Obsessed?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Is masturbation okay?

It wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that masturbation became classified as a major evil, and in the event it was not because of its sexual nature but because it was treated as a disease. In a 1712 treatise Onania, a writer identified by Laqueur as John Marten “announced that he had providentially met a pious physician who had found remedies for this hitherto incurable disease. The remedies are expensive, but given the seriousness of the condition, they are worth every penny.” This was followed in 1760 by David Tissot’s L’Onanisme, which “became an instant European literary sensation.” After Tissot, doctors claimed that all sorts of medical complications followed from masturbation: “spinal tuberculosis, epilepsy, pimples, madness, general wasting, and an early death.” It was, for Tissot, more dangerous than smallpox.

Why should the liberated Enlightenment worry about a private pleasure like masturbation? Laqueur argues that there were three complaints: Masturbation is private, based on a fantasy, and creates an insatiable addiction. But he thinks something deeper was going on too. The liberation of the Enlightenment was massive and disorienting that the attack on masturbation was, Laqueur claims, the “centerpiece of a program for policing the imagination, desire, and the self that modernity itself had unleashed.”

Oral sex?

Number two, is it unnatural? This is a tricky one. The male and female genitals are so clearly made for each other that there is a natural fitness or beauty to it. What about oral sex? Now you might jump to the conclusion and say: Nope, that is not natural, but I am slow to go there because of what the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon say about a wife’s breasts. This is kind of an analogy. So consider this. It seems to me nothing is more natural than a baby snuggling in his mother’s arms drinking at her breast. That is what breasts are. They are designed to feed babies. So is there anything physically natural about a husband’s fascination with his wife’s breasts? Well, you might say no. That is not what breasts are for. But Proverbs 5:19 says: Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight. Be intoxicated always with her love. And Song of Solomon 7:7–8 are even more explicit, speaking of the woman: Your stature is like a palm tree and your breasts are like its clusters. I say I will climb the palm tree and lay hold of its fruit. Oh, may your breasts be like clusters of the vine.

Well, even though there is very little anatomical correlation between a man’s hands or his lips and his wife’s breasts, it surely seems to be, quote, natural, in another way, namely built in delight and desire that God in his Word seems to commend for our marital enjoyment. So I ask: Well, might there be similar desires for oral sex or other kinds of sex? So I doubt that we should put a limit on a married couple based on the claim of it being unnatural. That is risky, but that is where I come down on the naturalness of it.

Hedonism anyone?

86 thoughts on “Obsessed?”

  1. Crumbs! What are these guys on? This is when some proper Biblical exegesis could really come in handy. Like, for instance, understanding that Song of Solomon is about the believer’s marriage to Christ, not human marriage.

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  3. We’re commanded to not lust; the problem with masturbation for the unmarried is the (usual) inability of someone to engage in it without lusting in their mind while doing so. As for married folks, I think it might be different, given the different circumstances, but I’m not sure why one would want to, bar missing each other if one is away on a business trip, while chatting in a naughty manner on the phone together, perhaps…

    As for oral sex, if Scripture doesn’t explicitly forbid it, why should anyone care if a married couple chooses to engage in such?

    As for the Song of Solomon, even if one takes it solely as a metaphor for the relationship between God and His Church, or the believer and Christ, how interesting that the metaphors are so highly sexual (that must say something about how deep God’s love is for us, that He employs such metaphors). But then, God’s Word does not shy away from very graphic metaphors…

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  4. So, a married couple, enjoying themselves in that way as well as more conventional sexual practices, is guilty of hedonism?

    On what Scriptural basis?

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  5. Will, if sex is merely about orgasm. Then you have a point. But then there goes your patriarchal world where men didn’t have to worry about women delighting in sex. And there goes your heterosexual world where sex was for procreation and marriage for rearing offspring.

    You’re one of those pomo patriarchalists. Snazzy!

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  6. Piper also tweeted this strange little poem recently:

    Down by the river the teenagers would go to make out. I watched them drive back. They never looked happy. Especially she.

    So, yeah.

