Celibate in the City: Former Bachelorette bachelor’s new book outlines how to make sense of love, sex and dating

Editor's Note: The following article is a review of the book "Undressed: The Naked Truth about Love, Sex and Dating" by Jason Illian, a former Bachelorette contestant who was eliminated when he revealed that he was waiting until marriage. I got an advance copy of the book, read it and liked it a bunch. This is my review.



Most people probably won’t find it hard to believe that Jason Illian isn’t married yet.

If you don’t know who Illian is, he is the former Bachelorette bachelor who shocked TV viewers and stirred up headlines around the nation’s water coolers when he publicly declared on the show that he not only had never had sex, but that he wanted to wait until marriage. Imagine! Admitting – in front of God and millions of TV viewers – that you’re a 30-year-old virgin. It’s social suicide. You might as well go ahead and say you enjoy dressing up in your grandmother’s undergarments. Most people I know look at a guy like that and think to themselves, “Are you kidding me?”

But when Ilian came out of the closet so to speak as a Christian, I have to say, I cheered. You see, at the time, I was engaged to my future wife. And just recently, we had been out to dinner with her father and step-mom and somehow (and I still don’t know how this happened) the topic of sex came up. Yeah. I know. I think that was the third level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

At any rate, we wound up telling them that we were waiting until we were married to have sex. I will never forget the look on my soon-to-be-step-mother-in-law’s face. It was as though I had said, “On Tuesdays, I spread strawberry preserves on myself and then wrap myself in Saran Wrap.”

“It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re doing, it’s that I don’t understand why,” she said.

And it was to answer exactly that question why Illian wrote his first book entitled “Undressed: The Naked Truth about Love, Sex and Dating.” It’s a hilarious and moving tome about the perils of being Celibate in the City and the battle that Illian has fought to get to the place where his faith in God intersects with the real world of dating and relationships.

You see, Illian believes that God actually exists. And more than that, God isn’t some impersonal cosmic force, but a God who – in the words of Jesus – is like a father. A God who cares deeply about the things we do in life and the kinds of people we are becoming.
And Illian believes that sexual freedom, like any freedom – drinking, eating, voting – can be very harmful if done recklessly. And I don’t think I need to cite much evidence to prove that our culture is sexually reckless, and it’s left a lot of really hurt people in its wake.

Illian’s book is a compelling read because it presents a relevant, accessible and common sense entry point for people to consider the Biblical concept of sexuality. The idea in Christianity about sex is one of the most unpopular of all the Christian virtues. But there is no getting around it. The Christian rule is this: either marriage - with complete faithfulness to your partner - or else total abstinence.

After hearing that, and after looking at our culture, you have two choices. You can say that Christianity is wrong. Or you can say that as a culture, our sexual instincts have gone awry. Being a Christian, obviously Illian thinks that our culture’s views of sexuality are off-kilter. His book goes a long way to helping light a way back.

After reading his book, I reflected for a time on what it is going to mean to have to raise my 19-month old son in modern society. I think that Illian’s views represent the last best hope for both men and women in our culture which is ever-finding new and increasingly blatant ways to cheapen not only sex, but male-female relationships. His articulation of Biblical views might sound crazy to a lot of people, and maybe even radical. His advice certainly flies in the face of everything we’re told in the locker room, on the school yard, on TV shows, and in movies.

But then again, it is no measure of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. And so maybe his advice is worth a try.