Theology for Women

Odds are that many of you who are reading this blog right now have either had premarital sex, are having premarital sex, or are thinking about having premarital sex.

Just look at the statistics:

• A 2002 government survey reported that 94% of American women and 96% of American men engage in premarital sex–as one article concluded, almost EVERYONE has sex before marriage
• According to a poll conducted by Time Magazine 10 years ago, 61% of frequent church attenders do not believe that it’s wrong for an adult to have sex outside of marriage. A recent Barna study confirmed this statistical range, also citing that over 60% of born again adults believe that co-habitation before marriage is also acceptable.
• In 2003, researchers at Northern Kentucky University showed that 61 percent of students who signed sexual-abstinence commitment cards broke their pledges. Of the remaining 39 percent who kept their pledges, 55 percent said they’d had oral sex, and did not consider oral sex to be sex.
• According to statistics in the book Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Mark Regenerus), Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17

Now statistics can be unreliable–we have no way of knowing just how the terms “evangelical,” “born-again,” or even “Christian” are defined in these studies. But even considering the margin of error, premarital sex is a big problem in the Church today. Just ask any pastor who does premarital counseling. I, personally, have a number of friends who are professing Christians but have no problem with it and don’t believe it is in conflict with their faith.

That said, I thought I should write a blog about a seemingly obvious truth that is not so obvious anymore: why premarital sex is wrong. And just so you know where I’m coming from, this is a point on which I have no room for argument. If you say you’re a Bible-believing Christian and you think it’s ok, you are wrong. There is simply no way around that fact. Scripture is clear.

(And if you don’t believe me, just go to biblegateway.com and search “sex.” Or if you’ve got the KJV version, look up fornication. That’s the old school word for premarital sex. It appears pretty frequently, and you’ll get the idea pretty quickly.)

However, for a lot of you it’s not enough to hear “because the Bible says so.” You need to be convinced that this is more than a matter of rule following. And I sympathize. Sex is hard to resist because, simply put, it’s awesome. We wouldn’t want to do it so badly if it wasn’t.

But what feels good now is not necessarily good later. My 6 year old self thought that my greatest good was to eat all the cookies that I could get my hands on in one sitting. My parents knew better. They knew that I would enjoy the cookies at first, but I would get horribly sick, and eventually horribly obese. But at the time, I was blind to the ways in which that instant gratification could make me sick, and we do the same thing with sex.

That said, we need to redefine our categories. Instead of thinking in terms of just right and wrong, we need to also think in terms of healthy and unhealthy, or spiritual life and spiritual death.

And that is what’s at stake here–your soul. Sure, it seems like a bunch of harmless fun, or maybe you really do care about the person you’re sleeping with and this is one way of showing them how you feel.

But God says otherwise. God cares about what you do with your body. And what we do with out bodies is very much connected to our souls.

Here’s why:

Sex is not just a benefit of being married. It is an integral part of the way God designed marriage and our function within marriage. The reason being that marriage, as a whole, reflects the relationship between Christ and the Church. And what do we know about that relationship? That it’s defined by two things: intimacy and sacrifice.

Sex within marriage is the only perfect picture of the Christ-Church relationship because it incorporates both of those elements. In the same way that we only achieve intimacy with God as a result of Him first sacrificing His Son for us, intimacy between spouses should only come as a direct result of their sacrifice for one another, their willingness to lay their lives down for one another.

And this idea of laying yourself down for one another is not mere lip service. God didn’t casually mention one day, “Hey, I’ll be there when you need me. Just shoot me an e-mail.” No, He didn’t just tell us with words, He died.

Similarly, it’s not enough to claim, “But my boyfriend loves me and he WOULD do anything for me.” No, he needs to show it, just like Christ. And he needs to make this sacrifice in 2 ways:

1. He needs to sacrifice having sex with you before marriage. Scripture tells us that we are bought at a price, and this verse reminds us that anything worth having comes at a price. That said, when a man sleeps with a woman without “paying the price” of laying himself down for her in a marriage covenant, then he essentially cheapens her asking price. He wants the pleasure without the commitment.

And we do the same with Christ–we “pray the prayer” but we don’t want the commitment and the sacrifice that true discipleship entails. And when we do this, the intimacy we claim to have with Christ, or another, is nothing but a sham. Even if you and your boyfriend have lived together for years and you really love each other, you’ve still sold one another short, because he simply wasn’t worth waiting for.

2. He needs to sacrifice by standing before God, your pastor, your family and your church community, promising to lay himself down for you. In addition to this, he must subject himself to the continuing accountability of those witnesses, who will push him to put you before himself, to take on your finances, your debts, your cares and your hardships, even when he doesn’t want to. In so doing, he lays down his own interests and puts yours first. Only then, having gone through the sacrifical marriage ceremony, does he have the freedom to engage in full intimacy with his wife in a way that mirrors Christ’s relationship with the Church.

