I have been angered and saddened by some of the ideas that people in the Church have developed about God’s view of sexuality. When I had my sexual awakening I started researching more deeply what God wanted for my sexual relationship with my husband. Some of the things I have come across since that time have either helped me to shake off the lies I had believed about myself and my sex life with my husband or they have left me shaking my head and sometimes my fists. When I lose my peace like that I have to step back and ask God what I can do about it.
I have seen many websites where the authors have either put a stumbling block up for Christian men and women in releasing them to participate in sinful acts, or they have provided information that serves to become a burden to the women that we, the ladies of this blog, desire to see set free. I found one where the writer works very hard at establishing arguments for practices that are sin, even using scriptures in a gross misrepresentation of what the intent of the scripture is. The effort made to work so hard to validate sinful behavior seems to indicate to me that they are deliberately putting a stumbling block in the way of Christians which is sickening to me. Then there are others where I can tell that the authors have tried to understand what God honestly thinks about these things and they have just come to an inaccurate, legalistic understanding because of their sexual past pain and misguided information.
So on the one side we have a site that is filled with so much wrong information I don’t even know where to begin. They have a main page that is giving Christians “freedom” to participate in anal sex before marriage, pointing out that there are scriptures where God directs women to receive anal sex. In every case, the context of the passage is about something else entirely. The author suggests that since anal sex allows a woman to keep her hymen in tact so she can remain a “pure and unsullied bride” on her wedding night, it is therefore permissible. In the same way, the website validates unmarried people to participate in oral sex because it is not real sex and then says it is only OK if the woman swallows, taking out of context the sin of Onan.
Furthermore and perhaps the saddest of all of the articles is one where the author gives married people his reasons why it is OK for them to participate in threesomes, complete again with his misinterpretations of scriptures that “prove” that a husband and wife can incorporate another woman into their sex life and it will be OK with the Lord. Oh, but not another man, because that might cause the wife to lust after him. Do you see the inconsistency?
I can’t even reflect on the content of this particular website for long before I lose my peace at the way this person has made such an open door for people to sin and misrepresented the Spirit-filled Word of God. My heart breaks at how they are leading people seeking truth into deception.
So there are indeed many websites like this, where you will see people talking about God and even using scriptures to support activities that are unacceptable.
On the other side of the coin, you will also find a lot of Christian websites where people are setting up rules for what is and is not acceptable based not on what God has said in scripture, but on their own experiences. In one I found, I could tell that the woman was genuine in trying to help people understand what their sexuality should be like, however, I do think she is misguided in some of her conclusions and her information places a heavy yoke on men and women to keep certain things out of their marriage beds that are actually a healthy way to express Godly passion.
Some of the spices that are not recommended according to her line of thinking include wearing lingerie and stripping, positions that don’t have you face to face, role playing, “vulgar language” (which could mean anything from using slang words for body parts to character insulting language), and oral sex in some circumstances.
The problem with a legalistic position like this is that it makes rules for everyone without considering that people have different heart issues. Lingerie and stripping for your husband are discouraged in this website because when your husband sees other women in the same situation he is going to prefer them over you because they look better (she assumes). As you age he is going to be less and less interested in you because you have trained him to be visual. She purports that we should learn to connect to our spouse in a non-visual way, like we do with God. The reality is that God made men (and many women) visually stimulated and wearing lingerie and stripping for him are great ways to please that part of him. The more he sees your naked body, the more he becomes connected to you. It’s in his wiring for it to be that way. It is insulting to say that we need to learn to become aroused without any visual stimulation.
Also, according to the author, a sex position that doesn’t have you face to face and specifically if you position yourselves doggy style, it is a “trap door” for perversion like bestiality. I am certain that receiving sex from behind does not in and of itself breed a desire to have sex with animals. If a person is already perverse in this manner I can see how they would perhaps seek to participate in it, but most people like it because it’s just really, really fun. It has nothing to do with wishing to have sex with an animal.
It would seem that the author has taken her negative experiences and made rules about what does and does not belong in the marriage bed based on them. She recommends asking yourself if what you are doing in your marriage bed is worshipful to the Lord and I can tell you with certainty that God LOVES to see the worship that my husband and I offer Him in celebrating the gift of sex that He gave us with complete abandon to one another.
So the problem here is that someone took a behavior that came from a sinful heart issue and applied a rule about the behavior rather than guiding people to freedom from the heart issue that caused the sin to begin with. In other words, one may choose to strip out of seeing the delight it brings to their spouse and out of the feeling it brings them of being desired by their one and only OR they may strip because they have an insatiable desire to actually perform in front of other people and when they do it they are fantasizing about other men or women watching them. Though the same thing is happening externally, internally, these are two very different situations. One builds the marriage up, the other tears it down. So you can not make a rule to say stripping is not beneficial to marriage just because some people need freedom from the latter mindset.
My problem is that the content I have read on websites like this comes off as very controlling. I would recommend that we all set up our sexual boundaries based on our own heart issues, rather than attempt to establish guidelines for everyone else which come from our history of pain and sexual confusion. Unless an act is expressly declared as sinful in the Word of God (multiple sexual partners, homosexual acts, bestiality and so on), we need to extend grace to people to work out what is acceptable in their marriage bed with their spouse and the Lord.
If you have any questions about what you read here about this topic please do not hesitate to leave it in the comment section or send it through our Got Questions? page. We all would be happy to help you understand healthy sexuality in any way we can.
Christian Nymphos 