Posts Tagged ‘sex’

How Long Does It Take To Sin

June 8, 2016

It’s only 20 minutes of his life. It shouldn’t take away from 20 years. (Sports Dad)

There are no moral giants in the story. Must be a story about real life. Privileged athlete takes advantage of girl. Has sex. Walks away.

His point of view–so what? It’s just sex.

Her point of view–I’ve been physically and emotionally violated.

The philosopher Ken Wilber once wrote, “Civilization is a race to overcome testosterone.” There is much to think about there.

Look at King David. A warrior-king. Doesn’t get any more “manly” than that. He saw a woman. An attractive woman. The hormones spoke, David listened. How long did it take out of his life to commit a sin that kept on giving? 20 minutes?

20 minutes with a woman led to murder of her husband and many of his own soldiers.

Some people have somehow gotten the idea that women are objects and think it is Biblical. Don’t know how they got that. The Old Testament records a time of warriors. The stories prize strong men who could fight against enemies. Yet, look at the stories of strong women, full of faith, who also led.

Paul, whom many cite as the philosopher of subjugating women, is often misread. As Andy Stanley put it in the recorded Your Move talk from last weekend said, “They didn’t read the verse before it” regarding the verse about wives being submissive to their husbands.

Quick test–who knows the verse before?

This is a story about men who think that women are only objects, not real people. Who think they only exist for their pleasure. It’s a story fed by pictures, TV, movies.

That’s not the story of people living under grace. Who value every human being as a person God created and loves. Every woman who is someone’s daughter.

That’s not 20 minutes of “slipping up” that would have been ignored if not brought to light. It’s 20 minutes that proves character.

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Getting Along With the Opposite Gender

February 26, 2016

Do you do much traveling alone? Happens to me a couple of times a month. This week I’ve made a business trip to San Diego. Nice city.

Got into a conversation about guys we know who made a practice of making unwanted advances on women. I am so used to interacting with women professionally, that I don’t really give a thought to trying to get them into my hotel room–or the other way around.

No, honestly. I’m so naive that twice when women hit up on me, I actually realized they were prostitutes. But once (she was drunk), it was something like 12 hours later when the thought hit me that she was hinting strongly about following me to my room.

Americans still have some of that Puritan heritage (or is it just Calvinist?) about how we have to be so suspicious of relations. Any wink can send us spiraling into a sexual adventure.

Oh, grow up.

I think about Jesus. We don’t usually think about how scandalous it must have been that Jesus, a rabbi, had bunches of women followers. And friends. Yet he was single. No problems there.

But there are guys who just don’t seem to get it. They seem to think it’s like being at the grocery, and you’re looking to pick up the most attractive package. They don’t seem to realize that women are actually humans. Some times it works the other way around, too. It’s not always a man’s problem.

I guess I’m just making a plea to treat people of whatever gender as a human being with a personality, imperfect though we all might be. I’m sitting here in San Diego not 30 miles from one of the most notorious red light districts in the world. It services American men. The men never realize that those girls don’t really want to be there. That they don’t spend all day dreaming of the guy who is going to buy 15 minutes of pleasure.

What does it mean to be a disciple? One thing is to treat every human being as a child of God, loved by the Father.

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All The Stuff I Put Up With

October 6, 2015

“You can’t believe all the stuff I had to put up with.” 

That was a person justifying an adulterous relationship that was quite public and resulted in the breakup of two families.

The relationship was not abusive. One party just got frustrated with the other. Actually, they were  both frustrated. Communication was nonexistent. 

Then came the opportunity for passionate sex. Emotions–dangerous things if not handled.

To this day the people who initiated the affair fail to see where there was sin in the situation.

They had put up with so much stuff, they couldn’t take it any longer.

I heard the quote the other day. I thought, gosh, we all put up with a lot of stuff. It’s called living with someone who isn’t 100% devoted to fulfilling my needs. I’m not so sure I could stand that, personally. But maybe a little would be nice….but I digress, and jest.

