.
And so, as I was doing these different ministries, I was also reading Pope John Paul II’s book “Love and responsibility”, and I started seeing that as the antidote for so much of this hurt and confusion.
Many people think that the Church shouldn’t speak about sex, claiming that priests don’t know much about it. Could we say that what they claim is true?
– I think that the world makes a big mistake in discrediting the Church’s teachings on sexuality, because they are being proclaimed by celibate men. In particular, when Pope John Paull II was a professor at the university in Lublin (Poland), his classrooms were packed. His female students thought he must have been married at some point, or at least engaged, because of how well he understood women. But he understood women that well because he was an extraordinary listener. A priest listens to thousands of confessions, many of them are from women, married women, who say things that they might not even say to their own husband.
You don’t need to engage in sexual activity to understand the gift of our sexuality as male and female, any more than an oncologist needs to have cancer to be able to treat it. And if anybody doubts this, they should just read the book “Love and responsibility”.
When asked about how to teach all this to the modern world, Pope John Paul II answered by saying: “It is necessary to understand the soul of the woman”. All of these things that have promised to liberate her, premarital sex, contraception, abortion… They have enslaved her instead.
Pope John Paul II also talks about when Adam first saw Eve’s naked body. John Paul II says that she experienced “the peace of the interior gaze”. What he meant by that is that women are very perceptive as to how men look at them. If a woman senses that a man is looking at her in an objectifying way, she becomes defensive and restless, she feels vulnerable and exposed. She might even be resentful towards him or towards sexuality in general. But if a man has purity of heart, in particular a husband towards his wife, he’s able to give to her all of the peace of the interior gaze. Meaning she is at rest in his presence, she can be naked without shame because she knows he’s looking at her with love.
It seems that once you get married, everything is allowed in sex. How do you live chastity in marriage?
– God’s plan for sex in marriage is to speak the wedding vows with the body. In your wedding vows you promise that your love will be free, total, faithful and that it’ll welcome children. And so when a husband and a wife make love, what they are doing is they are renewing their wedding vows in their bodies.
As a spouse, I give myself to you freely, I’m not forcing you, not manipulating or pressuring you, it’s a free gift of self. I’m not addicted to lust. It’s a total gift, you are holding back nothing from each other, not even your fatherhood or motherhood. It’s a faithful gift, not only with your body but also with your imagination. And it’s a fruitful act, so it’s never sterilized, contraceptive or aborted.
All of these means no adultery, no pornography, no contraception, purity of heart, reverence for the gift of sexuality… Essentially, what you are doing then is you are speaking the truth with your body. Because sex is saying with your body that I am completely yours, I give myself totally to you. And so, within marriage, you are speaking the truth in your body, you are renewing your wedding vows.
Unfortunately, a lot of people think that sexual desire is lust. So, if you are experiencing sexual desire you must be lusting, but that’s not the Church’s understanding of these terms, because otherwise just the act of love making itself would have to be sterile, unemotional and objectively disinterested. But that’s not the way that God designed it to work.
Pope John Paul II said that the sexual drive is a gift from God. And so we just have to reclaim it from the ways that the world has twisted it up.
Many young people attend your conferences, why are they so interested in this topic? What are they looking for?
– They are looking for love. They were created by love, for love, to receive love. And chastity makes love possible. They’ve been through heartbreak, they’ve been through the hurt. They know that all the pornography they’ve consumed has not brought them one inch closer to the love that their hearts really crave. Young people are looking for something that can break through all this hurt and confusion.
They are hungry for this because their hearts are made for love and their minds are made for the truth, and chastity gives them both.
What if someone has not lived chastity from a young age? How to heal those wounds?
– The first step is to realize that it is never too late. You are valuable, your value does not come from your virginity. Your sexuality has value because of you, you are the gift. You still have yourself to give, we are not damaged goods.
If you feel wounded from the past, don’t infect the wound, don0t go back to that old lifestyle of false consolations. But start over. If your future wife or husband is out there and has made mistakes, would you not love them because of their past? No. You’d love them and you’d want them to start over.
Today is that day of your life when you can start over. Love your spouse before you meet your spouse, and this will give you greater clarity to realize if that is the right person to marry. Once you become sexually intimate with someone, your capacity to be objective is just gone.
So start over. If you are Catholic, go to the Sacrament of Confession, and begin again.
You say it is important for young people to be the ones to tell others about the beauty of chastity. Why do you think this is relevant?
– Chastity is a virtue that is easy to resent. It’s easy to dismiss it, saying that it is not for you, that it is unhealthy or unrealistic. But when you have a young person saying that it is not unhealthy and that he or she is happy, that chastity is not unrealistic and it is as hard as you make it, that it can be enjoyable, you make it harder to dismiss this virtue.
How do you strike a balance between not being embarrassed to talk about sex and not turning it into a banal topic?
– One, I think it is an easy topic to talk about because it is already on people’s minds. But it can be an awkward subject, so I try to use humor in a tasteful way, and that helps people to relax. It’s almost as when you are using anesthesia before you operate. If you don’t numb the patient and you just stick a knife in them, they are going to run away. So I use humor as a kind of anesthesia and then I go on and make some strong points.
Again, it’s not much of a talk about shame and guilt. It’s more like explaining to them that you struggle to, and if I open up to them it helps them to relax.
Also, I like to focus on why this is a beautiful thing. Because truth and goodness, you can debate them, but beauty is irrefutable, you can’t argue with beauty.
Now the question you probably get asked at all your conferences: Is it really worth being chaste? Is it really possible?
– I would ask the question backwards. Is it really realistic to be unchaste and happy? Think about it. Do I really wanna grow up to be an adult that is still looking at pornography? Do I want to shut my computer when my five year old daughter comes into the room? Do I want to hide the porn from my wife? Is sleeping with a bunch of guys in college really what I long for in the depths of my soul? Do I want to sleep with a guy, not knowing if he’ll text me back two weeks from now? I think the answer to all that is no.
It seems like we are fighting against the very thing that we desire, which is authentic human love. So to me, chastity is not unrealistic, what is unrealistic is expecting people to find fulfillment living outside of the will of God.
People say that chastity is hard, but what is actually hard is unchastity. But we need to be realistic. When it comes to temptation, we cause 90 % of them by what we look at and who we hang out with. If we control that a little better, it comes a lot easier.