With all of that in mind, we come to the key reason why premarital sex is not just wrong, but spiritually poisonous: IT TELLS A LIE ABOUT GOD. It proclaims the lie that intimacy, as God has defined it, is not worth sacrificing for.

That said, you cannot build true, long-lasting intimacy upon a deception about the nature of intimacy. What you have with your girlfriend or boyfriend might be special, but that does not mean it reflects the heart of God. Even if you get along great and never fight and you think that you’re soulmates, you are sewing seeds of destruction into the relationship when you have sex before marriage–you are sewing seeds of impatience, lack of self-control, disrespect, lust, and idolatry. And even though you don’t see it now, those seeds WILL come to fruition.

And that is why I plead with you, not as someone who is lily white in this area, but as someone who has seen the destruction that sexual immorality leads to in my own life–flee from it! Run as fast as you can! Your life might be good now and you might think you’ve got it all figured out–maybe you even think you’ve pulled a fast one on God, that you’ve figured out a way to work the system and get what you want without the consequences. But you will be shocked and regretful 10 years down the road to realize the ways in which your decisions have corroded your soul, your relationship with God, and your relationship with your sexual partner.

Remember, sex is an act of worship because it reflects the character of God. But it is not a thing to be worshipped, something worth compromising your beliefs and your lifestyle just to attain. I know the rationalizations and the justifications because I’ve used them myself, but they are all ultimately lies. There is only one foundation upon which you should build your future, and that is truth. Anything else will ultimately and inevitablely crumble.

*For a GREAT book on this, check out Lauren Winner’s book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. You can also find two great articles here and here.

Many women have said to me, “Greg, men run the world.” Wow. That makes us sound pretty capable. So tell me, why would you think we could be incapable of something as simple as picking up the phone and asking you out? You seem to think at times that we’re “too shy” or we “just got out of something.” Let me remind you: Men find it satisfying to get what they want. (Particularly after a difficult day of running the world.) If we want you, we will find you.

This advice serves as the opener to a popular book entitled He’s Just Not That Into You: The No Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys. Written by Greg Behrendt, this book has become a national best-seller and the inspiration for a romantic comedy set to debut in 2009.

Its popularity is due in large part to its no nonsense approach to dating. In a world where women make excuses for the men who don’t pursue them, Behrendt saves them the time and energy of wondering. According to Behrendt, if a guy is interested he’ll make it clear–women just don’t want to accept this fact. That’s why his chapter titles possess seemingly obvious but necessary wisdom as:

He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Asking You Out

He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Calling You

He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Not Dating You

He’s Just Not That Into You If He Doesn’t Want to Marry You

…and my personal favorite…

He’s Just Not That Into You If He’s Breaking Up With You

This book has a bit of valuable truth to it. For the most part, guys are more straight-forward than women make them out to be. Women spend countless hours constructing dizzying logic about why a man didn’t call or why he doesn’t want to date her. But the truth is, when that same guy sees a women he really digs, then he’ll go for her. Even if he’s nervous or shy. Most of the time, a man’s actions are clear.

However, that is not the point of this blog.

The reason I mention this crazy dynamic between men and women is that it’s a perfect illustration of our attempt to discern God’s will. Scroll back up and read the opening paragraph again, but this time substitute the word “God” for men, and substitute “revealing His will” for asking you out. It’s essentially the same dynamic.

Just think about it–in the same way that we concoct crazy interpretations of a guy’s actions, even when they’re actually pretty clear, we create countless interpretations about God’s supposed will for our lives. But let’s be honest–both sets of interpretations are more likely a reflection of what we want to hear than a realistic assessment of the situation. And as a result, we make the process a lot harder than it needs to be.

In the same way that we agonize over understanding men, we see God’s will as a puzzle that we have to decode, a maze to find our way through. And that’s why we view the search for God’s will as a tight rope walk–if we make just the wrong step, we’ll fall off the path altogether and our lives will be ruined.

In reality, both men and God are not all that difficult to understand. If a guy doesn’t call you, it’s because he’s really not that into you. If God doesn’t give you a clear direction forward, He probably just wants you to chill out where you are. It’s not rocket science.

The real source of our confusion is often an unwillingness to accept the answer that we’re given.

Now I have to admit that my analogy does break down a bit. Sometimes men can be confusing (heck, they’re probably confused themselves a lot of the time!), but such a trait is not part of God’s character. God created the universe and reigns over it every day. He is sovereign, which means He not only desires that we fulfill His purposes, but He is more than capable of guiding us to that end.

That said, God is not going to sit in Heaven nervously biting His finger nails, hoping we follow His will for our lives. He wants us to know it, so if we ask Him, we are guaranteed to receive an answer.

But just like the dating game, it’s not always the answer we want. When God wants you to know the next step, He will make His will clear–the question is whether or not we’re willing to accept it. In the same way that we make excuses in the face of dating rejection, we do the same when God gives us an answer we don’t like.