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  7. D.G. Hart,
    If sex must include procreation, then someone who is prostateless because of cancer surgery, like myself, or women who have gone through menopause need not apply. But sex is first about the union of two people–God created Eve because Adam was alone. Now if one defines that union as necessarily involving complementarian parts, then Pres. Bill did not have sex with that woman and homosexuality does not exist by definition.

    The issue becomes what God’s Word says about that union. The next issue is whether we should try to legislate what God’s Word says about that union.

    BTW, I hope that sex between two people would always include being complimentarian.

    Finally, what kind of burden are we putting on most people when, without explicit Scriptural direction, we forbid masturbation?

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  8. I fail to see why sex can’t be about procreation, unifying of the flesh, and husband-wife recreation / pleasure, altogether.

    I mean, God made it for procreation, but also to unite a husband and wife closer together; and He made it a pleasurable activity itself.

    Why can’t patriarchalists also be hedonists (within a Godly context, of course)?

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  9. Will, however vivid the imagery in Song of Solomon we must read it with the understanding that God’s Word is never lewd, or vulgar. It is chaste. It is holy. It is spiritual.

    But the way some Christians talk about these issues today- the fact they talk about them openly- such as Piper there is anything but chaste.

    Dr. Hart- I’m glad that we seem to have found an area of agreement 🙂

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  10. Curt, sorry, I’m simply following the confession of faith.

    Plus, the sexual acts of heteros who can’t reproduce look a lot like those of heteros who can. Oral sex doesn’t qualify.

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  11. @ Alexander: “God’s Word is never lewd, or vulgar. It is chaste. It is holy. It is spiritual.”

    Of course it is holy and spiritual.

    But what of this and this?

    Graphic, if not lewd and vulgar, no?

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  12. I should clarify that I do not endorse hedonism, per se, but I do fail to see anything wrong with married couples delighting in each other and enjoying the range of possible pleasures that can occur within the marital union; I see nothing wrong with people enjoying God’s good gifts in an appropriate capacity, and I fail to see how such, and following the Reformed confessions on marriage, are mutually exclusive.

    Are not things like oral sex and masturbation ‘adiaphora’, given their occurring within a marital framework? I always thought that anything not explicitly forbidden in Scripture, and against which one can’t rationally derive a Scriptural argument, to be permissible, and ‘things indifferent’, i.e. adiaphora.

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  15. D.G. Hart,
    First, I understand. I do think, however, that we need to divide the confession of faith into parts with one part what the divines wrote about God and soteriology and the second part what they wrote about how we relate to people. And once we make that division, we need to admit that what they wrote about how we relate to others is more subject to cultural compromise than what they wrote about God.

    Second, what about those with sexual dysfunctions?

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  16. 1. Song of Solomon is about Christ and his people, not about peope and other people. I’ll bite. If it is about Christ and his people, how does anyone make sense of it without some referrent? I am to compare Christ and his people to….?

    2. What happened to being silent where Scripture seems, at least to me, to be silent?

    3. How is it wrong for the authors of the quotes to discuss those practices and make moral judgments when the same is done in the discussion that follows. As in, If homos do it, then heteros should not. I recall the Mary Pride made that same argument.

    3.Whatever happened to staying the heck out of people’s bedrooms? And, for that matter houses?

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  17. 1. Song of Solomon is about Christ and his people, not about peope and other people. I’ll bite. If it is about Christ and his people, how does anyone make sense of it without some referrent? I am to compare Christ and his people to….?

    2. What happened to being silent where Scripture seems, at least to me, to be silent?

    3. How is it wrong for the authors of the quotes to discuss those practices and make moral judgments when the same is done in the discussion that follows. As in, If homos do it, then heteros should not. I recall the Mary Pride made that same argument.

    4.Whatever happened to staying the heck out of people’s bedrooms? And, for that matter houses?

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  21. Of course masturbation is wrong; it comes from lust. And that’s why the regenerated heart feels bad after doing it.

    “Are not things like oral sex and masturbation ‘adiaphora’, given their occurring within a marital framework? I always thought that anything not explicitly forbidden in Scripture, and against which one can’t rationally derive a Scriptural argument, to be permissible, and ‘things indifferent’, i.e. adiaphora.”
    Are you Lutheran, Will?

