It’s been very refreshing to discover this blog and to understand the perspective expressed in it. As we have seen from some of the recent posts that have been put up, the evangelical purity movement, based on “complimentarian” theology, essentially teaches that women are lesser beings sexually, that women don’t have or shouldn’t have sexual feelings or desires, that women are more or less men’s sexual playthings. This is a very bad theology that isn’t differentiating itself from society where there are so many ingrained negative attitudes towards femininity and female sexuality which, of course, the porn industry exploits and magnifies. We fail therefore to understand the viewpoint behind abortion, which is part of women reclaiming their reproductive rights; conservatives argue they never had any such rights in the first place. That isn’t intended to detract from the moral arguments against abortion itself, but it is an insight into the diminution of femininity where women have been expected to shoulder most of the responsibility for child bearing and rearing. This blog doesn’t talk about all those things, but it does talk about one woman’s struggle with her sexuality, and it’s refreshing to see her talk openly about it.
Anyway here is the first post on her blog, it explains everything about what it is like for a single Christian woman to struggle with her sexuality and temptation and sexual sin. She chose to be very bold, about as bold as we are being with some of the things we have posted on this blog. And because of this, finding her blog after we decided to start this blog, was actually a very useful thing, because it filled in some detail and confirmed other detail of stuff we had already begun to post about.
Then five years went past and she wrote about a lot of other things….which we haven’t yet read, honestly. And the first time we looked at her blog we missed the update from just over a year ago, “Where I’ve Been“. And it’s really good to read this post, because she has described how she came to a peace about masturbation. She came to the conclusion masturbation was not an issue at all between her and God (as long as she stuck to certain parameters).
We’ve written a lot about masturbation on this blog (so far) and that is because it is extremely important to us to demystify and destigmatise all the negativity surrounding masturbation in the Church. Having got that out of our system up to this point, with a lot of reposting of internet content about Christians and masturbation, maybe it is time to move on to another subject. But we could not let this theme be concluded without writing about this girl’s journey because it mirrors our journeys as well. It is surely no coincidence that having come to the same place of recovery from sexual sin, we experienced likewise the beautiful freedom of knowing God more passionately than ever before and knowing that He created our bodies to experience sexual pleasure whether we are married or single. If we keep sin out of our masturbation experience then we can truly enjoy the fact that this gift was designed to produce pleasure for us within our bodies and that, as with all functions of our natural body, the performance of this gift is to be seen as an act of worship. So we get the most deep sense of spiritual fulfilment, favour and blessing every time we masturbate as long as we spend the time praising God and thanking Him for this blessing. If you bring that perspective into masturbation then the freedom from false guilt and shame can be a major aspect of recovery from sexual sin (such as porn addiction) while at the same time having an appropriate outlet for releasing sexual tension that builds up in our bodies.
The other useful knowledge we got from reading this blog, was already mentioned above, and that, along with a book by Linda Kay Kline about the purity movement, was understanding about the negative theological teachings that are endemic in conservative theology, that basically seek to demean female sexuality and deny that women have sexual drives and desires. It’s no accident that the True Love Waits program came out of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1993, only a few years after conservatives hijacked the SBC and drove out all female ministry leaders. Unfortunately this movement continues to enjoy widespread support because it is inherently rooted in complimentarianism, a widely taught school of theological belief that enshrines patriarchal religious beliefs, and essentially panders to secular patriarchalism that is still a widespread school of thought in conservative politics. Joshua Harris has at least renounced his purity culture book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” but patriarchal faith focus will, unfortunately, remain a significant part of the Church for the foreseeable future.
The affirmation about masturbation as something that Christians can partake of at the same time as living a pure, holy and upright life and maintain sexual purity is essential to us to “preach about” in this blog and that’s why it has been the key focus since the blog was set up. It will remain very important in a blog that not only focuses on Christian views of sexuality, but on the ministry of healing from sexual sin.