Sometimes the answer is “wait,” other times the answer is a flat-out “no,” or sometimes the answer may be slightly different than what you were expecting. But whatever God’s will is, He’s not deliberately hiding it from you. On the contrary, He has a vested interest in making sure you know it.

As I said, the analogy isn’t perfect because men will sometimes lie to spare a woman’s feelings or avoid feeling guilty. And occasionally a guy really is too shy to ask a girl out. But with God, you can count on Him to lead you because unlike the men that Greg Behrendt’s described, God is always into you.

I published this post a little over a year ago, but it was one of my most popular entries and I continue to hear about it today, so I thought I’d post it again for those of you who missed it. This goes out to all you single gals out there–don’t settle! Even in your friendships.

I am blessed to have a friend in my life who is not inhibited by social graces like tact. If I ever need an opinion, I can depend on him to speak hard truth into my life, generally in the most blunt form possible. Fortunately, he is almost always dead-on in his observations, which is why I go back to him again and again, regardless of the form in which his wisdom is dispensed.

For example, he recently introduced me to a term that I have since found to be both descriptive and extremely accurate. The term is “girlfriend place-holder.”

According to my friend, a lot of guys will have a female friend in their life that functions as a girlfriend in virtually every way–they talk a lot, spend a great deal of one-on-one time together, even go on pseudo-dates and act flirtatious. For all intents and purposes it would seem that the guy is interested, yet he never actually wants to commit. In fact, he never even broaches the topic of dating.

Why? Because, as my friend describes it, this girl is serving as a “girlfriend place-holder.” Though probably doing so unintentionally, some guys will keep a female friend around to hold the place of a girlfriend. In a sense, they are filling their time until they meet the girl they *really* want to date.

As my friend explained it, we all want companionship in some form or another, so even if we haven’t met Mr. or Mrs. Right just yet, many of us will find someone to meet those desires until the “real thing” comes along. And guys aren’t the only ones guilty of doing this. Girls do it just as much. Ladies, I’m sure you can think back to someone in your past, if not someone RIGHT NOW, who is serving as a boyfriend place-holder for you. He’s great because he’ll pay for things when you go out, and he’s always available if you’re bored, but you have absolutely no intention of dating him.

What is interesting about this form of guy-girl relationship is that it is deceptively intimate. Unlike blatant serial flirting in which you can easily spot the players you need to avoid, place-holding seems more real and more deep. After all, it is based upon an actual friendship, so there is more to it than simply having fun.

And that is what often keeps the “place-holders” hanging on so long–because there is depth to the relationship, they hold out hope that sooner or later the guy or girl will snap out of it: “One of these days he’s going to wake up and realize what a good thing he has right in front of him.” That sort of thing. In this way, these relationships can actually result in far greater emotional damage than shallower versions of its kind. Place-holders will more easily open up and make themselves vulnerable since they feel they can trust the other person.

This ultimately leaves the “place-holder” feeling confused and hurt, and sometimes devastated. I have a number of girl friends right now who are in this exact situation. They have a close guy friend that they spend a great deal of time with, but he just won’t commit. In fact, he won’t even bring up any sort of conversation relating to the romantic nature of their relationship. Perhaps the guy is simply afraid of commitment, but in many cases, as my guy friend explains it, these guys have no intention of dating at all. They are unintentionally using these young women as girlfriend place-holders.

Now I think it’s pretty obvious that this kind of relationship is not honoring to the “place-holder” involved, so if you can think of someone in your life who plays that role, then you should seriously consider cutting it off. Even if you are both using each other, and neither person necessarily has the upper hand, you are still not treating them as the brother and sister in Christ that they are. And more importantly, if you think a guy or girl might be treating YOU as a place-holder, then get out of that relationship, and fast! That is NOT how God intended you to be treated–you are to be loved and desired extravagantly, so anyone who makes you feel inadequate or unworthy of love is falling way short of that mark.

In addition to all that, if you have a friend who is treating someone as a place-holder, call them out! Guys, don’t let your friends treat girls that way–if you look the other way when your friends do this, then you are no better than they are since you clearly don’t respect your sister enough to stand up for her. And ladies, the same goes for you. No guy deserves to be strung along, so hold your friends accountable on their behalf.

And finally, don’t forget to reflect on why it is you need a place-holder in the first place. God is always sufficient, so if He hasn’t provided you with a spouse yet, He is still more than enough for you to be content. At the end of the day, that is the key issue here, so be sure not to cover it up with a girlfriend or boyfriend place-holder. Place-holding is little more than the symptom of a dissatisfied heart.

I wonder if Billy Crystal was right.

Think back to the movie When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the film came out in the late 80’s, and it co-starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. The storyline spans a period of many years beginning with the couple’s initial meeting, and following them as their friendship blossoms into romance.

It’s a pretty cute movie and you should check it out if you haven’t, but there is one scene in particular that I’ve always remembered—Crystal’s very first conversation with Ryan. The two are discussing whether or not men and women can be friends, and Crystal firmly believes that it’s impossible.

