Sexuality

Is God Male?

Trish6 Comments

The answer might seem obvious to Christians.  After all, throughout the Bible, God uses male pronouns to describe himself, and when God become flesh, he came as the man, Jesus.  Most people are content to leave the issue there, but since I love thinking about culture, gender, and sexuality, I wanted to dig a little deeper.

In a fallen world, anything can become a source of division.  This is true of music preferences; how much more when the character of God is in question?  There are some who find solace in thinking of God as Mother rather than Father, and there are others who react against this with scorn and even hatred.  It seems to me a part of the age old (Genesis 3 old) battle of the sexes:  whichever sex God identifies with “wins.”

After all, if God is male, then it is one small step to assume that being male is like being God.  And unfortunately, many of our Church forefathers taught wonderful truths about God alongside vicious insults about women.  For instance, Thomas Aquinas viewed men as the default perfect image of God and women as defective copies:  Continue reading →

Sex Trafficking (2 of 3): Victim’s Perspective

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The following information comes from information provided by Redeemed Ministries at their weekend conference on Aftercare Training.

Sex trafficking:  When an individual makes a profit by selling a human being in the Commerical Sex Industry by means of force, fraud, or coercion.

Before studying trafficking in more detail, I tended to think of the women and children forced into prostitution as victims of force and fraud.  Forced trafficking is the obvious nightmare:  someone is kidnapped, taken to an unknown location, and forced into sexual slavery.  Fraud is also fairly obviously horrible, and it occurs when a woman is offered a job that doesn’t exist in order to create a dependency and desperation that leads to sexual slavery.

Coercion, however, is trickier.  Women who are coerced into prostitution often believe that it was their choice.  From the outside, these are the women who are often scorned and looked down upon by “nice” men and women in the Church.  But the reality is not so simple.  Women who are coerced into sexual slavery are manipulated and abused, and they deserve our understanding and compassion.

There are five stages of entry into commercial sexual exploitation.  Although the way in which each stage plays out is different from woman to woman, all five are generally present if a woman is successfully coerced into sexual slavery.  Continue reading →

Sex Trafficking (1 of 3): God’s Perspective

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The following information comes from information provided by Redeemed Ministries at their weekend conference on Aftercare Training.

I am 100% convinced that God hates the sexual exploitation of women.  I am positive that he is grieved by the fact that 21-30 million people are trafficked, 80% of whom are women, and 50% of whom are children.  Why do I know God hates trafficking?  Because of how he has revealed himself in the Bible.  Continue reading →

Why Do Good Girls Like Bad Boys?

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There is a stereotype in Western culture that good girls like bad boys, and like all stereotypes, there is some truth and some lies to it.  [A caveat:  this is not about girls liking bad boys in movies!  How could we not?  Villains are often attractive people with a confident sense of humor who are more fully developed characters than their heroic counterparts.  Everyone crushes on movie bad boys; that is not what this post is about.]

Although not all “good girls” (which is a ridiculous label) like “bad boys” (also ridiculous), I think it is probably a true statement that women are often attracted to people who they know aren’t good for them.  And although I don’t have personal experience as a man, I’m willing to bet that men are often attracted to women that they know are bad for them.  So why do we do it?  Continue reading →

Choosing to be Happy for PDA Couples While I Sit Nearby, Very Single

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There is nothing more conflicting for me as a single person than watching couples perform Public Displays of Affection right in front of my eyeballs.  On the one–nicer–hand, how great for them!  I’m all for PDA, and I plan to gross out as many people as possible when I start dating someone who feels similarly comfortable.  I think there’s something very sweet about people showing their love for their partner in public.  BUT.  On the other–much meaner–hand, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to show PDA until I am also engaged in similar activities.

With one exception:  Old people. Couples above 60, hold hands all the time!  Kiss each other!  Rub each other’s backs and smile close into their face!  I love it.  It’s 100% adorable and it gives me hope that long-lasting love is possible.  Continue reading →

The Thing That Sucks About Being Single

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I like to defend singleness.  I like to become very defensive, really, and point out all the people, groups, and institutions that are not doing a good enough job at validating me.  I stand by my observations and my exhortations.  But there’s an elephant in the room that I always pointedly ignore during those kinds of blog posts.

Because the thing I skirt around is painful.  It is far easier to focus on what I like about singleness (the freedom!).  And it’s easier to focus on fear, and how being single means I get to avoid the potential heartbreak of loving someone so deeply that I accept the inevitability of being hurt by them.  It’s easier to pretend that that is the whole picture, thank you, please walk away now.  Continue reading →

Singleness According to Tim Keller

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One of the worst things about being single are the comments that come your way from well-meaning friends, relatives, and acquaintances.  My favorite (by which I mean my least favorite) is the question, “Why are you single?”  Sometimes I am tempted to pull a Bridget Jones and pretend to have a skin malady of hidden green scales.  One time I sarcastically responded, “I don’t know.  Why don’t you tell me why you think I’m single?” I was met with uncomfortable silence.  There is simply no good answer.  If there were a specific obstacle keeping me single, I would do my best to remove it.  And anyway, that question just highlights the fact that I am alone, with an unpleasant undertone of “and that’s not okay.”

