Theology for Women

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled “What God Thinks About Your Sex Life.” Since that post, I’ve had some follow-up thoughts that I have decided to add here.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but God designed sex in kind of a weird way. Depending on the context, sex can have two completely opposite effects. Within marriage, sex can make a marriage stronger, but outside of marriage it is just the opposite. Rather than make a dating or engaged couple stronger, sex can actually tear the couple apart.

Perhaps one of the best analogies for this principle can be seen in a fireplace. When a fire is built inside the fireplace, it heats the whole home and keeps everyone warm. Prior to the age of electric heated homes, this was a life saving gift during winter. But if you take that same  life-giving fire out of the fireplace, it will burn the house down, destroying everything and everyone within it.

It is the same with sex. Marriage is the hearth that contains the flames of sexual passion. When taken outside that protective guard, it has the power to destroy.

But why is that? Why is it that, in one context sex builds up, and in another context sex tears down?

To answer this question, we must first recognize the fact that most people, even many married people, have a fundamental  misunderstanding about sex. We see it as a right, not a responsibility.

Think about it this way–the way that Christians frequently articulate the nature of sex within marriage is that all bets are off once you say “I do.” As soon as the ring is on the finger, your bodies belong to one another so you can and should do whatever crazy sexual stuff you want, as long as it’s legal. And the more sex you have, the better.

For example, I heard about a church in Texas in which the pastor gave his married listeners a homework assignment as follow-up to the sermon–every night that week, they had to have sex. That is the Christian culture we live in right now.

What is somewhat problematic about this mentality is that it flirts with the idea that sex is a right. In a Christian form, it sells the worldly mentality that we all deserve sex whenever and however we want. That is the perspective driving the homosexuality debate right now–Americans believe they have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and sex. And anyone who stands in the way of you having sex the way you want it is either a religious fundamentalist or a chauvinist.

But sex is not a right. It’s a responsibility. When two people engage in sex, they put one another in a position of extreme vulnerability, which means they are in a position to get hurt more than ever before. That’s why affairs are so devastating. But when two people have sex they ALSO create the possibility of conceiving a child. Those are high stakes!

And that’s why it’s important to guard sex no matter where you are in life. Whether you are married or single, it’s not as if anything goes. Sex is still a responsibility, and it should be treated as such. That is what I love about the natural family planning method of birth control. It requires that a married couple abstain from sex once a month when the woman is most likely to get pregnant. It demands that the couple make a sacrifice and step away from the act of sex to reflect on the responsibility that it involves. It prevents them from taking sex for granted.

When married couples forget the significance of sex, they are tempted to use abuse it just as much as single people. Maybe a husband begins to see his wife more as an object to used than a gift to be treasured and romanced before she gives herself to him sexually. If she does not give him his right to sex, he may even go looking for it elsewhere. Conversely, a wife might withhold sex from her husband as a form of manipulation.

Yes, sex must still be guarded within marriage because it can very much be abused.

But what does this mean for single people? Given that sex is such a powerful force, even within the hearth of marriage, it has an even greater potential to destroy when taken outside of that context. Why? Because having premarital sex means you have altogether bought the lie that you deserve sex whenever you want it. And when you engage in that kind of perspective, sex becomes a false idol.

Maybe it’s not an idol at first. Maybe it begins with you messing around with your boyfriend from time to time. Slowly, you two push the line back further and further and further. You’re no longer going too far once a week–now it’s almost every night. And one day you push the line back all the way. You have sex.

But don’t think the story ends there. Soon you find yourself justifying the sex. “I really love my boyfriend” or “I know I’m going to marry him” or “There are worse sins than this one.” Eventually you reach a point at which it no longer bothers your conscience. You have altered your entire system of faith to suit your sexual practice. Now, your life and your beliefs center around  your sex life. Your interpretation of Christianity has been perverted or ignored to serve your sexual needs.

That is the definition of idolatry–when you center your life around something other than Christ. That doesn’t mean you’re a sex addict, it just means your sexual desires hold rank over God.

And that is the key difference between sex in marriage and sex outside of marriage. One stems from a life centered around idolatry and a need to satisfy one’s own desires. The other stems from a life centered around God.

And that is why one practice is more likely to bring life, whereas the other is likely to destroy. Whenever any practice or belief supplants the centrality of God in our lives, then we are headed towards self-destruction.

No matter where you are in life, married or single, that should be your theology of sex. Sex should always be practiced in a way that draws one another closer to God. This can ONLY be done in marriage, but it is not necessarily done in marriage. It is a discipline, and it is a form of worship so we must keep it sacred. Take the steps to guard it as such.