Ryan is confused by this and argues that countless men and women are friends without blurring the lines, but Crystal still disagrees. Even if the couple never acts upon their romantic feelings, there will always be one person in the friendship who is interested in the other. It may not be a permanent state of pining, but at some point or another, one of them is bound to think about it.

(I would have pasted the convo here but it’s a little PG-13. Google it–you’ll laugh. Oh and for those of you who watched this movie in the theaters, I thought I’d add that this year’s college freshmen hadn’t been born yet!)

So I pose the same question to you–Was Billy Crystal right? Can men and women ever really be friends? When I look back on my closest guy friendships, men that I never even came close to dating, there was still a point in time in which he or I was interested. Nothing came of it, but it seems to confirm Crystal’s point.

On the other hand, I wonder if the act of being attracted to another person necessarily invalidates friendship. Like I said, I’ve been friends with guys who were interested in me, or vice versa, but we got over it and remained friends. I’ve also been friends with guys who were dating another person or were married, so it was never an issue to begin with. Is Crystal therefore wrong, or am I simply being naive?

The reason I bring this up today is that it highlights our complete misunderstanding of male-female friendships. From Crystal’s perspective, men and women can ONLY interact in a sexual way, and I think he is right to an extent. If we spend enough one-on-one time with anyone, the idea is bound to surface.

But does that mean ALL male-female friendships must be inherently sexual? Heck no! And this is where our culture’s understanding of friendship has gone horribly awry.

In order to understand why we’ve perverted male-female friendships we need to first look out our single years, because the way we understand male-female friendships after we get married is profoundly shaped by the way we treated male-female friendships BEFORE marriage. Let me explain….

When you’re single, almost anything goes. You’ll spend excessive amounts of time with guys you have no intention of dating (and guys do the same with girls), and we assume it’s all above board as long as we’re not hooking up. Pre-marriage friendship is therefore defined by unrestrained freedom.

Of course, this almost never works out. No one can spend that much time with another person without someone starting to wonder. Lines get crossed and feelings get hurt. Thus proving Crystal to be right.

As a result of these abuses, we carry our experiences into marriage, and it shapes the way we interact with people of the opposite sex. We remember the fallout from our male-female friendships as a single person, and therefore swing in the opposite direction. There is almost a kind of paranoia surrounding male-female friendships. The idea of grabbing lunch with a co-worker is next to adultery, and you certainly can’t call a man who isn’t your husband on the phone. Ever.

But I wonder if that is altogether healthy. In responding this way, we sexualize ALL male-female relationships, which is a foreign dynamic to the Body of Christ. Shouldn’t our primary paradigm of interaction be that of brothers and sisters? It worries me when we treat our sisters in Christ more like whores who are trying to destroy our marriages, rather than members of a community designed to build our marriages up.

Yet this perspective originates in our unhealthy single friendships. Before we get married we should already be drawing boundaries. That doesn’t mean we should NEVER be alone with another man, but it does mean being responsible and making sure we treat our male friends as brothers. I have plenty of male friends who I consider to be good friends, but with whom I haven’t spent much alone time. If I need to tell them something, I will call them, but I don’t call them all the time. I keep them at an appropriate distance that guards their hearts and mine, while still maintaining our friendship.

If we were to have boundaries for male-female friendships prior to marriage, I wonder if we would be a little less threatened by these friendships after marriage. We would continue to have boundaries, but only for the sake of being wise, not paranoid. We could also see one another primarily as brothers and sisters in Christ, which means we wouldn’t always have to feel threatened by our husband’s friendships with other women. That doesn’t mean he should be calling women to confide in them, or that he should be taking them out to candlelit dinners, but he should be free to love them as his sisters.

All of that to say, how do you single gals interact with your male friends? Are you engaging in a degree of friendship that is sustainable once you start dating someone, or will you have to pull back considerably? Platonic friendships with guys can create just as much baggage for a dating relationship as ex-boyfriends, so only foster those kinds of friendship that would honor your husband. Not only for the sake of your future husband, but for the sake of guarding your guy friends’ hearts. This doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with guys, but it does mean we need to change the way we relate to them. Remember, these men are your brothers, not your boyfriend place holders.

Be the appropriate friend to men that you’d want your own husband to have. Let that be your compass.

For a good portion of my dating life, I have largely misunderstood God’s design for men. This misunderstanding resulted from my personal dating experiences, and it developed the following way…

For a long period of time, I never dated a guy who ever seemed that into me. He might have liked me at first, but as the relationship progressed he grew distant, and he eventually detached himself altogether.

What’s more, my exes all moved on very quickly. It didn’t seem like they were heart broken or that I left any sort of void in their lives. They were all just fine without me.

As a result of these experiences, I grew to believe that men are not prone to emotional attachment in the same way that women are. They could be interested in a woman, or even grow to love her, but they could just as easily turn that love off. They were inherently independent beings who could do with or without women.