    “Second, what about those with sexual dysfunctions?”
    Then you don’t get to do it. Deal with it, other people have.

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  22. Forgot to say, concerning, “anything not explicitly forbidden in Scripture…

    Well, pot isn’t explicitly forbidden. Is it adiaphora? If Christ had turned grass into pot instead of water into wine, we’d all be toking down at Communion, right?

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  24. Matt, you seem to be confusing/conflating the rule for worship and the rule for life in the Reformed tradition. As to worship the church may not legislate what God does not expressly command. As to life, the church may not legislate against what God does not explicity forbid.

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  26. Zrim, after Nawlins and then Redeemerpalooza public confessions? This is all child’s play. Figuratively or literally, whichever is floating the boat this morning.

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  28. Bill, you seem to confusing sarcasm with sincerity. The grass into pot line is a quote from a comedy show.

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  29. @ matt: No, I’m Reformed.

    Marijuana is definitely adiaphora, too. It happens to be illegal in many jurisdictions, but where it is legal and/or if it becomes legal in places where it currently is not, I see no reason why a believer can’t partake of it if he or she chooses to do so, as long as he doesn’t get blazed, any more than there is anything wrong with drinking alcoholic beverages, as long as one doesn’t get drunk. And the argument I’ve seen advanced by someone recently, that you one never not be intoxicated on marijuana, no matter how small an amount one partakes, is as absurd as the similar arguments one sees from teetotalitarian Christians, who question whether one can consume any alcohol without being at least slightly drunk. Of course one can, in either case; a basic principle of pharmacology is that one can have a large enough quantity of any substance that is sufficient to harm or kill someone, and one can have a small enough quantity of any substance such that it has no effect whatsoever; as for medicinal drugs, the recommended dosages fall between those two extremes, and the same is possible for more recreational drugs, whether caffeine, nicotine, ethanol, or tetrahydrocannabinol.

    I’ve never seen any modern Christian arguments against partaking of marijuana that ultimately weren’t some form of ‘darnit, it’s a hippy leftist thing, and so we shouldn’t do it!’, and older arguments were all of the ‘it turns people into violent criminals / turns women into sex slaves!’, akin to the ‘masturbation will make you go blind / grow hair on the palms of your hands / turn you crazy!’ paranoid arguments.

    There’s a cultural stigma against marijuana, but it isn’t based in reason; just prejudice.

    Apart from legality issues, there’s no reason why Christians couldn’t choose to partake of marijuana, as long as, like with alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, they don’t overdo it.

    Of course, nothing wrong with choosing not to partake, either.

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  30. Nice try with the Lord’s Supper analogy, but fail.

    Christ didn’t turn water into beer, either, but are we forbidden to drink any alcoholic beverage besides wine?

    He also didn’t turn anything into tobacco leaf; are we forbidden to enjoy a cigar, too?

    Or coffee?

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  31. And BTW, my mentioning the hairy palms / going blind arguments against masturbation is not to make a case for masturbation (I already pointed out above my beliefs, near the beginning of this discussion thread); I’m just pointing out that one can have bad arguments for any position, whether or not the particular position can be otherwise argued for on other grounds.

    I submit that I haven’t heard any solid arguments against marijuana partaking by Christians, other than ones pointing out the legality issue in many jurisdictions (not even ones appealing to its harmfulness; alcohol is harmful, too, wrecks many lives, but it is not forbidden by Scripture; ditto tobacco, or caffeine – people have OD’d on energy drinks…). Of course, laws can be changed; Prohibition against alcohol proved unworkable, and the same is being shown with marijuana.

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  32. Bill-

    Certainly the Song uses figurative language and images which are familiar to us to describe the relationship between the believer and Christ. But that doesn’t mean it’s about a married couple. It talks about hinds and roes: but these are images. The Song is an allegory: it’s has a dramatis personae, it has the words of different persons.

    But it is an intensely spiritual book and whilst it uses images to help us, without the Spirit illuminating it, and our experience, it is unintelligible.

