Damaged Goods Quotes

“Never make choices simply because someone told you what is right. Know yourself, know your situation, know God for yourself, and decide what is right for your life.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Whoever you are, you are loved by a God who finds you beautiful and wants you to be fulfilled in life. Be a safe space for yourself first; then you can learn to be a safe space for others.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“If you take one lesson and one lesson only from this book, I want it to be this: God doesn’t function in a currency of shame. Shame isn’t from God, it isn’t of God, and it isn’t something Christians should engage in. Shame is not nor will it ever be a useful response to a person’s experience of the world, especially when it comes to sexual experiences.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“A woman who 'acts like a man' - who is bold and assertive, and refuses to defer to male authority - is threatening to a system that makes women responsible for men's feelings.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“The watershed of the sexual revolution was when women started to become individuals who claimed they were different in no essential way from men.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Shame based on sexual status, whether it is because of lots of sexual activity or none at all, is wrong.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Shame based on sexual status, whether it is because of lots of sexual activity or none at all, is wrong. All”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“[Liberation theology] means challenging the stories that the authorities tell us about God, especially if these stories have the same outcome for every single person.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“When men become a caricature of their worst qualities and this caricature is baptized as important and right, boundaries become impossible to maintain.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“The Christian is responsible to care for the hurting and the downtrodden, and should not be in the business of creating further pain.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Regardless of your sexual state, you are a human being, you are a created person of God, and you are whole. Instead of talking about waiting for marriage, we need to talk about waiting until we’re ready. Instead of shaming sexually active young people, we need to be equipping them with the knowledge to have sex safely. Instead of categorizing all premarital sexual activity as bad, we need to have conversations about consent, and pleasure, and peer pressure. What”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Contrary to popular evangelical belief, feeling anger is not a sin—you’re allowed to feel angry. You should feel angry. Being outraged at mistreatment is normal and even good. How”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“evangelicalism instills a “fix-it” attitude into theories about marriage, about sex lives, about everything involving sexual identity. We need to remove ourselves from this mindset—people are not things to be fixed. Similarly,”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“Purity culture often functions by shaming us for seeking knowledge about our own bodies. Studying even the scientific elements of sexual intercourse can feel like a rebellion. Knowing yourself, even just medically or scientifically, is a step away from the ignorance that purity teachings often instill. Knowledge is power, especially here—knowing how your body and your partner’s work together can help you both be confident. One of the best ways to develop a healthy sexual ethic for yourself is to know your anatomy, to know how different kinds of sex work, and to be prepared to enter sexual encounters safely. Having this information can help you to be confident, both in saying yes and in saying no. The”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“In evangelical-speak, this is meeting people where they are. But I would add the following caveat: we must meet people where they are without a desire to change them into our image of what they should be.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity

“This is the freedom of the gospel—that we are free to be whom God made us to be, not confined to a box of aggressive masculinity or demure femininity.”
― Dianna Anderson, Damaged Goods: New Perspectives on Christian Purity