This Week in Sexuality

Posted on January 21, 2012 | Leave a comment

20120121-173425.jpgThis Saturday marks the starts of my “This Week in Sexuality” weekly feature. Every Saturday I will spotlight the “sexuality” stories I came across in the previous seven days.

Real Marriage
 
The biggest sexuality story hands down has been the release of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage. The book has barely been out two weeks and it already has just shy of an hundred reviews on Amazon. Egalatarians hate the book because Driscoll is a complementarian and believes in “traditional” marriage. No shocker there. However, the book is even getting mixed reviews from people that are in basic theological alignment with the Seattle pastor. A lot of the controversey stems from the fact that the book has a seemingly inordinate amount of its content dedicated sexual intercourse and various sex acts. I have yet to read the book but I do recall Driscoll’s teaching on the Song of Solomon being fairly messed up. I do eventually plan to pick up since it will be a significant influence on Christians.
 
Here are some of the better reviews I came across:
  • Deny Burk has lengthy review here.
  • Tim Challies has a short review here.
  • Doug Wilson did a mutli-parter: pt. 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.
Sidenote: The best book I’ve read on marriage so far is Doug Wilson’s Reforming Marriage. I’d recommend Ed Wheat’s Intended for Pleasure if you are looking for something that focuses on the sex act.
 
Babies are Good
 
Mark Oppenheimer’s latest article in the New York Times on Evangelicals shifting their views regarding contraception is worth checking. Here is a short quote:
“Since then, however, there has been a shift in evangelical thinking about contraception, and therefore about big families. You can see it in the Duggar family, the enthusiastic Santorum supporters who star on the reality television show “19 Kids & Counting.” You can read about it in books like “Quiverfull,” Kathryn Joyce’s 2009 account of Christians who forgo contraception to add children to the Lord’s army. And you can hear it in the teachings of theologians like Russell D. Moore, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary dean who warns evangelicals to be skeptical of the ‘contraceptive culture.’”

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Posted in Abortion, Parenting

Love and War

Posted on January 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

“The Bible is a cosmic love story, to be sure. At the end of The Book, Christ “gets the girl”–the bridal city that He desires. But history is also a war story. In it God proves Himself the best, the only one worthy to reign, by crushing all rivals and enemies in a just and righteous wrath.” William E.Mouser, The Story of Sex in Scripture pg. 21

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Posted in Biblical Sexuality

John Calvin on Abortion

Posted on January 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Reformers spoke up for the unborn. Will you?

“The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light” John Calvin, Commentarius in Exodum, 21,2

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Posted in Abortion

Sex is Not Safe

Posted on November 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

“As [Wendell Berry] writes in the splendid essay, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community”: “Sex was never safe, and it is less safe now than it has been.” Community customs, arrangements, and controls had existed “in part, to reduce the volatility and the danger of sex.” These controls would preserve its energy, its beauty, and its pleasure” so that the sexual act would in turn bond husbands to wives, “parents to children, families to community, [and] the community to nature.” Whenever sex becomes “autonomous,” freed from communal restraints, and valued solely for its own sake, it also becomes “frivolous” and “destructive–even of itself.”

“Rather than freedom the disintegration of the household through “sexual liberation” has produced a novel form of bondage. The new overlords, Mr. Berry says, are the sexual specialists–sex clinicians and pornographers–”[b]oth of whom subsist on the increasing possibility of sex between people who neither know or care about each other” and who also “subsist on our failure to see any purpose or virtue in sexual discipline.”

Allan Carlson. “Not Safe, Nor Private, Nor Free: Wendell Berry on Sexual Love and Procreation.” The Family in America. Sept-Oct 2007.

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Posted in Biblical Sexuality

The Pastor’s Wife

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

I cannot think of a more difficult position in life than that of a pastor’s wife.   Grace Driscoll, wife of Pastor Mark Driscoll, has written two excellent posts on being a ministry wife. She covers all the major issues and supplies some great solutions. You can read part one here and part two here.