Granted, I would find exceptions to the rule–in movies I saw men go to great lengths for the women they loved. Poets waxed eloquently about the beautiful features of their beloved’s eyes, lips and neck. I also had male friends who’d had their hearts absolutely broken by a girl. Without their girlfriend, they were emotional wrecks.

So how did I categorize these men who defied my understanding? I decided that they were somehow lesser men. It’s not that being in love is unmanly, but being extravagant about it seemed foreign to the gender. Any guy who would be that gaga about a girl needed to stop himself and start acting like a man. Only girls are supposed to get that swept up in romance and be that emotionally tied to another person.

So that’s how I understood men.

Here’s the problem with that line of thinking–

When your standard of manhood is emotional guardedness, you won’t recognize godly affection when you see it. In fact, you could be turned off by it.

Here’s what I mean–the kind of love and care you should expect from the man you marry is a kind of love that mimics the Father. That love is extravagant, self-sacrificing, and seemingly crazy at times. It is a love that goes to great, even absurd measures for the beloved, all for the sake of lavishing love on another. The cross is, after all, the most extravagant act of love the world has ever seen.

That said, any relationship in which a man is guarding himself or holding back is a relationship that fails to reflect God in a fundamental way. Granted, relationships should be guarded at first, but if you continue to date and that dynamic never changes, then there’s a problem. Such a relationship is more selfish than godly. It falls short of the example set for us in Christ and the Church–it is not a love that lays itself down for the other, but instead puts its own best interest first.

With all of this in mind, we ladies need to correct our vision. We need to look for the guys who embrace godly manhood, not a manhood that values emotional detachment and independence over intimacy.

And don’t be fooled into thinking that a guy is worth working for, simply because he plays hard to get through emotional unavailability. That is not the kind of love displayed for us in Christ, so it is clearly not the kind of love that God desires for you. If you find yourself drawn to that type of man, then you need to reevaluate your standards.

And to all you godly men out there–thank you for being a light in the dating darkness, and for reminding us of the true standard of love. Though we may get confused at times, you serve as a compass pointing us back to God amidst a culture of selfishness. Thank you for persevering–please press on!

So yesterday I had another one of those “you really shouldn’t date him” conversations with one of my friends. You know the kind–your friend likes a guy who isn’t a Christian, and even though she knows she can’t marry him, she still sees potential for change so she wants to date him.

Whenever we see our friends do this, the reaction is always the same. We always act mildly scandalized by the idea, pondering the seeming absurdity with an ever so subtle self-righteousness: “I just don’t understand why she would even consider dating someone who isn’t a Christian! I mean, a non-Christian wouldn’t be able to understand the very core of me if he doesn’t know Christ!”

And thus our friend is swiftly cast off into the “back-sliding Christian” pile.

Now I have to be honest, I have definitely said those words myself. I have acted shocked and appalled when one of my friends dated a non-Christian because to me, it seems so simple. Scripture is clear!

But if that’s the case, then why does it happen so often?

One of the reasons Christians fall into missionary dating so easily is because of the very attitude displayed above. Our inability to comprehend a deep emotional connection with a non-Christian reveals our shallow perception of human relationships, as well as a dangerous naiveté.

Let me explain what I mean. Whenever I think about the idea of dating a non-Christian, I think something along the lines of, “No way! He would probably cuss all the time and want to have sex with me and he wouldn’t understand my heart or my drive at all.”

Well newsflash: not all non-Christians are like that! You can be non-Christian and still have high moral principles, a desire to seek truth and knowledge, and an ability to challenge others intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

That said, when we deny the possibility that we could have any sort of emotional, intellectual or spiritual connection with a non-Christian, then we let our guard down and set ourselves up to fall. We allow our hearts to become intimate in ways that are not wise because we have created a false sense of security. And slowly but surely, without even realizing it, we find ourselves connected with a non-Christian in a way we never expected…or even knew was possible.

And because of our past stereotypes about non-Christians, stereotypes in which we believed that most non-Christians are shallow or unable to be spiritually engaged, we think that our case is an exception: “I know he’s not a Christian, but this is different. He shows so much potential!” Plus, you might have a better relationship with him than you’ve even had with other Christians, which encourages you to rationalize it all the more.

For that reason, we should be wary of thinking about Christians and non-Christians in categories of deep and shallow, moral and immoral, or spiritual and non-spiritual. The only difference between us is that Christians have been saved by the grace of God, which means that many non-Christians can be more intellectual, philosophical, emotionally attentive, or spiritually challenging than Christians.

And with that in mind, we should never be so complacent or arrogant as to think that we are immune to the temptation of dating a non-Christian. The reason Scripture warns us against it is not because non-Christians are jerks, or because the relationship will be totally unhealthy. On the contrary, there are a lot of great non-Christians out there!

The reason Scripture warns against it is because you are ultimately centering yourself on something other than Christ. Being a Christian means that Christ is at the center of every part of your life, and this will be difficult if not impossible if you actively choose to marry someone who is opposed to Christ. You will instead be settling for a false idol.

