Just one step at a time

The summer (well, sort-of summer, this is the UK!) is giving me the itch. All I seem to think about is sex. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex… you get the hint! Permanently horny! And they say men think about sex every 3 seconds!Starting to get annoying now.

Problem is, my friendly chef is (still) far to keen to help me scratch!

I’m having to live by ‘lead me not into temptation’ on a minute-by-minute basis!

I think that’s part of what OUCH was about - the general pent up frustration! Plus Church Boy has just been over to Northern Ireland to see a lady he likes. I’m kinda cool with that. But it’s still a reminder that there’s still nothing, nada, no one out there for me at the moment.

And I really could do with a decent hug!

According to Available Light, you can’t.

If you read his post, apparently he told a group of unmarried women who were living with partners that they should have no expectations of faithfulness over their partners because they were unmarried. In his own words:

“Years ago, in a graduate class discussion about adultery, I offended several young women by pointing out that it was impossible for their live-in boyfriends to cheat on them. Only married people can commit adultery, I said. It seemed to me that if they wanted to live together without being married, they should not expect their men to keep to a standard of marital fidelity.”

Oh come on! That’s so overly-simplistic. And completely arrogant Christian. As well as outrageous!

So is he saying, and I asked this in a comment, that the unmarried, but not living together, person, who hopes (as most of us do) that the relationships might move towards marriage, should not be hurt if their partner sleeps with/kisses/gets intimate in someway, with someone else? What happened to trust?

By implication (and maybe in my outrage I’ve mis-extrapolated this) he is saying that until we are married (and perhaps only until we’re married in church) we should have no expectations of fidelity from the other party, no demands of exclusivity of intimacy.

Bollock! Total and utter crap! Not quite the context (but Jesus never had this conversation), but I think it applies well here:

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’ Matthew 25:21 NIV

If we can’t be faithful in the smaller things - and even though I’ve never been married, I can see that a relationship prior to marriage is in someways smaller than a married one - then how can we expect to be faithful in the larger things (touché, I know, but one of the points I tried to make last year, if you’ve been following me that long), i.e. marriage, which has more pressures.

And if we’re strictly ‘Bible is the actual word of God’ Christians, then those women who were living with and having a sexual relationship with their partners, in God’s eyes are married. Though it’s always funny how some Christians can beat you with one stick and ignore the other: i.e., if the Bible is ‘law’, then everyone must be married, whilst ignoring that the Bible equates a committed sexual relationship with marriage.

But then that might make things far to tricky and radical!

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Not for the faint-hearted.

I’m totally ignorant (a blessing of sorts) of what actually happens during an abortion. I found more information here: http://www.btinternet.com/~DEvans_23/ab_meth.htm and here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/ethics/abortion/medical/methods_1.shtml

After watching the video and reading some of these descriptions, the brutality of surgical abortion is awful. Ignorance really is bliss.

I had registered that the morning-after-pill could be an abortion pill. I’ve taken it twice in the last 10 years.

I don’t agree with abortion - but to take away a woman’s right to choose will not stop them. They will just be ushered away into backstreet clinics again, causing more infections, infertility and death of mothers (though, with the number of trained abortion doctors nowadays, the odds are ‘better’ than they were before 1973).

What is needed is a new way of looking at sex education. And a new way of looking at sex. Of course, accidents are always going to happen - the heat of the moment is a powerful thing. I’m probably more highly educated on contraception methods and the possible STDs you can catch, and yet I’ve taken the morning-after-pill twice and had 2 HIV tests - but education helps and reduces the number of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.

And realising that sex is not the big deal we’ve made it - yet is a bigger deal than we’ve trivialised it to (if that makes sense).

Rant over (for now).

I’ve been reading and watching a range of books, blogs and films from other parts of the world, and it’s been getting me thinking about this whole women covering up ‘thing’.