In an attempt to get as much done before my students come back from Christmas break, I have spent the last week in all-out wedding planning mode. I’ve talked to photographers, looked at countless flower arrangements and been to too many bridal shops to count.

In particular, I’ve been using the last week to figure out the bridesmaid dresses, which has been tricky given that I don’t want my bridesmaids to hate me.

But as I’ve gone from store to store, looking at bridesmaid dresses and wedding gowns galore, it got me to thinking about this whole wedding ceremony thing. More specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning of the white dress.

Symbolically, the white dress is meant to represent the bride’s purity–she has saved herself for just this special day and now she can present herself as untouched, for her husband’s embrace alone.

Realistically, this almost never happens. One of my friends who lives with her boyfriend recently joked about wearing a silver dress at her wedding. “I’m not going to wear white,” she proclaimed. “The jig is up!”

And she’s not alone in this. In all honesty, how many of us can really wear white on our wedding days? Even for those women who maintain their virginity, it is oftentimes only by a thread. That’s hardly the symbolism behind the dress, is it?

Why, then, do we go on with this charade?

For most women, the main reason behind a white dress is the tradition of it. Plain and simple. I, however, have realized a very different but very important reason for maintaining this practice. But before I get into that thought process, let me back up a bit by setting the stage of how weddings generally go these days…

Today, the world tells us that your wedding is all about YOU. The rehearsal dinner is full of toasts about what a great couple you make, the church lobby and reception are decked with pictures of the two of you, and everyone is at your beck and call. This is YOUR day, and the focus is on you alone.

Scripturally speaking, this mentality is way off. Contrary to what the world says, your wedding day is not about you. It’s merely a reflection of a much greater love story, the romance between Christ and the Church. It is no coincidence that marriage reflects God’s relationship with us so neatly–marriage was fundamentally designed to.

That said, the aim of any wedding ceremony should be to highlight this greater truth. Everything about the day and the process leading up to it should be about the glory of God and His love for the Church. That perspective has already held me accountable in many ways, not the least of which is my understanding of the white dress.

Ultimately, the white dress is not about the purity of the bride’s lifestyle. Yes, her lifestyle is relevant, but that’s not the most relevant. Ultimately, the white dress is significant of the fact that God has made the bride pure.

The Bride is able to present herself as blameless before the Groom because the Groom laid himself down for her and cleansed her of her sin. And that purity has nothing to do with how many men she slept with before, or how unclean she might have been. All of that is behind, because Christ intervened.

Christ died to make his bride, his Church, clean. We reflect this beautiful news to the world around us when we wear white on our wedding day.

And this should be liberating news for us ladies who carry the baggage of a sullied past. If you worry about whether or not a Christian guy will marry you because of your shameful history, remember that you are no longer defined by that past. Christ has made you into a new creation, so you can still wear that white dress and you can wear it with confidence! Not based upon your own purity, but on the one who made you pure.

That does not, however, mean that the dress has no meaning for our present lifestyles. Because a wedding is a picture of the eternal Groom and His Bride, we must strive to reflect that relationship daily. Only yoke yourself with a man who will lay himself down for you and your purity, desiring to present you as blameless before God. Yes, God can redeem your mistakes, but that does not grant us the freedom to live however we want. Reflecting the relationship between Christ and the Church is more than a one-time wedding event. It is a way of life.

That is a good reminder for everyone, no matter what stage of life you find yourself in today.

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!!

Since writing the last post, I have received a number of great questions that I want to follow up on because they are relevant to us all, and they allow me to elaborate on some of my previous points.

The first question deals with whether or not it’s ok for your boyfriend to sleep over, as long as he isn’t actually sleeping in your bed. For instance, you might have stayed up extremely late watching a movie, and he’s too exhausted to drive home, so he crashes on the couch. What are we to think of this?

Again, this draws us back into some seemingly gray territory because it is even more “innocent” than lying in bed together without having sex. If you’re not even in the same room, then what’s the problem?

Well even though my last post focused on the intimacy of sharing a bed together, there are still some points from the post that apply. The first being that no matter what you do with a guy, it’s easy to compromise your witness if he sleeps over. Your roommates have no idea how long he’s been sleeping on that couch (though I would suspect he hasn’t been there very long…), and your neighbors know even less than that. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 teaches us to avoid even the appearance of evil, to flee from anything that even looks like sin, so this verse provides us with a great perspective on this issue.