So be humble, and be guarded. Being friends with non-Christians is a wonderful thing, but when it comes to members of the opposite sex, use caution. You may not be quite as strong as you think.

And keep that in mind the next time your friend dates a non-Christians. Perhaps shock and horror is not the best help for them, or your own ego.

As the feminist movement has gained more and more momentum over the years, women have embraced their sexual freedom in a variety of ways. In what is perhaps an ironic aspiration, women desire to be more like men, aiming to possess the “freedom” afforded their male counterparts. Specifically, some women have singled out the goal of “having sex like a man.”

In saying this, women mean they want to be as care-free and emotionally detached from their sexual partners as men seem to be. From their perspective, men are able to have as much casual sex with women as they want, without the repercussions of emotional attachment. It’s all about having a good time. No strings attached.

Now to me the problems with this goal are fairly self-evident. First, it negatively impacts men by proliferating the illusion that men can have casual sex without any sort of repercussions. Some men might seem to fit this prototype, but you will be hard pressed to find a man who’s never experienced any heartache at all. No, men are not sex-driven robots without hearts–they too can get hurt when physical intimacy is involved.

But the damage doesn’t stop there–this mindset clearly endangers women as well. From a female perspective, it is very difficult for women to have sex without forming some kind of attachment. When we sleep with someone and engage in that bodily intimacy, our hearts become entangled. We struggle to separate our actions from our hearts.

However, while these conclusions seem obvious to me, there are many women who disagree. They object saying, “That’s not true for me! I have lots of sex with men and it doesn’t mean a thing.” Or, “I have lots of friends who engage in casual sex without getting hurt, so they disprove your theory.”

In conversations like these, I have frequently been written off as the token Christian prude. From their perspective, I only hold those beliefs because of my faith. They also argue that my beliefs are true for me, but not true for every woman. Some women can separate themselves emotionally, so I shouldn’t make generalizations based upon my own subjective views.

Well interestingly enough, those objections to my “biased perspective” are becoming less and less tenable. In recent years, scientists have researched the effects of a hormone called oxytocin on the human body, and with enlightening results. While there is still much to be learned about this hormone and its influence, scientists are fairly certain of one thing: its presence can often lead to attachment and bonding in intimate relationships.

For instance, a woman’s body produces oxytocin when she is breast feeding, the result of which is greater emotional attachment with her child. Similarly, a woman’s body also produces oxytocin when she climaxes during intercourse, and this too can result in feelings of greater attachment with one’s partner.

Much of this research has come from comparing the mating habits of rats with those of prairie voles. Prairie voles are notoriously monogamous, and they also produce significant amounts of oxytocin when they mate. Rats, on the other hand, are polygamous creatures. Their bodies do not produce oxytocin when they mate, which is why they fail to bond with their respective partners.

Given that scientists still have much to learn about oxytocin’s effects on human relationships, I hesitate to draw any concrete conclusions about it. However, the research does lead us to one undeniable truth–sexuality cannot be reduced to an issue of mere ideology. It is clear from these studies that some creatures are biologically wired to be monogamous, and others to be polygamous. God has written these wirings into us from the start.

So given the presence of oxytocin, as well as other hormones that are thought to result in similar feelings of relational attachment, it’s clear that God designed us to be monogamous. He wrote it into our beings in a profoundly elemental way.

That said, why do some women seem able to have casual sex without any sort of emotional attachment? This is another area about which I hesitate to draw conclusions, given that I am not a scientist. But, after researching and discussing the matter with reliable resources, I suspect it has something to do with conditioning. There is a degree to which we can condition our bodies to respond to certain circumstances in specific ways, even to the extent of undermining our natural tendencies. And given that fact, it is altogether possible that, over time, a person can condition themselves to resist emotional attachment if they have casual sex enough. They essentially kill off their body’s natural tendency to attach, by training it to remain guarded or untouched.

I can certainly see this trend in my own life. I think we all remember our first kiss, and how meaningful it was. But gradually, the more people you kiss, the less meaningful a kiss becomes. Especially if you get hurt by someone you kissed. Because of that bad experience, a kiss loses the special romantic purity and newness that it had before, and it can even take a negative connotation for you. The more people you kiss, and the more broken promises and broken relationships that you associate with those kisses, the less a kiss will mean.

And one day, you wake up to find that it doesn’t mean almost anything at all.

That is the effect of conditioning. But even if you train yourself to remain unattached, it doesn’t change the fact that you were initially designed to associate sex with intimacy. God has written it into our original design, which means we cannot and should not ignore it.

The argument for conditioning should not lead us to conclude that women can, in fact, shut their hearts off completely. Even if a woman has conditioned herself to engage in uncommitted casual sex, she must constantly be on guard. If she lets down her guard for even a second, and allows herself to enjoy her partner as more than just a tool for pleasure, she is in danger of vulnerability. If she finds him to be a source of enjoyable company, or if she enjoys sex with him more than others, then she runs the risk of producing oxytocin. Without even meaning to, her body can lead her to form an emotional attachment. It’s as if her body is pulling her back to its created purpose.

