Category: Sex

Why I am Obsessed about Sex

Posted on by Elissa Anne

An obsession is a fixation. Most of the time, people with an obsession or fixation, try to keep it hidden, but when the topic comes up the person usually reveals hypersensitivity in the area of their obsession.

In my previous bog I suggested that the western church is obsessed about sex. I said this because my experience of Christians in general growing up, was that they desperately wanted to keep human sexuality under control. It is my observation that sexual immorality has stricter church-discipline-related consequences than any other kind of alleged-sin. It is the thing we are most secretive about because we know the moral police will judge us, but it’s also the most widely discussed topic when it involves someone else. In my opinion, this constitutes a hypersensitive area of fixation: an obsession.

I concede that part of the reason the western church is obsessed about sex is because western society is obsessed about sex. But if the goal of our obsession is, in fact, to control how Christians behave sexually, then this obsession will never reach its target. It is failing and will continue to fail us. I would like to suggest that we redirect our obsession and, instead of using it to judge and gossip about others while avoiding our own sexual secrets, that we start having honest-to-God conversations about our obsession with sex.

I’ll start.

I’m obsessed with sex partly because I was raised in sex-crazed western society and the sex-crazed western church. I, like the Christians around me, learned to speak religious-virginese about how sex before marriage is wrong and was interviewed by “Girlfriend Magazine” at the ripe old age of 14. I said things like: “True love waits,” and I want to “Save myself for marriage.” I talked about how sex joins people for life and asked the question “Why would you want to be joined with more than one person?” What I didn’t understand is that this mostly comes across as condemning, judgemental and legalistic.

I didn’t even realise that I was obsessed with sex when I was a teenager, but the fact that I ended up in a pretty popular Australian magazine for teenagers, certainly begs the question. There were other clues as well. At my bridal shower just two days ago a high-school friend reminded me that I told my whole class I was scared the rapture would happen while I was still a virgin and I didn’t want Jesus to come back before I’d had sex! (That was 15-20 years ago and I no longer agree with the rapture interpretation of Biblical passages.) Some of the people in my high-school class were shocked. I was known for being a passionate Christian, yet I was talking about the desire to experience sex. I don’t remember being very embarrassed though. I would shrug that kind of thing off by saying: “Doesn’t everyone want to know what it’s like to have sex?”

Meanwhile, I avoided sex like the plague. I never masturbated in high-school. If I felt aroused while watching a movie, I would generally avoid my feelings because I thought that they were wrong or at the very least, dangerous. I was obsessed about sexual purity and sub-consciously kept myself overweight throughout my teen years in order to avoid being sexually attractive to the opposite-sex. Sexual repression, hypersensitivity to all things sexual, guilt connected to any sexual arousal and extreme perfectionism in the area of my sexuality should have been telling signs.

When I was 18-19, I became depressed because I felt guilty about everything. If I forgot to brush my teeth, I felt guilty because I was “supposed” to brush my teeth. If I shaved my legs, I felt guilty because God put hair there. If I watched a lot of television, I felt guilty for being lazy. I remember one time wondering if it was a sin that I walked around stepping on ants and prayed that God would forgive me for being an ant killer. If ever I felt angry or hateful toward anyone, I would pray for days “God please make me love them. Please make me love them. Please make me love them.” Most of the time, the people I didn’t like were men around my dad’s age. This should have been a telling sign too. I would actually get sick feelings in the pit of my stomach and find myself feeling repulsed by certain men 2-3 decades older than me–for no apparent reason–and thought for sure there was something wrong with me.

When my depression grew bad enough that I started wondering if death would be kinder to me than life, I knew I had to seek counselling. One of the counsellors I saw asked me if I had been sexually abused. I said I didn’t know and she explained to me that most people that present with my level of irrational guilt have experienced abuse. I became hysterical and I asked God to tell me whether or not it was true. It took me another nine years to really become convinced that I was molested as a three year old and to face the experience as God gradually reconstructed my memory of it.

