Why 'Slut' Cuts to the Core—of All of Us

Are you a slut?

Have you ever been one?

Have you ever been made to feel like one?

Have you ever made someone else feel like one?

Have you ever called someone a slut, even if only in your mind?

Chances are that most of us fall into one or more of these categories.

It's funny how some words in our language are considered "swear" words and are regulated by the FCC, and other words aren't technically in this category, yet are viler than some of the banned words. Slut is one of those words. It even sounds ugly: a hiss that slides into a grunt and slams shut, case closed. It cuts deep in both sound and sense.

The word's long history in the English language has so many uses that it's nearly meaningless. Originally the term slut referred to a slovenly person (not necessarily female) and later came to be an acceptable name for a kitchen maid. But it's been used as an insult for a promiscuous woman for centuries. That still doesn't clear things up, however. In Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary, promiscuous meant "not restricted to an individual," making sex with more than one person, even, "promiscuous." Few today would adopt so strict a definition.

Now, over the past week, the word slut has made headlines, thanks to Rush Limbaugh's use of it (and then some) to disparage Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student appealing for government-mandated coverage of birth control. Don't get me wrong: The topic of what the government mandates and what our tax dollars pay for is more than fair game for public debate. Indeed, the more proper insult for Rush to have made would have been mooch. But now, as many others have noted, an important political debate has disappeared into the lethal quicksand of rhetoric.

But despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that we can't agree on the meaning of the word, it is quite powerful. So powerful that a "Slut Walk" movement is attempting to claim the word so as to drain some of its potency. So powerful that rapper Eminem has gotten rich off it. So powerful that Limbaugh has lost countless program sponsors amid the national outcries. So powerful that Fluke has rejected Limbaugh's apparently sincere apology. So powerful that my 76-year-old mother, no sympathizer with Fluke's political agenda, said of the whole Rush affair, "Some things you just can't take back."

I remember the first girl (is there more than one? God forgive me!) I deemed a slut. My boyfriend and I were seniors in high school and a 14-year-old freshman—a freshman!—told my boyfriend she'd do anything to get him, anything. I never exchanged words with this girl, but the words about her that consumed my thoughts were the most poisonous I've known. The power possessed by that one word, slut, cuts both ways, though, and I wonder if its greater hold is over the one who uses it against another.

So, as Christians, how then are we to respond to sexual promiscuity? Certainly, we are not to condone it in any of its definitions.

Yet isn't it strange that fallen women are at the heart of essential doctrines of the Christian faith? God commanded Hosea to marry Gomer, a harlot. When Gomer carried her promiscuity into their marriage, Hosea went out to search for her and bring her back home, a symbol of God's relationship with his unfaithful people and his restoration of them. It is a picture of the marriage of Christ and the Church. Rahab was a prostitute who, in aiding the Israelite spies, demonstrated a saving faith that placed her alongside Abraham, Isaac, and Moses. Jesus' own mother Mary, in conceiving as a virgin, was vulnerable to the same condemnation heaped on other women in her condition. And, of course, Jesus's words of liberation to the woman caught in adultery offer a stark contrast to the story now in the headlines.

Have no doubt: sexual sin is a form of slavery that needs no name to incur judgment. I know a college student who was exploited and abused sexually by a much older man, an authority figure in her life; she calls herself a slut. I know a young man who tries to fill his hunger for love and acceptance with endless one night stands; he feels like a whore. I know a woman who went on a job interview and got raped instead; she thinks she is not pure enough now for a good Christian man to want her. I know a single woman trying to overcome a porn habit; she feels dirty and old and unlovable. I know a 30-something virgin whose encounters with sexual harassment have made her feel slutty; she wonders if she has done something to encourage such behavior. I know of a law student named Sandra Fluke with whom I strongly disagree but whom I know will never be convinced or changed by being called a slut; I wonder how she feels. I know myself; I know that I have fallen short of God's standard.

What about you? Perhaps through your actions or the judgment of others or perhaps through your own self-condemnation, you see yourself as a slut. Most women, I believe, have felt like a Sandra Fluke, even without the national news coverage.

Only Jesus can undo what all the apologies in the world can't. Like a bridegroom, Christ loves us and wants to make us holy, to cleanse us, to present us as without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, holy and blameless. Behold, he makes all things new.