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  33. @Will:

    Getting “blazed” on marijuana is purely relative. Just as a beer for one person could cause them to be drunk whereas one beer for another might not do anything. Once again, purely relative. The point is not to get so drunk or buzzed or whatever so that you can’t give a testimony about Christ.

    You completely missed the sarcasm in the Lord’s supper analogy, so actually YOU failed.

    So go spank your monkey cuz if you’re married and on a business trip and you’re into naughty chatting, it’s all good.

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  34. To take the Song as allegory stands historical/grammatical exegesis on its head. It straightforwardly a Song about romantic/erotic love between man and woman.

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  37. Go ahead and impose extrabiblical limits on yourself, if that’s your thing. Seems to be the way of many here, apart from on drinking and smoking, that is…

    Just don’t tell me I’m not Reformed because I am not a ‘weaker brother’, needing extra rules.

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  38. As it happens, we seem to be in agreement about not making universal rules, due to different ways different people respond to the same amounts of substances.

    Good.

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  39. Bill- Strange, the church for hundreds of years didn’t think that way. You know there was a church before 1900.

    And straightforwardly erotic love?! What are you on? So you take the porn view then that it’s all sexual acts? You agree with Driscoll?

    Also, why would God be interested in giving a love manual? This rationalism is killing the church.

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  41. I was going to respond to Alexander along the lines of Jeff Cagle’s metaphor comment, and then I remembered the Alexander doesn’t think literary fluency helps one interpret the Bible.

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  45. Jeff – I don’t understand what you mean. Please explain to me what the following verses mean in relation to “marital erotic love” and their reference to human relations:

    Song of Songs 1:5-9:
    [5] I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. [6] Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept. [7] Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? [8] If thou know not, O thou fairest among women, go thy way forth by the footsteps of the flock, and feed thy kids beside the shepherds’ tents. [9] I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots.

    And can you tell me why it’s so important to you that the Song is about carnal, temporal human sexual experience and not about the relationship between Christ and the believer?

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  46. D4 – Please tell me where I said literary fluency isn’t important for Biblical interpretation. I’d like the quote. I said the Song was an allegory. So please tell me where I says the opposite.

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  48. @ Alex: And can you tell me why it’s so important to you that the Song is about carnal, temporal human sexual experience and not about the relationship between Christ and the believer?

    No, that wasn’t my point. My point was, if indeed we take the book as allegory, then we have to understand the literal meaning first before the allegory can make sense.

    Allegory is not the only Christocentric option here. Type is another viable option.

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  49. D4- I was making a different point there. I was responding to Dr. Hart and others who were arguing that secular literature (and films!) were useful means in understanding spiritual things. E.g. The Wire teaches us valuable things about the human condition. And indeed the practice whereby Dr. Hart routinely resorted to atheists like Mencken for spiritual edification and insight rather than Scripture . What I was saying was that Scripture tells us what we need to know about the human condition and it lays out the spiritual truths and insights we need. If a Christian has to use secular media then there’s a problem.

    I didn’t say that Scripture doesn’t use certain literary forms. In fact I affirmed it in the comment you referenced. But I don’t need to spend my time reading secular poems to understand what a poem is.

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  50. Alexander,

    is allegory a form original with the Biblical authors? How do you know Song is an allegory? It doesn’t come with the subtitle :An Allegory of Christ and His Church. Do any other inspired writers refer to the Song as an allegory? The only use of the word allegory I can think of in Scripture is an reference to seemingly unfigurative real life events. Shall that be our definition of allegory?

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  51. Alexander, let me correct you before you turn me into a frigging Harry Emerson Fosdick. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the human condition and the alleviation of our lot. It does not tell us what it is like even to be like David who loses a favored son (Absalom). Someone like a David Simon might help us imagine what that feels like (Mencken couldn’t since he stunk at fiction). I’m sorry to say, I doubt you could fictionalize it either, to consider David’s agony.

    But that’s okay. I don’t need to know David’s agony for salvation’s sake. I may need to consider it when meeting with an aged parent.