I just don’t get it? When was it decided that men are so weak and feeble that they can’t control their urges, and that it’s the woman’s fault? Why is it that women are responsible for men’s actions? Surely if you follow that thinking, that makes women far more powerful than men. And yet, women aren’t allowed to do certain things (in these societies that believe women cause men to sin). I just don’t get it.

An Iranian PhD student in Canada sexually assaulted a woman in an elevator. And blamed her: “You can’t expect all males to control themselves when the breasts are out” was his defense. Um, hello! Yes we can! In fact, we demand it! I’d like to think this says more about him than his culture, but I’m not 100% sure it’s the case. Culture has a lot to do with who we are, so there must be some influence.

A slightly more (I hope) tongue-in-cheek look at the subject, from an American perspective. I agree, to a point: we should ALL dress appropriately, men as well as women. There comes a point when we need to realise that letting it all hang out probably isn’t best for anyone (and I’ve done my years of letting it all hang out). But, just because someone chooses to do that, it’s no excuse to behave badly and take advantage (and I don’t think a man having an erection at the sight of a woman’s backside is sexual harrasment - that’s just biology. Touching - now that IS harassment!)

Though, I can see the advantages of the burqa: at least you wouldn’t have to worry about what to wear each morning!

Can I recommend At Five in the Afternoon, a very moving film about a young woman living in Kabul after the fall of the Taliban. If it doesn’t make you feel blessed to be living in a ‘Western’ country, then I don’t know what will.

Take 2 women, a bottle of wine and a couple of pints of beer and the conversation always turns to men, and often leads on to talking about sex. As it did last night with a very dear friend. Who, when we were talking about how we don’t want to end up with a guy who think sex should only be in the missionary position, in the dark, came out with:

“We don’t want them to be scared when we throw them on to the bed and rip their shirts off. After all, we can sew the buttons back on once we’re done!”

I don’t believe we should compromise in order to keep relationships. OK, let me clarify that: I don’t think we should compromise OURSELVES in order to keep relationships.

Yes, I know. Pot, kettle and black spring to mind. But I’m determined to not be that woman any more.

What I mean is compromises along the lines of:

• Sleep with someone in order to keep them.
• Move in with them because they’re not prepared to marry, in order to keep them.
• Go for a non-Christian (or whatever faith you hold) because despite wanting a strong, faith-led husband, there aren’t any around you’d consider, but would rather be married.
• Give up on their other activities or faith in order to appease a partner who doesn’t want them to be that way, in order to keep them.

I feel sad when I see friends drop, one by one, away from their faith because of a guy. Because it’s usually us women who compromise in order to keep a man. Because we have less time, if we want children; have less choice in churches; and want to please more than perhaps a man does.

I don’t want to compromise any more. I pray I will have the strength never to do so again.

I do, though, tell the unmarried and widows that singleness might well be the best thing for them, as it has been for me. But if they can’t manage their desires and emotions, they should by all means go ahead and get married. The difficulties of marriage are preferable by far to a sexually tortured life as a single.

1 Cor 7:8-9 (The Message)

I have issues with these 2 verses. They make me want to go back in time, grab Paul and drop him in the 21st century and yell at him: “You find me a husband, then!” Because it’s not that simple. As one who regularly ‘burns in lust’ (and if you’ve followed my previous blogs you’ll know bits and pieces of my history that attest to this), I’m fully aware of the tortured life of a single (sometimes I love the way The Message gets to the nub of things so succinctly!). And I’m VERY aware of how it is not that simple to rectify.

However, I’ve been thinking a little more on this recently. Because I’d forgotten verse 8, pointing this very firmly at singles, I’d got along a line of thinking of better to get married quickly than burn with lust waiting out an engagement. You can always tell the Christian couples who’ve not had sex before married. They’re usually married within 6 months (sometimes less) of announcing their engagement. And the ones who are sleeping together. I know of someone who got engaged October/November last year. And they’re not getting married until 2009. They are, however, moving in together this year. Much to the consternation of a few of the more pious of our congregation. Oh, I love a scandal. Particularly one that I’m not the cause of!