Knowing my abhorrence of this trend, imagine my delight when in chapter seven of The Meaning of Marriage, Tim Keller lists four common Christian explanations of singleness….and a sassy retort.  Continue reading →

What is the Real Problem with 50 Shades of Grey?

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The Christian online community is blowing up, and this time it’s about 50 Shades of Grey.  As usual, I have come to the same conclusion (don’t read or watch it), but for very different reasons.  I’m always this close to fitting in.  Most of the concern I see is directed at either 1) the erotica or 2) the BDSM.  With some caveats, I don’t really see these issues as all that significant.  What bothers me about the story is, instead, the abuse.

Full disclosure:  I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey.  This makes me that absolutely annoying person who has an uneducated opinion.  I’m sorry!  I have, however, had many conversations with readers, and I have been devouring any and all information about the series, positive or negative.  If that still doesn’t count as good enough for you, I don’t blame you.  But I encourage you to keep reading, and if I’ve missed something important, please let me know! Continue reading →

Gifts of SIngleness: Use Them or Become Resentful

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While I was trying to decide whether to stay in Dallas after I graduate from DTS or else move to Athens, my biggest Dallas advocates were repeating the same variety of advice:  Settle down.  Start investing in long term 1) relationships, 2) career, 3) housing.  Stop running.  These messages were internal, too.  After all, I’m 26-years-old, and Facebook is full of my peers marrying, buying houses, and even creating the next generation of adorable little girls and boys.  Picking up and moving overseas is such a post-college phase (and, uh, coincidentally, exactly what I did post-college).  A phase you’re meant to grow out of, right?

I felt vaguely guilty about my decision to choose Athens over Dallas despite feeling deep in my bones that it was the best choice and that it was where God was uniquely calling me.  That guilt disappeared during a conversation with my friend Jennie.  She affirmed my decision, then said, “It’s so great that you can just decide to move halfway around the world.  I have a hard enough time [taking her four children] into town to buy groceries.”

Suddenly things made a little more sense; stability and security are wonderful things, but so are freedom and adventure.  The former are more easily acquired through marriage, while the latter tend to find expression in singles.  This is, obviously, overly simplistic.  Singles can be stable and marrieds can have adventures.  But generally, I think this division is fairly accurate.

I have a long and varied relationship with my own singleness.  Sometimes I am desperate to be married, and other times I want to run as far away from the possibility as I can (these mood swings often coincide with the health or destruction of my friends’ relationships).  I have felt the cultural and Christian pressure that implies I am “less than” because I am single.  I have also felt the warmth and inclusion of marrieds and singles who welcome me into their homes and lives.  I used to think that being single was essentially a waiting game; over the years I have started to embrace my singleness and see it as the gift that it is.

I have more time to myself, more creative energy, a greater ability to serve others.  I can make decisions without aligning my plans to someone else’s, and I can be spontaneous in a way my married friends (especially those with children) simply cannot.  In short, as a single woman, I have more freedom and adventure.

So back to those itching thoughts about security and settling down.  Talking with Jennie, I realized that in many ways, I was hearing the message “Act like a married person.”  Having described the benefits of being single, I’ll now say I think the benefits of marriage are primarily security and stability (relationally, vocationally, and geographically).  I was being told to value the gifts of marriage above the gifts of singleness.  And subconsciously, I had started to agree.

Now that the subconscious was conscious, my anger flooded in.  No way was I going to feel bad about being single!  No way was I going to agree with societal pressure.  If I get married some day, and I hope I do, I will pursue and enjoy the gifts of stability and security.  Until then, I intend to embrace the gifts of singleness–I want to pursue freedom and adventure.  I want to be spontaneous, to use my nomadic ability to travel the world and connect with a vast network of amazing people.

Not that all single people need to travel in order to feel self-actualized.  But I do think that single people need to look at their life situation and seek out opportunities for freedom and adventure, whatever that may look like for her or him individually.  If single people do not take advantage of these gifts and instead pursue security and stability exclusively, I think we will become resentful.  I did, when I imagined my life in Dallas, living in the same place, working in the same place, year after year after year…alone.  I have seen this happen to single men and women–they get so locked into finding a good job and buying a house that they then obsess over finding the missing piece:  a husband or wife to complete the set.

I don’t want to become so focused on what I don’t have that I forget to appreciate what I do have:  the ability to relate broadly and meaningfully with many people, the freedom to be spontaneous, and an adventurous spirit that says “yes” before “let me check with so-and-so.”  I want to love being single while I’m here, for as long as that might be.  Deciding to move to Athens has renewed my ability to embrace my singleness.