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  52. Mr. Cagle,

    The Song is figurative and of the types of figurative, typical or allegorical, it is allegorical. We turn to Mr. Durham to explain:

    1) Type supposes a history to have happened on which the type is based, e.g. Jonah in the belly of the whale; allegory does not.

    2) Types look only to matters of fact and compare one fact with another (e.g. Christ lying in the grave to Jonah lying in the belly of the whale); whereas “allegories take in words, sentences, doctrines, both of faith and manners”.

    3) “Types compare persons, and facts under the Old Testament, with persons and facts under the New, and are made up of something that is present, prefiguring another to come”; allegories look to matters in hand and place spiritual truths upon words which at first glance they seem not to bear. And this is the case whether in the Old Testament or the New or in both, using the words to express the meaning the Spirit intends without any comparions between this and that of the Old or New Testamenst or both. An allegory may be in precepts, e.g. “Muzzle not the mouth of the Ox” and “cut off the right hand”- it is clear these precepts are not actually talking about muzzling the mouth of an ox or cutting off one’s right hand.

    4) Types are only historical and the truth of the fact agreeing in the antitype. Otherwise we would start seeing types where we have no warrant. Allegories, on the other hand, principally doctrinal and are not concerned with comapring facts but holding forth and explaining doctrines and using similitudes to better explain them and by the use of such to make them (the doctrines) more affecting to the reader.

    5) “Types in the Old Testament respect only some things, persons, and events, as Christ, the gospel, and its spreadings &c. and cannot be extended beyond these: but allegories take in every thing that belongs either to doctrine, or instructing in faith, or to practice for ordering one’s life.” Allegories are thereforme much more extensive in their meaning and application to life than types.

    The Song does not intend to compare Solomon’s marriage to the marriage between the believer and Christ. For a start, which marriage are we talking about? His sinful marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter?(!) or his polygamy generally? What sort of spiritual lessons would that teach? And if it be typical of Christ’s marriage to the church under the NT, how was it applied to the OT believer?

    There is also no scripture to back up the assertion that this Song is a type of the marriage between Christ and the gentile (NT) believer; the Song was fulfilled in the believing Jew, as his faith was of the same substance as the NT believer’s, indeed his faith was before the writing even of the Song. And there’s still the problem of which of Solomon’s marriage we’re hear speaking of. And why would he be speaking of someone else’s marriage? Beside the fact the writing of the Song would not allow for it to be applied to someone else since the writer (Solomon) writes either in the first person or to the wife.

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  53. D4-

    Again, I don’t need to spend my time reading secular allegories to know what an allegory is. I was taught what an allegory and what a poem is in school. I can apply that knowledge to the Bible. There is a difference between reading things in school as part of one’s education and deciding to spend one’s free time in secular entertainments and past times rather than in spiritually edifying ones.

    Education is important. Part of education is learning about literary styles. For most Christians their employment requires them to spend their time seeing to secualar affairs and that’s fine if it’s lawful employment, just as education is lawful. But if a Christian spends his time in worldly entertainments, as distinct from lawful education and employment, then that’s a problem.

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  54. @ Alexander:

    “Jeff” is suitable between peers, thank you. I’m not nearly old enough to deserve “Mr.”

    I’m not wedded to the view that Song has Solomon and one of his wives in the background, but I think it’s plausible. You clearly don’t. Why?

    I see two counterarguments in what you write:

    * That his marriage to Pharaoh’s daughter and his polygamy generally were sinful. Presumably, this would annul the analogy that holds between Christ and his bride.

    This objection needs to distinguish between the occasion of a wedding and the condition of being married.

    Was it wrong for Jacob to take a second wife, Rachel? Yes. Was it a sin for him to remain married to her, rather than divorce her? No. Are we commanded to marry within the faith? Yes. Must believers therefore abandon their unbelieving spouses? No.

    If we fail to distinguish here, then we get boxed into a corner reading 6.8-10. If the condition of being married has the same moral weight as the decision to get married, then we would have to read those verses as endorsing polygamy and concubinage, even if only in an allegorical sense.