But in addition to potentially hurting your witness, there are some other elements to factor in as well. I should have mentioned this in the last post, but if you have roommates, especially Christian ones, then you may actually poison your relationship with them if you have boys staying over. I’ve seen this happen a lot–a girl will have a roommate who invites her bf to stay over all the time, and she feels extremely uncomfortable about it. But her roommate never asks if it’s ok, and she gives off the vibe that it’s not up for discussion, so a minor estrangement begins to creep in. For some, it only results in a vague tension between roommates; for others, it can corrode the relationship altogether.

And this can happen even if he sleeps on the couch. While your roommate may feel weird when you two go off into your bedroom and shut the door, it’s awkward having a boy over late at night at all. The reason being that when a boy spends the night, you feel a little less safe and at home in your own apartment. There have been times when I couldn’t even walk around my own apartment in my pj’s because a guy was always around, and I resented my roommate for it.

The bottom line is that having your boyfriend sleep over, regardless of the circumstances, is disrespectful to your roommate. It invades her privacy as well as driving a wedge in between your relationship. So for the sake of your friendship and the health of your living situation, don’t let boys spend the night.

The final point I want to make about sleeping over relates back to the issue of appropriate intimacy. When I first thought about whether or not it’s alright for a boyfriend to sleep over, as long as he’s not in the same bed, I immediately sympathized with the question. From a technical stand point, there seems to be nothing wrong with it.

But the more I reflect on it, the more I am struck by the absurdity of it. With very few exceptions (like in the case of illness, or if you’re staying at your family’s house, etc.), having a guy sleeping in the same house or apartment is just another way of attaining as much intimacy as we can get away with, while also settings ourselves up for temptation.

For instance, say that you live in different cities and he’s visiting from out of town, so you allow him to stay with you. In doing this, you are putting yourself in a very precarious position since you are alone, late at night, with no accountability.

If your situation looks more like the one I described above (he’s there so late that he’s too exhausted to drive home) then the more pressing question is why he was there so late in the first place. If it was really THAT late at night, then odds are I was engaging in behavior that I should have been avoiding in the first place. In that case, I had bigger fish to fry than the mere issue of sleeping over.

All in all, the cons of sleeping over far outweigh the positives. There is really nothing to be gained by having him spend the night, which reminds us of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians: “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” By letting your boyfriend or girlfriend spend the night, then you are no longer seeking to be above reproach as you set yourself up for temptation, compromise your witness, and threaten your relationship with your roommates. Is all that really worth it?

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In addition to the clarifications on sleeping over, someone else asked me about the Scripture that one might use in support of what I have argued in these posts. What follows are some highlights…

- Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.- Song of Solomon 2:7, 3:5, 8:4

This is written within the very specific context of sexual love. By not awakening love until it so desires, we should not put ourselves in a situation to do something we know is wrong and will later regret.

- You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. –Matthew 5:27-28

We should not engage in any behavior that would lead our boyfriends to desire us in a way that God has forbidden outside of marriage. There is no formula for this because some guys can’t even handle kissing a woman without lusting after her, whereas others are not as tempted by that, but if you are doing anything you suspect would cause your boyfriend to stumble, then avoid it. If you indulge his lust, then you are not loving him as your brother in Christ, and you are disobeying God.

- Flee from sexual immorality. -1 Corinthians 6:18

Notice that this verse is not a passive “how much can I get away with” approach to sexual relationships. On the contrary, we are to flee any situation that might lead us into temptation. To try and get away with as much as possible is to buck against the very spirit of this verse.

In closing, I want to you to think of this discipline in your dating relationships as an investment in your marriage. One of the reasons our marriages are so emotionally bankrupt today is that we have stopped setting the institution apart in any kind of definitive way. We want what we want now, so we mimic the love and intimacy of marriage without engaging in the commitment that that love and intimacy require. This instant gratification corruption can play out when we have sex, when we sleep in the same bed, or even when we sleep in the same apartment. But these are not meant to be legalistic parameters, since it is ultimately about your heart. You should be doing everything you can to honor yourself, your boyfriend, and your God. That, at the end of the day, is the question we should be asking.

Thanks to all those great questions!!

I think most Christians would agree that having sex before marriage is wrong. After all, Scripture is pretty clear on the topic over and over again. What is a little less clear is the lines we cross leading up to sex. I can’t count the number of dating talks I’ve attended in which some ambiguously intentioned young person asked, “How far is too far?” For many of us, we feel like we’re doing pretty well as long as we’re not going “all the way,” so prior to that boundary almost anything goes.

