Showing posts tagged sexuality
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Within the Christian story there is the depth and richness of troth in friendship. Dan Allender reminds us that troth is an old term that meant “pledge of fidelity.” Naomi did not disappear into the outer fringes of Ruth and Boaz’s marriage and family life. Friendship fidelity prior to marriage is honored, respected, cherished within marital vows. Enduring friendships were not set in contrast to marital vows. In our modern romantic scripts, ‘She’s just a friend’ conveys a distance from vows, commitments, passion—a peripheral existence to the heart of the family. However, the bond between Naomi and Ruth did not drift away or become marginalized when Ruth married.

Dan Brennan, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women

This passage doesn’t deal specifically with male/female friendship, obviously, but that is book’s overall theme. There are terrific sections on same-gender friendship and friendship within marriage, too.

I wish I’d picked this book up five or six years ago. (Oh…it wasn’t published until last year.) Brennan keeps confirming so much of what I already knew and believed (or at least suspected and passionately hoped) about the glory and mystery of deep, spiritual friendship - but which I’ve recently begun to doubt, question, re-evaluate, perhaps even abandon. But Brennan’s work isn’t just validating (ha…); it’s also deeply edifying. This book is setting my mind at ease about some issues, convicting and challenging me in others. I’m just over halfway finished, but already I *highly* recommend it.

Sometimes, as a single Christian woman, I feel like I’m a… a hazard of some sort. Some kind of inadvertent femme fatale. Like if I breathe the wrong way I’m going to wreck a home or break a heart or crush a spirit.

I don’t know how to do this.

I don’t mean to simply rail against “male-dominated culture.” I know that’s an oversimplification. (The cartoonist does, too.) This image made me question, among other things, my own motives and my too-quick assumptions about others. You? View high resolution

I don’t mean to simply rail against “male-dominated culture.” I know that’s an oversimplification. (The cartoonist does, too.)

This image made me question, among other things, my own motives and my too-quick assumptions about others.

You?

(Reblogged from oldblinddeadjim)

sexual idealism

Ross Douthat explores the idealism behind the typically conservative of marriage and sex.

Here’s one passage:

Yes, in 1950 as in 2011, most people didn’t go virgins to their marriage beds. But earlier generations of Americans waited longer to have sex, took fewer sexual partners across their lifetimes, and were more likely to see sleeping together as a way station on the road to wedlock.

And they may have been happier for it. That’s the conclusion suggested by two sociologists, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America.” Their research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults, finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.

This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution.

Among the young people Regnerus and Uecker studied, the happiest women were those with a current sexual partner and only one or two partners in their lifetime. Virgins were almost as happy, though not quite, and then a young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.

Virgins are “almost as happy” - haha. Good news.

A Christian Response to Homosexuality

I am listening.

Sex or Faith?

A fascinating article, whatever your moral stance. Below in italics are some highlights:

After all, more than 90 percent of men and women, according to Guttmacher Institute surveys during the past 50 years, have reported engaging in premarital sex. And the older a single person becomes, many people believe, the more ridiculous it seems to forgo physical intimacy.

—I am a committed Christian, and I deeply (I do not think I am bluffing) trust God’s design for relationships and sexuality.

—Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy.

Too independent for Mormon men, and too much a virgin for the other set…

—Substitute “Christian” for “Mormon”—and I totally feel like this. I also sometimes feel to “hippie”/liberal for the “good” guys, too “Victorian”/conservative for the interesting ones. Not a fair assessment of reality, I know—just how I feel sometimes : )

Sex isn’t the doorway to adulthood that makes you the type of person you want to become, she said. That is a “fallacy and discounts the value of all the other kinds of relationships in our lives — with family, friends, co-workers and romantic partners where sex is not involved.”

—Yes.

“Church leaders are most helpful when they focus on salient individual needs in single people’s lives…and encourage singles to take sustainable risks in creating meaningful relationships.”

—I would like to know just what these “sustainable risks” are so I can start taking them.