With all of that in mind, we are wise to protect our divinely designed hearts. When we attempt to engage in casual sex, or even chronic flirting or casual kissing, we walk a fine line. Not only do we devalue those precious acts of affection, but we play Russian Roulette with our hearts. Will this be the hook-up that hurts us, or will it not? Maybe you’re having fun now, but God has designed our hearts in such a way that makes that lifestyle emotionally unsustainable. We merely sew seeds of brokenness that we will eventually have to reap.

What’s more, this research reveals that we Christians are not merely blind ideologues who ignore science for the sake of preserving the Bible. In this instance, biology is actually complementing our theology, which gives us all the more reason to heed God’s guidance. Our bodies are trying to tell us something that God has been telling us all along.

* Special thanks to David Goodman for helping me with the research on this one!!

What is spiritual leadership?

This is a question about which there has been a great deal of confusion among Christians. We all know that we need to date guys who can lead us spiritually, and we also know that we are to date people with whom we are equally yoked. The problem is that these two elements are not always discussed in conjunction with one another. We are not viewing them as two equally important aspects of a dating relationship, aspects that hold one another in a complementary tension.

For many women, we subconsciously interpret “equally yoked” to mean: “as spiritually mature as me, or more mature if possible.” That is, we want to date someone as mature as we are, but we would prefer someone who is more mature. Why? Because he needs to lead you, and he can probably do that best if he’s already more mature than you are.

As a result of this mentality, you will sometimes see couples in which the husband is clearly more mature than the wife. It’s not that the wife is immature in her faith, but she’s not nearly as passionate about studying Scripture or theology as her husband. She doesn’t desire the same amount of knowledge that he has. After all, he’s supposed to be the spiritual leader in the relationship, so why not leave that stuff to him?

The problem with this kind of relationship is that it fulfills one Scriptural requirement, while ignoring the other–yes, the man is leading spiritually, but are the two equally yoked? Not necessarily.

Spiritual leadership does not necessarily mean that the husband is significantly more mature than his wife. If he is, then the two are not really equally yoked. What’s more, the man is actually doing himself a disservice because he has not married someone who can REALLY challenge him. While he may be the spiritual leader in the relationship, it is likely that he will grow less because he is not married to a woman who has the capacity to push him the way he needs.

That said, spiritual leadership does not mean that the husband spiritually dominates his wife. On the contrary, it simply means that the man works harder. He’s got to step up, think ahead, anticipate, pray for wisdom, and humble himself, because being a spiritual leader has nothing to do with spiritual superiority–it has to do with fulfilling a role. If a man leads a woman who is just as solid as he is, then it’s going to be challenging for him to be the leader, but he’ll grow tremendously because of it.

With that in mind, men and women both have a challenge before them. Men, don’t allow spiritual leadership to be your only criteria in choosing a girl. Even if she’s a nice Christian girl, it’s not enough to know that you can lead her. Make sure you two are equally yoked as well. Make sure she is at the same place as you spiritually so that she is sure to challenge you, rather than pulling you down to her level.

And ladies, don’t be afraid to push yourselves. Not only are you doing yourself a service by pursuing God with radical ferocity, but you are serving your husbands as well. Remember, it takes iron to sharpen iron, so we cannot sharpen our husbands if we ourselves are not made of the right material.

Date a spiritual leader? Yes. But be equally yoked as well. Never have one without the other.

Yesterday as I sat by the pool reading, I overheard the following conversation between a guy and a girl who were sitting nearby. The young man was criticizing a friend of his who treats women badly:

“The guy talks down to her all the f—ing time! I’m sorry but I could never be such a d—head and f—ing talk to girls like that.”

The girl nodded in full agreement. I imagine her heart swooned to be in the presence of such a gentleman. “Who says chivalry is dead?!” she must have thought.

Can we please back up and review that conversation? Even now I sit in amazement of how ridiculous the whole thing was. While condemning another man for supposedly treating women poorly, this guy was simultaneously showering the girl’s ears with profanity. While criticizing another man for disrespecting women, he was disrespecting her.

And what’s even worse is that she ate it all up! Not once did she see the hypocrisy of his actions. It never dawned on her that he was dishonoring her by speaking so obscenely. In her eyes, his passionate distaste for another man’s sins was chivalry enough.

Sadly, this kind of “chivalry” pervades our culture. For another pertinent example, just look at popular song lyrics today–it’s now a term of endearment when a man calls a woman his “bitch.” Women feel flattered when guys ogle their bodies like pieces of meat in a butcher shop window. And it’s even gotten so bad that women will excuse their husband’s infidelity as long as he doesn’t leave them. These women proudly state, “He may go out with those other women, but he always comes home to me!”

Seriously? Is that the best we can hope for?

The ironic thing is that women have encouraged this behavior as well. In addition to dressing in ways that provoke the exact kind of attention we should be discouraging, some women actually punish men for being gentlemen.