    But if we distinguish, then we can observe that Solomon was foolish to get married a 61st time, yet not foolish to love his wife having married her.

    (Again, even if only in an allegorical sense)

    So I’m not yet compelled by that objection to believe that the Shullamite was ahistorical.

    * That the Song cannot be comparing Solomon’s marriage to that between Christ and his church because it would not make sense to an OT believer to reference the NT church.

    Here, I perceive two assumptions not shared.

    I assume that the OT and NT churches are one, different only in dispensation. So I would say that there is a comparison made between Solomon’s marriage and God’s relationship with the church in all ages.

    What grounds my assumption? Eph 5. Marriages are a picture of Christ’s relationship with the church.

    And actually, that comparison holds whether Song has a historical background or not. Even if Song is allegorical, then the author is comparing a human marriage to that spiritual one, just as Bunyan compares an earthly journey to a spiritual one.

    Second, I assume that the reality of the marriage picture precedes the quality of the marriage. Paul in Eph 5 asserts that husbands are heads of wives just as Christ is head of the church. Therefore, husbands should live as befits that headship.

    In other words, the marriage picture is not conditioned on husbands living up to a particular standard. The marriage picture is a fact – and out of that fact flows an obligation.

    The same would be true here. Solomon’s marriages were in fact pictures of Christ’s marriage to the church.

    Solomon wins no prizes for his headship! He was, as you point out, given to idolatry. I can’t imagine seeing my husband at most once every three years.

    All that said, the picture holds.

    Thoughts?

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  55. Again, I don’t need to spend my time reading secular allegories to know what an allegory is. I was taught what an allegory and what a poem is in school. I can apply that knowledge to the Bible.

    This is why I say you don’t believe that literary fluency helps one interpret the Bible. What you describe above is not fluency; it’s bare rudiment.

    One has to read many, many examples of different types of poems and allegories to become fluent in these genres. Classroom definitions with a couple exempli gratia don’t do that for you.

    And before you counter with the illumination of the Spirit (in which I believe), will the Spirit help me understand the nuance of a Greek text if I’ve only just learned the alphabet? Same with genre.

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  56. This is the problem with the view that grammatical-historical hermeneutics is the be-all and end-all when it comes to understanding the Bible (a view which has barely been around 100 years if that). The medium becomes all important. So the history books become mere history and people spend too long in the intricacies of understanding poetry and miss the actual point of the passage.

    An allegory is an allegory. It’s not hard. Stop trying to deconstruct the Bible and just read it, meditate upon it, look for Christ in it. Leave the literary criticism to the atheists.

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  57. I’m wasn’t trying to defend a histo-gram-decon-crit-erary hermenuetic as I was my original statement about your own approach which you have finally affirmed.

    Why’d you bother disagreeing with me in the first place?

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  59. Alexander,

    Aside from some OT passages falling broadly into the genre of “fable”, the category of allegory didn’t enter into Israelite/Jewish lit until the intertestamental period, when Jewish authors repurposed allegory for their purposes. They imported it from the Greeks sometime after ca. 400BC.

    I’ll elaborate when I don’t have to type on the iPhone. That isn’t to say that Song of Songs is about erotic love either, just to say the genre of allegory didn’t exist when SoS was written. It would be like attributing science-fiction to Aquinas – historically implausible.

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  62. McMark, Jones: “Masturbation is Islamic or Unitarian, certainly not Christian.”

    That might make the BBs happy, but I sure hope Mark has close ties to anti-terrorist units in British Columbia.

    Jones: “Masturbation is not an unforgivable sin because it is a sin. If it weren’t, then it just might be the unforgivable sin.”

    Is that some sort of Reformed haiku? What could that possibly mean?

    But the usual clever tagline: “Pastor Mark Jones ran this article by several pastors and friends before posting it, and only one friend said he “puked in his mouth” after reading this article. But he’s in the OPC.”

    Sort of undercuts the tension of “sin or unforgivable sin.”

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  64. Oh no, he went with ‘pleasuring yourself’. Well, sister Aloysius might tell you it was unforgivable just to get you to stop. Jr. High, it was a tough time for everyone.