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Posted in Femininity

Halloween ’11: The Avengers

Posted on October 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

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Is Homosexuality Genetically Innate…

Posted on October 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

…and does it even matter?

I tend to believe that there are genetic factors at play with most people who have same-sex attraction. However, this belief doesn’t yield the conclusion that gay activist desire. Homosexuality can involve genetic factors and still be a sin. Anyone that wants to read a relatively short article on why this is so should read John Frame’s, “But God Made Me This Way!” Here is a short passage to get you interested:

“Would a genetic basis for homosexuality eliminate the element of “choice?” Certainly not. A person with a genetic propensity for alcoholism still makes a choice when he decides to take a drink, and then another, and then another. Same with an xyy male who decides to punch somebody in the nose. If we assume the existence of a genetic propensity for homosexuality, it is true as we said that those with that makeup face greater temptation in this area than others. But those who succumb to the temptation do choose to do so, as do all of us when we succumb to our own besetting temptations. Homosexuals certainly choose not to remain celibate, and they choose to have sexual relations. They are not forced to do this by their genes or by anything contrary to their own desires.”

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Posted in Biblical Sexuality, Homosexuality, Sexual Sins

Wilson on Father Hunger

Posted on October 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

What Is Father Hunger? from Desiring God on Vimeo.

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Posted in Father Hunger, Fatherhood

“The moment a child is conceived, a father is born.”

Posted on October 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’ve just discovered Too Many Aborted dot Com. It is a great website. They captured my heart when they wrote, “The moment a child is conceived, a father is born.” Good stuff. Check it out here.

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Posted in Abortion, Fatherhood

Home-schooling Homes and Homosexuality

Posted on October 26, 2011 | 14 Comments

Homosexuals come from all sorts of households. Single parents homes, Christian homes, middle class homes, biracial homes and just any other category of home you can come up with. Homosexuality is a sin (Scripture says this clearly and repeatedly) and sin knows no boundaries. That being said, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi’s research has shown that there are a triad of factors that tend to be present in the homes that homosexuals come raised in. The present of these environmental factors and shaping influences will put a child at higher risk of developing and acting upon homosexual urges. Several years ago I noticed this triad in one of the places a Christian would least expect. I started noticing an abnormal amount of especially effeminate young men from home-schooling families. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the causes behind this trend.  However, over time I began to notice that three variables tended to be present in all these home-schooling households.

 

First, the father was often absent due to working long hours to provide for his family. It should be noted that the father appeared to be godly in all examples I observed. He just was gone a lot and was exhausted when he was home.

Second, the mother tended to be overbearing in her management of her home. Her home was well kept. Her lesson plans well-executed. She was queen of every aspect of her home.

Third, not all the sons in these homes came across as effeminate. Some of the boys were very masculine. They were covered in bruises and cuts from building a tree house or playing soccer. However, I noticed the sons that did demonstrate these prehomosexual tendencies were usually homebodies. They tended to be very timid, artistic*, and clung to mother while his brothers explored the world outside.

So, in summary, a distant father, overbearing/protective mother, and timid child were a concoction that tended to produce effeminacy and potential homosexuality. This was disturbing to me because all three are common in home-schooling households. In this sense, home-schooling can be a very dangerous environment for young men to mature in.

What is a parent to do? Should we reject homeschooling? Should we force our artistic boys to build tree houses? Not necessarily. There is another way to come at this and it starts with the parents.

Consider this passage from Joseph Nicolosi’s A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality:

“For variety of reasons, some mothers also have a tendency to prolong their son’s dependence. A mother’s intimacy with her son is primal, complete, exclusive, and this powerful bond can easily deepen into what psychiatrist Robert Stoller calls a ‘blissful symbiosis.” But the mother may be inclined to hold on to her son in what becomes an unhealthy mutual dependency, especially if she does not have a satisfying, intimate relationship with the boy’s father. In such cases she can put too much energy into the boy, using him to fulfill her needs for love and companionship in a way that is not good for him.
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Posted in Biblical Sexuality, Fatherhood, Femininity, Homosexuality, Masculinity, Parenting