I’m not writing this to stir anyone’s pity or empathy. I’m writing this to help readers understand why I have this desperate desire to openly discuss my sexuality. Because on the one hand, religion told me that sex before marriage was wrong. But, on the other hand, my abuse told me that I’d already experienced some kind of sex before marriage. And that made me feel very, very wrong. And I have carried the weight of my sexual-wrongness around with me all my life. Even now, as I prepare to be married, I am struggling with sexual anxiety. I don’t want to live with this secret, obsessive sexual anxiety on my own anymore. I want to talk about it!

“Let’s talk about sex baby

Let’s talk about you and me

Let’s talk about all the good things

And the bad things that may be

Let’s talk about sex!”

This song made me cringe (with judgementalism) in high-school, but now it’s probably the thing I want most in all the world for people like me who have suppressed their sexuality long enough. So I am writing these blogs to encourage much more dialogue amongst my peers about human sexuality.

Navigating my singleness and sexuality throughout my twenties and early thirties has been a complex and emotional adventure. I struggled with people giving me the Christian-virginese answer to singleness and sexlessness: “God is all you need.” And I struggled with mixed messages around masturbation and sexual arousal (amongst other struggles). There are many other topics I look forward to discussing in future blogs, but we will start with masturbation first.

So stay tuned for blog 3: Is masturbation a sin?

Why is the Church Obsessed about Sex?

Posted on by Elissa Anne

While I was growing up, I felt like I was taught a postmodern version of the 10 commandments:

  1. Worship the Trinity only
  2. Don’t love material possessions more than God
  3. Don’t swear
  4. Go to church every Sunday
  5. Obey your parents
  6. Don’t commit murder
  7. Don’t commit sexual sin including but not limited to: lust of the eyes, lust of the heart, pre-marital sex (including dry-humping, inappropriate fondling or caressing, oral sex; other grey areas may include: kissing, holding hands, cuddling, touching in any way, shape or form), extra-marital sex, polygamy, divorce and re-marriage, fantasy, indulgence in pornography, homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transvestitism, intersexuality; other grey areas may include: masturbation & oral sex in marriage!
  8. Don’t steal
  9. Don’t lie
  10. Don’t be jealous

From my perspective “sexual sin” seemed to be the most talked about of all the postmodern-day commandments. In my teen years I heard stories about the days when parents used to disown their own daughters for coming home pregnant and unwed teenage mothers had their newborn babies forcibly removed.

I heard about young adult friends and family being stood down from being part of the church worship team because they either confessed to having premarital sex, were dobbed in for premarital sex, or became pregnant out of wedlock. I watched as some Christian couples made the fateful decision to move in together and about a minute later, felt unwelcome at church and left, only to return within a year or two when they were legally married. Others rushed down the aisle to cover-up the possibility that they may or may not have conceived before marriage.

I heard gossip about which young people at church were secretly having sex, which older married couples had confessed to sex before marriage, and the double-standards applied to elite members of the church whose sexual sins were kept forever on the down-low–presumably below the belt.

“Sexual immorality” always seemed to be dealt with more harshly than any other moral failing: pastors ex-communicated for adultery; pornography burning ceremonies; exorcisms performed on homosexuals; abortions to cover-up premarital sex; verbal abuse, gossip and slander about or toward the promiscuous; and a church-wide fear of admitting to any sort of temptation or mistake.

It’s interesting because we don’t stand down pastors who are clearly overweight, which indicates the likelihood of gluttony, laziness or both, but if there is a hint of sexual sin, you can bet-your-britches that pastor is in big trouble! Most of the time we don’t even discuss whether it is right or wrong to buy houses and cars that pollute our environment, destroy the ozone layer, wipe out forests and rape the earth, but we will talk incessantly about how much of a slut little miss so-and-so is, and how GLBTI people are really perverted heterosexuals! Just last year (2014) an American preacher said that God gave us clear instructions in Leviticus that we are to wipe out–and I do mean murder, which, by the way, goes against commandment number six–all homosexual people. Another pastor from New Zealand said he was praying that a certain gay man would off himself.