Paul spent much time on reconciling relationships. The letters to the Corinthians, for example. More to the point would be Philemon.

Adultry is a sin. It breaks relationships and draws the people away from God.

Paul spends the first couple of chapters of Romans talking about the ways we sin. Then he talks about how we have to recognized them, and our part in the situations, and then our confession, healing, and restoration.

I have a great deal of empathy–and even anger–with abusive relationships. The abused must leave, somehow. But for those who justify “lots of stuff” as grounds for adultry, well, that’s too much a stretch. 

God likes to see us grow in maturity. We work out stuff one way or another. That is what grown-up people do. Heck, even kids know that.

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I Confess

August 24, 2015

We were taught as children that God is always watching us. Well, we were also taught that Santa Claus was always watching us, too. And both knew when we were naughty.

The writer of Hebrews, a document in the New Testament, talked about a great cloud of witnesses.

Worse than all of those–the Internet is watching you. The Web knows when you’ve been naughty. And it stores that data. The story is that they store it so that they can serve ads to you that are relevant to your wants. But, who knows what nefarious use could be made from all that knowledge about you?

I confess–that I am not scrambling to do damage control. I don’t have to go to my wife and explain why my name got linked to a Website that is designed for married men and women to “hook up” for casual sex.

I have never seen the Ashley Madison (no link provided) Website. I’ve seen ads. I’ve seen stories about it and its competitors. But I confess, I never clicked. For those who do not follow technology, the Ashley Madison Website was “hacked”, that is, broken into. And the “hackers”, aka thieves, downloaded the customer list including names and email addresses. If you enrolled at that site, soon the whole world will know.

I don’t write about technology on this blog. However, there is a spiritual discipline point to talking about technology.

For whatever reason some (many?) married men and women feel a deep need for sexual encounters. There seem to be many reasons for this. I’m not going to delve into psychology. But for more information, check out the first 9 chapters of Proverbs.

God knows what you do. He knows what’s in your heart. But if you want to do immediate relationship damage, register your email on these hook up or porn sites. When (not if) they are hacked and emails are released, the words of Desi Arnaz will come back to haunt you, ‘Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

The damage between you and God is already done. Better restore that relationship soon.

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Andy Stanley—New Rules for Love, Sex, Dating

April 13, 2015

How many people have lost career, families, respect due to sexual passions run amok? How many marriages have you seen that just never got started off right?

Andy Stanley’s latest book, “The New Rules For Love, Sex & Dating,” is targeted at single people of all ages, but the wisdom works for all of us—even those like me who are many, many years past the subject.

Stanley is one of the best communicators in the Christian church today. I listen to him every week. He talks about focusing on making better decisions in order to live a better life. In other words, he’s not like the generation that was in charge during his (and my) youth that stopped at “thou shalt not” moralism. He applies teachings from the Bible much as common sense rather than finger pointing.

This book talks of relationships, treating people well, and how to handle those powerful emotions of “love” and sex. I single out the word “love” partly because we are just past Valentine’s Day where love is celebrated as an emotion. Stanly emphasizes, much as I always do, love as something you do, not always as something you feel.

I especially appreciate his descriptions of the elements of love that Paul the Apostle discusses in 1 Cor 13. Especially he defines patience and kindness as decisions. Of course, that is true. You decide in the moment that you will be patient in the situation. You decide in the moment to act with kindness toward another.

Decisions, though, when repeated lead to habits. You develop through your repeated decisions the habit of patience or kindness. It becomes a part of who you are. You become patient and kind, and by extension, loving.

Oh, and for sex—don’t do it. Well, don’t do it outside of marriage. His most powerful teaching, as well as the hardest, is for those who have left or are leaving a sexually active relationship that is floundering. Take a year off. Do not date for a year. Take time to be the person that the person you are looking for is looking for.

[DISCLAIMER: I received this book from North Point Publishing in exchange for this review. There was no guarantee what my review would be, though.]

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