I will never forget the time a guy friend of mine was riding on the bus when a young women got on. There weren’t any seats available, so my friend stood up and offered his seat to her. The girl’s response was surprising. Instead of gratefully taking his seat, she was indignant: “I don’t want your seat! It’s not like I’m too weak to stand!”

This isn’t the only time I’ve heard stories of this kind. I know numerous men who’ve been reprimanded by young ladies when they held the door for them. The mindset, I assume, is that men are treating women as weak, fragile, inferior beings when they condescend to offer such gestures.

This is the backwards world we live in. We have become so confused that we interpret honor as insult. Women are actually demanding disrespect as a sign of respect. Not only do we tolerate it, but we invite it.

But why?

This is a complex question that has many, many different answers, but at the heart of it all is a complete loss of our identity. Women have forgotten that they are the crowning jewel of creation, designed to glorify God with their beauty, requiring honor and respect from the men created to care for them. Women have forgotten that they were made in God’s image, so they should expect men to treat them with the appropriate respect that such an image deserves.

Ladies, we must refuse to participate in a culture that renames dishonor as valor, cowardice as courage, and dominance as strength. We may twist and rationalize every misbehavior possible, but at the end of the day it is still utterly detestable to God Himself, so we must work to view the world through this lens.

And if you have a female friend who is allowing herself to be romanced with this new form of chivalry, please tell her. Remind her that God created her for more than she realizes, so she must not stand by while her beauty, and the beauty of God, are spit upon. We are better than that. And more importantly, God is better than that.

I’m starting to feel like one of those dating advice columnists. It seems like I spend so much time talking about dating, but I really do think it’s warranted. Not that dating is the be all and the end all of life, but some of my biggest mistakes thus far have taken place in dating relationships, so I hope that my experiences can help you navigate the pitfalls of this tricky business.

(Maybe I should start a blog called “Ask Sharon.” Haha!)

In the past, I’ve talked about dating and marriage as a kind of “tool” for ministry–I want to be a better minister WITH my spouse than I was without them. And this paradigm was actually set for us with Adam and Eve–Eve helped Adam in his dominion over creation, and he did a better job because of her….at least that was God’s original intention.

Even now, I stick by that standard whole-heartedly, and I think all Christians should factor it into their thought process as they consider someone for marriage. BUT, I recently heard a simpler version of this approach that I really like, if for no other reason than it is straight to the point. I think you will find it to be helpful as well, and it goes as follows:

Am I more or less admirable now than when I was single?

The person who shared this dating barometer with me explained, “With a lot of the girls I dated, I felt that I was a more admirable person before I met them.” As a single guy, he spent his time and thought life in ways that were more pleasing to God and gained the respect of those around him.

But when he started dating the wrong girls, all that started to slip away. Suddenly he was sacrificing his ministry and friendships to spend more time with his girlfriend. What’s more, his prayer life was hampered by the shame he felt due to the physical side of his dating relationship. As a result, his relationship with God and his friends suffered.

Perhaps you’ve been in the same situation. And if you have, I would bet you could see it on your friends’ faces–suddenly the friendship is not what it used to be. You can’t put your finger on it, but there’s tension, there’s frustration, and there are walls where there weren’t walls before. You can tell that your friends respect you a little less than they used to.

But a Christ-centered relationship should do the opposite. It should inspire you to love God and your friends better. It should simultaneously anchor you and liberate you to live life more effectively.

I know that phrase sounds like a bit of a paradox, but both components, anchoring and liberating, should be present in a healthy relationship. You should be anchored by the peace of knowing you are within God’s will for you, thereby protecting you from the emotional storms of a self-absorbed relationship. A Christ-centered relationship should create greater peace in your life, not greater uncertainty, anxiety or confusion.

If you are not in an anchoring relationship, one of the first two things that suffers is your relationship with God and your friends. Because your dating relationship is rocky, it consumes your thought life–it’s all you can think about, and it’s all you talk about. Plus, it takes you away from your friends because you’re constantly with your significant other, patching up the latest drama. In this way, you need a relationship that anchors you, not only for your own emotional benefit, but because of the greater implications it will have on those around you.

But in addition to being anchored, a Christ-centered relationship should also liberate you to serve God and others, knowing that you don’t always have to be with your boyfriend all the time since the relationship is in God’s hands.

What’s more, your bf should inspire you to serve such that you feel MORE connected to him when you’re serving God, even when you’re not with him. This is a bit counter-intuitive, but there is a degree to which you can foster greater intimacy by serving apart, as opposed to spending lots of time together, but time that is wasted just sitting around playing Guitar hero, watching Grey’s Anatomy, and making out.

So all of that to say, look for someone who will make you more admirable than you already are. And if you’re in a relationship now, ask yourself, “Am I more admirable than I was as a single person.” For the sake of your dating relationship, your relationship with God, and your relationship with your friends, I would encourage you to make sure the answer to that question is a resounding “yes!”