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  66. Wow, from incarnation-Trinity-union-communion to homosexuality (with pit stops in Unitarianism and Islam). What, no blindness, hairy palms, and stunted growth? But I’m sure those young campers are all crystal clear now. Or at least ready for some old-fashioned s’mores already. Worldview’s need for an answer to everything sure is weird-o.

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  67. As it is, I don’t like the English puritans trying to sort out every possible nook and cranny of my heart and ways before God. Now, you want me to walk the distance with a PCA dude, who can’t get Sola Fide and covenant figured? I don’t think so.

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  69. I’m amazed that none of the parents of the female campers objected to a pastor speaking to their daughter on this topic. Shouldn’t this be reserved for parents? At least Young Life and Campus Crusade separated the sexes for their obligatory teenage sex talk, in my day that is. Is nothing too inappropriate for public consumption anymore? Have Jersey Shore and the Kardashians set the tone for even the conservative reformed churches?

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  71. So our public schools are more Christian than the OPC summer camps? Maybe the pro-Constantinians have an ironic point about influence.

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  72. D.G.,
    Mark Jones’ article on masturbation is a reminder that we sometimes leave too much to deductive reasoning. I would call it Puritanical Deduction Gone Wild.

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  76. So, the mad dash to be the next shock jock pulpiteer has begun in earnest. I’m not sure Driscoll’s body is cold yet, but by gum we’ve got folks masturbating and we can’t spare to rest.

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  80. You have helpful advice about expectations and communication you’d get in any decent book on marriage. You’ve freshened up the old, tired “love bank” idea by making it about Energy and Flow and Zimzum. I see your usual great pacing, even if it sometimes sounds like you’re grasping for coffee-cup sleeve slogans.”

    ME: “I’m seeing subtle but big successes in every chapter. You tell stories about your marriage that are amazing exercises in self-marketing—you seem to be talking about conflict but you never let yourself look nasty. And your wife never comes close to looking bad, which is so important on the Oprah Winfrey Network and Oprah’s tours. On every page I see great branding, great re-packaging. ‘Relationship’ is such a boring, overused word. You’ve done away with relationship and started talking instead about this Energy, this Zimzum, this Space that only the two of you share.”

    JP: “Also there’s nothing about holiness—you use ‘sacred,’ which is so much fresher than “holy.” And you use it in a fresh way. It’s not a person or a body or marriage as an institution that’s sacred. Instead, it’s the zimzum energy field between us—sex itself, for instance—that’s sacred.”

    http://www.booksandculture.com/articles/webexclusives/2014/november/zimzum-of-love.html

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  82. In The Act of Marriage, for example, the Song of Solomon is cited as a guide for manual clitoral stimulation: “His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.” DeRogatis notes that this is a “uniquely Protestant approach to the joy of sex. The most authoritative text on sexuality is … the Bible.”

    But perhaps sex is like the administration of the sacraments—no need to get all “biblicist” about it.

    Where the Bible does not speak, let us have liberty

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  83. Will McDavid (Mockingbird)—-The attempt to overcorrect for decades of repression and denigration of the body (a more pop form of the increased focus on bodily resurrection and working with one’s hands)… may be wrong to sharply divide between this new embrace of sex and the old puritanism. Though there’s a change in tone, one can almost hear the Law of Good Sex, as well as that same ‘us vs them’ (the best sex) creeping in. There should be better ways to celebrate something good than linking it up so closely with Christian identity .

    http://www.mbird.com/2014/11/another-week-ends-life-in-psychiatric-records-faith-as-ambiguous-blessing-evangelical-women-relentlessly-positive-millennials-flawed-in-laws-and-friends-of-sinners/

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  85. Thanks for allowing me the chance to revisit this timeless exchange:

    D. G. Hart
    Posted August 21, 2014 at 6:45 am | Permalink

    McMark, what about wet dreams?

    Curt Day
    Posted August 21, 2014 at 7:31 am | Permalink

    D.G.,

    There is a very simple solution to having wet dreams. Get prostate cancer surgery. Guaranteed, no more wet dreams.

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