Why is the western church so obsessed about sex?

I don’t know about you, but I tend to obsess over the things that I covet. Commandment number ten: don’t be jealous. I once heard a poem that I have never forgotten:

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods

Not even a penny bun

But say thanks to the Lord that he did not forbid thee

To court thy neighbour’s son!”

I believe that the western church obsesses over sex because we are generally jealous. While I was a very chaste virgin in my early twenties, rarely masturbating and certainly not engaging in any sexual activities with other people, I envied every friend who became engaged and got married. A big part of this was because they were about to begin–or were already enjoying–their sex-life and I was still keeping my legs tightly crossed in abstinence. For some people, abstinence and virginity last longer than others, but most of the time, this is not because we don’t “want” to have sex.

I don’t think it’s all that much of a stretch to conclude that in the deepest parts of many virginal Christians’ hearts, there is a secret envy toward the more promiscuous. This is not necessarily because we want to indulge in promiscuity, but because we think it is unfair that other people get away with it, while we don’t. We feel disgusted by certain types of “slutty behaviour” because we would never conceive of doing such a thing! But our claim that we would never entertain the idea is a downright lie. It’s something we think with our cognitive minds, while our subconscious is still reacting in immature jealousy saying “that’s not fair!”

This is also known as self-righteousness.

When we think we are better than other people; that we would never traverse the boundary the way someone else has; that we would never even be comparably tempted; then we have succumbed to the delusion of our own self-righteousness.

Jesus said: “Anyone who looks at a woman [person] lustfully has already committed adultery with her [that person] in his [or her] heart,” Matthew 5:28 NIV. I do not believe for one second that there is a single Christian, or even a single human being (who has reached puberty), who has not committed adultery of the heart. We are all adulterers and no amount of abstinence, self-righteousness or judgemental pride toward other adulterers, is going to change that.

I am not writing this to condemn anyone. I am writing this to liberate people. We are all on an equal playing field. We are all sexually immoral. So why do we need to point the finger at other people’s sexuality and beg them to conform to our self-righteous standards?

“Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.” John 8:7 NLT

What Language Does God Speak?

Posted on by Elissa Anne

Hebrews 1:2-3 tells us that “In these last days he has spoken to us by his son … the exact representation of his being!” The synoptic Gospels all agree that Jesus held up love as the highest law (Mt 22:37-40, Mk 12:29-31, Lk 10:27). John took this one step further: “Love one another as I have loved you,” (Jn 13:34). Jesus didn’t merely command that we love, he demonstrated and embodied love. He instructed us to love even our enemies (Mt 5:44, Lk 6:27, 35) and he modelled that love in his treatment of women, prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans, Pharisees and Roman soldiers.

Jesus treated women with a great deal more dignity and respect than was culturally normal in his day and age. He argued for their rights in marriage (Mt 19), he touched and healed women considered untouchable and unclean (Mt 8), he forgave prostitutes without judgement (Jn 8) and he spoke kindly to a divorcee (Jn 4) who had three strikes against her: she was female, divorced and a Samaritan! His treatment of Samaritans in deeming them his neighbours was also unheard of (Lk 10). Similarly, though Jesus opposed the Pharisee’s teachings numerous times (Mt 5:20, 16:6, 23:13-39, Mk 2:24, Mk 3:6), he was always willing to converse and interact with them (Lk 7:36-50). Interestingly, while he dined with the Pharisees, a prostitute tried to express her love to Jesus in what was considered to be a very seductive manner. Jesus understood that she did not know any better and he treated her seduction as nothing less than an act of beautiful worship (see also Mk 14:1-9). While other people treated tax collectors as outcasts, Jesus associated with Zacchaeus as an equal (Lk 19). Jesus turned the other cheek in every regard, even when the Roman soldiers arrested him. One disciple cut off a soldier’s ear and Jesus’ response was to heal the soldier and go with them quietly. He did not consider them his enemies (Mt 26:52, Lk 23:46). Jesus was anti-discriminatory in his approach to other religions, other classes, other races and the opposite sex.