Because of this mentality, a new trend in Christian dating has developed: sleeping together but not having sex. Countless Christian couples will share a bed for the night without doing the actual deed, and I’ve done it myself. And on some level, it would seem pretty innocent–all you’re doing is sleeping together. That’s not so bad, right?

Well as a person who has herself engaged in this behavior, let me be the first to say that it’s wrong. And if you’re doing it with your significant other, then you need to stop. I know this is a pretty hard line stance, but here’s my thought process…

First, when you share a bed with someone you are tempting yourself unnecessarily. My pastor always says that if your boyfriend can lie down next to you without getting aroused, then he either doesn’t like you very much, or he’s probably gay. While he is overstating his point in jest, I think there is something to that statement. When you are lying under the covers in a dark room next to a person that you’re attracted to, then it will be extremely difficult to set appropriate boundaries. Your judgment will be compromised be your desires, and speaking from my own experience, my desires win every time.

Even if you don’t start out having sex, it won’t be long until you reach that point. You’ll find yourself needing to go further and further to get the same degree of pleasure, and eventually you will find yourself facing the final frontier. For that reason, don’t put yourself in that position. Even if you’re not spending the entire night together, being in bed is a tremendous temptation, so it should be avoided no matter the circumstances.

The second reason Christians should avoid sleeping over is that it compromises your witness. If your roommates aren’t Christians and they see your boyfriend sleeping over, they will likely assume you are having sex. When this happens, we fail to distinguish Christian relationships from worldly relationships in any substantive way.

But even if your roommates are Christian, you can still pull them down with your example. If, for instance, they are wondering about boundaries in their own relationships, and they look to you for direction, then you will be leading them right into temptation. Even if they know you’re not having sex, they may still come to think that sleeping in the same bed is okay, so don’t set them up for such a fall.

Now if you don’t have a roommate and none of the above applies to you, you can still compromise your witness. If, for example, your neighbors see your boyfriend leave early in the morning, the same perception may be achieved, so it is best to be above reproach in this area.

The final reason that spending the night should be avoided is that it is actually very intimate, and in a way that is not appropriate outside the bonds of marriage. You know, we don’t really talk about sleeping in the same bed as being an intimate act, but whenever I woke up the next morning I always felt like I had crossed a major line of intimacy that I hadn’t intended to transgress.

I think this intimacy stems from a lot of things–One, you are imitating the intimacy between married people. Across time and culture, marriages have been consummated when the husband and wife came together in one marital bed. Conversely, a husband might be kicked out of that bed and exiled to the couch if the couple is fighting. That said, sleeping together in one bed can sympolize the union between a husband and wife. The sharing of a bed represents the sharing of a life.

Two, when we share a bed with another person, we are in close proximity for an extended period of time. This, in my mind, is what separates sharing a bed with a friend of the same sex, from sharing a bed with someone you’re attracted to. When I share a bed with a girl friend, we might as well be sleeping in separate beds. I don’t want her all up in my space, and neither does she. In fact, I had to share a bed with an old friend last week, and I woke up in the middle of the night when I felt her nudge my foot back onto my side of the bed.:)

But when you sleep with your boyfriend, it’s a very different story. He lies close to you with his arms around you, and he can feel your entire body against his. Because of this closeness, sleeping together is very intimate for dating couples in a way that is distinct from same-gender friends who share a bed.

And finally, sleeping together is intimate because we are most vulnerable when we are asleep. In a sense, sleeping with someone in such close proximity is an act of trust and commitment. We can let down our guard and be ourselves, trusting that the person will still be there in the morning. Again, this is a kind of commitment that is appropriate in marriage, but should be avoided prior to that time. In a sense, spending the night with someone can be a kind of commitment in which we feel safe and protected by the person who is next to us (especially for us ladies), so for the sake of guarding your heart and not jumping the gun emotionally, you really shouldn’t do it.

So if you are dating someone with whom you find yourself spending the night a lot, talk to them about it. Make a commitment to one another to stop this behavior for the sake of the relationship. After all, this is not about rules and regulations–this is about honoring God and honoring your significant other. When the physical relationship gets out of hand, then it corrodes your relationship with God and your boyfriend, so we should all abstain from such spiritual poison. And if your roommates are doing this, talk to them about it and figure out how to hold them accountable in a way that is encouraging, rather than judgmental.

And finally, enjoy having an entire bed to yourself while you can! Some people hate going to bed alone, but I say relish in it, because the poor guy I marry is gonna be fighting me for bed space.