The dilemma that the body of Christ faces today, is in being equally anti-discriminatory towards all people groups we could ever possibly encounter. In the past Christians have discriminated against left-handers with claims that it was a sin to be born left-handed because the “goats” are to be placed on Jesus’ left side (Mt 25:33, see also Gen 48:13-18). Christians have used multiple Biblical passages to warrant prejudice against women including but not limited to: “Women should remain silent in churches” (1 Cor 14:34 see also 1 Cor 11:5, Eph 5:22, 1 Peter 3:1-7 etc). Still today Christians justify racism with slogans such as “The children of Ham turned black for their sins.” Homophobia is the new racism. The fad today is to throw verses such as Romans 2:27 and Leviticus 18:22 at the GLBTI (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex) community and tell them that their sexual inclinations are sinful. When did God give the church the right to judge what is or is not evil, wrong, sinful, unhealthy or harmful? Did not Jesus say: “Do NOT judge … for in the same way you judge others, you will be judged!” (Mt 7:1-2)?

Jesus said: “There are Eunuchs who were born that way, and there are Eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs” (Mt 19:11-12). Eunuchs had different genitals and sexuality to other males and this passage blatantly says that some were born that way. Must we not consider, then, that it is possible to be born gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex? If the body of Christ includes murderers, rapists, alcoholics, adulterers, discriminators, bigots, racists, and homophobics, then it most certainly includes gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people as brothers and sisters!

If the body of Christ is truly going to extend the love of God and represent Jesus, then we must refrain from judgement toward the GLBTI community and welcome them into our churches without demanding change, with full acceptance, love and grace toward them.

Acknowledging Need or Lack

Posted on by K2 Media

I have seen a few facebook statuses recently that have asserted the idea that God has provided for all our needs and we should not focus on what we lack but should believe that we are complete, whole, fulfilled and blessed in Christ etc.

Ephesians 1:3 says we have “Every spiritual blessing in Christ.” It does not say “Every physical blessing.” It goes on to list these blessings as forgiveness, reconciliation, holiness, blamelessness, sonship etc. These are wonderful spiritual blessings. There are other verses that talk about God providing for needs and blessing us, but, in my opinion, the Bible does not guarantee all our needs will be met in this lifetime on this earth.

There are orphans starving to death and their need for food has been left unmet. I’m forgiven for all my sin and it does not affect my relationship with God, but it still affects my relationships with other human beings. People sell children as sex slaves, wage war and put on self-protective facades to avoid intimacy, because this world is in lack and the need for love is often not being met.

I’m going to be embarrassingly honest and admit that my greatest area of lack … is sex. I’m not married and I generally don’t have sex. I’m waiting for love.

Being raised as a Christian, I was taught that “God is all I need.” I struggled with this idea because I experienced needs like affection and attention that I believed I lacked greatly at times and less so at other times.

Now I hear arguments that God has provided for all needs and again I feel frustrated because my experience says otherwise. When discussing whether or not my experience lines up with God’s word teaching that I am forgiven and don’t need to feel condemned (Romans 8:1) I totally agree. But the word of God does not guarantee that I will ever get married or that all of my physical, emotional and sexual needs will be met.

In the past I have tried to alter my perspective and convince myself that I don’t need what I need. I have learned to be more content in my singleness and much more accepting of myself as a person. However, what I am learning now is that I have to embrace and validate my own needs despite anyone’s opinion that I have no lack or no need in Christ. I disagree with this and I own the fact that I want a partner in life. I want more hugs, more massages; quality time with a man who can hardly keep his eyes off me, deep discussions and someone to live with long term. I accept my need and I will no longer apologise for it 🙂

If you would be interested in reading more about my struggles in singleness and sexuality, let me know and I will write more on this topic in the future.